On the list of “things that annoy me about AI”, trying to upsell AI features as part of a service is close to the top. I’ve recently noticed that my LinkedIn feed has been shoving an AI icon and related “coaching prompts” into my feed, and my solution of hiding every post that had the icons on them wasn’t actually filtering the system the way that I wanted. Today I spent a few minutes learning
Read moreThe “personal computing” market has dramatically shifted from the original visions evolving out of Xerox PARC and the innovation labs of the past into a multi-level mediated… mess.
Thankfully, open source operating systems are thriving, and the barrier of entry into an actually personal computing experience that is tailored to your own environment is lower than ever. With that in mind, in December, I started looking at how I could start to extend my Ubuntu desktop.
This was a really fun project to take on, and I’m itching to start doing more of this as I think through what kind of ways that I want to expand and customize my personal computing environment.
Read moreAs I’m writing this, I’m wearing a green t-shirt with a giant eyeball over my rapidly growing stomach. It’s Halloween, and I’ve decided to dress up as Mike Wazowski – it feels like I’m all stomach these days, so it felt appropriate. My partner dressed up as Boo. Halloween is an especially interesting time of year to reflect on identity and persona: it’s a holiday that encourages people to step into a different character and
Read moreBack in 2015, I bought the domain ‘livi.link’ to use as a shortlink domain. Why? It’s freaking adorable, and it meant that I could leave links around the internet that would be immediately identified as mine. I set up a bit.ly account with Twitter authentication, and used “livi links” for years. Then, I deleted my Twitter account, and forgot to detach it from my bit.ly account. Oops. Yesterday, I wanted to make a short link
Read moreWhile LLAMA 2 is certainly interesting, and more openly licensed than some other AI language models, it’s definitely not open source. Open source is a term that is defined by a non-profit called the Open Source Initiative. The OSI explicitly calls out that it is not sufficient for code to be open for something to be called open source. The actual definition of open source includes provisions that must be true for the licensing of the software. LLAMA 2’s “permissive” license doesn’t apply.
Read moreI wanted to build Firefox from source in order to implement the changes found in the patch stack linked above. That’s the beauty of open source – I was able to be sent a patch that someone wrote last summer, and even though it hasn’t been made production-ready and merged, I can start working with it immediately.
Read moreThe open source movement gives me hope. It’s how I’m able to run multiple different interfaces to local language models that can be fine-tuned on my computers with my own data, and know that it’s not leaving my own environment. It’s how I can build the Firefox web browser locally, and add custom patches so that I can run experiments with my browsing history safely. It’s how I can picture re-imagined fair value exchange systems working.
The commercial software stack is collapsing, locking users into increasingly tightly controlled environments where customization is locked away, abstracted because of its complexity. This is not the way.
Read moreToday, I learned how to build Firefox from source. I’ve been a Mozillian since 2019, but this is the first time that I built the browser on my own machine. My sophomore year of college, I used Visual Studio and en embedded iexplore.exe window to make a simplified browser that had bookmarks permanently placed as UI buttons. I can’t even remember if it had an address bar, but I remember feeling accomplished that my portal to the internet was uniquely mine.
Read moreMy work over the past ten+ (wtf?) years has focused on emerging technologies, primarily spatial computing and machine learning – so this moment is pretty spectacular to see. We’re entering a new age where generative AI can create infinite worlds of content as a tool to aid and augment human creativity and understanding, and with today’s announcement, we’re creeping ever-closer to advancements in spatial computing hardware that allows us to experience technology in ways that allow us to use our natural cognition to better facilitate our relationship to information.
Read moreAs we begin crossing a new productivity frontier with the availability of large language models and advances in artificial intelligence algorithms, I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of these tools in helping us introspect and communicate. Enter the idea of SelfOS. My long-term vision for SelfOS is ambitious – a personal operating system for anyone. In practice, there will be infinite ways of building a SelfOS. It’s not a single technology stack, but instead a series of principles grounded in the belief that technology should be used as a tool to empower individuals, rather than as systems of oppression.
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