I recently listened to Paul Frazee talk about Bluesky on the Software Engineering Radio podcast and it struck me that one thing they got right was looking at social media like a search engine looks at the web, instead of like a centralized platform(Facebook) and instead of like a federated network of platforms(fediverse).

If your feed is understood to be just the search results you see, then users can understand that their algorithm is something they need to work on in the same vein that they change their search parameters on Google or Bing or other search engines.

This is a story that’s been rotating through the media since ChatGPT first released.

I have an unpopular opinion about this headline after seeing the media cycle repeatedly downplay/ignore what Alphabet has been doing in response to OpenAI: Google the search engine is not in direct competition with ChatGPT, but Gemini is, and Alphabet is smart to keep simpler/time-tested search functionality central to Google rather than react strongly and scrap the keyword-based search bar that users understand are comfortable using - especially older users, but I think most people are starting to discover they have a use for both search and LLM chats.

I think there are two product categories here, which first looked like they were going to converge in 2022-2024, but which are now slowly changing course as customers start to comprehend how both are necessary for different purposes.

When I make chats in ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude etc, I am starting to plan them longitudinally so that I can use them over and over for a specific project or query type.

When I turn to a search bar, it’s because I really want a proxy for a specific website or between me and whatever weird site has the answer to my specific question. It’s not that I want discussion and a chat about it, I just want Google’s card-like results with a website index I can read instead of that website’s stylized, animated web design on top or popups or malware.

Every time I get sucked into a chat with Bing CoPilot(ChatGPT) when I really only had a web search query, I regret wasting my time talking to the LLM. Almost as a reflex, I’ve started avoiding it for most things now.

Iran’s government sucks, but this story really shows how the Iranian people are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Regular Iranians have more in common with western social values than those of the Iranian government or Russia - it’s been that way before, during, and after the Iranian revolution.

Not sure what the answer is, but they keep trying to protest and resist their government every few years and they get violently forced back into submission.

Of all the countries with screwed up regimes, Iran is one where I think it’s more appropriate to encourage more fluid immigration into western countries - a lot of their working age population is relatively better educated than many other countries too.

FatTony Search engine is it down or just me

Walmart near me

Mark Zuckerberg now a backstreet boy

Yes, I know. Right on.

That Cruz quote is insane. Net neutrality will not be easily sold to the public as “radically left-wing”. Nobody is going to believe that shit.

It literally has neutrality right in the name!

Patients don’t have much hope arguing with insurance companies but doctors do - they just have to be more aggressive than the average doctor.

First, they have to get through to a doctor on the insurer’s side - eventually, once you go up the claim management tree, these insurance companies leave the ultimate decision up to a doctor that they pay a shitload of money to have profitable medical opinions on their behalf.

Here is the thing: It is malpractice to diagnose and recommend treatment for a patient you have not evaluated, so the only valid medical opinion on the record is your physician’s medical opinion.

You just need a doctor on your side who will raise the stakes high enough to threaten their doctor’s medical license.

At that point, the insurance doctor will cave and approve the claim.

You still need a diagnosis and a treatment plan that is backed by medical science, of course.

Usage for what?

Pretty sure Netflix has been doing this for overdubs for the last 2+ years. The actors mouths approximately match the overdubbed language, at least for English.

I think a promising way to defeat a giant for-profit corporation like Meta is by investing capital in many smaller non-profit corporations which can each focus more tightly on the fediverse while Meta spins off to focus on the next hype train a year from now.

Little non-profit companies can carve off small portions of the market for federated social media content and, if enough exist to carve it in small enough pieces, then giant corporations like Meta will focus on other markets that are less fragmented.

Sure, Meta might try to buy out the little guys and consolidate, but as long as the little guys keep investing in free and open source IP(not trademarked/copyrighted systems) there won’t be much room for Meta to technically differentiate themselves in a meaningful way to most consumers.