Notable

Posted 15th Apr 2025 @ 11:11

This is the quote Kottke shared from M. Gessen:

This is my radical proposal for universities: Act like universities, not like businesses. Spend your endowments. Accept more, not fewer students. Open up your campuses and [bring] education to communities. Create a base. Become a movement.

Cannot get behind this enough. For the past 4 years or so, I have been volunteering my time at two universities, multiple times a year. For one I am an alumni and for the other, I'm considered an "expert". It's not only rewarding on a personal level, but I hope it is rewarding to those students who get input from people with real industry experience. I'm coming up to 20 years now and there some that are a year into their journey and others that are even more seasoned than I am in their professions. We each bring different experiences but ultimately we are giving these students and the university access to a wider community.

Posted 15th Apr 2025 @ 08:23

Carol Cadwalladr sums up the situation of The Guardian partnering with OpenAI:

it married its rapist

Strong words, but what a way to describe the AI landscape right now. Companies gathering all they can for free and then charging a fee to see how a computer might put that content back together in answer to a question.

The more AI invades my life, the more I see value, but there is an ethical side that is just not being taken seriously.

AI may be doing more harm than good right now. It's energy intensive, it's built upon theft and you can't trust that it's output will be correct. Maybe no one cares about those first two points, but if you're not fact checking it's output then you are not using the tool correctly.

Governments should not be caving into AI companies, arguably they should not even be using AI until it is more energy efficient and it is free from bias (impossible?).

Algorithms have their own problems, as many social media companies have confirmed, but I prefer algorithms that can be explained over a tool that is wholly based upon the theft.

Posted 11th Apr 2025 @ 08:10

Posted 3rd Apr 2025 @ 13:12

WTF, France? From the economic bloc that lead to the creation of cookie banners, they are mad at Apple for showing a prompt that asks if the user would like to preserve their privacy or not?!

The investigation was launched in 2021 following a complaint lodged by a coalition of French advertising trade associations, including Alliance Digitale and the Internet Advertising Syndicate.

Has this coalition also lodge complaints with the plague of cookie banners we've been subjected to for years now? If not, why not?

They should really be looking at why this pop up is necessary, not why it might be frustrating.

Posted 31st Mar 2025 @ 14:48

Everyone is, rightfully, raving about Adolescence. The fact each episode was filmed in one shot blew my mind.

Once you've watch it, come back for some insight from Stephen Graham and this behind the scenes from Netflix is great if you're interested in how they pulled it all of.

Posted 24th Mar 2025 @ 16:52

Via Studio Notes.

Posted 23rd Mar 2025 @ 20:48

If it's a Tesla, then yes. They took the decision to drop LiDAR around 4-years ago. Cameras, not matter how hi-definition, are never going to be enough.

However Tesla / Elon wish to spin it, cost cutting is probably at the route of it all. Full self driving is still a dream at this point and it will remain a dream until the right hardware is deployed to make it safe.

FSD in a Tesla is a lie.

Posted 19th Mar 2025 @ 14:11

Stunning takedown by John Gruber of the state of Apple with regards to Apple Intelligence.

I'm not in the same racket as him, but a few weeks ago I did my own post to see if is Apple Intelligence any good? Of the fetaures available, out of 5 I looked at only 1 was any good to me. Safe to say Apple Intelligence is low in usefulness and completeness. I also gave Apple the benefit of not having yet released a more integrated Siri, but I am not privy to anything other than marketing and reviews so I could only go on what I knew.

I'm also not really in the AI space and pretty sceptical on it because of it seems pretty unethical in how it all these multi-billion dollar models get trained. If I was Tim Cook, I would have put the hardware first and positioned those platforms as the backbone of desktop AI. Dear developers, go build amazing AI tools on our hardware. Then as a native solution, pick a partner and integrate it. Leave it at that.

No one needs Image Playgrounds. ChatGPT now integrates with Xcode. Anything Apple Intelligence can do, another service could have filled that hole and Apple could have spent a lot more time on things that actually matter.

Posted 13th Mar 2025 @ 09:05

I hadn't really thought to comment on Skype's retirement until I read this piece by John Gruber.

If I remember correctly, I used Skype at my first proper web development job back in 2006. Almost 20 years ago. I also used it for nearly all communication in my last role (2012-2020) as it rolled conversations and calling all into one.

We tried replacing the chat element with Slack in the mid-2010s but it didn't work when only our team used it in the organisation. We also had an internal chat tool, but Skype always won because of it's VOIP capability.

it never seemed Microsoft had any sort of plan for what to do with Skype

Gruber is totally right with this take, it's a shame because there was potential. Would it have been more prosperous without the acquisition? I doubt it, but there might have been a bit more strategy with regards to where it was headed.

Posted 4th Mar 2025 @ 16:21