Baldur Bjarnason

Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

Blog: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/
AI Book: https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/
Pronouns: he/him
Book: https://softwarecrisis.baldurbjarnason.com/

Public Key

npub1hr7087sk4yxl25nmx9c42p0zgk5kyfyvar5xeklezs23hjuenr7qr3jxyc

NIP-05 Address

baldur_at_toot.cafe@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqst3l8nlgt2jr042fanzu24qh3yt2tzyjxw36rvm0u3g9gmewve3lqt30ysl

Author Public Key

npub1hr7087sk4yxl25nmx9c42p0zgk5kyfyvar5xeklezs23hjuenr7qr3jxyc

Show more details

Last Notes

2025-04-27 10:44:45

- reply

In pretty much all of those cases those weaknesses have been known for decades and people have been highlighting them for very long time. John Dewey highlighted many of the flaws in the approaches we use for education over a century ago. They are not approaches that are being used because they work but because they are an enforcement mechanism to maintain power. Adding another unequal enforcement mechanism into the mix only exacerbates the problem and doesn’t help anybody

2025-04-27 10:01:49

“Why does everybody get angry at me whenever I defend a new tech that’s purpose-made to destroy industries, misinform, and pollute the environment?”
A mystery for the fucking ages. First help us stop the harm done by these tools (both the makers and what they make) then you can come back and talk all you want about your vague wishy-washy positive use cases that you use to justify your blatant neophilia
Of course, you will have lost interest by then because it won’t be new anymore

2025-04-17 15:58:13

- reply

🙂👍🏻

2025-04-16 10:17:25

“Why would a musician join OnlyFans? : NPR”
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/31/g-s1-57321/only-fans-musicians-kate-nash-lizzie-no
Reading this as a longtime Kate Nash fan is disheartening. It paints a very grim picture of the music industry: streaming pays a pittance and the cost of live performances is so high that tours come out at a loss
Even Spotify's claim that they paid out over £500K for Foundations needs to be put in context: that's over 18 years and has to be shared with the publisher, the brunt of which would have been paid out years ago

2025-01-21 09:41:48

A useful aspect to a completely unambiguous fascist gesture, even though it’s ultimately performative, is that you can use it to gauge which news media you can trust to call a Nazi a Nazi, which will obfuscate things with layers of “both-sidesing”, and which will outright be regurgitating propaganda

2025-01-08 21:03:12

- reply

Thanks! 🙂

2025-01-08 20:05:26

Interim note 4: time-based media: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/2025/interim-4/

2025-01-08 18:27:07

- reply

Thanks! I appreciate that. Yeah, the whole “avoid questions by inventing work” is definitely a pattern that’s very easy to fall into.

2024-11-18 12:16:20

- reply

Yup! 👍🏻

2024-11-18 11:40:39

Links (18 November 2024): https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/2024/links-41/

2024-11-18 11:31:58

Queer Comfort Viewing: 'Surprise! You're less straight than you thought you were!' movies and series: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/queer-comfort-viewing/surprise-you-are-not-straight/

2024-11-18 11:23:42

"Queer Comfort Viewing: 'Surprise! You're less straight than you thought you were!' movies and series"
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/queer-comfort-viewing/surprise-you-are-not-straight/

2024-11-18 09:03:34

- reply

Thanks!

2024-11-11 18:25:16

- reply

Oh, that’s a good suggestion. I like that idea. Thanks!

2024-11-05 10:35:31

“Apple Buys Pixelmator”
https://shapeof.com/archives/2024/11/apple_buys_pixelmator.html
> So it feels strange that Acorn is now effectively the only independent Mac image editor from that era.
Back when I was still using a mac on the regular, Acorn was one of my absolute favourites. It's one of the apps I still miss.

2024-11-02 11:22:41

Apparently Kolka, my sister’s black cat, basked in the sun so much this summer that her black fur bleached into a dark brown #caturday
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/413/094/660/789/253/original/c003b15c5bbfc3f7.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/413/094/857/191/749/original/bf2b3a716d87a35a.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/413/095/539/655/136/original/ff08e9e1c1e4cc2d.jpg

2024-10-26 18:42:52

This is Lukka again (“lukka” is Icelandic for “luck”), on inspection duty. She’s very much a “so, what are WE doing today?” kind of cat. Whenever her owner takes out the garbage, she will escort him to the bins and back
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/375/190/626/669/291/original/2a9558513eecfb63.jpeg

2024-10-24 15:48:34

- reply

Thanks! And, yeah, I know that feeling very well. 🙂

2024-10-23 09:56:54

“State of Frontend 2024”
https://tsh.io/state-of-frontend/
This is, honestly, really fucking grim reading. I have to hope this isn't representative of the actual industry because otherwise end-users are in for a pretty bad time with software quality continuing to deteriorate.

2024-10-16 12:18:45

“the secret ingredient to coming up with good ideas for a story | by Doc Burford | Oct, 2024 | Medium”
https://docseuss.medium.com/the-secret-ingredient-to-coming-up-with-good-ideas-for-a-story-2b10ed4a1b5f
> So, look, you wanna be creative? Well, it might seem scary until you actually practice it enough, but the answer is: figure out what you’re writing, figure out what kind of story it is, strip away the things that don’t matter, and build up from there.

2024-10-16 11:05:13

Links (16 October 2024): https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/links-38/

2024-10-14 17:17:55

- reply

Yeah, it has, I think. IIRC kids now get more hours of English teaching than Danish.

2024-10-14 17:14:40

- reply

😄

2024-10-13 14:47:27

- reply

Water from the geothermal area is used to provide heat and hot water for the town, both residential and the local swimming pool, spa, and commercial greenhouses.

2024-10-12 11:37:46

- reply

And this is an old photo sister of theirs, who I call Mouser Queen because half the time I try to take a photo of her in the summer I can’t post it because she’s dismembering a mouse.
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/294/233/150/702/835/original/1b98c43ea083bddd.jpeg

2024-10-12 11:37:46

- reply

This is the mama during her occasional inspections of my flat. She’s the friendliest of the bunch by far and likes to come and say hello.
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/294/243/222/424/618/original/0f9d96ff45a57214.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/294/243/373/946/744/original/b43db75ccbc1f690.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/294/243/701/989/086/original/7c0710f238bbb80b.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/294/244/008/071/176/original/40f1132f9863eb59.jpg

2024-10-12 11:37:46

- reply

For those new to the local cat family tree here in Hveragerði. This is an old photo of the cat I nickname Fluffy Murder Bro who is Miss Sensible’s sibling, just a year younger. He is fluffy, a bro, and these days has a clown collar because he’s too fond of murdering the local wildlife.
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/294/229/770/952/874/original/a462413d2429231f.jpeg

2024-10-11 10:36:34

- reply

😄

2024-10-11 10:13:09

Me: “Ah, damn. I never replied to X, did I? Fuck. It’d be too weird to reply now”
Just a reminder that I’m exceedingly bad at the whole “social media” thing. Half the time I don’t know what to say to a reply so I either just reply with an emoji or just put it off until I forget about it, only to be hit several days later by a super-vivid memory of planning to reply. Or, if I did reply, a super-vivid memory of what I should have written instead
This whole society thing is complicated as hell 😅

2024-10-10 10:02:01

- reply

The lack of interest from FF and Safari in the Navigation API is particularly galling as it's such a massive improvement over existing APIs both in design and accessibility.

2024-10-10 09:55:03

Short list of proposed/in progress web standards I'd love to see get broader support:
- View transitions in Firefox (Safari is in progress AFAICT)
- SharedWorker in Chrome Android
- createWriteable() in Safari. It's ridiculous to force OPFS writing to be done in a worker
- Module support in service workers (FF is the main holdout, I think?)
- integrity property in import maps (FF again, I think)
- Navigation API in both FF and Safari, potentially the "biggest win" API not being implemented IMO

2024-10-10 09:35:15

“Doug Engelbart or: How We Learned to Stop Commanding and Love the Mouse”
https://sarajoy.dev/blog/see-and-point/

2024-09-25 12:03:31

- reply

Yup.

2024-09-14 16:18:04

- reply

I got to have a go at the whole “modify the hardware to install a proper linux” thing with this chromebook at some point. 🙂

2024-09-14 12:47:11

- reply

I genuinely hate ChromeOS. It's a series of horrible design decisions compounded by the fact they keep shifting things around and changing crap so you can't even form decent coping habits for their earlier horrible design decisions.
But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's not just a horrible design, it's also horribly implemented
(The Files app also clearly has a memory leak, but that's a topic for another day.)

2024-09-14 12:45:12

- reply

And I noticed that the laptop becomes unusable quicker if I have mastodon open in a tab. But it doesn't clear up when I close that tab, so it doesn't seem to be in the mastodon web app itself.
And, finally, it clicks that it the memory leak has to be in how chromeos handles notifications, so I click on the taskbar thing to show the notifications and, after a stutter...
The whole OS session crashes with the usual "do you want to restore your apps" bubble.
Fun!

2024-09-14 12:40:22

Today's "wow the software industry's really bad at it's job isn't it?" moment:
I have a chromebook "sofa laptop" specifically for non-serious use. It's an over-specced 16GB RAM Google thing. Yet it progressively becomes slower and slower the longer it runs until it becomes unusable, I reboot and everything is fine again
So, a memory leak, right? But where?
Well, thing is, I pretty much ignore notifications on the device but never bothered to turn them off
(You can see where this is going.)

2024-09-13 15:06:43

Starting to see people link to perplexity.ai answers in their blog posts instead of Wikipedia even though the perplexity answer is literally just paraphrasing (not even summarising) the Wikipedia entry. 😑

2024-09-05 15:16:35

“Threads is trading trust for growth”
https://werd.io/2024/threads-is-trading-trust-for-growth
Threads sounds exactly as unpleasant as I imagined a Twitter clone made by the Instagram team to be.

2024-08-31 17:44:45

- reply

"Helping" was not what the person was talking about. They were specifically claiming that all developer specialisation would disappear citing web dev as a specific example.
Also, how do you know it's giving you good results and not teaching you outdated or sub-optimal approaches? Are you verifying your results with research or relying on "this ran without errors" gut checks?

2024-08-31 15:13:50

Apparently programmer specialities such as "web dev" are about to become obsolete because an experienced dev can quickly become an expert by using LLMs. Tools that are trained almost entirely on code built using principles that I and an increasing number of _web_ devs think are a dysfunctional dead end, even a potential existential threat to the industry itself
But, y'know, maybe I'm wrong and a python dev copying and pasting bloated React code out of ChatGPT is the future of web dev 🤷🏻‍♂️

2024-08-31 10:15:50

The iPad literally prompts for permission to paste between the same three apps every single day. If this is by design then the design is utterly broken.

2024-08-28 11:28:57

I wrote a bit about I've noticed my own behaviour on social media changing
"Bad Faith Burnout"
> So, apologies in advance if I don’t reply to your reply. It’s not you
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/bad-faith-burnout/

2024-08-27 13:27:24

“Just use fucking paper, man - Andy Bell”
https://andy-bell.co.uk/just-fucking-use-paper-man/
This. Index cards too.
(I alternate between pencil and fountain pen depending on my mood, but the principle is the same in both cases.)

2024-08-26 14:40:32

One of the unexpected side effects of having a newsletter that's based on your blog is the day you've got a newsletter scheduled becomes an unofficial "publish all your drafts" day. 😁

2024-08-26 12:36:56

- reply

https://www.ruv.is/english/2024-08-25-lava-flows-over-old-munitions-420409 😅

2024-08-26 12:25:39

Between the ice cave tragedy and the “we might have some… explosives under the lava” thing, Icelandic tourism (and tourists) doesn’t seem to be having a particularly good week.

2024-08-26 12:20:50

“Lava flows over old munitions - RÚV.is”
https://www.ruv.is/english/2024-08-25-lava-flows-over-old-munitions-420409
> There is a risk of explosion at the eruption site, as lava flows and wildfires burn at a contaminated US military training site. We didn't need the extra work, says the fire chief.
This sounds suboptimal.

2024-08-26 09:19:14

The glacial cave collapse is a horrifying accident. We won’t know what exactly caused it until after the investigation, but I will note that, back in June, RUV reported that glacial experts objected strongly to the decision to allow glacial cave trips in the summer, that it was fundamentally unsafe
https://www.ruv.is/english/2024-08-25-ice-cave-collapses-at-breidamerkurjokull-420425
The original coverage in June, which also notes reports that some of the tourism companies have been going beyond what they’re permitted to do
https://www.ruv.is/utvarp/spila/thetta-helst/33405/9uid5s

2024-08-17 10:31:47

These here are later of my great-granddad’s chair and some of my bookshelves, about midnight. You can see how process zero results in slightly noisier exposures, but not offensively so, IMO
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/976/898/474/739/238/original/21bc70211f3b5e81.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/976/899/019/247/053/original/885e27835fa444a2.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/976/899/483/124/645/original/85e08a17feed7870.jpeg

2024-08-16 10:58:36

Holy crap, the Wordpress Plugin Directory process is just the absolute worst. Subversion? Seriously?

2024-08-15 10:45:46

- reply

So, here are two shots directly out of each app, process zero first form Halide, then out of the box in the Camera app.
The difference is striking on an iPhone as the Camera app HEIC supports HDR, but not really noticeable on a regular screen, which suggests to me that Apple is wasting a lot of its processing thunder on HDR
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/965/612/408/622/009/original/848ad8b0b86a7f7c.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/965/612/820/822/191/original/2d7c70275ef68596.jpg

2024-08-15 10:28:42

“Process Zero: The Anti-Intelligent Camera”
https://www.lux.camera/introducing-process-zero-for-iphone/
> Introducing a process that uses zero AI and zero computational photography to produce beautiful, film-like natural photos. Meet Halide 2.15, with Process Zero.
LOVE this idea. Really want to take a walk later today to test this out, despite the rain. We'll see if I have time 😄

2024-07-31 10:12:55

“Opinion: What’s behind the AI boom? Exploited humans”
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2024/07/30/opinion-whats-behind-the-ai-boom-exploited-humans/amp/
> In Iceland, we visited data center workers who documented the energy-intensive nature of these centers, which consume more electricity than Icelandic households combined.
One of the reasons why this shit makes me so angry. This is directly threatening Iceland's energy transition as it's soaking up all excess capacity

2024-07-21 13:14:04

“Fascism Creeps in from Silicon Valley”
https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/fascism-creeps-in-from-silicon-valley
> Calling these people fascist is sometimes derided as scare tactics or alarmism, but I don’t know in what world accuracy is alarmist.
Pretty sure that fascism runs deeper and is much more common among people in tech than is commonly accepted outside of tech

2024-07-09 12:26:14

I know it’s a killjoy thing to say, but spotting the peak of a bubble is not the same as spotting when it pops. The peak needs to happen before the pop.

2024-07-08 14:57:34

- reply

Yeah, already checked that. Show all windows for Safari only shows the current window/instance.

2024-07-08 10:53:27

- reply

Yeah and yeah.

2024-07-08 10:17:19

- reply

Yeah, same here. No idea.

2024-07-08 09:53:38

“GitHub - explainers-by-googlers/prompt-api: A proposal for a web API for prompting browser-provided language models”
https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/prompt-api
> const session = await ai.createTextSession();
No nononono no NO nope NOPE. Fucking hell no. JFC is this week's reading off to a bad start.

2024-07-08 09:16:30

- reply

The closed tabs don’t seem to be under recently closed tabs so I’m guessing this has something to do with the nuclear-level fuckup that is iPad multitasking. There doesn’t seem to be another Safari window floating around anywhere on this iPad though.

2024-07-08 09:14:25

- reply

Strongly tempted to switch browsers on the iPad even though they have the same underlying. Regularly disappearing user data is just not acceptable and it keeps happening with Safari. This is entirely the app itself, not Webkit.

2024-07-08 09:09:30

iPad Safari just disappeared dozens of tabs with no indication as to what happened, where they went, or how to recover them. It’s the only fucking browser where this keeps happening to me

2024-07-07 20:14:56

I’m not the best at taking clear photos of birds 😄
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/747/038/652/604/108/original/0498f9c5586f8bd5.jpeg

2024-06-20 14:18:50

- reply

Yeah, people relying on chatbots for learning and not realising that what they get is both inaccurate and outdated (with training data having an inevitable cut-off date) is something I keep seeing more and more 😕

2024-06-20 09:57:05

- reply

People who know about all of the new and cool features either don’t have the opportunity to use them or are too overworked to use them.
People who don’t know about them aren’t finding out because the field is effectively being dismantled, leading to fewer outlets writing about CSS and next to no conferences dedicated to it.
Businesses don’t want to pay for CSS so they’re basically getting less of it and fewer people who specialise in it.

2024-06-20 09:53:28

At the risk of being labelled a one note pessimist, pretty much everything about the state of CSS—slow uptake of standards, popular reliance on frameworks, the lack of conferences, and the diminishing number of publications—can be explained by the eradication of CSS specialisation from the job market

2024-06-10 12:23:36

One of the jobs I had to pay for college was selling TVs in an electronics store. They had a bonus system where I always came in last because I always advised people to buy within their means and not on credit
Every time I have a meeting where I tell a prospective client that they don’t need my services I reminded of that time when I spent my weekends wearing cheap wrinkle-free shirts and telling divorced dads they could do with a slightly smaller TV

2024-04-17 09:58:16

Seeing tech people’s hyperbolic response to an incredibly kind and generous youtube review of a product that genuinely shouldn’t exist makes me glad I don’t review products for a living. I’d have been much harsher

2024-04-16 10:50:33

- reply

Yeah, I figured.

2024-04-16 10:44:46

Gonna go over to Linkedin and repost some “AI” sceptics to see if that’ll stem the tide connection invitations from AI Dudes.

2024-04-16 10:23:20

“‘Means of Control’ – Pixel Envy” https://pxlnv.com/blog/means-of-control/

2024-04-16 09:49:19

- reply

So, it’s hard to make a specific rec because needs and tastes vary 🙂 but what I like to use under similar circumstances is to use a small number of helper libraries like uhtml (https://github.com/WebReflection/uhtml#readme). And if it’s something a little bit more involved, Lit has worked for me in the past https://lit.dev/docs/ It’s quite oriented towards TS but works without it.

2024-04-15 09:43:28

“Faster Connectivity !== Faster Websites - Jim Nielsen’s Blog” https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/faster-bandwidth-and-websites/

2024-04-14 11:44:27

- reply

For reference, the actual translations:
These are birds:
Tjaldur = oystercatcher
Skógarþröstur = redwing
Glókollur = goldcrest
Steindepill = wheatear
This is a fish
Loðna = capelin/caplin

2024-04-14 10:01:21

- reply

Yeah, subtitle translations here have gone seriously downhill very quickly here. Not just in the cinema.
It’s an issue for certain publishing genres. Young Adult books, for example, are frequently so badly translated that readers (actual teenagers, not adults reading YA) have been complaining about it. I mean, they never did put much work into YA but apparently it’s even worse today.

2024-04-14 09:18:22

- reply

Google Translate used to get the individual words right for Icelandic and everything else wrong. Now it’s much better at syntax and grammar but so so so many of the words themselves are now outright ridiculous
It thinks that:
“Tjaldur” = tent
“Loðna” = hairy
“Glókollur” = glow sticks
“Steindepill” = gem
And before you ask, yes it gets those wrong in context:
“loðna fannst norðan lands” = fur was found in the north of the country
This is the garbage translators are losing their jobs to

2024-04-14 08:50:45

“Society of Authors survey reveals a third of translators and quarter of illustrators losing work to AI”
We all know how crap generative images are but machine translation seems to be outright declining. Google Translate now thinks “skógarþröstur” in Icelandic means “woodpecker” https://downthetubes.net/society-of-authors-survey-reveals-a-third-of-translators-and-quarter-of-illustrators-losing-work-to-ai/

2024-04-13 16:37:43

Took my camera with an “antique” lens (70s/80s is antique now, right?) out on my “clear my head of anxiety” walk. This might have been a mistake since a funky manual lens isn’t the best for birds and landscapes, but you make do 🙂
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/264/888/670/172/075/original/0d9bfe0998f8424c.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/264/888/819/730/309/original/fce7d63511e271df.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/264/888/968/384/904/original/6d88523f3b04b705.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/264/889/142/102/412/original/5cfaa213f883864e.jpg

2024-04-13 10:37:08

For today’s #caturday post, another batch of photos from my sister of her cat Kolka, a black-and-white rescue who has gone from semi-feral to “hey, people give scritches!”
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/263/470/956/737/669/original/57a1a31874ad2be6.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/263/471/092/237/598/original/f3d6e3d16d16696f.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/263/471/198/793/956/original/b8bd6d5b74363156.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/263/471/307/296/338/original/1b6f99440c93a019.jpg

2024-04-13 09:50:17

So, it may feel like I’m harping on a bit about JSR—the tech industry’s latest attempt to ‘fix’ the JavaScript ecosystem—but it kind of bugs me how little discussion there is about it
Like, it’s literally a proposal by a VC-funded startup to coopt existing infrastructure and the only comments I’m seeing online are “ooh, they put a lot of work into making it fast.”
There’s no discussion of what it’s for, whether it tells us anything about npm or how that can be improved.

2024-04-12 12:12:26

- reply

Ah, it’s only available under the notifications view, not if you’re viewing the post itself. That’s confusing
Thanks for helping me figure this out!

2024-04-12 10:04:46

Posting “Here’s what ChatGPT has to say about your blog post” in a reply that mentions me is an automatic mute or, if I haven’t had my coffee, a block
That is all.

2024-04-11 10:31:05

- reply

Like, you have to make an effort to be this ignorant about so many things:
- Finance
- Copyright law
- Technology
- Software
- Machine Learning
- Neuroscience
- Even on the basic topic of writing and creativity which _should_ be right in their expertise.
Why do I do this to myself? 😩

2024-04-11 10:26:49

Made the mistake of reading through a discussion between publishing types on an “AI”-adjacent topic (rumours about tech cos contemplating buying Simon & Schuster). I’ve rarely seen so much concentrated ignorance on so many topics bundled together in a single thread 🙄

2024-04-10 13:11:24

“Intel is oddly enthusiast about AI replacing everyone’s jobs”
“Oddly”? This is the point and purpose of “AI”. It’s anti-labour. Replacing everybody’s jobs—or at least replacing skilled staff that has leverage with lower-paid “AI wranglers” with no bargaining power—is what it’s for https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-vision-2024-ai-taking-jobs/

2024-04-09 10:42:17

- reply

So, I've seen a lot of estimates but it's very hard to accurately gauge that without having direct access to actual power usage data.
But we know from how these systems work that their power use is structurally at the very least on similar level to cryptocoins.

2024-04-09 10:32:14

- reply

That’s without getting into the ethics of how the training data is handled or how these systems are largely being used to replace labour. I know where I stand on those topics, but you don’t need to have an opinion on them to understand that very few people should be using these systems. Just look out of the window and see that we’re in a climate crisis. That should be enough for you to step away from LLMs

2024-04-09 10:32:13

- reply

The impartial bit is another key. Any study that is directly performed or sponsored by a vendor is not to be trusted. Don’t even read it. It doesn’t matter how well it’s constructed, there are too many ways for researcher bias to affect the results of even the most well-structured study. Vendor-affiliated studies are marketing. Nothing more
Even studies that are independent but are based on confidential data from vendors should be dismissed out of hand. Science needs to be open.

2024-04-09 10:32:13

- reply

Almost everything positive about LLMs you see today is based on extremely unreliable evidence, much of it from some of the most dishonest people you’ll find in tech (cryptocoiners, effective altruists, etc.)
Given that these models are obscenely power-hungry during a global climate crisis it’s my opinion that integrating these tools into your daily work is inherently unethical and irresponsible

2024-04-08 12:51:47

Trying a new thing with the newsletter this week. Instead of bundling everything in the newsletter into a single digest-style blog post, I’m instead breaking the topics up into their own blog posts. The newsletter digest format doesn’t really work for blogs, IMO.
That’s the theory anyway

2024-04-08 12:04:23

'This shit's so expensive': a note on generative models and software margins: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/this-shits-so-expensive/

2024-04-08 10:00:54

- reply

Software usually has extraordinarily high margins. Tech’s nonsense management tactics are contingent on being able to float shit away on a tide of money. You only get away with bullshit software dev, shipping abysmal apps, and constant security lapses if you are making an obscene amount of money

2024-04-08 09:50:41

So far, AI hasn’t been profitable for Big Tech | Ars Technica
"the cost to Microsoft exceeds $20 a month per user on average, according to a person familiar with the matter. In some cases, individual power users have cost the company as much as $80 a month." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/10/so-far-ai-hasnt-been-profitable-for-big-tech/

2024-04-08 09:25:08

This is absolutely a spec issue. As in there is none. Programmatic discovery and manipulation of selection ranges inside shadow roots is simply undefined, which is why we now have three different behaviours
Until there’s a genuine consensus on what is supposed to happen, the only sensible thing is to avoid shipping anything that requires text selection (i.e. any form of text editing or highlighting) in a shadow root.
https://mastodon.social/@marijn/112234316153174392

2024-04-07 12:10:24

- reply

kreisí! 😄

2024-04-07 12:02:00

That feeling when the Icelandic spelling of a word leaks into your English writing.
(The letters ‘C’ and ‘Z’ aren’t in the Icelandic alphabet and when words that include them are adopted into Icelandic the letters get replaced with ‘K’ and ‘S’, respectively.)

2024-04-05 15:12:30

“Inconsistency is a feature, not a bug – Terence Eden’s Blog”
The thing that makes Google’s later icons extraordinarily incompetent is that the old icons were consistent in terms of style, colours, shading, etc. The new icons are worse because they are less identifiable https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/04/inconsistency-is-a-feature-not-a-bug/

2024-04-04 09:13:11

“Thoughts on embedding alternative text metadata into images – Eric Bailey” https://ericwbailey.website/published/thoughts-on-embedding-alternative-text-metadata-into-images/

2024-04-03 13:56:52

Just saw somebody on a mailing list describe “AI” sceptics as performative contrarians and I guess they mean people like me. 🤷‍♂️