Joe Biden’s farewell address
Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.
End of a garbage era
Our garbage service has, finally, abandoned its dot-matrix printer and tractor-feed perforated forms for a laser printer and shiny multi-color forms.
Hands and AI
When I see ordinary human hands on a screen, they’ve begun to look like the work of AI.
Raindrop.io
A Pinboard alternative.
Pinboard tags again
The behavior of Pinboard tags has puzzled me . I use a Pinboard account to create public tags for Orange Crate Art posts. The tags are suppo...
Fading technology
“Are you old enough to run the cash register?” “What’s a cash register?”
ChatGPT and a forklift
Ted Chiang: “Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.”
Time, it goes so fast
“What’s a BVD?”
OPEN [space] DOOR
From Murder, She Wrote.
Music, worsening
Rick Beato explains “The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse.”
Chatbots and Russian propaganda
Axios reports that “the leading AI chatbots are regurgitating Russian misinformation.”
“AI and the Death of Student Writing”
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lisa Lieberman, a community-college instructor, writes about “AI and the Death of Student Writing.”
“Inherently and irredeemably unreliable narrators”
“All large language models, by the very nature of their architecture, are inherently and irredeemably unreliable narrators,” said Grady Booch, a renowned computer scientist.
The tells
A scam. How many tells can you tell?
Recently updated
Yes, 1,074,000,000 buttonholes from one machine.
Buttonholes
From a New York Times obituary for the tailor Martin Greenfield: a buttonhole-cutting machine that has cut 1,074,000,000 buttonholes.
A Gamewell close-up
Like the mail chute in When Strangers Marry, this Gamewell fire alarm, too, was ready for its close-up.
An NYT Vision Pro review
“After using the headset for about five days, I’m unconvinced that people will get much value from it”: Brian X. Chen reviews Apple’s Vision Pro.
Calendar, notes, task management
A paper planner is all three apps.
A word in The Waste Land
And search engines.
Kranmar’s Vision Pro
From the maker of Kranmar’s Delicious Mystery Appetizer comes an AR device for the rest of us.
In there and out here
Re: Apple’s Vision Pro: Out here will always be better than in there.
Floppies in the news
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is abandoning its use of the floppy disk.
Siri talks back
“Don’t worry, it’s okay.”
iA Writer is not AI
A college prof bans iA Writer. But iA Writer is not an app for AI-generated prose.
Nerves, arms, hands
Three exercises to alleviate arm nerve pain (YouTube). On a related note, The Washington Post has an article about the effect of device use on fine motor skills, including handwriting (gift link).
AI and VDP
It’s dispiriting to see so much AI-generated blather about stuff one loves. Example: an explanation of Van Dyke Parks song.
“What is internet, anyway?”
Internet Artifacts, from 1977 to 2007.
A technological trick
A revised Metaverse. No thank you.
Noisy colors
The Washington Post listens to different colors of noise.