It’s time for another update in my Honda Element blog post series. After my last road trip, I decided to scrap the rooftop box. Even though the extra storage was great, I was suspicious it was dragging too much on the highway and killing my gas milage. In its place I’ve mounted a much slimmer roof basket, which I also thought would be perfect for helping add a solar panel to the roof in a clean, non-destructive way.

So far I really like it. Here are a few photos:

I bolted the panel to the roof basket rods, and it seems mostly secure, but it’s not perfect. Of the four mount points, I could only get three actually aligned in a workable way. I’m hoping to adjust how it’s attached and add a few extra zip ties as insurance.

Not really shown, I’m winding the cable down into the back of the car, where I can charge one of my portable batteries. This is sort of a luxury I don’t need, to be honest, but it’s fun and you can never have too much electricity while traveling. Also still need to get something to stick the cable to the roof better.

The basket is the Thule Canyon XT Cargo Basket. The panel is the Jackery SolarSaga 100 Prime. It’s purposefully off-center because I still need to reattach my weBoost antenna.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has written a long essay about powerful AI. I haven’t even finished reading it and it has already blown my mind a few times over:

To summarize the above, my basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years. I’ll refer to this as the “compressed 21st century”: the idea that after powerful AI is developed, we will in a few years make all the progress in biology and medicine that we would have made in the whole 21st century.

He also addresses finding meaning in work. Many people are rightly concerned about AI replacing their work — and this concern combined with energy and climate issues fuel much of the pushback against AI — but this has never bothered me very much. There will always be tasks that only humans are best suited for.

On the question of meaning, I think it is very likely a mistake to believe that tasks you undertake are meaningless simply because an AI could do them better. Most people are not the best in the world at anything, and it doesn’t seem to bother them particularly much. Of course today they can still contribute through comparative advantage, and may derive meaning from the economic value they produce, but people also greatly enjoy activities that produce no economic value.

There is too much in the essay to even summarize. While it feels complementary to Sam Altman’s post, The Intelligence Age, Dario’s essay is much more detailed. Anthropic seems in good hands.

As soon as Threads released their early documentation for the Threads API months ago, we dropped everything we were doing and prototyped it in Micro.blog. We had a slow road to getting approved by Meta, but I’m happy to announce that automatic cross-posting from your blog to Threads is now enabled for everyone on Micro.blog. Thanks to all the many Micro.blog users who tried this in beta form before we could officially roll it out.

To enable it, click on Sources in Micro.blog on the web, then click Add Threads. Whenever you post to your blog, a copy of your post will be formatted and sent to Threads too. There’s nothing extra to do while posting. You can optionally disable Threads for a specific blog post if you want to skip cross-posting it, or if you want to manually post it.

Micro.blog is unique among most web platforms in that the timeline and cross-posting is actually driven completely by RSS and JSON Feed. This means that cross-posting from Micro.blog to Threads works for any blog, hosted anywhere. You could enable Threads cross-posting for WordPress, Ghost, Write.as, or even a static site using Hugo.

And while you’re trying it out, we also support cross-posting to Mastodon, Bluesky, Nostr, and another half dozen services.

Enjoy! Happy blogging.

NPR has reviewed internal documents from TikTok:

For the first time, internal TikTok communications have been made public that show a company unconcerned with the harms the app poses for American teenagers. This is despite its own research validating many child safety concerns.

We’ve known for a long time that the addictive nature of the infinite timeline pioneered by TikTok was causing problems for teenagers. But this is a whole new thing:

One internal report that analyzed TikTok’s main video feed saw “a high volume of … not attractive subjects” were filling everyone’s app. In response, Kentucky investigators found that TikTok retooled its algorithm to amplify users the company viewed as beautiful.

Shut it down. ByteDance has until January to divest the app and I have no sympathy for a delay. It needs new leadership.

It’s less than a month until election day. I believe Kamala Harris is going to win. Knock on wood, many things are breaking her way in the final weeks of the campaign, in a way that they did not for Hillary Clinton when she was also on her way to winning the presidency.

However, this assumes that we get out and vote. It assumes we don’t trip at the finish line over nitpicky perfect is the enemy of the good complaints that discourage Democrats and keep them home on election day. Let’s remember: Donald Trump’s base is still massive.

Every once in a while, Trump says something that is true. During one of the debates and at his otherwise incoherent rally speeches, he said that he received millions of more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, more votes than any incumbent president has before. That’s accurate. Even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, Trump’s vote total in 2020 (74 million votes!) easily surpassed that too.

Trump leaves out of his speeches that someone else received even more votes. That’s why Joe Biden is president.

But getting 74 million votes is no small thing. Despite felony convictions, impeachments, and general incompetence, Trump will have widespread support again. Misinformation online might be worse now than ever. He could win. Democratic turnout must be up to the challenge.