AI
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Theday
Markets are Money It doesn’t say that in The Gluetrain Manifesto, but the long-gone (but archived) parody of The Cluetrain Manifesto is still funny. Or was it? I didn’t hear that China was building robot armies before it was debunked. May the most talented robots still lose 404 Media: Tidal Says It Won’t Pay Royalties for… Continue reading
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Unday
And in your browser, it's hard to tell who's winning Remember "fair use"? It's a concept kind of like "public airwaves." There's an ideal in there somewhere, but the context is a world where social contracts really aren't, and it's all kind of worked out, but not really. Alex Raksin tackles "fair use" in How… Continue reading
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The George Carlin Model of AI
Forty-five years ago, George Carlin forecast the future of AI: Listen to what George says, if you haven’t already. You can stop about two and a half minutes in, after he talks about how all your shit is stuff and everyone else’s stuff is shit. Because that’s the reason Big AI will never be personal… Continue reading
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Ladderday
Ed Zitron's latest two are good reads: Exclusive: OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X in 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion Premium: The Silicon Valley Bubble (Part 2) I've worked in the Valley, both on-site and in the world, since 1977. (On site was '85 to '01.) It ain't the same. On the contrary?::: Notebook LM does… Continue reading
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Fewsday
One frontier of anthropomorphism In the midst of a dialog with ChatGPT, I just got this: "Doc, I've been thinking about this off and on since your earlier questions…" Is it really thinking? Will it feel insulted or betrayed that I just blogged this? Olds In the continuing story of news as a business, newspapers… Continue reading
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Opday
On a medical frontier Adrian Gropper in the AI corner of the New England Journal of Medicine: The Medical AI Assistant as Publication, Not Device — Why Peer-Reviewed, Open-Source AI Belongs in the Standard of Care. From the abstract: "I argue that when a physician publishes a MAIA’s architecture, retrieval methodology, and validation results in a… Continue reading
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Stutterday
Still a wonder to watch Just took in this Starlink launch from Vandenberg. Got a lot of pix. These things are common now, but I’m still a big kid, and space stuff excites me. I also seem to be here when launches aren’t happening, so it was great to catch this one. What you see… Continue reading
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Oopsday
Frogmarch I am not calendar-blind, but I am disabled around dates. I frequently get today’s date wrong, and dates for future stuff tend not to stick in my mind—or I have them wrong. But I am accurate about days of the week. So I know today is Tuesday. I also know Tuesday is Pre-Election (Primary)… Continue reading
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Saturvice
A plan to enclose the public Web The Web is a public commons made of links. There is stuff at those links, almost all of it open to everybody, by design. The main way we see and use that stuff is with a browser. But what if your browser has AI of its own, and… Continue reading
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Active Devotion
Being old, I get lots of ads for Chair Tai Chi, Chair Yoga, and other positional challenges toward staying alive, limber, and not much closer to dead than you are without them. So this one occurred to me yesterday. And, since I can no longer draw (arthritis, talent), I handed illustration over to ChatGPT. Apologies… Continue reading
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From Losing the Web to Saving Us All
Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy—Thesis #7, The Cluetrain Manifesto Big AI subverts everything, including hyperlinks, which are what make the Web a web. With Big AI, you no longer surf from searches to sources across an ocean of links. You ask questions and get answers from the world’s largest Magic 8-Balls. They top the new hierarchy, which… Continue reading
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Tweezeday
Not cheap, but appealing Is my future portable drive one or more 8 TB strips (such as one of these) that I carry with me and plug into one of these? I laid out the problem in more detail here. Nothing has changed yet. On the continuing death of TV (and everything else) as we… Continue reading
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Memday
Remembering the future What matters most about Memorial Day is that we stop killing each other, especially over problems that could have been solved without anyone dying. Word Pope Leo on AI. The whole thing. More evidence that advertising corrupts and digital advertising corrupts absolutely Wired: ‘Creepy’ Listening Tool for Targeted Ads Didn’t Actually Work, FTC Says. I added… Continue reading
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Oofday
This one is too good at them I just wasted an hour of writing and research by hitting the wrong chord on my keyboard here, after neglecting to save my work in progress. You can't teach an old dog old mistakes. Uh oh Some bad shit is going down in Garden Grove. The other two don't… Continue reading
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Thirstday
The inhuman touch For the first time ever, a call to AppleCare got me an AI agent rather than a human being. The agent solved my problem, but made me feel sad, because AppleCare’s people provided a human connection, just we get from the people behind the Apple Stores’ Genius Bars. Are they the next… Continue reading
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Personal Agentry
In Know your .agent, Esther Dyson suggests that we need a DNS-like registry of AI agents. She and her colleagues at the Agentic AI foundation (agentcommunity.org) have started one, and it has some good premises, such as accountability for AI agents and their operators. .agent is clearly designed—so far—to make Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAi, Perplexity, et.… Continue reading
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Fromday
That number is way too low California AG Bob Bonta writes, “On Friday, we announced a historic $12.75 million settlement against General Motors for illegally retaining and selling hundreds of thousands of Californians’ location and driving data to data brokers.” It’s coming down There are three great teams left in the NBA playoffs. The Knicks… Continue reading
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Thrumsday
Fills a void Great backstory in Axios on the Politik app. Just in time for finals and/or graduation A massive Canvas data breach paralyzes 9000 schools and 275 million students. My school, Indiana University, is among them. It’s a ransomware shakedown: You may already be infected Gadget Review: Google Chrome Silently Installs a 4 GB AI… Continue reading
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Whensday
All the way down, but not out This visit to an abandoned radio station speaks volumes about what remains of the industry. The station is WACQ/580 in Tuskegee, Alabama. I’m listening to the online stream right now, and it sounds like a working local station, with live talent and lots of ads by local sponsors.… Continue reading
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Default Lines
Suck onward I only had this one day to catch up on all kinds of stuff here in Santa Barbara, and ended up spending half of it trying to get our two printers working. The Brother is a laser printer that only worked on Wi-Fi after I downloaded new drivers and installed them with my… Continue reading