BTW, I don’t think the web was created to make people rich. #

Another way to look at Claude Code. It’s a way to talk to your code, to ask it questions, and tell it how you want it to change. #

I think maybe it’s time to consider a reboot of WordPress. I can’t seem to seed them with any ideas about building on it from the point of view of the web. It’s a product unto itself, it has plugins, but I’m not a plug-in sort of guy. I write operating systems. That’s what drives me. I see a great place to put an OS with WordPress as the storage and publishing component, and everything else grows up around it. It’s one of those famous coral reefs but it hasn’t been born yet. The idea would not be to compete with WordPress, it’s to make something that fits into our view of the world, that just happens to be the same codebase. And when on the other side they think they have to do it themselves we reach out and say here, just take this over, it’s yours. It’s so hard to penetrate the awareness inside old organizations with new ideas. I think it’s the manifest destiny of WordPress, that what they have now is a nice revenue generating machine, but it’s not serving as the web’s writing base, which is what imho it was supposed to be. (And I have a bit of standing there, btw.) #

I have news for you — Claude forgets important stuff. I catch it forgetting to do things it was “programmed” to do. It’s not a computer, it’s not garbage in garbage out. It could be good stuff in garbage out. As I’ve said before there’s a big chunk of the app I’m working on where I don’t read code. User interface stuff only. No control of what comes in our out. Trying to not take any chances here. #

Does it ever cross anyone’s mind that according to the rules of war, Iran would be totally justified in attacking the United States? #

This is a multi-billion dollar idea. I want to link to “report-up” concept in something I’m writing. There is no Wikipedia page for that but there is a brief explainer in Google, via their AI. Here’s the feature: add a permalink to that response. I’m lazy and will link to it in my writing. #

Vibe-coded software will have a place where users can communicate what they want to developers who can help make it real. The same way you might get medical info from an AI, but would still get your colonoscopy from an actual doctor. Part of the origin story of podcasting is that Adam hacked up a version of Frontier to illustrate what he had in mind for the “last yard” protocol. When I looked at the code it was horrible, hard to believe someone thought of doing it that way. But it got the point across, and that’s the moment the podcasting boostrap began. I love using the AIs to tell a visual story, a skill I never had or developed. No reason it can’t work the same way for software. #

In yesterday’s podcast I mentioned a Microsoft promotional video from the 90s. JY Stervinou on Twitter asked if he had found it, and it was close but it was the video I was talking about. So I checked in with Claude with this prompt.

• there was a microsoft promotional video in the 90s featuring bill gates and steve ballmer riding up front in a car, it’s a ripoff of a volkswagon commercial, the music is catchy song Da Da Da. they drive around and then see a Sun Microsystems computer, they pick it up but it smells bad (apparently) and they drop it off in someone’s garbage. i can’t find the video on the web, can you?

It found a low rez version of the video on YouTube, with a comment.

• It’s a spoof of the 1997 Volkswagen Golf commercial, with Ballmer and Gates driving a Golf, picking up a Sun workstation and later rejecting it. The “Da Da Da” track is by the German band Trio. One source describes the dropped computer as an old IBM rather than Sun, so accounts differ on that detail, but the Know Your Meme listing specifically says Sun workstation, matching what you remember.

Here’s the low-rez video at 1/4 size.

*

The computer in the video I saw was definitely a Sun workstation. It wouldn’t make much sense for it to be an IBM in 1997, Microsoft had already passed over IBM, they were in the middle of the Java Wars with Sun, and there even is a Sun response to the Microsoft video with two actors playing Gates and Ballmer, and in the end Sun CEO Scott McNealy shows up, after (it turns out) Gates smells and the Sun terminal is still in the back seat and users and developers are still nowhere in sight.

I imagine there are a few old time Microsoft people still following this blog, if anyone has a decent resolution version of the Da Da Da video, I’d love to get a good version on the web of 2026.