Saturday Night: Live

Last week I watched some clips from the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. As a kid, growing up in New York, I used to stay up late to watch it, like many of my fellow New Yorkers.

My uncle used to work at 30 Rockefeller Center, so he would occasionally get me tickets to NBC programs like  Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live. 

Although I didn't get a chance to see a live broadcast of SNL, I did get to see the two-hour dress rehearsal that occurs each Saturday night from 8 PM – 10 PM. Based on the audience's reaction, a couple sketches are cut from the show to make it fit in 90 minutes. 

So, I had a chance to watch the dress rehearsal on December 17, 1994 with Courtney Love's band, Hole along with George Forman as the guest host. 

After the dress rehearsal, my buddy and I went to a local NYC bar and we were thrilled to watch the live broadcast while knowing what was about to happen. 

DOGE and the Shakeup in Government: A Culture Shift

Without a doubt, the entire world has seen the shakeup in the U.S. federal government led by the President and DOGE.

In a nutshell, the fundamental culture of the federal government has been impacted by a shift from a traditional bureaucracy to an entrepreneurial, cost-cutting mindset. 

Each type of organization has one keyword that's a driving force in its organization. For the federal government, that word is "risk." What's the risk of doing this or what's the risk of doing that? 

For entrepreneurial organizations, the key driving force is "opportunity." How can I turn this challenge or setback into an opportunity?  

Opportunity prioritizes speed of change over security, whereas risk prioritizes security over speed. Each has its appropriate place and time. 

Parris Island Heads

I came across this Lego diorama of a head (bathroom) in boot camp. It's a reproduction of the final boot camp scene from the movie, Full Metal Jacket. 

When I shared this image with friends, they were amazed that the heads were actually arranged like this. Yes, we were literally side-by-side and face-to-face in some of the barracks we stayed in at Parris Island, South Carolina.

Every evening in boot camp we had 50 mins of free time just before taps where we could read and write letters home and socialize with the other recruits in our platoon (about 60 of us). The very first thing we’d all do when free time began was make a beeline to the head to poop so we could do it at our leisure. Believe it or not, we would read our letters and have discussions in this arrangement while giving our fellow recruits a courtesy look-away when completing the final paperwork.

The military excels at pushing people beyond their comfort zone in a safe, controlled environment.

Tube Tester Memories at Blair TV

Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.

– Grace Hopper

Before solid-state electronics, like the transistor, there were vacuum tube electronics like the triode. Vacuum tubes consume a lot of power and are fragile, similar to an incandescent light bulb.

As a child, we had many televisions in my home. Every bedroom had one, and there were two more in the basement. The reason we had so many TVs was because my father would always stop to pick up discarded televisions that were lying on the side of the road, waiting for track pickup. 

About a mile from home was the now defunct Blair TV repair shop that had tube tester. My father would pull out any suspected bad tubes from the TV's he found and bring the tubes to the TV repair shop for testing. Once he uncovered a bad tube, he'd pay a few bucks to replace it and, voila, we'd have a working TV in the house.

Technology and Media: Historic Transformations

Podcast of this blog post.

Having witnessed firsthand the explosion of the Internet and the birth of social media, I observed a profound shift: information, once difficult to produce and disseminate, can now be created and shared by anyone with ease. The barrier to entry for crazy ideas is now lower than it has ever been in history. People now need to be more discriminating than ever.

It will probably take a few generations for people to learn a proper level of skepticism. Right now, the pace at how quickly things are changing is faster than the rate at which the average person can keep up. I only wish we had better records of the impact of other, historic transitions from people who lived through it. I asked AI to give me some examples and this is what I discovered. 

The transition from mass media to social media represents a profound societal shift in how information is created, distributed, and consumed. Throughout history, comparable adjustments have occurred during periods of technological and cultural innovation. Here are some examples:

1. The Invention of Writing (Circa 3200 BCE)

• What Changed: Oral traditions gave way to written records, enabling information to be preserved and transmitted across generations and distances.

• Impact: Writing centralized knowledge within institutions like temples and royal courts but also democratized access to ideas over time. Societies had to learn to value written contracts, laws, and literature over oral storytelling.

2. The Printing Press (15th Century)

• What Changed: Johannes Gutenberg’s invention made mass production of books possible, transforming knowledge from an elite privilege into a public good.

• Impact: The spread of books, pamphlets, and newspapers fueled the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. However, it also necessitated new skills, like literacy, and created challenges such as the dissemination of propaganda.

3. The Telegraph and Telephone (19th Century)

• What Changed: Communication became nearly instantaneous over long distances.

• Impact: The flow of information accelerated commerce, politics, and personal relationships. However, it also created a demand for new protocols and etiquette around remote communication.

4. Mass Media (20th Century)

• What Changed: The rise of radio, television, and film centralized information dissemination, placing control in the hands of a few corporations or governments.

• Impact: Mass media shaped public opinion and culture on an unprecedented scale. Societies grappled with issues like censorship, propaganda, and the influence of advertising.

5. The Internet (Late 20th Century)

• What Changed: The internet democratized access to information and gave individuals the tools to publish content globally.

• Impact: The transition required societies to navigate new risks, such as cybercrime, misinformation, and digital divides, while also embracing the possibilities for global collaboration and education.

6. The Rise of Algorithms and AI (21st Century)

• What Changed: Algorithms began curating information for individuals, creating “filter bubbles” and personalized content streams.

• Impact: This shift parallels earlier technological revolutions but adds complexity due to the opacity of algorithmic decision-making and its potential for bias or manipulation.

Societal Adjustments Across Transitions:

• Critical Thinking: Similar to learning literacy after the printing press, people now need “digital literacy” to evaluate the credibility of online information.

• Ethical Norms: Societies create new rules or guidelines for acceptable behavior in response to technological shifts, such as copyright laws or content moderation policies.

• Power Dynamics: Each transition alters who holds power over information and who can challenge authority, from the scribe to the independent journalist to the social media influencer.

These transitions often involve disruption, but they also open opportunities for progress, creativity, and greater inclusivity. The key challenge for each era is learning to wield new tools responsibly.

Balanced News from the Right & Left

A friend turned me on to Tangle News, yesterday. Unlike Ground News (which reports on how other news outlets are reporting news), Tangle News reports a story and then reports on what the Right and Left are saying about the topic followed by the author's personal take. 

I'm trying it out with the latest story that was published about Matt Gates' Attorney General bid. This article was published just before he withdrew his name, so it's a little stale but still interesting. I also turned the article into a podcast for alternative consumption. 

Pocket Travel Router & Repeater for the Win

A coworker who was visiting San Diego in September mentioned that he always travels with a pocket-sized travel router so I decided to check one out on Amazon. I'm impressed; especially since it cost less than $40 with tax and shipping and it was delivered in under three hours.

I'm simply using mine as a WiFi repeater to deliver connectivity to a dead spot at home and it's working magnificently. It is ideal for using at a hotel so you and your fellow roommates don't need to keep logging into the hotel room's WiFi. And it's especially useful on a cruise ship or airline flight where guests are charged for Internet access for each device. Simply pay for connecting one device, the travel router, and then everyone else in your stateroom can connect it. 

To use it, you log into it, like a typical router or cable modem, and then connect it to your current home (or hotel, etc) WiFi network (you can also use ethernet or tether it to your phone’s hotspot). Once it's set up, it creates its own WiFi network so multiple people can connect to the travel router without needing to log into the hotel’s network.

iPhones Running iOS 18.1 Automatically Reboot and Lock Down After Being Idle for 96 Hours

This is an interesting new iPhone feature that causes an iPhone to automatically reboot if it's turned on but hasn’t been unlocked for 96 hours.

The thinking is that if your phone is taken from you then it’s harder to hack after it reboots, which is completely true.

Law enforcement has recently encountered this new feature from iPhones they’ve confiscated. The phones that law enforcement have been storing were inexplicably rebooting after 96 hours.

How It Works

When you turn on your iPhone, after it’s been completely powered down, or reboot it, your keys are still encrypted. Entering your six digit PIN unlocks the keys.

This is why, after you turn a phone on, but don’t unlock it, phone calls or text messages don’t display the names of who they’re from on the Lock Screen - rather the notifications simply show the phone number of the sender. The iPhone can’t decrypt a lot of things, like your address book, until you enter your PIN after turning it on or rebooting.

Once you unlock your iPhone for the first time, all the keys are decrypted and kept in memory until the next time you reboot the phone.

Pair Programming with 3Blue1Brown

For years, I've followed the fantastic videos created by Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown. His videos cover math related topics such as linear algebra, quantum computing, neural networks, and physics. 

I just watch his latest video where he pair programs with Ben Sparks while explaining to Sparks how he developed a custom Python library for his video renderings.

What struck me about this video is it reminds of how gammers record and replay massively multiplayer games for others to watch.

Sanderson and Sparks essentially do the same thing, as Sanderson walks through his code and even uses ChatGPT to write some of it, saving him time. Enjoy.

Mind Blowing AI Podcast Creation

This podcast was created for free, entirely by an AI based on approximately 1,200 words of text: http://joemoreno.com/patriotism.mp3

Everyone I’ve shared this with has been absolutely amazed.

Those two voices, in this podcast, are completely AI generated. The source of the text the AI used was this blog post from earlier today.

Try It Yourself

Here's how I did it (you'll need a Google/Gmail account).

1. I visited Google's NotebookLM AI at: https://notebooklm.google.com

2. I clicked the Create button.

3. I then uploaded the text of my document.

4. Under the "Audio Overview" I clicked on the Generate button to create the "Deep dive conversation" with two hosts. It took a few minutes to complete and then I downloaded the WAV sound file. I added one additional, unnecessary, step of converting it to an MP3 using the Apple Music app on my Mac (formerly known as the iTunes app).

Ta-da. That's all there is to it.

Since this is generative AI, every time you use the same content to generate a new podcast, you'll get a different result.

Use Cases

I'm thinking of other uses for this such as turning a long article into a podcast to listen to during a commute or perhaps some work related reading that you can listen to as a podcast while commuting.