These are all the books I have read either at work or home during 2023. To add to the list, I am going include the audiobooks I have listened to this year.

Eyes of the Void by Adrain Tchaikovsky

The Web by Jonathan Kellerman

I'm Glad My Mom is Dead by Jennette McCurdy

Holly by Stephen King (yes, listened and read the book)

Fairytale by Stephen King

All the below I listened to in anticipation of Holly coming out. All written by Stephen King.

Mr Mercedes Finder's Keepers If It Bleeds. Life of Chuck. The Outsider.       

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The Woman Who Wouldn't by Gene Wilder

The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

DumaKey by Stephen King

Later by Stephen King

Old Mans War by John Scatzi

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Off To Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer

Run Program by Scott Meyer

The Talisman by Stephen King

Mile 81 by Stephen King

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

Now that is all the books some of these I read before or listened to many times, and I am pretty sure there some I forgot.

I read at least one book a day unless really busy, then maybe can take up to three days.

My 40 minutes of round trip commute, along with my other traveling, allows me to listen to a lot of audiobooks.

I hope to beat this reading record for 2024.

Happy New Year!

I am looking forward to this novel. I love this character and look forward to reading another case with her as the lead.

I am a little frustrated when I noticed that Will Patton will not be the voice for the audiobook, but I will adjust because I will at least have a physical copy.

Who else is excited for this novel?

This is what the new GOP they are 100% embrace white supremacy and are welcoming fascism into America.

We must stop them by voting and if that doesn't work....

Received this in my email what do you all think?

There a link also but I didn't dare click on it. I can share it if anyone wants to. Just ask.

Stop Trying to Make Social Networks Succeed by Ploum on 2023-07-06

Lot is happening in the social network landscape with the demises of Twitter and Reddit, the apparition of Bluesky and Threads, the growing popularity of Mastodon. Many pundits are trying to guess which one will be successful and trying to explain why others will fail. Which completely misses the point.

Particular social networks will never "succeed". Nobody even agree on the definition of "success".

The problem is that we all see our little bubble and generalise what we observe as universal. We have a hard time understanding Mastodon ? Mastodon will never succeed, it will be for a niche. A few of our favourite web stars goes to Bluesky ? Bluesky is the future, everybody will be there.

That’s not how it works. That’s not how it ever worked.

Like every human endeavour, every social network is there for a limited duration and will be useful to a limited niche of people. That niche may grow to the point of being huge, like Facebook and WhatsApp. But, to this day, there are more people in the world without an account on Facebook than people with one. Every single social network is only representative of a minority. And the opposite would be terrifying when you think about it (which is exactly what Meta is trying to build).

Social networks are fluid. They come, they go. For commercial social networks, the success is defined by: "do they earn enough money to make investors happy ?" There’s no metric of success for non-commercial ones. They simply exist as long as at least two users are using them to communicate. Which is why criticisms like "Mastodon could never raise enough money" or "the Fediverse will never succeed" totally miss the point.

If you live in the same occidental bubble as me, you might have never heard of WeChat, QQ or VK. Those are immensely popular social networks. In China and Russia. WeChat alone is more or less the size of Instagram in terms of active users. The war in Ukraine also demonstrated that the most popular social network in that part of the world is Telegram. Which is twice as big as Twitter but, for whatever reason, is barely mentioned in my own circles. The lesson here is simple: you are living in a small niche. We all do. Your experience is not representative of anything but your own. And it’s fine.

There will never be one social network to rule them all. There should never be one social network to rule them all. In fact, tech-savvy people should fight to ensure that no social network ever "succeed".

Human lives in communities. We join them, we sometimes leave them. Social networks should only be an underlying infrastructure to support our communities. Social networks are not our communities. Social network dies. Communities migrate and flock to different destinations. Nothing ever replaced Google+, which was really popular in my own tech circle. Nothing will replace Twitter or Reddit. Some communities will find a new home on Mastodon or on Lemmy. Some will go elsewhere. That’s not a problem as long as you can have multiple accounts in different places. Something I’m sure you do. Communities can be split. Communities can be merged. People can be part of several communities and several platforms.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists are trying to convince us that, one day, a social network will succeed, will become universal. That it should grow. That social networks are our communities. That your community should grow to succeed.

This is a lie, a delusion. Our communities are worth a lot more than the underlying tool used at some point in time. By accepting the confusion, we are destroying our communities. We are selling them, we are transforming them into a simple commercial asset for the makers of the tool we are using, the tool which exploits us.

Stop trying to make social networks succeed, stop dreaming of a universal network. Instead, invest in your own communities. Help them make long-term, custom and sustainable solutions. Try to achieve small and local successes instead of pursuing an imaginary universal one. It will make you happier.

It will make all of us happier.

There a link also but I didn't dare click on it. I can share it if anyone wants to. Just ask.

Stop Trying to Make Social Networks Succeed by Ploum on 2023-07-06

Lot is happening in the social network landscape with the demises of Twitter and Reddit, the apparition of Bluesky and Threads, the growing popularity of Mastodon. Many pundits are trying to guess which one will be successful and trying to explain why others will fail. Which completely misses the point.

Particular social networks will never "succeed". Nobody even agree on the definition of "success".

The problem is that we all see our little bubble and generalise what we observe as universal. We have a hard time understanding Mastodon ? Mastodon will never succeed, it will be for a niche. A few of our favourite web stars goes to Bluesky ? Bluesky is the future, everybody will be there.

That’s not how it works. That’s not how it ever worked.

Like every human endeavour, every social network is there for a limited duration and will be useful to a limited niche of people. That niche may grow to the point of being huge, like Facebook and WhatsApp. But, to this day, there are more people in the world without an account on Facebook than people with one. Every single social network is only representative of a minority. And the opposite would be terrifying when you think about it (which is exactly what Meta is trying to build).

Social networks are fluid. They come, they go. For commercial social networks, the success is defined by: "do they earn enough money to make investors happy ?" There’s no metric of success for non-commercial ones. They simply exist as long as at least two users are using them to communicate. Which is why criticisms like "Mastodon could never raise enough money" or "the Fediverse will never succeed" totally miss the point.

If you live in the same occidental bubble as me, you might have never heard of WeChat, QQ or VK. Those are immensely popular social networks. In China and Russia. WeChat alone is more or less the size of Instagram in terms of active users. The war in Ukraine also demonstrated that the most popular social network in that part of the world is Telegram. Which is twice as big as Twitter but, for whatever reason, is barely mentioned in my own circles. The lesson here is simple: you are living in a small niche. We all do. Your experience is not representative of anything but your own. And it’s fine.

There will never be one social network to rule them all. There should never be one social network to rule them all. In fact, tech-savvy people should fight to ensure that no social network ever "succeed".

Human lives in communities. We join them, we sometimes leave them. Social networks should only be an underlying infrastructure to support our communities. Social networks are not our communities. Social network dies. Communities migrate and flock to different destinations. Nothing ever replaced Google+, which was really popular in my own tech circle. Nothing will replace Twitter or Reddit. Some communities will find a new home on Mastodon or on Lemmy. Some will go elsewhere. That’s not a problem as long as you can have multiple accounts in different places. Something I’m sure you do. Communities can be split. Communities can be merged. People can be part of several communities and several platforms.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists are trying to convince us that, one day, a social network will succeed, will become universal. That it should grow. That social networks are our communities. That your community should grow to succeed.

This is a lie, a delusion. Our communities are worth a lot more than the underlying tool used at some point in time. By accepting the confusion, we are destroying our communities. We are selling them, we are transforming them into a simple commercial asset for the makers of the tool we are using, the tool which exploits us.

Stop trying to make social networks succeed, stop dreaming of a universal network. Instead, invest in your own communities. Help them make long-term, custom and sustainable solutions. Try to achieve small and local successes instead of pursuing an imaginary universal one. It will make you happier.

It will make all of us happier.

Me and my boss explained how you could just have AI write your article etc. Then have those checking systems check it for you. Keep fixing it until beats the systems which with AI won't take long.

Great plan what could go wrong?