John Beatty

@[email protected]
375 Followers
480 Following
234 Posts
Engineer, tinkerer, husband, dad. Pluralist, fallibilist, liberal (in the broadest sense). Open is better. Working on https://opencheck.is as a hobby. Former co-founder/CEO of Clover.
Websitehttps://www.johndbeatty.com
OpenCheckhttps://opencheck.is/person/John_Beatty
John BeattyOct 3, 2023
Show threadaevaSep 8, 2023
It's funny because the browser monoculture problem is like one of the few points in life where you can just change a personal preference and make an actual change in the world. It's like if voting with your dollar actually worked, or if switching to plastic straws actually stopped climate change. In the end though we're all gonna die because even something as simple and easy as this is just a bridge too far for people.
John BeattySep 7, 2023
Show threadMeredith WhittakerSep 6, 2023
Of course this isn't a total victory. We would have loved to see this in the text of the law itself. But this is nonetheless huge, and insofar as the guidance for implementation will have the force to shape Ofcom's implementation framework, this is, again, very big and very good.
John BeattySep 7, 2023
Meredith WhittakerSep 6, 2023

WOW. I'm so moved, a bit stunned, and more than anything sincerely grateful to those who came together to ensure sunlight on the dangerous OSB Spy Clause, and to those in the UK gov who synthesized the facts and acted on them.

I knew we had to fight. I didn't know we'd win ❤️🙏

https://www.ft.com/content/770e58b1-a299-4b7b-a129-bded8649a43b?shareType=nongift

UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging

Ministers will not immediately enforce online safety bill powers to scan apps after WhatsApp threatened shutdown

Financial Times
John BeattySep 7, 2023
Kunal MehtaSep 6, 2023

Having free, encrypted #DNS provided by #Wikimedia would be groundbreaking. I can't wait to see this move forward!

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_DNS

(As the page explains, this doesn't solve all internet censorship issues, but is a pretty big step forward and lays the groundwork for more improvements like ECH)

Wikimedia DNS - Meta-Wiki

John BeattyAug 17, 2023
Simon WillisonAug 15, 2023

Answered a question on Hacker News about using ChatGPT for programming tasks with a bunch of my own examples... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37126182#37127206

Comments so far include "If someone on my team was doing things this unusually they’d probably be let go" and "sorry but these examples are not impressive at all and by no means a representative of any serious programmer's workload"

A lot of people out there are absolutely determined not to take the practical utility of this stuff seriously!

Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT? | Hacker News

John BeattyJul 7, 2023
Show threadDan LuuJul 7, 2023

I've been trying out Threads at https://www.threads.net/@danluu.danluu and it's exactly what I don't want (ranked feed full of influencer stuff I never want to see, etc.), but it's exactly the kind of thing I don't want that looks a lot like what most people might want.

Twitter, Bluesky, and Nostr are making the kind of thing that I don't want that's also what most people don't want. There's a huge vacuum in this space and it seems like a "I just have to outrun the bear" kind of situation.

Threads • Log in

Join Threads to share ideas, ask questions, post random thoughts, find your people and more. Log in with your Instagram.

Threads
John BeattyJul 6, 2023
James BakerJul 5, 2023
In case you missed it. Meredith at @signalapp was excellent at setting out the problems with UK Gov’s plans to back door end-to-end encryption. If you haven’t done already please support @openrightsgroup campaign on this https://action.openrightsgroup.org/dont-scan-me #encryption #privacy #onlinesafetybill
Join the Campaign to Stop the Spy Clause

Take action to oppose mass survillance of our private messages

Open Rights Group
John BeattyMay 6, 2023
petersuberMay 1, 2023

Always worth remembering. The #web could have been proprietary infrastructure.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/30/1172276538/world-wide-web-internet-anniversary

"30 years ago this week…something called the World Wide Web launched into the public domain…#CERN owned Berners-Lee's invention and…had the option to license [it] out…for profit. But Berners-Lee believed that keeping the web as open as possible would help it grow…[He] eventually convinced CERN to release the World Wide Web into the #PublicDomain without any #patents or fees."

#IP #WWW

John BeattyMay 6, 2023
Miriam PosnerMay 5, 2023
Finding anything useful on the web via google has become such a disaster. Just a sea of SEO-driven garbage. I was looking for some Python help yesterday and just could not get through the wall of robot-written SEO chum. It’s such a shame—I know that so many people are writing things that are genuinely useful and completely unfindable.
John BeattyApr 6, 2023
Simon WillisonApr 6, 2023

I agree that confabulation/hallucination/lying is a huge problem with LLMs like ChatGPT, Bard etc

But I think a lot of people are underestimating how difficult it is to establish "truth" around most topics

High quality news publications have journalists, editors and fact checkers with robust editorial processes... and errors still frequently slip through

Expecting a LLM to perfectly automate that fact checking process just doesn't seem realistic to me