Field notes

The future of agents isn’t general-knowledge LLMs. It’s a model with impeccable function calling, with prebuilt interchangeable brain banks that grow as you use it.

Most LLMs are wasting massive compute for information that’s never relevant or used.

Every piece of software you use has a default. Not its best setting — its default. The gap between the two is where most surveillance lives, and closing that gap is a surprisingly cheap way to feel better about being online.

I keep a running list of apps where the default is against the user: Chrome, the iOS share sheet, almost every chat app with read receipts on. Worth the hour it takes to retune.

The dopamine system is not designed for “good things.” It is designed for progress toward a goal you have defined. You get a bite of the cookie as you get closer. Then it goes quiet, and you need another destination.

No progress is too small. That single step holds its weight in gold. Each step is one extra win the biology will track. Comfort-obsessed culture makes that easy to starve.

YouTube is often the last thing people cannot leave. On desktop and Android, Grayjay is seriously nice software, and fine for replacing it. The video still arrives. The account does not have to.

I thought I’d like AI. I want out. Tell me why 99% of my feed is blatantly generated. Give me the human content back.

The antidote is not another model. It is choosing what I read, and leaving room for people who still sound like people.

Can confirm Curve Pay works on GrapheneOS devices in the UK. This is a feature I had been missing for a long time.

Not a reason to install the OS. Just a hole in daily life that closed. The rest of the case is still about control, not contactless.

There are not many bottom-tier opinions. This is one of them.

Privacy tools are not a hobby for people with a clearance. They are how ordinary software stops defaulting against the person using it.

A Pebble that is just a watch again. Worth keeping next to Grafter and Waypoint: small hardware, local jobs, no need to keep a phone in the conversation.

First you guess. Then you compute what the guess would imply, and you compare that to nature. It does not matter how beautiful the guess is, or who made it.

I keep coming back to this when a model sounds sure. Sure is not the test.

I have been working on a script for Linux maintenance and system config, for the day I run a stupid command and mess it up. Maintenance used to intimidate me. I use this weekly now.

I will publish it once it’s polished. I think it could help new Linux users, which is the whole point of writing the scary bits down.

A train has the most freedom when it is on the tracks. Off them it is a pile of parts: potential, no direction. Absolute freedom looks like a gift and behaves like an abyss.

Frameworks are not the opposite of freedom. They are what turn potential into a trip worth taking. I want the next length of rail where I am standing, not a wider field with no path.

Brute-forcing a new life by ignoring the signals does not hold. To tyrannise yourself you first have to pretend the feedback is not there. Then you have no compass left.

The ends-justify-the-means version of discipline treats every input as secondary to the result. I would rather negotiate with the system I actually have than declare war on it.

I use Proton Mail with my own domain. The address can move with me. I do not have to rewrite it on every account when a provider gets worse, or sold, or boring.

It’s future-proofing, made easy. I only use a “real” address for people I actually write to, and for accounts I’m happy to keep linked to me.

You’re looking for something like the FUTO keyboard. They’re a sure David in a Goliath market of untrustable keyboards. An absolute gem.

No network permission, local speech dictation, and it just works. I tested it for a few days and bought the licence without hesitation.