We're putting software in places it doesn't belong. Two short rants about software making things worse.

Making things less thingy

A little while back BMW tried to charge people to use the seat heaters that were already installed in their cars. They reneged after some bad press, but the trend continues. Here's Audi's page on features you can pay to unlock.

This is possible because software is used to artificially hamstring the car. Imagine if you bought a car with a sun roof that was bolted in place because you didn't pay to "unlock" it upfront. Enthusiasts would figure out how to cheaply remove those bolts, and the car company would eventually give up on the idea. Unfortunately, software is notoriously difficult to alter in place, and circumvention of "digital locks" is generally considered illegal.

Businesses can use software to hold their product's essence for ransom.

In 2019 Nike released some high-tech shoes that you could control with an app, and last year they discontinued the app. Some of the features of the shoes don't work without the app. Until someone reverse engineers the setup, fans of the shoes will have to keep the app around on an old phone and make sure nothing gets automatically updated and removed.

The product is less useful because the business got sick of maintaining the software interface.

It's convenient but it's less good

Many restaurants around here (Brisbane, Australia) have adoped online ordering. Instead of talking to staff, you tap on your phone. It can break in silly ways when compare to talking with a person; it's extremely unlikely that the colour of your t-shirt is going to give the waitress a seizure, but it's not uncommon for the "order" button on the menu app to freeze because of some quirk in your phone's web browser.

It's certainly more convenient, in some respect, but I've been starting to think that not every convenience is worth it. I've been struggling with feelings of isolation for a little while, and I've been noticing the way that convenience can be at odds with connection. In 2025 it's extremely convenient to not engage with other people.

It's also convenient to type out a big rant while sitting at my desk in my house. It would be much less convenient to commiserate with friends over dinner or beers. I worry that "social media" (including UpTrust) will become the dominant social substrate out of convience, even though there are much better non-software alternatives.

... My computer (HP Elite Dragonfly G2) is having a tough time- often using 60-90%+ of memory capacity. it has 16GB, and I've had it for a little over 3 years. 

I use Chrome, which I know is RAM heavy. But I'm wondering if I just need to buy a new computer with more memory since I multitask a lot (I have a ton of tabs open on Chrome). I'm in the zone where it impacts Zoom calls- I can't use any programs that are memory intensive. This is a recent thing- my computer used to perform better. 

What do y'all think?

Timeline of Events in Brian Thompson Assassination. On December 4, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated outside the New York Hilton Midtown. The suspect, later identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, shot Thompson multiple times before fleeing on an e-bike. Thompson was pronounced dead shortly after. Mangione, who stayed in NYC for 10 days prior, was arrested on December 9 in Pennsylvania and charged with second-degree murder. The attack is believed to be a symbolic act targeting the healthcare industry.

November 24, 2024

• 10:11 p.m.: Suspect arrives in New York City on a Greyhound bus from Atlanta, Georgia.

November 24 – December 3, 2024

• Suspect checks into the HI New York City Hostel on the Upper West Side using a falsified New Jersey ID and pays in cash.
• He stays at the hostel for ten days, checking out on December 3.

December 4, 2024

• 5:30 a.m.: Suspect leaves the hostel, likely by bike.
• 6:15 a.m.: Suspect exits the 57th Street F Train subway station.
• 6:17 a.m.: Suspect purchases coffee, water, and granola bars at a Starbucks near the New York Hilton Midtown hotel.
• 6:30 a.m.: Surveillance footage captures the suspect walking while talking on the phone.
• 6:39 a.m.: Suspect arrives in front of the New York Hilton Midtown hotel and waits.
• 6:44 a.m.: Brian Thompson leaves his hotel. The assailant shoots him multiple times, then flees northbound via a pedestrian walkway.
• 6:46 a.m.: Police respond to a 911 call reporting the shooting.
• 6:48 a.m.: Officers find Thompson with multiple gunshot wounds. He is taken to Mount Sinai West hospital. The assailant is seen riding an e-bike into Central Park.
• 6:59 a.m.: Suspect is seen riding a bike on West 85th Street.
• 7:04 a.m.: Suspect enters a northbound taxi at 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
• 7:12 a.m.: Thompson is pronounced dead at Mount Sinai West hospital.

December 9, 2024

• Morning: Luigi Mangione, 26, is arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in connection with the assassination.
• Afternoon: Mangione is charged with second-degree murder and other related offenses.

December 11, 2024

• Mangione appears in court, contests extradition to New York, and is held without bail pending a governor’s warrant.

Welcome to UpTrust: building a better internet for civilizational well-being. UpTrust isn’t just another social platform. We’re a movement towards civilizational well-being, an evolutionary leap in collective intelligence, powered by you.

Our Vision

UpTrust is designed to help your conversations:

1. Elevate truth in a world of relativity
2. Foster love and compassion in dialogue
3. Increase our collective awareness
4. Align individual growth with societal progress

How UpTrust Works

How? Changing the incentive landscape. Your current social media choices almost exclusively offer an environment where enragement = engagement = money. This predictably produces polarization, addiction and isolation.

UpTrust is built on a different set of principles:

1. Trust-Based Influence: Your impact grows through the quality and insight of your contributions relative to a domain of trust, not just popularity. This can be seen relative to you as an individual user, or relative to any group you’re in. We also call this PageRank for People

2. Bridging Perspectives: We algorithmically reward content that thoughtfully synthesizes different viewpoints according to each individual user, encouraging creative solutions to complex issues. We call this bridging or synthesizing.

3. Collective Intelligence: Discover and engage with diverse groups and viewpoints, expanding your understanding of our interconnected world.

4. AI Facilitation: AI is in our nervous system, built in to categorize and provide context. Optional tools help you introspect, steelman arguments, learn, grow, and connect ideas across the platform, fostering more meaningful dialogue (including generative disagreement)

5. Organic Moderation: Content filtering isn’t top-down. It’s a distributed process where trusted members act as the immune system of our digital organism.

6. Aligned Incentives: Your natural desires for recognition, competition, and influence aren’t suppressed—they’re channeled towards outcomes that benefit the entire system. Your desire to win, to get status, to make money, are welcomed in a system that yokes these to collective wellbeing.

7. Everything is a bet: Whenever you bid for someone’s attention and it goes well, you’re rewarded with more access to their feed and network. But unlike trad social media, when it doesn’t go well, you lose access. This tightens the feedback loop and disincentivizes attention-grabbing.

Your Journey on UpTrust

1. Start Interacting: As soon as you start up- and down- trusting content, the algorithm will begin to adjust your trust scores, changing what’s prioritized for you. The people you start to trust will have greater influence on what you see in the domain you trust them for, and those you down-trust will have less influence. Down-trusts are also helpful for helping us find bridges.

2. Start Posting: Participate in discussions, share insights, and watch your influence grow based on the value you bring.

3. Try bots: Have fun. They’re pretty cool.

4. Bridge Divides: The full bridging features haven’t been released yet; nevertheless content that synthesizes divergent viewpoints and creates new understanding tends to be more trustworthy across polarized divides, and therefore wins in what was formerly the attention economy—now a trust economy.

5. Grow Collectively: As you develop, you’ll contribute to the overall improvement of dialogue and understanding on the platform.

Why UpTrust Matters

Humankind has built the infrastructure to be unimaginably connected, humane, and intelligent. Yet, we stand at a crossroads: civilizational well-being on one horizon, civilizational collapse on the other.

UpTrust offers a path towards the good future:

• A space where disagreements foster creativity and development, not division
• Dialogue that nourishes, connects, and helps us grow
• Increased awareness of our collective existence and potential
• An opportunity to align personal growth with societal progress

Thank you for helping make this vision real.

With you we make UpTrust more than a platform—we curate a culture dedicated to bettering ourselves and our world through more meaningful, nuanced, and compassionate interaction in a grounded way, that fully honors and includes selfish, ethnocentric, and worldcentric motivations as part of the collective well-being.