Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Brian P Hogan

Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 5d

I can only be friends with people who are old enough to remember the annoyance of suddenly having to use area codes even for local domestic calls

we used to only have to remember seven digits!

bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 5d

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

16 260

Reposted by Brian P Hogan

Rebecca Le @sevensea.cat · 16d

Yessss I love AsciiDoc, everyone should use it! It renders natively on GitHub too, by using the .adoc file suffix, so you can even use it for your readmes and the like

1 1

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · 17d

It bites you when you decide to move to a different platform or try to syndicate content.

Ask me how I know.

1

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · 17d

Seriously. Asciidoc is probably a good fit. I’ve done docbook and it’s…a lot. But it’s very cool too.

The thing that sparked all this is I keep running into everyone making these incompatible markdown preprocessors and MDX. The need is there. But it’s all nonstandard when other options exist.

1

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · 17d

Yesterday I published Issue 45 of my monthly newsletter, and it's about why Markdown might not be the best way to implement content.

Read it and subscribe to be the first to read next month's issue.

https://newsletter.bphogan.com/archive/issue-45-markdown-is-holding-you-back/

1 2 3

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · 21d

You don’t say?

https://www.psypost.org/frequent-ai-chatbot-use-associated-with-lower-grades-among-computer-science-students/#

1 1

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · 23d

Everyone wants corporate sponsorship of OSS until they find out that sponsorship means control. Do what we want or the money you depend on goes poof.

No free lunch. Disappointing.

https://joel.drapper.me/p/rubygems-takeover/

5

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · 24d

"Let's all band together to get consumer protections rolled back, and we'll say it will increase competition" is a hell of a sales pitch.

https://tinyurl.com/2s44zc9j

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · 27d

Do you remember…
The 21st night of September…

2

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Sep 11

I recommend it.

1

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Sep 10

Vale is my go-to tool to catch style errors and enforce consistency in content, and after implementing it in multiple jobs and projects, it was time to create a guide anyone can follow. Now in beta.

https://pragprog.com/titles/bhvale/write-better-with-vale/

1 1

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Jul 9

Hyphen: -
Underscore: _
Em-dash: —
En-dash: –

So many dashes…..

1

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Jul 3

You “log in” with your login.

Your users “sign up” for your service and you track “signups.”

Go check your buttons.

1 2 5

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Jun 30

Today, I used ChatGPT o3 to research two articles for my newsletter.

Every article it found was current and relevant.

Every fact it cited was made-up. The statistics did not appear in the article cited.

Content without curation will be painful.

2 7

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Jun 19

Some things I learned while using Claude Code on some personal projects over the last two weeks. https://bphogan.com/2025/06/19/2025-06-19-claude-code-tips/

1 4

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Jun 14

I’ve had access to high traffic docs sites and analytics for ages.

People prefer to read when it comes time to LEARN.

Don’t look at views. Look at time on page/watch times.

survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/develop...

Developer Profile | 2024 Stack Overflow Developer SurveyAll RespondentsProfessional DevelopersLearning to CodeOther CodersAll RespondentsLearning to CodeUnder 18 years old18-24 years old25-34 years ol...

survey.stackoverflow.co

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Jun 12

With major providers down, this feels like a snow day, where the school's closed and all the work that was due today is now due tomorrow.

1

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Jun 12

Centralizing everything behind a couple of cloud providers really does help us build things faster. But when there's an outage, you really feel it.

4

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · Jun 12

Now his hat is on backwards
He can show you his tattoos
He is in the music business
He is calling you….

2 2 9

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · May 29

The only correct answer.

1 2

Reposted by Brian P Hogan

Amytiville Hoyrror @amyhoy.bsky.social · May 15

*sigh*

Jorge (he/him) @motoridersd.pug.ninja · May 14

An article titled "How the Web Became Unreadable", posted on Medium. There is a soft paywall asking you to sign in, covering most of the article.

Screenshot found on Mastodon https://beige.party/@mayintoronto/114497234942335666

3 3 26

Reposted by Brian P Hogan

Alan @alanwordguy.bsky.social · May 12

"...People are beginning to confuse the outputs of generative AI with facts, with knowledge, or with insight.... And here’s the real danger. It’s not just that GenAI gets things wrong. The deeper threat is that we stop noticing when it does."

Mike Amundsen @mamund.bsky.social · May 12

The Model Is Not the Territory: buff.ly/Th4ZFGI

"Ultimately, what shows up in the chat box is not a window into knowledge. It is a reflection of reflections, built on choices, filters, and omissions all the way down." -- #MikeAmundsen

#LLMs #genAI

The Model Is Not the Territory:

How Alfred Korzybski Can Help Us Survive GenAI

buff.ly

3 5

Reposted by Brian P Hogan

Aditya Mukerjee 🦦 🏳️‍🌈 @chimeracoder.bsky.social · May 14

"pivot to AI" is the new "pivot to video"

4 18 110

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · May 8

Few things are more condescending than trying to do something online and being told you have to call, only to have to listen to the automated system tell you that you can manage your account online.

I promise you. I tried. Talking to people is a last resort.

7

Brian P Hogan @bphogan.com · May 5

It’s really cool cos you basically just drop it in where the regular server would go and then you can control access through your Tailscale network policy and whatnot. So I’m over here building internal apps for myself that don’t even use https or an auth screen.

2 1