Links and photos (20 May 2024)
Twee apologia #
These two quotes:
But, dammit, I can’t. I love them too much. I am drawn back over and over
and
I’m in the bag. Not my first hypocrisy rodeo
Are from Generative AI Is Totally Shameless. I Want to Be It.
They demonstrate neatly why I dislike Paul Ford’s writing on tech and distrust people who love said writing. It’s all just too-cute twee apologia for the absolute worst of tech, all wrapped up in a “haha, ain’t I a stinker” Looney-Tunes personality.
That he pulls it off at all is a testament to how good his writing is. But that doesn’t stop what he’s saying from being shite.
This shit has consequences #
“Google Cloud shows it can break things for lots of customers • The Register”
Like I said when the layoffs where first announced, you’re going to see random shit go wrong because these companies now have a bunch of systems nobody in-house understands any more. This is what happens with mass layoffs.
This was inevitable. As soon as you heard “10-15% of the organisation laid off” it became absolutely certain that things would start to go wrong, the only question is when and what. For every public breakdown there’s going to be a corresponding bunch of private failures we haven’t heard about.
Links #
- “Updating from macOS Ventura to Sonoma silently enables iCloud Keychain”
- “Complicated Sticks. – Faster and Worse”. “The more complex the product, the more potential it has to have potential.”
- “Some of my Eleventy Filters · Chris Burnell”
- “Apple Annie’s Weblog · A Community of Concerns”
- “The Future of 11ty (2024)—zachleat.com”
- “How Makers of Nonconsensual AI Porn Make a Living on Patreon”
- “Known Purpose and Trusted Potential. – Faster and Worse”
- “The New Golden Age of Black and White Photography - Photography | PentaxForums.com”. If I had a massive surplus of funds (LOL) I’d absolutely buy myself a monochrome sensor camera.
- “Adactio: Journal—Baseline progressive enhancement”. Yet again, Jeremy says what I was thinking.
- “The four causes of writer’s block and what to do about them — Chocolate and Vodka”
- “The Great Paradox of the U.S. Market!”. “The best guess is still that this second investment bubble – in AI – will at least temporarily deflate and probably facilitate a more normal ending to the original bubble, which we paused in December 2022 to admire the AI stocks.” So, the dude writing this is one of those longterm professional investor types who’s made a bunch of money in the past correctly spotting bubbles and betting against them.
- “A.I. and the Silicon Valley Hype Machine” “Given these constraints, it seems just as likely to me that generative A.I. could end up like the Roomba, the mediocre vacuum robot that does a passable job when you are home alone but not if you are expecting guests.” This is, honestly, either too generous to generative models or not generous enough towards vacuum robots.
- “The wrong way to do Web Components | Go Make Things”
- “‘Magical thinking’: hopes for sustainable jet fuel not realistic, report finds | Greenhouse gas emissions | The Guardian”. We’re not going to be able to wave a technological magic wand and make our current way of life environmentally sustainable. It’s just not going to happen
- “Money (That’s What I Want)“. “The tl;dr of this newsletter is: It’s difficult to do social purpose work at the moment because many of the larger organisations that have money don’t want to spend it.” Been hearing this from a number of different organisations.
Photos #
This only lasted for a moment.
Neighbour doing the rounds in the garden.
