Claude — the new AI kid on the block

Curiosity, mostly. That's what got me to try Claude.

I'd been on ChatGPT long enough that it had become background infrastructure - always open in a tab, always useful enough to not question. But I kept seeing Claude mentioned in circles I pay attention to, and Anthropic's approach to AI safety struck me as more considered than most. So last month I started routing some of my everyday prompts through Claude instead, just to see.

A few things became clear quickly. The writing it produces doesn't read like a language model wrote it. (Well, it is.) That sounds obvious, but spend enough time with ChatGPT and you start recognising the cadence; a certain rhythm, a tendency toward lists when prose would do better, hedges stacked on hedges. Claude's outputs have more texture to them. Personality may be too much of a stretch. 

The other thing, and this surprised me more, is that Claude seems to know what it doesn't know. (Is this possible for an LLM?) ChatGPT will occasionally confabulate with remarkable self-assurance - detailed, plausible, and wrong. Claude is more likely to flag uncertainty, or to ask a clarifying question before charging ahead with an assumption. In a work context, that matters. Confidently wrong is often worse than uncertain. Of course, an LLM is an LLM is an LLM.

I should be fair: ChatGPT still has its edge cases where it pulls ahead. The plugin ecosystem is broader, and GPT-4's code interpreter has saved me hours on data wrangling tasks I don't particularly enjoy doing manually. These aren't minor points. And for the casual user, the difference probably won't be dramatic enough to bother switching.

But my default has shifted. When I open a new tab now, it's more often Claude than not. After months of the same habit, that's telling. 

(Title is a reference to an older post)

Breaking the Network Effect

 As most observers of Internet culture know, the power of a network is derived from the number of users on the platform. A single telephone user would have no utility from the device, but as more users join the network, the value to any single user goes up exponentially. This is also known as Metcalfe's law. 

All social media networks also follow the same principle - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and also WhatsApp. Most of these platforms have millions, if not billions, of users. As such, it's difficult for any new platform to challenge the incumbents. Even Google tried and failed multiple times to beat Facebook.

With all the recent news about updates to WhatsApp's terms of service, I had seen many friends moving to Signal recently. I personally installed Signal sometime back, but couldn't continue using it for the very same reason - network effect. If none of my friends are there, it isn't useful for me either. I uninstalled it soon after. 

However, a surge in migration provides opportunities to break the network effect that keeps the incumbent the leader. As a few people move to the new platform, they can choose to request all of their contacts to move as well. Many may not move the first time, but as they see more and more of their contacts moving and getting frequent requests to switch, the pressure builds until they also see enough value to move.

What can stop this from happening are switching costs - for example, WhatsApp has already opened up its API to allow businesses to interact with their customers.  As long as these businesses provide enough value for the WhatsApp users and don't replicate this on Signal as well, it will be difficult for the user to move and continue getting the same service. 

Personally, I have tried to convince some of my contacts to switch. Too early to say whether we will break the Network Effect.

Making WFH work

Redundancy. 

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world and the entire family had to rely on the home Internet connection for getting everything done, I was dreading the day when that connectivity would go out. That day came a couple of months back, when my wife and I had work calls lined up and both the boys were about to start their online classes. Thankfully, that exclamation point near the Wifi icon disappeared in five minutes, but scared me enough to make me sign up for a second, back-up connection.

Some basic research led me to the venerable EdgeRouter X, which could take in both ISP connections and provide a single load-balanced connection to the wireless AP. Setup was simple enough, the folks at Ubiquiti have done an amazing job with the wizard that can get you started in less than 5 minutes. Basic networking knowledge is helpful too, to get more done out of this workhorse of a machine. 

What pushed me to the EdgeRouter was its Gigabit connectivity, whereas the cheaper TP-Link ones cap out at 100 Mbps. With one 150 Mbps and another 100 Mbps connection, I didn't want the router to be the bottleneck. Speedtests at fast.com and speedtest.net both provide around 230-240 Mbps, meaning that load-balancing is working, and is actually aggregating for multi-part connections. Also setup Tasker and Connectbot on my Android to SSH into the router and toggle load-balancing and failover at the touch of a button. 

Unless something drastic takes out both the connections simultaneously, it's a reassuring feeling to know that there's some redundancy to the lifeline that's making things manageable in these crazy times. 

Wireguard - the new VPN kid on the block

Having tried my hand with OpenVPN to provide a secure Internet connection for my gadgets while travelling, I was less than impressed by the throughput on the Raspberry Pi. At a measly 3 Mbps, it was simply not good enough.

I had heard about Wireguard almost a year back, but last week's ArsTechnica article rekindled my interest. Many others have also tried their hands, and looks like it's all set to take over the VPN landscape. Major benefits include a much simplified setup (compared to the maze that is OpenVPN), superior performance (throughput much greater than others), much smaller codebase (only 4,000 lines of code, compared to 600,000 for OpenVPN and 400,000 for IPSEC) which theoretically translates into a reduced attack surface and others.

Spun up a VPS instance and installed Wireguard. From install to setup on both server and client, it literally took less than 10 minutes and I had a working connection on my Android phone. A quick test indicates almost 4-5x times faster speeds than OpenVPN, and nearly instantaneous connection against the roughly 8-10 seconds for OpenVPN. Another major benefit seems to be that the protocol is not chatty, and packets need not be sent regularly to keep the connection alive - a major concern for mobile devices with batteries that drain quickly. It also promises full IP roaming on both peers (term to refer to both 'server' and 'client' on Wireguard), again significant when switching between WiFi and cellular connections where each transition would have otherwise initiated a full renegotiation of the session.

Still under heavy development, I couldn't find a package for the Raspberry Pi yet, although it can be compiled. The Android release is very basic and experimental. However, Wireguard could be soon integrated into the Linux kernel itself, giving it much needed code review and mainstream acceptance. Even Linus himself seems to be a fan.

Six second ads and consumers

Seems like the whole of advertising industry is moving towards shorter ad formats. Driven primarily by behemoths YouTube and Facebook, and taken up by other digital publishers, even TV is embracing six seconders as the next big thing. Is this just us admitting to the fact that consumer attention spans are rapidly shrinking or just that we can't be bothered to properly craft the story with the time and attention it deserves or maybe a combination of both?

There's definitely a strong case which can be made for the six-seconder. A brand which has already reached threshold levels in awareness may benefit by using it to amp up the frequency, and thereby, top-of-mind recall - major FMCG brands being an obvious example. There are also many brands with creatives which are worth watching over and over, in infinite loops of six seconds each. But when everyone jumps on the bandwagon, I'm not too hopeful the thinking will last, and we will end up being pummelled by them.

In a hyper-fragmented landscape of infinitely scrolling timelines and unlimited media choices, the primary benchmark by which creative and media efficacy should be measured is very simple - relevance. Are we reaching the right audience in the right context and telling her a story that she finds useful, and maybe even enjoys? Chances are, she will appreciate the effort and remember us for it. Or would we rather cop out and hope that she forgives us the six second intrusion, since there's so much less of it to hate?

Perspective is everything

The new job now takes me on a longer commute, through the insane Bangalore traffic at rush hours. Having avoided it for the last three years, thanks to Namma Metro, this was something I was dreading.

Podcasts to the rescue. There's nothing better than Radiolab and This American Life, with Snap Judgement and The Moth sprinkled in for good measure, to help endure the never-ending, bumper-to-bumper traffic and the ensuing road rage. I would strongly recommend these and a few others (refer sidebar for links) to make time on the road a little more bearable.

As Rory Sutherland so eloquently puts it in this video, perspective is everything.

Raspberry Pi 2 : Getting started

Not having played around with Linux for a long time, I finally decided to set up a Raspberry Pi 2 project. For $35, this tiny computer does pack a punch. This spec sheet details out everything. You can basically set up a small web, mail, or home automation server and more.

My idea was to turn it into a VPN gateway that sits between my TV and home router and serve up a US IP through OpenVPN. This will basically let me stream Netflix or Hulu directly on the TV, without the need of Miracast or DLNA devices/software.

Having dabbled with OpenVPN and basic routing when setting up my VPS, this was fairly straightforward. I was inspired by this Makezine guide, which used two Wifi dongles - one for connecting to the local network and the other for hosting the VPN access point. Picking the correct dongles is also important; it would need to support the soft AP function. I used an Edimax EW-7811 Un and a Tenda W311MI. Both are fairly cheap and robust, although the Edimax one seems to drop a lot of packets.

In addition to stock Raspbian (a Debian-based distro, optimized for Raspberry Pi), you would also need to install hostapd which will turn the dongle into an AP and also dnsmasq for basic DHCP and DNS for clients connecting to the AP. Once done, you would need to use iptables to do the routing, which basically takes the traffic from the wifi subnet and forwards it to the VPN tunnel. Any client connecting to the AP will have a public IP address of the VPN server.

Performance in terms of VPN throughput remains a concern. My Android phone, connected to the VPN directly, gives 18 Mbps down, whereas the Raspberry AP only gives 3 Mbps. Many discussions suggest this could be due to a bottleneck, as the Ethernet and USB ports share the same interface and the traffic has to traverse the bus twice. Switching the inbound interface from USB to Ethernet didn't improve the situation either; some commenters also suggest that the CPU itself could be a problem. However, 'top' didn't reveal much load on the CPU.

3 Mbps is barely enough to provide a SD stream, so HD is pretty much impossible. Still needs some digging around to identify where the bottleneck is. Even so, I would consider this project a 'fruit'ful one.

With the case open

Up and running

Kindle 3G - First impressions

Finally, after months of waiting, I have the Kindle 3G in my hands. And it has been well worth the wait.

The screen is a pleasure to read from, coming almost close to a printed book in terms of resolution and sharpness. Having read an e-book for more than an hour in a sitting, I came out of it without a headache or eyestrain. The Kindle truly delivers on Amazon's promise that within a few page turns (virtual, of course), you will disappear into the book. I know I did.

The experimental web browser is just that, experimental. The pages take some time to load, but it helps if images are turned of and you are reading the mobile version of the page. But then again, I didn't buy it for browsing the web, and it is more than a nice-to-have.

I only wish that Amazon brings down the Kindle book prices than their physical copies, still can't see the rationale of a digital copy costing as much as the real thing. However, if you are a bibliophile and can't have enough of the printed word, the Kindle is the best gift you could buy yourself.

Sixth Sense - Virtual information, real world

Augmented reality finally seems to be coming to the real world. In an amazing demonstration of the possibilities, Pranav Mistry and Patti Maes of MIT Media Lab show how simple off-the-shelf components can be put together to make your own wearable gestural interface.

Called Sixth Sense, the device consists of a camera, a pocket projector with mirror and a mobile phone. The phone remains in the user's pocket, and uses visual input from the camera and the projector acts as the monitor. It can be programmed to recognise hand gestures and virtually any surface can be used as a screen.

With these basics in place, Sixth Sense can seamlessly plug in information from the virtual world to the real world. For example, a person browsing through a new bestseller at a bookstore can project Amazon ratings and reader reviews right onto the book and make instant decisions on whether to buy the book or not. You can check your flight timings by just holding the ticket in front of the camera. The system will scan the ticket and retrieve the current status from the Web, through the mobile phone's data connection.

An extremely interesting application of ubiquitous technologies, Sixth Sense has amazing potential to change how we see and interact with the world around us. By supplementing the real world with meta information and an easy-to-use interface, this is one technology that really lives up to its name. [Sixth Sense demo]

Change is good

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” - Charles Darwin

Some people hate change. They just can't let go of the familiar and even bother to try and learn something new. Evolution takes care of them.

ZDNet's Ed Bott gives a good example of change in the technology world. In his Microsoft Report blog, he recounts how his colleague gripes about the user interface changes in Windows 7, the latest version of the operating system, which is still in development. As Bott himself notes, you can't please everyone. But to all those people who keep on complaining about how they have to keep up with the changes in software or hardware or everytime their favourite website has a new design, just remember Darwin.

Google Suggest, now with ads?

Google seems to be experimenting with ads in their search box, which will pop up as soon as you start entering a query. According to this SearchEngineLand article, the ads seem to be in test phase, and may not be implemented at all. They may be just testing the waters to see how users react, but this is surely an indication of how much pressure even Google seems to be facing in the current economic downturn. For a company which has kept its homepage free of any paid ads, integrating commercials right into the heart of its product is a big step.

Judging by the number of people who come to this blog, searching for ways to turn off the Google Suggest feature in the search engine's homepage, it may not be their most popular feature.

It will be interesting to see how the users react if they do indeed start ads in the search box. Maybe people will just grin and bear it, realizing that good things do come at a price, or maybe we will see some migration to Yahoo and Live search engines, which have been dwindling in market shares with every passing month. Google may have just given users an excuse to try them out after all.

Launching Chrome was good after all

When Chrome was launched early September, there was much hue and cry about the need for yet another web browser in an already crowded market. I thought it was a good thing. Now, it is getting better.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, at the Hardware 2.0 blog on ZDNet, has published some numbers on how the new Firefox 3.1 beta 1 stacks up against IE, Chrome and the rest. If Chrome set the bar high in ACID 3 and SunSpider Javascript benchmarks, Firefox 3.1 has pushed it even higher. Chrome still takes the lead in Google's own V8 JavaScript benchmark quite convincingly though.

The Firefox 3.1 beta 1 also comes with a slew of features which will hopefully inspire developers in the opposing camps to create some magic of their own. As Kingsley-Hughes puts it, competition is good.

Anti Spam - Spamming the spammers

Did you know that 95 percent of all email sent in 2007 was spam? Yes, that is a fact.

In spite of all the legislation, the spammers keep marching on. Filling up mailboxes, overloading servers and clogging networks worldwide, the spam keeps coming. So how do you get back at them? That's right, spam them back.

AuditMyPc, an online security testing site, has put up a tool that they hope will give spammers a large dose of their own medicine. Anti Spam is basically a web-page that fills itself with fake email addresses every time it is viewed. The way the developers hope to get it working is like this:

1. Spam-bots, which scour the Web, looking for email addresses to spam, land on the Anti Spam page.
2. They find loads of email addresses (all of them fake, by the way), and promptly adds all of them to their databases.
3. Finally, they follow the last link on the page, which links to itself, thereby loading the Anti Spam page with a fresh list of fake email addresses. The process repeats, filling the databases with enough worthless addresses to make it inefficient to spam.

That sounds like a really interesting concept, and I for one would love to see it work. But would it really? The Buzz Out Loud crew makes some good observations on the idea. Adding fake email addresses to the spam database surely would take down the conversion ratio, but still might not bring down the absolute hits the spammers get. As far as they are concerned, it is all automated and wouldn't matter much.

ISPs could see a flurry of attempts to send emails to non-existent accounts, and that could help them identify potential spammers more easily and blacklist them. This is all assuming that spammers don't blacklist the Anti Spam page first and let their bots go round in circles, feeding on fake addresses.

AuditMyPc encourages the public to link to their Anti Spam page, so that bots are more likely to find it and collect the bogus addresses. As far as I can tell, their appeal seems to be working. Type in 'anti spam' on Google and guess what is the first organic result? If the company decides to make an actual anti-spam product of its own in the future or even take ads for them, they surely won't be needing any search ads. The Anti Spam page may not take down too many spambots, but it won't hurt their site traffic.

DECE - The future of DRM?

“The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.” - Andres S. Tannenbaum (Also seen attributed to Ken Olsen)

I love that quote. It is funny. It is funny because it is true.

In a digital media landscape littered with incompatible standards and casualties from the format wars, a host of technology and media powerhouses are joining hands to bring a consumer friendly version of DRM for content. In other words, a standard for DRM.

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), which is backed by the likes of Cisco, Fox, HP, Intel, Microsoft, NBC Univeral, Paramount Pictures, Philips, Sony and Toshiba, among others, will offer customers the "buy once, play anywhere" freedom that has been taken away by conventional DRM. Simply put, the standard will enable content bought from consortium members to play on DECE hardware/codec. Not so much DRM-free as having no DRM at all, but a step forward, nevertheless.

Will DECE succeed in convincing consumers who are sceptical about DRM and how it restricts their usage of content they had paid for? Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, a technology columnist at ZDNet, says it beautifully with the title of his blog post - DECE : Lipstick on the DRM pig.

Read the Reuters story - Studios form digital-download ecosystem

Chrome - why another browser is good

It has been more than a week since Google unleashed Chrome on the Web. Statistics abound on the market share erosion of the incumbents from the newcomer's arrival. Frankly, I think it is far too early for the numbers to make sense. There will be enough downloads and installs in the first week as people try out the new software and figure out if it is actually any good. (Remember, it was promoted in the Google homepage, no less - the most expensive virtual real estate in the world. That has to count for something.)

So how can the new browser help the Web? In a market crowded by the likes of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Opera, is there any need for yet another commodity software which is free anyway? I think there is.

Firstly, Google has open-sourced Chrome. This means virtually anybody can peer under Chrome's hood and take the best features and even improve upon it. Like the rising tide that lifts all boats, every browser developer and user stands to gain from this.

Secondly, I think the sandbox-approach to the whole browser and even individual tabs is an innovative move. If one site crashes your tab, just close it without bringing all the other tabs and browser windows down. (I am not sure about this, but I think only Chrome has implemented this as of now.) Spawning new processes for individual tabs keeps the user in control, and the entire system more secure.

Thirdly, Google has a way with how it puts the user in focus in product design. The clean, minimalist look of the Google homepage is appreciated by millions, and Chrome has borrowed this philosophy in its user interface. I am sure other browser designers can take a page or two from the Google design book and weave it onto their own. No big, bloated buttons and no useless menu bars. Keep it simple, silly.

There are many things that I don't like at all about Chrome, but that will form the topic of another post. But if somebody has ideas for yet another Web browser and intend to release one soon, I am all for it. Better too many than too few.

Of spam blogs and captchas

Seems like even Blogger has spotted my irregular posting patterns. I tried to make a new posting and it won't allow me to do that, unless I solve another one of those captchas. And they even have a nifty link nearby which says 'Why do I have this', which explains that my blog has the "characteristics of a spam blog". I have applied to unlock my blog from the captcha curse, which apparently requires human intervention. Serves me right for not posting by procrastinating.

Google Suggest - Turn off autocomplete

Google seems to be rolling out new features in a hurry, or in this case, integrating an old one. The official Google blog has announced that the Suggest feature will be available by default on the engine. Judging from the responses of bloggers, it is a love-it or hate-it feature. Personally, I don't care for it much, what with the suggestions coming nowhere near what I want to type in. Indeed, it is more of a distraction than anything.

It is quite easy to turn off too. Just type in - http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0 and you have it. The feature can be disabled easily using the Preferences link from the homepage as well.

Google sort by date or relevance

Google seems to be testing a new feature. Its News and Blog Search had this feature from the beginning, but seems like you can now sort your web search also by date or relevance. Probably they figured out that people were searching for news and blogs from the main search engine itself, and were shifting often to News and Blog search functionalities to get the latest updates. Maybe they had been working on this for sometime, and the Olympics just came by and users searching for medal tallies just pushed it to the tipping point. (It is worth mentioning that they have been manually tweaking search algorithms for Olympics related content, as has Yahoo and Live search.)

Here is a screenshot that I got a couple of minutes ago. Probably they are rolling it out only to a few users at the moment, as they usually do. Your mileage may vary.



Update - Feb 14, 09: From my web analytics, I can see that more and more people are searching for this feature from all parts of the world. Either Google is rolling it out slowly in test regions, or this has the potential to be an incredibly popular feature.

The importance of being Yahoo's Valentine

The irony about writing on technology is that much like the subject itself, it becomes obsolete before you can say "Gordon Moore". Which is why analysing Microsoft's bid for Yahoo and the subsequent refusal is not exciting, now that we are a couple of weeks into it. But what would be really interesting to watch is Yahoo's flirtation with News Corp., considering the fact that it just passed on over $44 billion from the Redmond giant.

Is Jerry Yang simply holding out for a better price from Microsoft, considering how desperate Microsoft has shown itself to be in the race for the Web dollar? Or does he believe that a tie-up with the media behemoth can actually bail Yahoo! out of its impending financial crisis, given its relatively poor performance in online advertising sales vis-à-vis Google? (Even with all the commotion around it, Yahoo has been acquiring online ad companies to stay afloat.) The Wall Street Journal says that its owner News Corp could hand over MySpace and some other online properties to Yahoo for as much as 20% stake in the Web giant. This could keep Yahoo safe from a hostile bid from Microsoft, and also give it access to a wider user base, not the least of which would be the world's largest social networking site. Of course, monetising it would be a different story.

Looking from Microsoft's perspective, it just may be willing to raise the offer if Yahoo plays its cards right. But given the fact that it would have to finance even part of the current offer with debt, which would be a first in the company's history, it is highly unlikely to be much of an increase. Microsoft's stock did crash as soon as the offer was made, reflecting possible shareholder opinion that even the current offer is too much.

But even this willingness to borrow for the first time clearly indicates how serious Microsoft is to get Yahoo. Both the companies have been playing catch-up with Google in online advertising revenues, and neither have had much success yet. Even together, they may not be able to do this, given the complexities of integrating two large hi-tech companies and hit the ground running in probably the world's most dynamic industry. As one comment in a news site said, "Tie two rocks together and they still sink." Maybe. Depends on what you tie them with.

RSS agents and Instant Messaging bots

It is hard enough to keep track of all the RSS feeds we have in our subscription list; knowing when they have been just updated would be helpful, but even more tough. Why not combine the power of RSS and Instant Messaging to give you an instant update? The idea is nothing new, and there are tons of services out there already.

Yahoo Alerts helps you pick different topics from a list, or even enter a custom RSS feed from third-party site, which can be delivered by email, Yahoo Messenger or text message. Some other websites that provide similar services are Imified, Rasasa, FeedCrier and ZapTXT.

You can use them to subscribe to RSS feeds (news, weather updates, sports score, etc.). As soon as the feed is updated, the bot would IM you the summary. It actually converts the pull based RSS into a push technology; you are updated as and when it happens. Of course, you can control the frequency and content of the updates through a web interface. What is really great is that some of them don't even require registration; just add a bot as your IM buddy list and you are done.

Imified, for instance, has a Blogger widget. You can add the Imified bot as a buddy on your IM, start a chat session and pull up sports score (from an RSS feed) or update your Blogger post; all of this from your instant messenger. Kind of like Twitter, which also has the same functionality. You can also create your own widgets and customise it to your requirements.

What is really great about using IM as a platform is that you can use your mobile phone's IM client to access the services anywhere, anytime. You are waiting for your bus, and in comes a new instant message : "Manchester United 2 : Liverpool 1 FT". No more expensive text messages, no more manual browsing!

More Bots

As you may know, Google Talk uses the Jabber protocol. Add eliza at swissjabber.org (in the usual email id format) as a contact in your Gmail account and you can start up a chat session with a bot.

There are also lot of Jabber bots that can provide weather, dictionary and mail notifications. (Jabber bots and IM Bots for Jabber). Please do leave a comment if you find other interesting services/bots.