Starlings dropping by for a visit
Putting together the blog post collection has meant trying to find old links in the Wayback Machine
One was this one by the legendary Kathy Sierra in 2004. It’s both inspiring and depressing, because we all know what happened in the intervening two decades
“A Computer Book Author’s Manifesto” https://web.archive.org/web/20120118171954/http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/news/ksmanifesto.html
Tech talking about anti-trust regulation conveniently ignores the AT&T and IBM consent decrees (and related actions). Those directly and indirectly lead to some of the biggest economy-growing, market-making innovations in modern history
Because apparently regulations never work
“Thoughts on embedding alternative text metadata into images – Eric Bailey” https://ericwbailey.website/published/thoughts-on-embedding-alternative-text-metadata-into-images/
“Artists Sell Themselves So Cheap”
"Artists don’t sell themselves cheap. If you as a rich publisher/producer/studio got creative work cheaply, you took advantage of someone." https://colleendoran.substack.com/p/artists-sell-themselves-so-cheap
“The AI community needs to take copyright lawsuits seriously”
Maybe people will take this more seriously when a law professor says it. They certainly weren’t paying attention when I was making the same argument. https://www.understandingai.org/p/the-ai-community-needs-to-take-copyright
Occasionally I stop to think about how much of the modern software development infrastructure and community is run at a massive loss: Stack Overflow, npm, Github Copilot (probably Github itself), VS Code.
Also how much of it is owned and run by Microsoft.
So much of it could disappear at a short notice if just one CEO changes his mind about his company’s marketing strategy.
“OpenAI confirms that AI writing detectors don’t work | Ars Technica”
“Pants on Fire – Pixel Envy”
"But Evans does not give nearly enough weight to how often big industry players and their representatives simply lie."
I’m shocked, shocked etc. etc. https://pxlnv.com/blog/pants-on-fire/
“The modern era of research-backed software delivery”
"Essentially, making projects small has 3x more impact than making them agile."
I’m pretty much required by law to link to any essay that both cites the CHAOS reports and Gall’s law https://octopus.com/devops/history/research-backed-software-delivery/
“AI Is Starting to Look Like the Dot Com Bubble”
The similarities have been obvious for months now. The main difference is that the AI bubble comes at the beginning of a near-exponential rise in environmental and political volatility, so whether it improves or not honestly won’t matter that much https://futurism.com/ai-dot-com-bubble
So, one of my neighbours adopted kittens, siblings, last year. Figured I might try to find some pictures to show how they’ve grown up.
The newer pictures were taken in the spring so they probably still had more of that winter fluff going. #caturday
> You see, if somebody robs a store, it's a crime and the state is all set and ready to nab the criminal. But if somebody steals from the commons and from the future, it's seen as an entrepreneurial activity and the state cheers and gives them tax concessions rather than arresting them. We badly need an expanded concept of justice and fairness that takes mortgaging the future into account.
- Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology
“Patreon issues are causing paused payouts and canceled subscriptions - The Verge”
We’re seeing an increase in tech co blunders—exactly what rational people would expect a few months after a mass layoff. Patreon has laid of over 17% of its workforce in the past year or so. https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/3/23818598/patreon-payment-blocked-processing-declined-subscription-canceled