Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Technology

  • Kevin Drum RIP

    I think?

    If you follow the blog closely, Kevin Drum is an old school political blogger. His politics match mine quite well. And he’s been blogging forever, in the old school way where you learn about his family, interests, etc.

    He’s been fighting health issues for a long time. Things seemed up and down. His last blog post was titled Health Update (as he often does) and the first sentence was “Everything is getting worse”.

    I enjoy his posts so the fact that this was five days ago was concerning. I searched his name on Bluesky and found this:

    Mi cuñato is gone. Several of you may know him. He was a Dem blogger that wrote for Political Animal & Mother Jones. The guy that started Friday Cat-Blogging, Kevin Drum.My partner’s older brother. Bless you, Kevin 🐈 🪽 🏵️

    — Lonely Doll 💛🐝💜= 🪷 (@lonelydoll.bsky.social) 2025-03-08T00:40:29.679Z

    Cuñato means brother in law.

    Life is short, enjoy it.

  • Am I Blue?

    Interesting site that tests where your personal boundary between blue and green is:

    Is My Blue Your Blue?

  • Waymo Way Easy

    What does a tech guy have to try in San Fran? A Waymo taxi of course. You need the app, but after that it’s like Uber or Lyft.

    The car pulls up.

    When you get in, you have to actually click a button on the car screen or your app to start the ride. Then the car pulls out and you get a safety talk.

    After that, it’s pretty normal.

    It drove fine. A bus started to drift into our lane and the Waymo honked at it. Just a regular drive.

  • Social Media Learning Curve

    This was written when Elon Musk first bought Twitter. It’s a great overview of why content moderation is so damn hard on the global web.

    It goes through (in detail) 20 phases that a social media site is likely to go through. The summary:

    Level One: “We’re the free speech platform! Anything goes!”
    Level Two: “We’re the free speech platform! But no CSAM!”
    Level Three: “We’re the free speech platform! But no CSAM and no infringement!”
    Level Four: “We’re the free speech platform without CSAM, infringement or hate speech!”
    Level Five: “We’re the free speech platform without CSAM, infringement, or hate speech, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Six: “We’re the free speech platform, without CSAM or hate speech, and who will take down infringing content, but not fair use content, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Seven: “We’re the free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, and infringement, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Eight: “We’re the free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement and spam, and we follow all laws!”
    Level Nine: “We’re the trustworthy free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, and spam, and we follow all the laws!”
    Level Ten: “We’re the trustworthy free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, and spam, and we follow laws of democratic countries.”

    Level Eleven: “We’re the trustworthy mostly free speech platform, doing our best to stop CSAM, hate speech, infringement, spam, and genocide, and we’re working to hire more moderators to deal with foreign languages.”
    …
    Level Twenty: “Look, we’re just a freaking website. Can’t you people behave?”

    Read the whole thing, it’s good.

  • Twitter is Now Useless

    Network effects and tipping points are amazing things. Over the course of about a week, everyone I follow on Twitter bailed and moved to Bluesky.

    It really is amazing how things happen gradually, then all at once. Two weeks ago I would go straight to Twitter, but today that icon isn’t on my phone’s home screen at all.

  • Now on Bluesky

    I’ve been a long time Twitter user (not using the other name). Musk taking it over did bad things to the overall experience, but since I’m largely a consumer of a tightly curated list of people, I didn’t notice it too much. Don’t spend time in the replies and never, ever go to the “For You” tab, and Twitter is pretty much as good as it ever was.

    Until the people you follow leave. I don’t get replies from white supremacists, but when the folks I want to follow finally say “enough”, I notice. At first it was just a few, and they went a few different places. Mastodon and Threads seemed like possible contenders in the early days of Musk/Twitter.

    But lately, Bluesky gained momentum, and since the election it’s been an avalanche of people leaving Twitter for Bluesky (or at least posting primarily there). Sports is still better on Twitter, but politics has moved over. I’ll probably still spend time on Twitter, but these days I go to Bluesky first.

    I don’t post much, but I’m fish1964 pretty much everywhere. And starting with this post, I will be cross posting on Bluesky (assuming it works).

  • New Address

    New Address

    When gmail first came out, I got an email address there. My nickname is Fish so I wanted something like that. Of course, fish@gmail.com was taken as was fish1, fish2 and pretty much every other number at the end. But I tried my birth year and sure enough, that was available. At the time, advertising my age didn’t seem problematic.

    Later, of course, it really seemed like a bad idea. But now I’m to that point where I can embrace it. My twitter handle is fish1964, most places where I pick a user name, that’s what it is, including Word Press where this is hosted. The URL has always been https://fish1964.wordpress.com/.

    But now I own the domain, so while that URL still works, it will redirect to fish1964.com. I’m not totally sure why I care, but if I’m going to retire and get back to blogging, it seemed like I ought to own my handle.

    Welcome to fish1964.com.

  • Messi not Messy

    Good article by M.G. Siegler (who you should follow)

    Well, I didn’t see Apple’s long cultivated ‘Services’ narrative going in this direction. Earlier today, it was announced that Lionel Messi, the world’s greatest soccer player,¹ would be leaving Europe behind and joining Inter Miami.² This matters because the biggest name in fútbol (soccer), and arguably in all sports, is coming to America.³ But it also matters because he’s coming to play in the MLS. A league that has an exclusive television deal with Apple. And as such, Apple apparently helped lure Messi over with an extraordinary offer: a cut of revenue from new subscribers to their Season Pass service.

    That’s right. Apple is using the world’s highest-profile athlete as lead gen.

  • Bug Fix

    Via xkcd, of course. This one makes me laugh on a few different levels. I mean, really, the fact that siphoning works is a little weird…

  • Matrix Ice

    With a h/t to Seth Godin, this video is insanely well done…