It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ... and feel like it too, Brr..!

Big change around here, I've experimented with a new feed reader, Feedly, to replace my venerable SharpReader.  So far I like it, especially that I can read feeds on my iPad and my PC, and they're synced.  More on this...

Meanwhile, it's all happening!

It was big news when DeepMind's Alpha Zero learned to play Go - beating top humans and even devising new strategies - and ever bigger news when it became the strongest chess program.  But now it has mastered Stratego, which is even more difficult due to the number of move combinations and the fact that each player defines their own starting position - unlike Go or Chess, where the starting position is fixed.  Cool! 

Jean-Louis Gassée gives thanks to Silicon Valley.  "Now a happy grandfather, I have the time and freedom of mind to gratefully reflect upon my move to Silicon Valley more than 35 years ago."  Amen. 

Also Jean-Louie Gassée: ChatGPT: Its Nothing, You Don't Need It. And We'll Have It In Six Months.  After years of work, suddenly the tip of the AI-ML iceberg becomes visible in a way that gets everyone's attention.  It sure got mine! 

Philip Greenspun: ChatGPT agrees with me about Lisp.  Hard to disagree, actually. 

Ah but can it code?  Ars Technica: DeepMind’s latest AI project solves programming challenges like a newb.  I'm waiting for an AI bot which codes a stronger version of itself. 

Jon Udell: Mastodon, Steampipe, and RSS.  Quite interesting.  In the wake of Elon Musk's acquisition of, and subsequent changes to, Twitter, many have experimented with Mastodon, a would-be open Twitter competitor.  Definitely a lot to play with here.  I question whether anything can overcome the network effect of Twitter however; the Twitterverse is just so large now. 

I have a Mastodon account, but don't use it to "follow" anything.  Should I relay my posts here to there?  Probably could ... but dlvr.it, my current Twitter cross-posting tool, doesn't yet support it.  Maybe I have to create my own bot to do it.

Ars Technica: Mastodon is hurtling toward a tipping point.  Nah.  It's doing fine but "tipping" is going to require a massive rate of adoption way beyond what's happening now. 

Tim Bray wonders: Is Moving to Mastodon Ethical?  A strangely non-technical take from him, that does not seem like the right question. 

Bari Weiss on Twitter.  "We did not selectively retrieve, or cherry-pick, files with an eye toward servicing a particular agenda. Our goal was simply to figure out what had happened at crucial moments in the history of the country and the company."  One of the journalists selected by Elon Musk to publish "the Twitter files". 

Elon Musk: Should I step down as head of Twitter? ... of course he never planned to lead Twitter forever, any more than he runs SpaceX day-to-day. 

Dave Winer: Advice for Elon Musk.  It's fascinating how so many people think they know better than Elon, when he's the world richest person and arguably the world's most successful.  He started or was an early investor in PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and OpenAI.  Maybe he can figure this out :) 

Related: Clive Thompson: Tiny Snippets of Code that Changed the World.  "Only a few short lines can have a massive, global impact" ... like the first pop up ad! (ugh)... 

With Christmas shopping upon us, we ponder: Popular Retail stores that no longer exist.  Sniff. 

I was just in Macy's, they're still very much alive, and I wondered: what allowed them to survive when so many others did not?

Ottmar Liebert: 17 Years Ago.  "What is the purpose of millions of years of evolution?  Let me tell you a secret: it’s YOU! It’s all so you can experience this life."  Not sure evolution has a purpose, perhaps result would be more accurate. 

Well that's a lot - I guess my new Feedly RSS system causes me to review a lot, and share a lot too.  Onward.