Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
AI Native IDEs for Code, Engineering, Science
Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
AI Native IDEs for Code, Engineering, Science
Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
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At our house we have Optimum Voice, which is Cablevision’s VOIP service. It works perfectly well with good call quality and a decent web admin panel. It even let’s you forward a .wav file of your voicemails to PhoneTag for transcription which is truly useful since Susan and I see both out of the house all day. But it’s not really VOIP as it was meant to be. The service is delivered in blackbox fashion in the form of a cable modem with two phone jacks on the back (we have two lines at home). I asked about SIP phones and the answer was simply ‘no we don’t support them.’ Now I am pretty sure that Cablevision did not build something crazy and proprietary (although one never knows). So inside the cable modem there is probably a clean interface between SIP and the part that’s driving the analog jacks but no obvious access to that. By looking on the Internet I found various folks on other cable systems who had figured out how to hack into the modem box to identify the SIP settings. I don’t have the time to try that for Optimum and the particular modem we have, but I have found a great alternative. CallCentric has a wonderful self service VOIP offering that was not only extremely easy to set up but offers great quality and competitive rates. Now I have a SNOM 300 phone which I can plug anywhere into our home network (or any other IP network for that matter) and get the full on VOIP experience as it was meant to be. So far I highly recommend this to anyone with a home office or small business / startup (will provide updates if I encounter any glitches).
At our house we have Optimum Voice, which is Cablevision’s VOIP service. It works perfectly well with good call quality and a decent web admin panel. It even let’s you forward a .wav file of your voicemails to PhoneTag for transcription which is truly useful since Susan and I see both out of the house all day. But it’s not really VOIP as it was meant to be. The service is delivered in blackbox fashion in the form of a cable modem with two phone jacks on the back (we have two lines at home). I asked about SIP phones and the answer was simply ‘no we don’t support them.’ Now I am pretty sure that Cablevision did not build something crazy and proprietary (although one never knows). So inside the cable modem there is probably a clean interface between SIP and the part that’s driving the analog jacks but no obvious access to that. By looking on the Internet I found various folks on other cable systems who had figured out how to hack into the modem box to identify the SIP settings. I don’t have the time to try that for Optimum and the particular modem we have, but I have found a great alternative. CallCentric has a wonderful self service VOIP offering that was not only extremely easy to set up but offers great quality and competitive rates. Now I have a SNOM 300 phone which I can plug anywhere into our home network (or any other IP network for that matter) and get the full on VOIP experience as it was meant to be. So far I highly recommend this to anyone with a home office or small business / startup (will provide updates if I encounter any glitches).
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