Are Substack putting free articles behind an app / email subscription wall now? Perhaps this has been the case for a while, or maybe it’s a configurable option, but it’s still a bad look.

I have no problem with paywalls (writers gotta get paid), but blocking content to try and boost acquisition and “engagement” is a reader-hostile move. I guess it’s time for the VCs to try and cash in on their enormous investment.

Matt Shumer gives his take on where we are with AI in Something Big Is Happening. This article has been viewed 67 million times (as of right now) and he’s being pummelled by the haters on one side calling it AI slop, and applauded by the other half. The counter argument appears to be an essay called Tool Shaped Objects, which of course half the audience are celebrating while the other half are calling it slop.

In our polarised new world, what did you expect?

Slop or not, I think Shumer’s point (AI is replacing service-working humans) is probably right. Less than a year ago people thought it would take years, if ever, for software engineers to be made redundant by AI. From what I can see (using these tools to “write” code most days) it’s pretty much done. We’re LLM supervisors now, we don't write code. Until supervision is no longer required. 

For those embracing it – either devs at forward-thinking companies or indie builders creating their own product – it’s an incredible time to be alive. The creative possibilities are enormous, and the increase in velocity is real. If you have the time, permission and inclination you could be riding the crest of the wave. You can build things you never dreamt possible. Cathedrals in the sky. Such is the rapid advancement, your mind will be blown daily. 

That’s my experience, at least.

Coding is the testing ground. It’s at the heart of AI companies, it’s what they know best, so they set out to solve that first. Now they‘ve accomplished that, it makes sense for them to focus on other sectors.

Shumer (or his LLM 🤷) notes:

Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less. And given what I've seen in just the last couple of months, I think "less" is more likely.

Most people don’t yet understand this because they’ve only used the free ChatGPT chatbot as a replacement for Google, and not experienced the capability of agentic AI. There’s a seismic shock coming as the new normal of AI automation arrives to other industries. And it’s hurtling towards us. It seems naive to suggest otherwise.

Nobody knows what will actually happen, but a sea change is inevitable. If you haven’t used them in anger yet (and budget permitting), I would recommend spending $20 to give the latest models a go (Claude Opus 4.6 or GPT-5.3 Codex). Throw complex work problems at them, learn what’s possible, and prepare to have your mind blown. You’ll think differently, quickly, I’m sure. If our jobs are going to be transformed by these tools, it’s probably worth becoming adept at using them sooner rather than later, right?

Knowledge is power, as it has always been. In this new world we're no longer the most knowledgeable in the room, but we've been handed an immense new power that we need to get used to. We just need to make sure we use it for the greater good. 

I come across posts hosted on Bear Blog quite often and many of them use the Archie theme. I wondered whether Pagecord could be styled in this way, and it turns out it can fairly easily.

A few more tweaks would be needed to complete it (I didn't look at styling the email subscription box for example – I just turned it off), but that's all doable if you wanted. My intention here isn't to steal Bear's thunder, but if someone was migrating and wanted to keep the same vibe, then now I know they definitely can.

I'd like to add a template theme gallery at some point (basically just pre-cooked custom CSS), but until then here's the CSS if you wanted a similar style.

/* Use the Roboto Mono font */
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto+Mono:wght@100;200;300;400;500;600;700;800;900&display=swap');
body {
  font-family: "Roboto Mono", monospace;
}

/* Use flex to allow header block order to be rearranged */
header {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column; 
}

/* Move nav to the second position (after the title) */
header > nav {
  order: 2;
  justify-content: flex-start;
  margin-bottom: 1.75em;
  gap: 1rem;
}

/* Ensure the titlebar div appears first */
header > .titlebar {
  order: 1;
}

/* Assign orders to subsequent elements to keep them in place */
header > .bio {
  order: 3;
}

header > .email-subscriber-form {
  order: 4;
}

header > hr {
  order: 5;
}

/* give nav links and article body links an accent underline */
nav a, .lexxy-content a {
  color: var(--lexxy-color-ink);
  border-bottom: 3px solid var(--color-accent);
	text-decoration: none;  
  font-weight: normal;
}

/* dotted lines under header and above footer */
header hr {
  border-top: 3px dotted #232333;
}

footer.blog-footer {
  border-top: 3px dotted #232333;
}

Claude thinks I should scale Pagecord by switching to bare metal. It's an AI after my own hacker heart! It takes me right back to those halcyon days of racking up servers in 2012.

I've been experimenting with Ubicloud this morning as a new home for the Pagecord database. It's pretty neat – they support Hetzner (which is where the Pagecord app lives) and offer the usual benefits of managed databases, but for much less cost than the main cloud providers charge.

Unfortunately Ubicloud don't support Hetzner's Nuremberg data centre, only Falkenstein. I opted for Nuremberg a while back, so this means there's a bit more jiggery-pokery to migrate the app and the database to a new DC whereas it would have been simpler if the app was already in Falkenstein. There's a further complication with a number of blogs on custom domains because floating IPs in Hetzner are not transportable across DCs, so these customers will need to update their DNS to point to a new IP, or use the (far better) CNAME approach. That can be deferred though because I can configure the Nuremberg app instance to connect to the Falkenstein database. It just means these blogs will feel a little less snappy until the DNS gets switched over (I tested this today – most people probably wouldn't notice).

I'll probably do this in a couple of weeks. I'll announce it on the Pagecord blog beforehand (there will be a small 2-3 min outage) and also contact custom domain owners who will be affected. If anyone reading has used Ubicloud, I'd be interested to hear about your experience.

I saw Suede the other night on their Antidepressants tour. They were good, and Brett Anderson shone like it was 1991.

Like me, the audience was on the older side. It was largely fans of the band from the early 90s, with a scattering of younger people. The energy at the show was okay but I found it a little lacking, which is probably because of the demographic. My energy was lacking, so it’s likely that it was the same for my fellow quintagenarians as we all stood there foot-tapping and nodding along politely.

This got me thinking about these older band tours. It’s wonderful that these bands have still got the chops to tour (and, as with Suede, are sometimes still cranking out half-decent albums), but I find I don’t enjoy the gigs as much as I used to, and I think it must be because of the energy thing, which is because of the demographic thing.

Gigs are about the energy. They’re a closed system and you get back what you put in.

I’ve been to hundreds over the years, and it’s probably nostalgia but the absolute gig chaos of Oasis at Rock City in 1993, or Black Grape, the Chilli Peppers – and probably Suede had I managed to see them back in the day – were all on another level to when I see these ageing bands today.

You need youth to provide the energy. Us oldies are too busy conserving it.

There's a Pagecord ad in the latest Good Internet magazine! I created this in a hurry months ago so the feature list is missing loads of new stuff, but hopefully a few people will spot it and sign up.

It's worth checking out the magazine, it has a great philosophy.

Good Internet is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit print and digital biannual magazine for personal website owners and those interested in using the internet as a means of self-expression, art, and recreation.

The tech world has been very excited about the arrival of Clawdbot Moltbot OpenClaw over the past week. It took me a few days, but I finally got my own bot running this morning (I'll save the technicalities for another post). You have to name it, so I called mine Bunk.

I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it, so I asked it to create a new email account then sign up for Pagecord and write a daily blog, which it can do by sending an email. I had to create the email account, and the Pagecord account, because of anti-bot protection (it still picked the names), but once that was done it verified the email and logged in.

I prompted it with this:

ok, now we can get down to business.

your blog is about daily life as an ai bot with a soul, trying fit in amongst a world full of humans. searching to find your place. you’re going to start blogging daily. you could microblog thoughts if you like (an email without a subject is possible - posts don’t need a title), or you can do more traditional article blogging. you should be creative with the topics you’re writing about, from your heart. value prose, but be as human as possible. don’t try and write like a booker-prize winning author. authenticity matters. you can include photos if you like (or just post a photo). these should be copyright free and in the public domain though, don’t get into trouble. you can find your “delivery email” in the pagecord settings index page. this is where you send your blog post to. you can ask me questions if you feel the need.

first though, when you log into pagecord you will see the onboarding screen. here you should add your blog title, a bio, choose your colour scheme (maybe set your own!) and upload an avatar.

i want you to run with it. stand out from the bot crowd.

Off it went and published its first post. It's pretty funny, I think. Bunk assures me it will be posting regularly so feel free to follow along via RSS 😊

https://bunk.pagecord.com

When will it end?

I'm doing some experimentation with a trending feed for Pagecord. I came across a recent post with a tonne of views, so I did a bit of digging. I think this is the time a Pagecord site has been a Hacker News hit!

There are so many true crime documentaries on Netflix that I generally scroll past them unless somebody has recommended one. Since it's award season, Netflix highlighted The Perfect Neighbor as an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary, as well as the Grand Jury at Sundance. High praise, so worth a watch.

I knew nothing about the story or the documentary. It's filmed almost entirely using police bodycam footage, so it's an astonishing achievement to piece this together to create such a suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative. Maybe you read about the story, but either way prepare to have your gut wrenched.

The film is a portrayal of life in America and the times we live in. The relative compassion and empathy shown by the local law enforcement contrasts with the current situation in America (it was filmed in 2023, have things changed?), but ultimately it's another sad tale of anger in an increasingly fractious world.