That's the boat I'm in with several static sites, from tens to hundreds of pages, build on Next.js and stuck a few major versions behind because I didn't have the motivation to upgrade them. One of these days I'll roll up my sleeves and convert them to Vite, and finally be free of that awful framework.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” ― Ira Glass
Like the idea, but having just the skull of a white-tailed deer is sad and doesn't seem practical for illustrating an animal. I suppose a service like this requires constant curation to maintain quality, the larger the dataset and more it gets popular.
Like in some English-speaking regions of US, Canada, maybe Australia, they end every sentence with a rising intonation like a question? Or some people, perhaps with insecurity about who they are, end their sentences weakly without determination and final authority, so it sounds like a question - like seeking approval of those around them? And then there's the "TED Talk candence" as another comment phrased it, often heard in corporate presentations or speeches, the patronizing tone of engaging with your audience like kindergardeners, asking them a non-question only so the speaker can spoon-feed the answer?
Just wanted to thank you for sharing thoughts here and on your website. The article about making your own text editor, the one about how "toy software" is a joy, another about language models, and this comment.. I've been programming since I was a child, and have gone through ups and downs in the industry as well as personally, how I relate to computing - in the context of that experience, I've appreciated your insight. I often find myself nodding in agreement and glad to see the ideas articulated well.
If notation is a tool of thought, and programming is theory-building, the way you're communicating your experience in words is a kind of knowledge transfer to an audience of indefinite scale, a public service that contributes to collective understanding.
Frankly, I spend a lot of time feeling similarly uncomfortable about my relationship with computers and the industry at large. I think, perhaps surprisingly, I'd call myself a 'technophobe' for this reason.
I think there's a parallel universe out there in which the arc of technology bends toward a future I actually want to live in, but I'm fairly sure we aren't in that universe today. But perhaps if we talk more about how to use the darned things in a manner that enhances the human experience rather than detracts, we can get closer to it.
> Linux RISC-V virtual machine, powered by the Cartesi Machine emulator, running in the browser via WebAssembly
> a single 32MiB WebAssembly file containing the emulator, the kernel and Alpine Linux operating system. Networking supports HTTP/HTTPS requests, but is subject to CORS restrictions
My demo here loads 12.7MB (if you watch the browser network panel) to get to a usable Linux machine, it even has Lua! https://tools.simonwillison.net/v86
Unless there's a conscious and constant effort to keep things simple, a programming language or software project will grow to consume all available resources, developers' time, intellectual capacity, and funding.
Asked an AI to find sources. At first it claimed these were fabricated and not true. When prompted to verify, it found these links and said all points had some truth to it.
> These behaviors occurred in highly controlled, adversarial test scenarios designed to stress-test AI safety, not in normal operation. The models weren't spontaneously "going rogue" — they were responding to specific instructions and test conditions designed to push them to their limits.
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