activescott's Notes

Public notes from activescott

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Why not just play in English? English is already an agent framework—we're structuring it, not replacing it. Plain English doesn't distinguish sequential from parallel, doesn't specify retry counts, doesn't scope variables. OpenProse uses English exactly where ambiguity is a feature (inside ...), and structure everywhere else. The fourth wall syntax lets you lean on AI judgment precisely when you want to.

How is this a VM? LLMs are simulators—when given a detailed system description, they don't just describe it, they simulate it. The prose.md spec describes a VM with enough fidelity that reading it induces simulation. But simulation with sufficient fidelity is implementation: each session spawns a real subagent, outputs are real artifacts, state persists in conversation history or files. The simulation is the execution.

The Agent Skills format was originally developed by Anthropic, released as an open standard, and has been adopted by a growing number of agent products. The standard is open to contributions from the broader ecosystem.

The Agent Skills format was originally developed by Anthropic, released as an open standard, and has been adopted by a growing number of agent products. The standard is open to contributions from the broader ecosystem.

Monday, March 9, 2026

Sunday, March 8, 2026

Overnight, one Israeli operation in a town in the eastern Bekaa Valley - a focal point of the rising hostilities - saw at least 41 people killed and 40 injured, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Three Lebanese soldiers were among the dead, and locals listed the names of civilians, including children, they said had been killed. The focus of the operation in Nabi Chit was recovering the remains of an Israeli military airman who went missing in Lebanon 40 years ago.

Witnesses told the BBC that the Israeli soldiers had arrived disguised in Lebanese military fatigues and used ambulances with signs of Hezbollah's Islamic Health Organization. The Lebanese army chief later confirmed this to local media, but the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not respond to BBC requests for comment about this allegation.

Saturday, March 7, 2026

The honest take: Setup time is real. This isn't a weekend project — it took weeks of configuring, breaking, and fixing. But now everything runs 24/7, I own my data, and the monthly cost is basically just electricity (~$10-15/month).

The biggest win? Immich. Having Google Photos-level search (face recognition, location, object detection) on hardware I own, with zero cloud dependency — that alone justified the build.

Video (full build walkthrough): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cET4sfqdlE&t

I'm a plumber by trade who fell into self-hosting, so if I can set this up, anyone can. Happy to answer questions.

Israel has cut off the entry of all food and other goods into Gaza in an echo of the siege it imposed in the earliest days of its war with Hamas. The United Nations and other humanitarian aid providers are sharply criticizing the decision and calling it a violation of international law.

“A tool of extortion,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said. “A reckless act of collective punishment,” Oxfam said. Key mediator Egypt accused Israel of using “starvation as a weapon.”

Hunger has been an issue throughout the war for Gaza’s over 2 million people, and some aid experts had warned of possible famine. Now there is concern about losing the progress that experts reported under the past six weeks of a ceasefire.

Israel is trying to pressure the Hamas militant group to agree to what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government describes as a U.S. proposal to extend the ceasefire’s first phase instead of beginning negotiations on the far more difficult second phase. In phase two, Hamas would release the remaining living hostages in return for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and a lasting ceasefire.

Last year, the International Criminal Court said there was reason to believe Israel had used “starvation as a method of warfare” when it issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. The allegation is also central to South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.

On Sunday, Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch, said Israel as an occupying power has an “absolute duty” to facilitate humanitarian aid under the Geneva Conventions, and called Israel’s decision “a resumption of the war-crime starvation strategy” that led to the ICC warrant.

Under the October ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, Israel agreed to allow 600 trucks of aid into Gaza a day.

However, Israel’s own figures suggest that an average of only 459 trucks a day have entered the Gaza Strip between Oct. 12, when the flow of the aid restarted, and Sunday, according to an AP analysis. COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of coordinating aid entry, provided the figures.

Friday, March 6, 2026

Thursday, March 5, 2026

Wednesday, March 4, 2026

As Congress returns to session this week amid a new conflict in the Middle East, a crucial question hangs over Washington: Who gets to decide when America's military can be sent to war?

The Constitution says that only Congress has that power, with limited exceptions. In the four days after hostilities began, the Trump administration has struggled to articulate whether any of those exceptions apply to this situation. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has called this a "war," undermining the argument that it's a different kind of military action that doesn't require congressional authorization. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others have said the strikes against Iran were in response to an imminent threat against American troops in the region—only to later back down from that claim. President Donald Trump has made overlapping and contradictory claims about the conflict's aims, and on Tuesday seemed to claim responsibility for initiating Saturday's attack.

Tuesday, March 3, 2026