Transcriber Notes 2023-11-19

See Typescript 2023-11-19 and Typescript Index 2023-11-19, as well as Typescript Archive and Typescript Transcripts.

How to hard-reload and clear cache in a Chromium browser like Google Chrome, also shows how to set "disable cache" in the Network tab of the inspector; useful during local development of a wiki plugin. (Courtesy Brian; screenclip Jeff; also inlined in Typescript 2023-11-19 ). Timestamped PageFold divider above and image item below are shift-drag copies from that page.

Ward is calling in from a canal boat in France on the Rhône River, with an in-cabin screen tuned to a camera looking at the river.

AI as conversational tool making it easy to enter a development ecosystem and do the boilerplate code which connects a thought with a platform like an SQL database engine or a Node server or in-page Javascript - an enabler of thought into machinery for action, as long as the action follows a common, generally textual pattern (don't try this with a Lisp framework).

LLMs as automated plausible story generators, destroying collective knowledge by making up stuff that sounds reasonable in its own terms, but plays upon the human tendency to project an intelligent world model onto a storyteller or conversation partner; the same tendency exploited by conspiracy opportunists, confidence frauds, cult leaders, and narcissistic visionaries.

Google's page rank as under visibly effective assault from fraudsters related to certain obvious-in-context exploitable queries, like "{finance app} support telephone number".

An extended discussion of Nix as a software dependency management ecosystem, related to Marc's experience installing Wiki / observing Wiki as a one-click install backed by Nix.

Eric's reflections on returning to "DLL hell" in every new environment where we have software dependencies and distributed teams; Nix is the latest attempt to make dependencies explicit using artifact content hashes (SHA-1 used as a fancy checksum/identifier). In practice that means if your front end is Javascript, you likely use Node; if your front end is Python, you likely use pip. But the contents of the scripts behind the friendly interface may be as arcane and complex as autotools, a confection of Perl and M4 macros to ensure that the dependencies and build options are correct for your particular platform.

Viki's interest in the wiki plugin system, with wiki plugin generation demonstrated by Eric and elucidated by Paul, including the "npm pack" mechanism to install a local plugin under development, elaborated with a "here's an hour pairing with Ward on a plugin" demonstrated by Jeff, a "hello world" behavior in the emit() function of the custom plugin.

Viki's "word count" plugin considered as something which could be done as a client plugin ("count the words in this page / these pages" or "is this page a wiki haiku?"); for an ongoing word count, you might need to hook the client's event handling to update the word count every time an editor loses focus or every time you make a word boundary with a space or some sort of punctation.

Ward's "Morse Teacher' plugin as a more tightly interactive custom editor possibly useful for a more continous word count plugin model?

There's also Ward's "site survey" approach as a mechanism to create and update a word count surveyor.

What do Jeff's gestures at the camera mean? "I feel that too!" / "Yes, a hundred percent that!" / "Yes, that's a terrible trap." / "That's such a good example." / "Oh yes, I've seen that before a hundred times."

"The American Buffalo" from Ken Burns, about the tightly interwoven strains of the early Industrial Revolution, buffalo hide, the fashion for beaver hats, and the trappers of the 1800s responding to the demands of industry and fashion. "No species can survive the swings of fashion" - (beaver hats).

Are we, as "self-enlightened" folks, just as subject to the constraints of the decision landscape as our forebears who held slaves and hunted animals to extinction to serve the financial models then current? (See: global warming; AI hype).

Brian Marick's Oddly Influenced, about communities of technical or artistic practice, often tightly homogeneous and sometimes deliberately excluding the social context in which their work is used or sold; the forces which disrupt those communities.

The US healthcare system and the difficulties of connecting needs and good practice in the context of an extractive financial model which does as much harm as good and burdens the patient with case management.

Broadly distributing working examples of problem-solving communities so that people have things to turn to, already in their mind, when they are facing trouble, rather than delegating it upward to disconnected hierarchical managers missing the context and ability to balance issues. "We had civil defense sitting right there as a model in people's minds for public health and other issues, a story we could use to work together for each other, and we didn't use it."