in commentary, general, webmention reply |

On Blogging for Traffic

Manuel Moreale has a comment up on his blog that’s in response to someone else’s writing. This post of mine is in response to Manuel’s post.

It’s somewhat unfortunate that Manuel hasn’t linked to that original newsletter or post or article or whatever it is. Because this could very well be a chain of replies, which makes the web a beautiful place.

First, the setup – Manuel takes offense at the idea that someone would recommend that you should “blog to be found” on the internet. As in, instead of focusing on building the most wonderful site, make a quick and dirty one that gets eyeballs. You can worry about the looks later. That’s the original post.

Manuel argues that the web isn’t so black and white. What if the individual goal of the website owner is to learn or hone their programming skills? What if making a gorgeous website is the actual point? What if the person is focused more on the art of making the site than on getting the most views?

In one sense, I agree. Everyone has the right to do what they want with their site. So if your goal is to learn PHP, don’t worry too much about how long your blog posts are.

However, and this is where I would have loved it if Manuel had linked to the original post as I would then be able to judge the context, it’s entirely possible that this advice is focused on people who really want to use the web as a means of getting their words out. To be read by many others. To get as many views as possible for the writing they are doing.

In all those scenarios, this advice is really sound. “You can have a ‘basic’ blog that actually gets traffic.”

The next line is one Manuel takes offense from – “What sounds more professional to you?” According to Manuel, this is awful advice.

Here’s the thing though – from the limited words Manuel has posted from the other fellow, the word professional actually says a lot. If you have a personal blog, your goal is to do what you want with it. Often, that can be no goal at all. For example, this blog itself. I’m not bothered with metrics, writing for an audience etc. I’m mostly just having fun and if I feel strongly about something, I post here about it.

Flip side, I’m building a newsletter over at everyopsguy.com

The goal there is to write about topics closely related to my profession and industry. I plan on publishing there every week, even if it’s a bunch of links cobbled together from my daily RSS readings. There, I am writing professionally, and thus I am writing for traffic. I want people to see my writing. I want people to believe me when I say I know about the industry I’m in, and this is one way to showcase that.

When I publish on this blog, I don’t bother with posting the links online (though long ago I set it up that automatically these links should get posted online; not sure if that automation still works) or how many clicks I get to my site.

But when I publish my newsletter, I repost on LinkedIn and my other social handles. I push out into the world on purpose so I can have more visibility.

Everyone who ever gives any good advice about writing says that you should write for one person. That person is either yourself on your personal blog, or one indeterminate persona on your professional website. Either ways, it’s one person.

But writing, and marketing your writing, are two different efforts, just like writing and editing are different. Once you have written for that one person, if you want to, you should absolutely push it out to as many people as possible. Shout from the rooftops, scream into the void. Do what you need to, to get your words in front of the people who you believe should be reading them.

Again, if Manuel had linked to the original post, I would have been able to see more context. But we are also in the era of people opting for more self-owned online presence. This is true for both personal, and professional spheres.

We want to reduce people’s dependence on Facebook, twitter, Threads, and other corporate-run social media platforms. The way to do that? Get your own blog.

We want to reduce people’s dependence on LinkedIn (literally the only professional social networking site left in the market). The way to do that? Get your own (professional) blog.

I could have easily chosen to write my everyopsguy posts weekly on LinkedIn as so many other professionals do. But I want to own that experience. I want people to come to my website. I want people to subscribe directly with me. I’m a big believer in that.

I’m also a believer that if someone gives you advice, context matters.

I hope Manuel sees that.

Comment on – Net neutrality, we hardly knew ye – Marginal REVOLUTION

Internet experts Tim Wu, Cory Doctorow, Farhad Manjoo and many others were just plain, flat out wrong about this, mostly due to their anti-capitalist mentality.

Source: Net neutrality, we hardly knew ye – Marginal REVOLUTION

This sort of conclusion shows that it really, really matters where you get your information from. In this case, the author has summarized from reading a Bloomberg article, that general supply and demand handled the lack of net neutrality without government intervention.

Cool. Cool.

Except, you seem to forget that in 2014, “the average speed of Netflix streaming video content delivered to Comcast subscribers has declined by more than 25%, according to Netflix” according to this article Time Magazine and Netflix’s own data as seen from the image below, published by Quartz.

Image for article titled The inside story of how Netflix came to pay Comcast for internet traffic

So what did Netflix do? They bought speed.

The exact details of the deal have been private information, so everyone built their own estimates. One estimate from that time (2014 was before Net Neutrality rules) is that though they might be liable for about $400M per year, in reality, Netflix would be paying about $25-50M per year on a multi-year deal.

Note that every website pays for access. After all, they are the ones in demand and the ISP knows this. Your monthly home internet bill is just one source of funds for ISPs. They charge a much larger chunk to large companies like Google, Meta, Netflix, AWS, etc for the amount of data they upload to the ISP’s network. This includes general websites like this blog, but also anyone who is in the video streaming, or game server business.

That’s normal. What’s not normal is that Comcast was knowingly (or unknowingly, for my CYA) throttling Netflix’s speed, thus giving Netflix customers a much worse streaming experience. Instead of a technical fix to the issue, the two parties struck a deal whereby Netflix bought a Direct Interconnection with Comcast and started uploading directly to their network.

Later, Net Neutrality laws prevented such behavior, but I suspect that this was a multi-year deal built under the guise of a Direct Interconnect, so it survived the Open Internet Order by the FCC and probably continues on to this day.

Also, Bloomberg claims that –

Bandwidth has expanded, and Netflix transmissions do not interfere with Facebook, or vice versa. There is plenty of access to go around.

This is flat out lies and a very bad way of thinking about the Internet.

First, of course Netflix transmissions “interfere” with Facebook (and Instagram, and YouTube, and Comcast’s own streaming service Peacock). Everyone is a video streaming behemoth. They are all uploading a lot more than when they were web 2.0 darlings way back when.

Second, Net Neutrality may not defend big players like Netflix and Facebook, but it sure can protect smaller businesses or independent website owners.

Let’s say tomorrow I post a wildly popular video on my site. Suddenly, there’s a spike in streaming traffic to my site. My own server vendor DigitalOcean may not want to charge me for the spike, because its a one time thing or maybe I’m already paying for the bandwidth and am within limits. But an ISP like CenturyLink or Comcast can easily come to DigitalOcean and ask for a bigger payout for supporting this sudden but consistent burst of video traffic. They can threaten to reduce streaming speeds for traffic to my site, so that anyone coming to my site is forced to watch the video in 480p or lower, instead of the 1080p or 4K I’ve shot the video in.

This increases transcoding costs for me, thus making me spend time, money, and energy to convert the video to multiple formats, hosting them on my site etc. DigitalOcean may also decide to punt the costs to me, so now I’m on the hook for Comcast’s lack of net neutrality. Suddenly, I have to figure out a monetization strategy to pay for video streaming at proper speeds. A nice little moment of fleeting Internet stardom then becomes either a hole in my pocket or necessitates a conversion to ad-supported or a paid website. All because Comcast realized I’m streaming video from my blog.

You might think this scenario is far-fetched, and maybe it is. But that’s how many webservices start. Someone has an idea, they try it online, and in the 15 minutes of fame they get, they have to run to get funds to cover the costs of just being a nice netizen.

Then folks like… Tyler Cowen (an Econ professor at George Mason, no less) of marginalrevolution read a tainted Bloomberg opinion piece and think they know how the Internet works.

they said on yet another social media platform

Source: The internet is now five websites – Manu

 

Seriously. The least these armchair commenters could do it go create an account on one of the million other websites still out there, building the Internet as it grows. A better step would be to make their own website which federates, but that’s asking for too much from some people.

2024 in Books

My year in books, dedicated to my Mom, who we lost this last month. She was the kindest soul I’ve ever known, and she loved reading.

I was at 45 books on December 30th, but spent the last day racing through John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. Partly because it’s a great novel and partly because I wanted to be closer to my soft goal of 50. So I’ve read 46 books this year.

Cheers, Mom.

Highlights from – How to Raise a Genius: Lessons from a 45-Year Study of Supersmart Children

How to Raise a Genius: Lessons from a 45-Year Study of Supersmart Children

Pioneering mathematicians Terence Tao and Lenhard Ng were one-percenters, as were Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and musician Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga), who all passed through the Hopkins centre.

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Such results contradict long-established ideas suggesting that expert performance is built mainly through practice—that anyone can get to the top with enough focused effort of the right kind

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The findings, which dovetail with those of other recent studies, suggest that spatial ability plays a major part in creativity and technical innovation

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In a comparison of children who bypassed a grade with a control group of similarly smart children who didn’t, the grade-skippers were 60% more likely to earn doctorates or patents and more than twice as likely to get a PhD in a STEM field

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Among students with high ability, those who were given a richer density of advanced precollegiate educational opportunities in STEM went on to publish more academic papers, earn more patents and pursue higher-level careers than their equally smart peers who didn’t have these opportunities.

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for individuals beyond a certain IQ barrier (120 is often cited), concentrated practice time is much more important than additional intellectual abilities in acquiring expertise

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It’s far better, Dweck says, to encourage a growth mindset, in which children believe that brains and talent are merely a starting point, and that abilities can be developed through hard work and continued intellectual risk-taking

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“They work hard to learn more and get smarter.” Research by Dweck and her colleagues shows that students who learn with this mindset show greater motivation at school, get better marks and have higher test scores.

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Perplexity: Pros and Cons

I’ve had Perplexity Pro for over a month now and I’ve dived deep into it. I’ve made it my primary search engine on my computer’s Chrome browser. I’ve downloaded their Mac and iOS apps and given them a prominent place on my digital yard. I’ve started using it for every search under the Sun (except for map searches, which are going to Apple Maps these days). So here are some quick Pros and Cons from my experience –

Pros

  1. Perplexity is very good at search and more specifically, at nuanced search.
    • I am looking for a printer for my home and I gave it a printer I like, a price point I prefer (less than the sample printer), and some features I want in it.
    • It was able to search for and summarize the features of similarly priced printers and let me know what the best option for me is.
    • I separately did the search myself and came to pretty much the same conclusion!
  2. Perplexity Pro isn’t ad-driven.
    • I’m paying for this service. I mean, technically I’m not because I got it for free for a year through a deal, but come Oct 2025, I will probably pay $20/mo for it.
    • While the price point is not great, it feels nice to be able to pay for a service as critical as web search and not have to wade through a bunch of ads to get to a relevant link. (Take a hint Google. I pay for YouTube Premium, why the heck wouldn’t I pay for Google Premium?)
  3. Perplexity lets you organize your searches and system prompt them.
    • Spaces are a way to organize your searches. You can retroactively add a search to a space.
    • I currently have three spaces – Investment, programming, and “software tools”
    • Each space allows you to set a custom AI model and a “system prompt”. For example, you could say “You are an investment advisor. Help me plan investments in stocks, bonds, market funds, and any other type of investment which can give me high returns in the US with a medium amount of risk.” and set the model to GPT-4o.
  4. Perplexity can write small scripts and improve upon them.
    • This is par for the course for every LLM right now, but it’s still a nice to have. It takes the friction away from doing a lot of random experimentation. I asked it to write a script to batch use “Imagemagick”, it did so. I asked it to change the script from bash to zsh, it did so. I asked it to add parameters, print stuff out, supress warnings, it did all of that.
    • That said, I once asked Perplexity to install and run a python package. While it acted like it’s installing the package, when the time came to actually run it, Perplexity balked and told me it doesn’t have runners.
  5. Perplexity taps into other LLM models.
    • In case you didn’t know, Perplexity is web search engine with access to other large language models, instead of building their own. As part of Pro, you can pick and choose which model you want to use to answer the question. Depending on what you pick, you can get different responses. It’s worth noting though, that I ignore this and let Perplexity decide which model to use to give me a response and it just does so and does a good job of it.
  6. Perplexity spills the tea.
    • Perplexity has the news. No, I don’t mean the Perplexity Discover feature, which is a sort of MSN/Apple News competitor in that it collects and recommends news items for me to read, but which invariably feel not particularly well tailored.
    • I mean that I can ask it the latest news on a particular topic and it does a really good job of pulling and summarizing “up to the day” news items on the topic.
  7. Perplexity really understands complex questions.
    • Here’s the question I asked about the printers – “Find a wireless printer for my home, similar to Epson EcoTank ET-2850. It should have a touchscreen display and a way to wirelessly print from computers and phones. It should be able to print double sided pages automatically. It should use a refillable ink tank that I can use third party ink with. Lastly, it should be less than $200.”
    • I did not expect it to get all the points. It did.
  8. Perplexity understands files.
    • Someone sent me a PDF file that was a bunch of land surveys, notes about where the land will be acquired and where it’ll be left untouched, and timelines and other details.
    • I couldn’t made head or tail of the file. So I gave it to Perplexity and asked it some deeply relevant questions.
    • Perplexity actually gave me all accurate answers about the file and helped me understand the issue at hand.
    • I verified the info I got from Perplexity with some neighbors and it turns out Perplexity got everything right!
  9. Perplexity has access to Wolfram Alpha!
    • Someone recently posted online that Perplexity doesn’t do math properly. A colleague commented – “Why the heck would you even ask an LLM to do math?? That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how LLMs work!”
    • But Perplexity isn’t just an LLM. It’s a Search Engine with an LLM interface. That means it should be able to tie into all kinds of other services, including those that current Search engines do.
    • Services like Wolfram Alpha, arguably the best math tool on the web.
    • I asked Perplexity “What is sqrt(45) times 11,546?”
    • It went straight to Wolfram Alpha and gave me 2 versions of the response.
    • It even gave me the link to Wolfram Alpha, to let me run the query myself.
    • I verified the result with Google Search’s Math Solver.
    • Same result.

Cons

  1. Perplexity is great for Search. Just not Website Search.
    • A lot of times, all I want to do is get to a website. I know Keepa exists. I don’t know if it’s a .com or .somethingelse
    • I know Kindle’s Online Reader exists. I just haven’t visited it on this computer, so I don’t have the URL in my history.
    • Instead of giving me the next hop, Perplexity strives to give me the next hop and a summary of the service, a Chrome extension, the iOS app, and “features and benefits” of the service. I do not need any of this. Just give me the link and let me go!
    • I really wish Perplexity would offering a dumber and faster version of their search for one-word searches or keyword searches like “website for writefreely”. I do not want an AI summary, I do not want options, I just want a jumping point.
  2. While Perplexity is really good at product search, it feels limited to the sites that they have collaborated with. For example, in the first Pro point, I mentioned printers. It seemed like Perplexity only looked at prices on Best Buy. It looked for advice on reddit, NY Times, etc. But pricing came only from Best Buy. So are you really getting the best pricing advice or just more vendor lock-in? Remains to be seen.
  3. Also, one of Perplexity’s offerings is called Perplexity Purchases. It’s basically a customized interface for shopping, where you can apparently compare products and buy from within the Perplexity interface.
    • I have not signed up for the service because of a few key points which made it feel weird.
    • While they take your address and credit card info like any other service, the copy around it says that “Perplexity will purchase it on your behalf. For a limited time, shipping is free!”
    • What this tells me is that I’ll pay Perplexity and they’ll pay the vendor. This is not good because what if disputes arise or I want to return a product? Will Perplexity provide the same level of support that we’ve come to expect from vendors?
    • Also, will this mean that I lose out on points on my Credit Card because the payment isn’t going directly to the vendor? Like if Chase is running a points bonanza on a particular mattress brand, and I buy it. But the payment looks like it went to Perplexity and not to the mattress brand, do I still get the cashback or extra points?
    • Lastly, what the heck does “shipping is free for a limited time” even mean? Why is Perplexity in charge of shipping anyway? Most vendors provide free shipping these days. So if I’m buying from Costco or Best Buy through Perplexity, is there a future where Perplexity would charge me for shipping while buying directly from the vendor would not?
  4. Perplexity has opened our eyes to paid web search. Good for Kagi. If most of the time, I’m using Perplexity to only do web searches, I do not want to pay twenty dollars per month for it. I want to pay less. Ten dollars per month for unlimited searches on Kagi seems like a nice number.
  5. Perplexity doesn’t have a Firefox extension!
    • I use Firefox for my personal browsing. Perplexity doesn’t have an official extension there. Not a problem as I just go to perplexity.ai and then do the search. But we’re all so used to the Omnibar.

Verdict

Perplexity is awesome! It’s got a lot of search results (I don’t know who their backend web-crawler is, or if they’re building the database themselves), advanced search capabilities, and features to make your research easier. It even has some confusing and moonshot features which may or may not pan out, and it is experimenting with ads too, for their free offering.

But. It is not a Google Search replacement. Yet.

There are simpler things that Perplexity brings too much complexity to. If I’m looking just for the weather, or simple math, or the domain of a website, I do not need LLMs or explanations or summaries. I need a quicker interface.

Perhaps Perplexity could hire a few Google Engineers and implement DNS prefetching to improve their page load times. Perhaps they could build simpler, faster interfaces to solve some of our non-LLM queries faster.

Then how valuable would the company be?

Also, since the company has introduced us to the concept of paid web search, I’m now more open with experimenting with search engines like Kagi, which cost less per month and act like traditional search engines. Maybe at the end of my Perplexity Pro free trial, I’ll go experiment with that company and see what comes of it. If I don’t like it after using it for a month or so, I know I’m going to come back to Perplexity.

why it’s difficult to journal

I struggle to journal or otherwise write privately: I don’t find myself a worthy audience.

Source: se acercan tiempos oscuros (el finde) | yours, tiramisu

This is what I struggle with too. I feel like people who are successful at journaling every day must really enjoy being told what went on with their own lives. To me, I’m living that event, what then is the point of writing about it?

I know, I know – the point is that the journal is not for the now me, it’s for the future me. That future me will be thankful I noticed that moment in time enough to write about it. One of my favorite things these days is to stare at older pics of my child. I’m sure I must have felt awkward taking those pics when I did, but the now me thanks that one because these precious memories are so wonderful to look back at.

Maybe taking a quick photo and writing a quick note in a journal don’t need to be that different in cost in my mind? But for that, I need to tell myself that there is a worthy audience for what I’m doing – future me.

Writing Month or something

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do a Novel writing month, but I have signed up for writingmonth.org with the idea that I want to write at least 10,000 words in my journal (this blog counts) and another 10,000 words at least for office work.

For office work, I’ll only count words I write in documents and not in emails or chat, simply because it’s easier to account for documents than for the latter two. WritingMonth.org is a small endeavor by 1 person actively and another contributing member in some capacity. So while I can reasonably expect the developer to respond quickly to feedback, what I do not expect is a mobile app and a browser plugin and an obsidian plugin, etc etc.

And in one sense it doesn’t even matter. The friction of manually entering my goals into a platform means that I’ll only do it if I’m genuinely going about the process. This same has been true for StoryGraph, where I’ve been tracking all the books I’ve been listening to. I manually plug in my read count daily, instead of relying onon, say, Goodreads and Kindle being integrated and doing it automatically for me.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that – I hanker for this kind of automation when I’m comfortable in my efforts. But when I’m starting out, it makes sense to do the process of tracking details manually. After all, there’s recollection in that task, and also intent. Only if I write and then plug in by word count into the web app will I see that meter fill up for that monthly word count. Only then will I get to see the satisfaction of knowing for sure that I’m doing something with my time and my life instead of simply… living it.

GPT based “Denial of Information” attack

Academic journals, archives, and repositories are seeing an increasing number of questionable research papers clearly produced using generative AI. They are often created with widely available, general-purpose AI applications, most likely ChatGPT, and mimic scientific writing. Google Scholar easily locates and lists these questionable papers alongside reputable, quality-controlled research. Our analysis of a selection of
— Read on misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/gpt-fabricated-scientific-papers-on-google-scholar-key-features-spread-and-implications-for-preempting-evidence-manipulation/

I think we can define a new type of attack on the Internet. Much like the Denial of Service attack makes a service unavailable to ordinary users, a Denial of Information attack makes readily searchable information obscure by inundating it with generative AI based nonsense or outright misinformation.

This can be both a malicious attack or negligence.

A malicious attack would be threat actors specifically targeting information silos such as social media or SEO with misinformation intended to influence society.

A negligent attack is either in the form of misguided attempts by end users to use LLMs to churn out content faster, thereby inundating traditional systems with unverifiable data; or a negligent attack can come in the form of data retrieval infrastructure (such as search engines or LLMs) using generative AI to compile information without adequate gates to verify such information.

A Denial of Information attack is more insidious than a Denial of Service attack because it’s much more difficult to detect and even harder to neutralize due to the individualistic nature of information retrieval and consumption.

Comment for Colin Walker Blog – Sep 9, 2024

My MacBook is getting very tired so I want to mainly use it for music to get the most life out of it.

Source: Colin Walker – Sep 9, 2024

 

Say, Colin, doesn’t it make sense to try to get base Linux on your MacBook? I’ve heard people say it really gives a new life to old Macs, and not just a fresh coat of paint.

Drivers are fully supported, things seem to be snappier and RAM is used better than if you were on Windows or ChromeOS Flex or anything else.

From what I recall, base Ubuntu or Debian or Linux Mint are good options.

Dare I say, I’m sending you down a new rabbit hole? 😀