urlwolf

I don't want my content to be harvested by LLMs; They are removing attribution, among other things. Otherwise, I'd like to stick as close as possible to the open source licenses (say MIT). Is there such a license out there? If not, anyone working on such a thing?

So far what we have learned is that robots.txt doesn't work; major sites are using login-only access with 2FA to have any hope to keep their content away from LLMs. I imagine the licenses would be one thing, but actually implementing/enforcing them might be a whole other can of worms!

Gemini is a new protocol, which acts as a replacement for HTTP. Its accompanying markup language, Gemtext, is an extremely stripped down version of markdown and acts as a replacement for HTML.

Gemspace is in early days, but I find I like write there much more than in the open web. I've been using an http proxy so that I can post my writings here, and I wonder if I could, one day, just post a gemspace link.

Would you follow it? Links look like this: gemini://geminiprotocol.net/docs/specification.gmi

After updating chrome (on ubuntu, installed through the google .deb file), several extensions stopped to work.

Example: - Autoscroll https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/autoscroll/occjjkgifpmdgodlplnacmkejpdionan/reviews

- Dark reader (clicking the icon shows a screen with a progress bar and no options, although it does change css) https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/dark-reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh

Anyone knows why? Is this my setup, or happening for everyone? Did chrome make a big breaking change?

When trying to change default search engine in chrome to duckduckgo, it's not on the dropdown (settings > search engine). Copying the search url to 'site search' doesn't work, ddg not listed on search engine and cannot be made default.

Google search on how to change to ddg produces old results that don't apply to the status quo. I still haven't figured out how to do it. I don't want to install the extension or use the ddg browser.

This is using the .deb file from google, on ubuntu LTS. As vanilla a chrome install as it can be.

Google seems to be going heavy-handed on people staying with their search engine.

I want to read long-form with strong, sound argumentation. Where do you go for those? The thinking style I'm looking for is the opposite of twitter/short form social media.

This is my experience:

Books ----- Now I read books, but not even books fulfill this requirement of sound argumentation: some have lazy thinking (ie self-help, business advice) using barely anything beyond anecdotes as evidence for a point they present as generalizable.

The concept of 'useful books' by Robfitz is going in the right direction: a book that solves a problem.

Philosophy books often contain good examples of argumentation. One could read just philosophy books! The problem is that they are:

- Not well-written (or written for an audience who is not me!) - Solving problems that are not immediately relevant to me (whether God exists, whether humans are rational, etc) - Not using empirical evidence at all (the methods of philosophy are like this! Only recently there are some experimental philosophers)

Books that don't do what I want: - Geopolitics - Evolutionary psychology - Self-help - Non-fiction books designed to be a best-seller - Books designed to upsell you on a product or service - Technical books

Opinion pieces, blogs, substack ------------------------------- In 2024, their writing style sounds very 'twitter' (provocative, hasty generalizations, predictions, very little in terms of argumentation). Example "PayPal was expected to “shock” the world. Instead, they shot themselves in the foot." These opinions have almost zero usefulness for me. More so if they are trying to make predictions. Influencers on twitter make predicitions every other day and they rarely bother checking their track record for accuracy. And if they did, it would be very low.

News ---- I realize I can only aspire to understand a handful of topics well-enough that I can follow the news and know when they are bullshit or not!

- Fact-checked (almost zero sources have this! And it's too costly to do the fact-checking yourself) - Clearly-stated bias - Showing you their data sources when they use data/graphs

Warning, this is just a historical anecdote that will not improve your understanding of LLMs much, but will perhaps give you context:

https://lof.flounder.online/gemlog/2024-01-09%20How%20teaching%20vi%20to%20secretaries%20brought%20LLMs%20to%20humanity.gmi

These guys show a hard coded backdoor into Apple ARM chips. It can neither be removed nor be patched

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1f6YyH62jFE

With the year coming to an end, I was thinking about what would make me switch away from FF. There's only one thing: security. With a dwindling market share, and a C-suite that seems to be distracted at best, the risk is that the team is too small.

What do you think?

Looking at raw numbers of cve reports, FF is doing better than chrome:

https://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html?vendor_id=452

https://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?vendor_id=1224

But the severity of those reports is another matter. One single report could make a night and day difference.

I'm very impressed with Firefox (in terms of features) and value the fact that it's preventing a tech monoculture on chrome (dominated by one corporation).

I see FF users dwindling down, and I'm worried. What could we do to prevent FF from going out of business?