Why you can't create an account on rss.chat
http://scripting.com/2026/07/12/121948.html?title=whyYouCantCreateAnAccountOnRsschat
A karass is "a group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner, even when superficial linkages are not evident."
I think of rss.chat as a social network for my karass. A small group of people, not trying to get famous or rich from using a social network, rather wanted to work with or stay in touch with people who are linked cosmically. This is one of many rich ideas invented by Kurt Vonnegut, this one in Cat's Cradle, which you should read, because it's some of the best story-telling out there, and it's full of food for thought. I read all the books when I was a teen, and have since re-read them. Sirens of Titan was my fave.
Anyway...
In the past when I announced a product, people could use it right away, and usually they click a couple of things and then go away.
In the case of rss.chat -- what you will see is very much like what you see when you aren't logged in, or what you see on a social network like X, or Mastodon or whatever. The UI is nice, but it's not the thing. That will be revealed relatively slowly, over time -- as new instances pop up, and even more importantly, as developers figure out that this setup works well enough to clone. I'm not selling a product here -- I want to bootstrap an ecosystem, using all I learned from several successful bootstraps -- blogging, RSS, podcasting.
The idea is this -- the web itself is a social network. It's up to us, all of us, not just me -- to build that network.
When you see how we proceed from here that will become clearer.
In the meantime I'm going to change the message you get when you try to sign on, and start a wait list so that when more instances are available, some meant to be open to the public, we'll be sure to let you all know about that.
For now, I'm operating a network for people I work with, and it's all open for anyone to read. That's also one of the ideas I want to explore, something I call a "Fractional horsepower social network," stealing a very good idea from Steve Jobs.
I don't want to turn the world over to a startup, we've done that and have a pretty good idea of where it goes. I want lots of small ones that have a very strong basis to be connected together in as many ways as people can imagine.
Yesterday was a wonderful first day for rss.chat. It's now out there, but we haven't talked about or demo'd many of the things that it does. I wanted to get the feeds out there first, because now we get to think together about how they fit together to give us a social network experience. It's not locked in a silo, these are just like feeds you have known about for over two decades. But it is a new application for those feeds. And this is a bootstrap. You start with something small that you're sure is a beginning for what you want to do. And then you and others use it for a while. And it is open source, MIT licensed, but compatibility will make the difference.
Back in 2022 I wrote a bit called 
Claude Code et al change how software is developed forever. We're never going back. And it's just as likely that writing on computer networks will undergo a similar transformation.
I'm old enough to remember the Tall Ships in NY Harbor on this day in 1976, the bicentennial. As a NY kid, I wasn't very impressed. I liked rockets and rock bands, sound systems, had started programming then, was working in BASIC at Rapidata, a time sharing company with its office in the Empire State Building where I had my office on the 39th floor. The windows opened. This was betw Tulane and UW-Madison. I had no clue what was going on, but I had already come close to getting drafted. I had been raised to think the US absolutely was totally special, the best place, the rest of the world was far behind us. We were right to feel that way. It was the US vs the World and we won. I was born only 10 years after the end of WW II, so the feeling of power and righteousness was our foundation growing up, but also the certainty we'd all die in a nuclear holocaust. By 1976 we had had Watergate, the president was a crook, and were about to go through spiraling stagflation. Ronald Reagan. John Lennon killed. We had shit to deal with, worse in some ways than what we have today. Are we still the USA? We are if we decide we are. Anyway, my friend Jerry at the right wants to sing for you: "I'm Uncle Sam that's who I am been hiding out in a rock and roll band." We sing this song here every July 4, and it's always as true as it was in previous years. Freedom is something you practice.
I need new podcasts. The only one I listen to regularly now is the Bill Simmons podcast, but that's because the Knicks won and the NBA is re-forming itself around the Knicks. It's so freaking unusual to have your team, which was once right up there with Charlotte, New Orleans, Portland, Washington, Memphis, in the very the bottom rung of the NBA, to have them be the model everyone is chasing with the qualification that no one expects it to last (I don't care if it does, I love this team, the're as memorable as the 1973 champs), but all of a sudden Bill Simmons is respectful. I can't listen to a podcast of Democratic consultants, or Republican consultants that vote Democratic now. I did listen to them on the lead-up to the election in 2024. But whatever happens in the sport of elections the Democrats as they were before 2024, the one that re-nominated Biden and then switched to Harris and lost a race that should have been an easy win, are over. Those Democrats still think people will vote for well-executed government. Some people will (me, for example) but enough people see the election as Reality TV, so you want someone who looks like a winner in that context. The world has changed in so many ways and the Dems haven't even caught up with the change brought about by blogging and podcasting. Now we have Claude. I probably would vote for Claude too. I don't know. Anyway I'm warmed up now. Onto my day's work with the aforementioned Claude.
I saw a bit of a commencement speech by Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO of Google, where he was talking about AI and getting boo'd by the audience. But he was saying things that were right and should be paid attention to. Most important, and I'm paraphrasing, the AI world is just getting started, and we can change it now most easily, it's malleable. That won't last forever. As Obama says, "Don't boo, vote." Same thing here. AI has already completely changed how we develop software. It's not replacing humans, it's giving us amazing new power. Maybe it will at some point replace us, but don't be so sure that what we do with it might be every bit as new as the things it can do. We have different abilities. And I am old enough to remember a time before personal computers, the internet, the web, mobile devices, all the things that have since become everyday fixtures, and they all had negative aspects, but I would never go back. We're on a train and it's going somewhere. Where it goes is something we all have a say in.
A thought for people who think the US can't be fixed. I've seen very strange things happen, like all of a sudden people figure it out and boom next thing you know they're the NBA Champions. It wasn't exactly sudden, but the last leg of was. A gestalt. Now two leaders figure out how to. The thing about each of those people is determination, and a belief they were right, and they went right up to the edge and fought. I think the country would unite behind such a leader.
Some things Claude is extremely tedious at. But then it blows you away how it can read thousands of lines of complicated code in a few seconds (in parallel) and find tiny little things that any good obsessive programmer would want to fix (like me). And be amazed at how we, our species, made such a thing. Where is the pride? I was once prideful that my civilization created a great piece of machinery like my Subaru Forester, and now just a few years later, we've come up with a decent simulation of a super-human brain that's not just a demo or a robot vacuum cleaner it actually does amazing science fiction type stuff. Take a deep breath and feel a little awe to go with the cynicism. It's good to be ready to be riled up, but sometimes the truth isn't as bad as you'd like to think, sometimes it's utterly amazing. ;-)
Another truth, the user interface of WordPress could benefit from a total overhaul. Too many expedient choices over too many years that paper over bad design choices with yet more bad choices. But this kind of problem is relatively easy to fix. Make a list of all the features. Don’t organize the list yet. Keep adding. Then play around with logical groups, give the groups names. Voila, there’s your menu structure. And since it’s 2026 and not 2010, do something innovative with AI. Let the user explain what they want to do, confirm it, and then forget about the menu structure and just do what they asked you to do. Over time the UI will become more literate and less organizational. You remember how Nixon could open up China and could because he was such a hawk. WordPress getting a AI/UI overhaul will seem right because it so desperately needs an overhaul and everyone knows it. Another truth, don’t feel bad WordPress, every 20+ year old end user product desperately needs a user interface overhaul because that’s just the way it works. (I have never created a product that lasted as long as WordPress has. I have created concepts that have.)
