This work predates agents as we know them now and was intended for building chat bots (as in irc chat bots) but when auto-gpt I realized I could formalize it super nicely with this library:
I love the Whole Earth Catalog. That era of techno-utopian optimism is so exciting. I'm too young to have experienced more then the tail end of it in the 90s going to computer camp as a kid, but it felt like anything was possible and everything was connected.
It is a bit sad to see where we have landed after all that.
If you look at the first 10 years of Whole Earth Review, starting in 1985, it's startling to see the similarities to the issues of today.
January 1985: Computers as Poison - "It is not our hand that we put into the computer, it is our attention."
July 1985: Digital Retouching - "The end of photography as evidence of anything"
Winter 1985: "Islam: Beyond the Stereotypes"
Spring 1986: "Peering into the age of Transparency" - about space surveillance
Summer 1986: “This text tries to explain how minds work. How can intelligence emerge from non-intelligence? To answer that, I’ll show that you can build a mind from many little parts, each mindless by itself.”
Fall 1986: The Fringes of Reason - Strange myths and eccentric science
Winter 1986: AmerRuss - Joining America and Russia into one country
Summer 1987: What is real & A No-Cash Economy that Works
Fall 1987: Doing Drag & Male Identity
Summer 1988: The Far Left & Far Right Converge
Summer 1988: The Rights of Robots
Whole Earth published a whole spectrum of ideas, so you can cherry pick and find things that were prescient of the trouble we would find ourselves in. But overall the publication held a very optimistic view that stands at odds with present day reality.
I'm just looking at the covers, listed by publication date. I'm not cherry picking from inside the magazines. I was too young to really remember the 80s or early 90s so I'm just surprised that people were worried about the same things back then, as if only the technology form factor has changed. The notion of computers as attention traps I find especially surprising given the state of personal computing in 1985.
> It is a bit sad to see where we have landed after all that.
For a comically small amount of money I can listen to any song I want to, read any book I want to, watch any movie/TV show I want to. Then there’s the ad-supported videos and images and text. Then there’s the AIs that I use every day!
I’m in awe at how amazing where we have landed at is. Sure some stuff isn’t perfect but what fun is it to be sad about what is pretty cool?
Maybe you're too young to remember the kind of vibe and optimism that people rode in the 90s.
Felt like everything was going to be better, like we humans were going to be better. More peace, no apartheid, no Soviet union, removing borders between countries in Europe, tech felt like a way to connect us.
In fact, I invite you to re read your entire post. You post achievements in conveniences as major milestones for human progress, but...people have never read as little as they do today, never went to so few concerts as today, or the movies and the average adult in US spends less than 4 hours socializing (including both family and friends) per week, that's less than half the quote of the 90s which was already less but not as significantly.
You didn't explicitly call your examples major milestones of human progress but you did use rather trite examples of consumer capitalism as a counter example to my disappointment at the lackluster end game of 20th century techno-futurism.
As other commenters have stated the techno-futurist vision that comes out of the Whole Earth Catalog was radically utopian and far grander then "I get to watch low value consumer media whenever I want."
I’d say dirt cheap solar panels and CRISPR based vaccines are pretty cool. I’m also quite optimistic about the proliferation of plausible SMR designs. That new concrete that self heals and sequesters carbon is cool too.
I think it's a category error. The optimism isn't about tech, but rather about society changing in ways that make life better:
> More peace, no apartheid, no Soviet union, removing borders between countries in Europe, tech felt like a way to connect us.
If I read your comment charitably, one could maybe argue that we're actually making decent progress in the electrification of things, and that we're also improving health globally, but I'm not sure if that's the case. It doesn't quite feel like it at least.
I think that's a function of social media and living in a society where things are objectively already really good for the vast majority of people compared to 50 years ago.
We're talking about the whole earth here, not just the societies that we live in.
And globally, things are not so rosy.
Specifically the point of electrification, might be that we electrify more, but globally the CO2 emissions are on the rise still, and have continuously risen in the past 50 years.
It's only good if you over focus on material things.
As soon as you start looking at: mental health, drug addiction, loneliness rate, sexual activity, going out, etc, by all metrics we're way worse than our parents, let alone our grandparents.
Social dislocation, a loneliness epidemic, the breakdown of civil society and of trust in the media, gambling unleashed in everyone's pockets, billions of dollars spent trying to get you addicted to scrolling on your phone... Yes, it's worth bemoaning that.
People have good points, and you refute it in childish manner, its hard to have sympathies. I for one can fully agree with them since I am one of those who experienced whole transition, and overall its heading into sad 1984-esque direction without any real way to change course.
Sure, toys and cheap fun are more accessible than ever, but we are losing something much deeper that makes humans... more human for the lack of better words. Election results in many places are just a result of that. Maybe you don't care about that or are oblivious about it, to your own loss, but its everywhere and everybody who cares sees/feels it. There is gigatons of cool technological progress for sure, but it doesn't counterbalance what was expressed.
I am lucky that I moved to society which offers much more real freedom and democracy than current US can to 99.9% of its citizens (none other than Switzerland), even if for other reasons initially (mountains and obviously money), its what eventually made me stay and much more (polite respectful society which is low crime, high quality public healthcare and education, decent social system and so on). Most of the world has much less and it doesnt seem to be improving.
Maybe I'm missing some sarcasm here, but it would be worth asking what the consequences of this situation are for the people who actually make all the music/books/films you get to consume for a "comically small amount of money".
I know this is a razz but I must have you know I use a frankenstein-d iPod classic with rockbox, bluetooth mod, and an SSD. Don't hate on Zunes those things ruled too. Nothing beats a sansa clip though.
That’s cool. I have one of the big wheel iPods with the 60 GB drive and the 30pin connector. Still going strong on its radio speaker doc. I also had a zune that has been lost to time.
You're arguing convenience for things you could already do through a library over the huge amount of negatives that has come with the Internet: crime, espionage, hacking, emotional manipulation, spread of propaganda and disinformation, social media, legalized data stealing, destruction and abuse of copyright, centralization of information flow, etc.
Well, you could already do, sort of. Even the best stocked library in the world has it's limits and even the largest printed encyclopedia cannot reach anywhere near the breath of information on Wikipedia and no technical library has as many articles as PubMed.
We switched from techno optimism to techno pessimism - for some good reasons - nevertheless internet brought to the table revolutionary capabilities not only for evil but also for good.
Before I got my first full time software engineering gig (I had worked part time briefly years prior) I was working full time as a carpenter. We were paying for an expensive online work order system. Having some previous experience writing software for music in college and a couple /brief/ LAMP stack freelance jobs after college I decided to try to write my own work order system. It took me like a month and it would never have never scaled, was really ugly, and had the absolute minimum number of features. I could never had accepted money from someone to use it but it did what we needed and we ran with it for several years after that.
I was only able to do this because I had some prior programming experience but I would imagine that if AI coding tools get a bit better they would enable a larger cohort of people to build a personal tool like I did.
How do you handle situations where crashing the process is inappropriate. I may not care that a library doesn't like its log file or network socket disappearing, but I very much care if its exception about that event kills the entire process.
myCoolSubroutine = do
now <- getCurrentTime
users <- getUsers
forM users (sendEmail now)
sendEmail now user =
if user.expiry <= now
then sendExpiryEmail user
else sendNonExpiryEmail user
You can define its recursion principle by building a higher-order function that receives an element of your type and, for each constructor, receives a function that takes all the parameters of that constructor (with any recursive parameters replaced by `r`) and returns `r`.
For `List` this becomes:
foldr :: (() -> r) -> (a -> r -> r) -> List a -> r
The eliminator for `Nil` can be simplified to `r` as `() -> r` is isomorphic to `r`:
foldr :: r -> (a -> r -> r) -> List a -> r
foldr z f Nil = z
foldr z f (List a xs) = f a (foldr f z xs)
For `Bool`:
data Bool = True | False
We get:
bool :: a -> a -> Bool -> a
bool p q True = q
bool p q False = p
Continuing to work on a Low Power FM community radio station for the East San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. We have started promoting and putting on local events and are trying to fund raise to build out the station. Raising money is hard! We did a big show in Burbank where several hundred people showed up but we only netted $800 after expenses. :(
Since this is hackernews, i'll add that i'm building the website and archiving system using haskell and htmx, but what is currently live is a temp static html site.
https://github.com/solomon-b/kpbj.fm
This is sick - I happen to run a site for DIY and community organizations like yours. We have proven the best way to fundraise is to throw events like you did but to upsell people on a recurring donation when they get the ticket.
On the off chance you are throwing another event, I would love to help you raise much more than $800 one time (my site is https://withfriends.events/)
Short answer is I would just recommend one of the tons of tax software out there specific to LLC, individual, 501c3. My site helps with the raising money part and just integrates and gives advice for that
This might be a naive question which you've probably been asked plenty of times before so I'm sorry of I'm being tedious here.
Is it really worth the effort and expense to have a real radio station these days? Wouldn't an online stream be just as effective if it was promoted well locally?
A few years ago a friend who was very much involved in a local community group which I was also somewhat interested in asked me if I wanted to help build a low power FM station. He asked me because I know something about radio since I was into ham radio etc.
I was skeptical that it was worth the effort. The nerdy part of me would have enjoyed doing it but I couldn't help thinking that an online stream would probably reach as many people without the hassle and expensive of a transmitter, antenna etc.
I know it's a toss up. Every car has an FM radio. Not everyone is going to have a phone plugged in to Android Auto or Apple Car Play and have a good data plan and have a solid connection.
I also pointed out that the technical effort is probably the small part compared to producing interesting content.
1. Radio is COOL. As a fellow ham I think you would agree with me on this one so I'll leave it at that.
2. Internet streaming gives you wider but far less localized audience. We will have an internet stream, but being radio first shifts the focus to local community and local content.
3. Internet streaming and radio have related but not entirely overlapping histories and contexts which impacts how people produce and consume their content. I love the traditional formats of radio and they are often completely missing in online radio which IMO models itself more often on mixtape and club DJ culture.
4. AI slop is ruining the world. I have this belief that as AI slop further conquers the internet we are going to get to a place where nobody trusts internet content. People will seek out novelty and authenticity (sort of how LLMs do lol) and I think there will be a return to local content and community.
5. Commercial radio sucks. The LPFM system is a wonderful opportunity to create a strong, community driven alternative to corporate media.
Radio is so much fun to learn. It’s liberating to learn for curiosity and joy rather than commercialization. The community is welcoming, and while not directly translatable for most paid work, it does teach general problem solving skills.
I would be hesitant to turn off some physical pain like that of an injury I don't want to overextend, but for something like a chronic headache this would be a godsend.
My most effective treatment for headaches is imitrex but you have to time it correctly and I really hate how it makes my body feel.
https://blog.cofree.coffee/2025-03-05-chat-bots-revisited/
I did some light integration experiments with the OpenAI API but I never got around to building a full agent. Alas..
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