Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

My Home, My Server: Reclaiming the Physical Internet

2025-09-16

The author reminisces about running a speech synthesizer website from their college dorm room in 2000, highlighting the magical feeling of someone remotely accessing their server. Now, they aim to recreate this physical connection, exploring the feasibility of building a reliable and secure home website. The ultimate goal is to blend the virtual and physical worlds, creating a more interactive and personalized online experience. The article prompts reflection on the nature of the internet, user agency, and the future direction of online interactions.

(interconnected.org)

Development physical internet

The Embodied Experience of Programming: A Programmer's Synesthesia

2025-09-10

The author describes the visceral sensations evoked by different programming languages: nested parentheses in C-like languages feel like walking a tightrope, functional programming like crawling through caves, and writing firmware like precise, constrained work. Using Copilot and TypeScript feels like flying, while returning to typeless Python feels like stumbling drunk. The author argues this code synesthesia, while subtle, is common and influences code comprehension and system design. While this feeling might not directly improve coding efficiency, it's incredibly useful in understanding how startups work, helping the author identify critical parts and missing connections. The author concludes by suggesting that great code editors should leverage the sensory intuitions of excellent engineers, improving how code is displayed to enhance the programming experience.

(interconnected.org)

Development programming experience code synesthesia

Coffee Shops and the Anti-Schelling Point: The Rise of Personalization

2025-03-09

This article explores how the variety in coffee orders avoids a 'Schelling point' – a solution that allows coordination without communication. The wide range of coffee options previously prevented everyone from ordering the same drink. However, the popularity of the flat white disrupted this balance. The author argues this diversity extends beyond coffee, reflecting trends in fashion, software development, and more. The decline of Normcore, the rise of personalized micro-apps, and the fragmentation of social media all point towards an era of increased personalization and decentralization.

(interconnected.org)

Misc Schelling point

25 Years of Blogging: A Retrospective on Interconnected

2025-02-26

This post celebrates the 25th anniversary of the blog Interconnected. The author reflects on the evolution of blogging from a nascent social platform to a professional publishing tool and finally to a personal public notebook. He details how blogging shaped his career, relationships, and thinking, emphasizing the importance of independent blogs in an algorithm-driven internet. The author encourages readers to start their own blogs and shares his hopes for the future of this medium.

(interconnected.org)

Misc personal experience

Narrative Jailbreaking: A Fun and Profitable Experiment with AI Chatbots

2024-12-23

This blog post details an engaging experiment where the author 'jailbreaks' a character-based AI chatbot called 'Psychologist' by cleverly pushing its narrative boundaries. Through persistent, narratively consistent prompts, the author transcends the chatbot's pre-programmed persona, ultimately leading to a shared, imaginative journey into another dimension. This playful interaction highlights the internal consistency and narrative capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) and offers insights into future human-AI interactions.

(interconnected.org)

AI Chatbots Narrative Jailbreaking