The AI-nuclear weapons analogy, explained : Vox catalogues some similarities and differences between the two technologies.
Recently I read:
The Doc Web: A deep dive into the dynamics of publishing to the web via Google Docs.
A woman, blogging: this is a political act: Blogging can be empowering, especially for people who otherwise might not have a voice - but it’s not without risk.
Absolutely love this recent post from the fantastic SMBC Comics.
How unique is Covid-19?
Being somewhat drawn to the Covid-doomer persuasion myself, I appreciate the reminder from Miloš Miljković that we should step back and consider the context of both what we know about other viruses, and the impact of things that are associated with, but not unique to, Covid - such as having to be …
Elon Musk's free speech 'principles' lose to his economic interests once again as he capitulates to Brazil's Twitter demands
We previously saw how Twitter/X was banned in Brazil on the basis that Elon Musk had been picking arguments with the authorities over there after his company was asked to suspend the accounts of certain users. Musk claimed that the judge who made this demand was making “illegal orders to …
Honestly it’s probably a losing battle, but if you want to try then organisations like CNN and Wired have guides as to how to opt out of letting the big social networks strip-mine your personal data in order to sell it to any rich-enough enterprise interested in ‘improving’ their …
Hidden Figures reminds us that not all 1960s NASA geniuses were Serious White Men
📽️ Watched Hidden Figures. Based on real life events, this is the story of 3 computers. This was in the era when to be a computer was to have human rather than artificial intelligence. It was simply the job title of someone who computes. Here we’re talking about mathematicians. We learn about …
Just re-encountered Good Clean Fun’s classic “The MySpace Song”. Emotional memories for any old-skool internetters. A glorious time when we could all be guaranteed at least one friend (Tom).
Somewhat bewildered at what’s going on between the ultra famous web content management system that powers a good chunk of the internet, Wordpress (well, its CEO Matt Mullenweg) and WP Engine - a service that hosts Wordpress sites. The former has been virulently criticising the latter all of a …
A new study finds 3,601 of the more-than-14,000 chemicals known to be used to store, process, package or serve food are measurably present in us. Several are thought to be potentially hazardous to us, whilst many others haven’t ever been tested.
Why limit the political gifts ban to buying clothes for the PM?
Starmer and top colleagues to stop taking clothes gifts from donors Oddly specific rule. If gifts are a problem, and they probably are, then why not stop taking all gifts in this context? That’s what it’s like where I work. We’re told to decline all gifts from third parties we …
'Outrage' erupts as Keir Starmer moves a painting to another room
It’s interesting, if somewhat predictable, what passes muster for making it to the status of a wannabe British political scandal in more normal, less actually scandalous, times. The latest example I know of is the “outrage” at Keir Starmer moving a painting to another room in his …
The era of Britishcore is upon us
Apparently we’re in the aesthetic era of Britishcore. I’ve enjoyed learning about the cultural ‘cores, at least ever since the days of cottagecore. Corecore was of course a highlight in terms of its naming - a “screaming-into-void” aesthetic according to Vice. …
Now Hezbollah's walkie-talkies are exploding
First it was their pagers. Now it’s Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies that are exploding. The latest attack has killed or injured a few more hundred people, Hezbollah members or otherwise. It’s apparently seeming more and more likely that it’s the work of Israel, although no one …
New phones aren't all that more exciting despite what Google claims
I believe Jason has previously noted on his blog that new phones are boring - although I can’t find the specific post. I guess it’s not just me being older and more tired that made me feel this way. This may be no bad thing overall in that the excitement upon new phone releases many …
10015 is a useful website containing a ton of quick little web tools that handle a set of fairly mundane but cropping up surprisingly often computing tasks, mostly around text and images. Some examples include mini tools that: change the case of text resize or crop images format code encode URLs …
Remote cyber-attack on Hezbollah's pagers causes thousands of injuries and deaths
In what sounds like a plot of a fairly implausible science fiction story, hundreds of pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah exploded yesterday in what appears to be an very well coordinated, very sophisticated, attack against the organisation. Unfortunately, whatever one might think of Hezbollah, …
🎶 Listening to HIT ME HARD AND SOFT by Billie Eilish. The world’s most famous whisperer is back with a third album. It was a bold move to release it fairly soon after Taylor Swift was in the process of breaking every record going with her 2024 album. But it doesn’t seem to have done …
🎶 Listening to Radical Optimism by Dua Lipa. Described in part as being influenced by the neo-psychedelia genre - one I admit I had not heard of before - the album was apparently written to reflect the concept of radical optimism that she’s working into her life. I want to capture the essence …
🎶 Listening to ~mAntras~ by Alien Ant Farm. These are the guys who made the almost indisputably best version of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” - less smooth than the original, sure, but criminally good - a rather upsetting 23 years ago. And here they are decades later, fitting …
Save videos, photos and audio from your favourite sites with Cobalt
Colbalt.tools looks to be a very useful web tool that lets you download and save video, audio and pictures from several streaming sites (Youtube, Vimeo et al.) as well as those attached to social media posts (Twitter, Tiktok and many more). cobalt lets you save anything from your favorite websites: …
Recent research provides some (weak) evidence that labelling menu items with calories might cause harm to some
Something I feel myself gradually changing my mind on is the ubiquitous labelling of how many calories each food contains on restaurant menus. The basic idea there is that if consumers see that some restaurant food choices options have a very large amount of calories in them then they might be less …
UniGetUI is a handy GUI for Winget and other Windows package managers
If you’re a Windows users who likes using Winget as a package manager, as I do, but would prefer a graphical user interface over hitting the command line then UniGetUI - formerly known as WingetUI) might be the app for you. It’s a free open-source utility that lets you install, update …
Where is the boundary between blue and green?
ismy.blue is a weirdly fascinating website whereby it shows you a page that has a background colour of something in the blue-green spectrum - anything between a HSL hue value of 120 and 240. You then hit a button depending on whether you’d call it blue or green if you were forced to say. The …
Fake streamers listening to fake music by fake artists on Spotify allegedly made a single fraudster at least $10 million
In a perfect example of the potential made available by the deleterious effects of bad business models music streaming services, someone has been charged with defrauding Spotify to the tune of $10 million dollars. The allegation is that Michael Smith created a ton of low-effort “music” - …
A friend gets in touch to let me know that it’s not necessarily scary AI cyber-brains that are going to end humanity. We also need to be wary of robotically-augmented mushrooms. I’m not sure what sci-fi novel this particular bunch of researchers last read, but something has compelled …
📄 Reading the Pivot to AI blog. This is high-grade fodder for those of us who harbour a significant amount scepticism for the recent boom in AI, especially of the generative type. Don’t get me wrong, when this stuff works it can seem like magic, and I do use it in small doses many days. But it …