Jonathan Vaught

Master of None. Husband of one, father of two. CTO at Kickserv. Culture war conscientious objector. Also answers to Pipeline, especially when sweaty.

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

It's easy: Just lease the Mall, free and unconditionally, to @DollyParton, and let her do the rest.

[Christian Stegmaier @cstegmaier]

“Bobby Cox Field at Truist Park”

[Leland @ItsLeland]

In honor of Bobby Cox, here’s almost 20 minutes of him getting ejected.

Legend.

[Emily Zanotti 🦝 @emzanotti]

I feel like, if you have to say, “this is not a golden calf,” you’ve already lost the battle over whether it is, indeed, a golden calf

[Jonathan Vaught @copyhacker]

So glad The Fly made it, my all time #1

[Steven Hyden @Steven_Hyden]

Inspired by the Rolling Stone list, I came up with my own top 25 greatest guitar solos of all time and asked readers to produce their own suggestions. https://t.co/dPzkfSaDl6

[Jonathan Vaught @copyhacker]

@IsaacKing314 Finally something the South is miles ahead on, y’all

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[signüll @signulll]

the craziest part now is that the modern computer probably has to be entirely reinvented, from scratch. pretty much like how jobs & co brought apple ii to market.

like not improved. not given a chatbot sidebar or something but really from the ground up like the iphone redefined what it meant to be a pocket computer.

the current paradigm for computers was built around a human staring at a screen, moving a cursor, opening apps, managing windows, naming files, remembering where things live, & manually translating intent into interface actions.

that made sense when the human was the runtime. but in an ai native world, it starts to look kinda ridiculous.

you can see this ridiculousness when you use computer use agents… they are useful sure, but they’re also obviously transitional. they’re teaching ai to operate machines designed for humans, which is clever, but also kind of absurd. it’s like making a robot hand so it can use a doorknob instead of asking why the door needs a knob at all. yes i know humans also need to use a door knob, but maybe in the future humans don’t need to use a computer, or at least what we think of a computer today at all.

this all leads to some interesting questions:

- what is a file when the system understands context?
- what is an app when intent can route itself?
- what is a desktop when work can be decomposed, executed, monitored, & summarized by agents?
- what is a browser when the agent can retrieve, compare, transact, & remember?
- what is an operating system when the primary user is no longer just a person, but a person plus a swarm of delegated intelligences? or no person at all.

the old computer assumed navigation.
the new computer has to assume a new kind of intention. the old computer organized information. the new computer has to try to organize agency.

we’re still in the hacky middle stage at the moment with sidebars, copilots, agents clicking through legacy ui, & automation layers sitting on top of 40 year old metaphors.

the new computer is likely one where memory, context, identity, permissions, tools, agents, & interfaces are native primitives. this means desktop, mobile, browser, apps, files, folders deserves another first principles look.

[Emily Zanotti 🦝 @emzanotti]

Don Bluth was wrong. Every single human of a certain age can point to the exact moment they were scarred by a Don Bluth film.

[Jonathan Vaught @copyhacker]

I love this movie so much.

[The Sting @TheStingisBack]

Does anyone remember the weird past-life thriller Dead Again (1991)
Robin Williams shows up uncredited as a disgraced psychiatrist; he didn’t want anyone expecting a comedy. He only has three scenes, and he’s absolutely electric.
Oh, and happy birthday, Emma Thompson

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

@Valen10Francois The French would never do that. They don't have de Gaulle.

[Jonathan Vaught @copyhacker]

@kdaigle did you do this

[Vaishnavi @_vmlops]

MICROSOFT BUILT A TOOL THAT CONVERTS LITERALLY ANYTHING INTO CLEAN MARKDOWN FOR YOUR LLM

pdfs. word docs. excel. powerpoint. audio. youtube urls

one pip install and your AI pipeline stops choking on raw files forever

no custom parsers. no broken layouts. no garbled text.

just clean, structured markdown your LLM can actually read

https://t.co/RSt0CczfYa

[Jonathan Vaught @copyhacker]

@kdaigle I get a lot out of having models code review each other. This is next level though.

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

The Denial of Saint Peter, by Caravaggio, 1610

[Jonathan Vaught @copyhacker]

Good lord Texas can’t hit the broad side of a barn tonight.

[GC Supply Co. @gcsupplycompany]

"Sometimes things get heated. We move on."

You can print that.

[Jonathan Vaught @copyhacker]

ESPN with the pregame handshake receipts. Lol.

[Jonathan Vaught @copyhacker]

@newinattica I didn’t know you could say some of that stuff on espn

[Law in Japan @Colin_P_A_Jones]

@RGA This is Major Tom to tech support
I’m clicking on the tab
But it’s acting in a most peculiar way
And the menu ribbon looks quite different today

[Jonathan Vaught @copyhacker]

@sammyrhodes Will never ever get old