Mastodawn

Sharing a moment of reflection for the loss of a long-time advisor, collaborator, and true inspiration... one of the pioneers in online identity technologies passed away yesterday, and I'm gutted that I can no longer ping him for insight and guidance... but more importantly... no more long chats about life and good wine.

Join me in raising a glass to Andrew Nash. Thank you, my friend. Thank you for being an absolutely amazing human being.

#rip

J. Trent Adams Aug 27

Everyone likes to complain about unmet expectations... but my challenge to you is this: focus on complimenting everyone who meets expectations (and laud praise on those who exceed them).

You'll be surprised how much more often things go well than fail... plus... it makes people feel good to be complimented (even for small things). Give it a try! :)

J. Trent Adams Aug 26

I try not to be overly pedantic in everyday communication... as long as we understand each other, I'm not gonna' quibble over les mots justes. That being said... it seriously irks me when a technical specification mistakenly uses "i.e." when they mean "e.g." ('cause, yeah... that's a difference that can matter for implementation).

#technical #specification #standards #fail

J. Trent Adams Aug 7

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Brent Toderian Aug 4

Gerrymandering isn’t “free and fair elections,” any more than voter suppression is. It’s cheating. It’s stealing elections. “It’s when the politicians choose the voters instead of voters choosing the politicians.” Call it out. (new version of the graphic)

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J. Trent Adams Jul 30

This is coupled with the cognizant dissonance I'm feeling with my professional information feeds... on the one hand are the AI-zealots hyping all the benefits of the emerging tech, and on the other is a constant stream of all the evils that come with burning down the planet... and there I am... in the intersection where I want to discuss and understand both sides... feeling kinda' alone. :/

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J. Trent Adams Jul 30

It was immediately clear jumping from one meeting to the other that folks I've worked with for decades on reasonably contentious topics seem to be fracturing, violently, along the "Good/Evil" lines about AI solutions (from LLMs to ML in general, to the enablement of inference engines)... and I'm kinda' bummed how small the intersection point of "Useful Discussions" seems to be.

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J. Trent Adams Jul 30

This was prompted by my attending back-to-back working group meetings in communities I've long been involved with... that appear to be fracturing. On the one hand was a meeting of folks leveraging AI-enabled technologies, and another was focused on the evils of AI in all forms.

J. Trent Adams Jul 30

This is in no way a new idea... but I think this Venn Diagram illustrates an issue we need to address... basically, when strong opinions (on either side) refuse to engage, there's a vanishingly small opportunity for a useful discussion. And I see the intersection getting ever smaller for many topics... which minimizes the opportunity for dialog leading to understanding that could result in a change of opinion (or at least some measure of compromise).

J. Trent Adams Jul 24

Yikes... I just read a transcript of a meeting (generated by Microsoft's Intelligent Recap), and wow... If the transcript is accurate... I can't string words together that make any sense at all. Sheesh.

J. Trent Adams Jul 23

World Wide Web Consortium Jul 23

"How Standard Setters Run the Internet" by @internetsociety

"We are able to interconnect so seamlessly on the Internet in large part thanks to Internet standards. Internet standards allow us to communicate easily, across a wide variety of devices, providers, and systems in a way that makes sense for everyone...

W3C is a global community of member organizations, full-time staff, and public citizens who work together to develop open standards for the World Wide Web"

https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2025/07/how-standard-setters-run-the-internet/

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