... works as a web developer in Hveragerði, Iceland, and writes about the web, digital publishing, and web/product development
These are his notes
“How Google is killing independent sites like ours - HouseFresh”
Sites that do genuine research and actual testing are getting crushed between big media sites that get a pass from Google for spammy rewrites and incoherent generated crap that scores incredibly high in the results
I hope I am wrong. I hope that the bottom doesn’t fall out of AI, and that the startup ecosystem grows, and that this all becomes profitable and that everything will be fine.
Where I find out that I’m clearly way more mean-spirited than Ed
“Static Site Generators and CMS’s | Go Make Things”
I had totally missed the weird EOL of Forestry.io and the migration over to TinaCMS. What happened there? Seems like an abrupt end to a product with paying customers.
“The State of the Culture, 2024 - by Ted Gioia”
This turned out to be a better read than I expected. A few years ago I would have dismissed its observations out of hand, but today they have the weight that can’t be denied
“What’s the fun in writing on the internet anymore?”
The purpose of expression is expression.
“’Novel’ AI-made materials not actually new – study”
Published report ‘should be retracted as the main claim of discovery is wrong’, UCL chemistry professor tells us
These kind of shenanigans are the norm for “AI” research, which is why you should not trust any study that feeds the hype
Took these two photos just for fun.
This is one of the houses that the cat rescue, Villikettir Suðurlands, uses to shelter cats until they find homes. You can see a couple of cats lounging in the window and enjoying being inside.
(This is the rescue where my sister got her cat Kolka.)
There are few things more relaxing than listening to a waterfall, even a small one like this one in Varmá. I should do this more often.
Friðmundur’s cat is on Þorvaldur’s tractor again.
“ChatGPT 4 fails at solving a Captcha and progress is slow”
Some things feel fast because they are being completely misrepresented and don’t work the way they are portrayed. More often than you think there is a person behind the curtain playing the role of the computer.
“AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants - BBC Worklife”
All Apple is being asked to do is offer the same level of choice on mobile that everyone already enjoys on their computers. Rather than comply reasonably, Apple have found a way to throw their toys of the pram.
“‘AI’ is pretty much just shorthand for mediocre”
This happened more quickly than I had expected, but it’s a pretty darn mainstream sentiment by now.
Even talk radio personalities here in Iceland make “AI” quips now when they talk about how mediocre something is
“Air Canada found liable for chatbot’s bad advice on plane tickets | CBC News”
Now that we’re in a bubble, regular companies are diving into the chatbot hype and they’re discovering that non-US countries have actual consumer protection laws.
Quite a few people have a rule of thumb that anybody who has self-published a book on a topic is a bullshitter shilling product
I get why but it’s frustrating when you’ve actually done the research
Just adds to my sense that writing the book in question was probably a mistake 😕
This is neat
“Syntax highlighting code blocks with Prism and the Custom Highlight API”
“Zero to Unmaintainable in 1.2 Commands - Jim Nielsen’s Blog”
“Advocating for Protections for the Information Ecosystem | by Emily M. Bender | Feb, 2024 | Medium”
“Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in the EU • The Register”
This is disappointing. This effectively kills off iOS web apps in the EU because iOS wipes regular web data for a site after a week of inactivity. The only way to get around that was with installation
No matter whether you’re talking about Apple’s thingamajiggy or “AI”, it’s risky to assume the inevitability of technical progress. The constant progress we saw in tech was contingent on unusually broad globalisation, political stability, and a massive surplus of resources