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  • Data, Data Everywhere, But Who Gets Yours

    Mr Mobile review of a product I had my eye on for meeting notes, the Plaud Note: Finally, there’s the question you really have to ask with any product like this. What company am I entrusting with these potentially sensitive recordings? Well, answering that led me down a fascinating rabbit hole into the world of so called registered agents, which are essentially companies that allow certain types of businesses to operate by giving them a physical address for legal purposes…in Wyoming, registered agents don’t seem to need to do any kind of vetting of the companies they represent.
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    Essay
    25 Mar 2024
  • Hardly Any AI

    Matt Birchler, writing about the technology used in wristbands at concerts: Whenever a company says, “We’re using AI to enhance our product,” ask them for specifics. Often, it’s either complete nonsense or something so minor that it’s essentially doing nothing. It’s not always the case, but I think you’d be surprised how much “AI” is mentioned in product marketing as nothing more than a marketing tool to look modern.
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    Essay
    18 Mar 2024
  • No More Snacks

    Rex Barrett writing about his ongoing content diet: … Filling my time with these junk apps is alluring, and I feel good when using them, but I want to find content that takes me somewhere. Ultimately, I don’t want to look back and see hours blocks of time squandered on things I’ll not even remember in a day or two. My brain goes through these cycles of needing to back away from the web completely, to diving in constantly.
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    Essay
    17 Mar 2024
  • I Struggle With AI Images

    Cory Dransfeldt has great posts about AI, and this one is no exception. Of course, he’s right in his stance on AI-generated images, but as with everything, I don’t find the conclusion so simple. The images it generates are, at best, a polished regression to the mean. If you want custom art, pay an artist. As I have covered before, my thoughts on generative AI are mixed. While I understand many of the issues people have with it, I can’t find the same motivation.
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    Essay
    17 Mar 2024
  • Did I Read That?

    One of the first sections I added to my new blog is a reading page. I adore reading, and if I’m not reading, I am often pondering over the things I have read. It’s an obsession, but one I happily embrace. The only problem with my need to track these activities is the standard at which I consider something as read. There’s been debate online about the distinction between reading a book and ‘reading’ an audiobook.
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    Essay
    11 Mar 2024
  • It's Your Work, You Should Be Able To Decide

    I wrote a few days ago about my personal take on AI being trained on my writing. Although I expected much more anger, hence the rather long block at the bottom, I am happy to see some nice responses and some pushback on the ideas. It sparked several emails, a few text messages, and one very well-thought-through response post. Erlend on Mastodon raised a very good point when considering other people’s choices:
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    Essay
    10 Mar 2024
  • Spending Time In The Dark Forest

    Kyle Hill in their YouTube video on generative AI: The Internet feels steadily more lifeless. But that’s because, like those alien civilisations, the real human users are hiding in private apps, servers, and RSS feeds, lest they be beset by these digital predators. This is Yancey Strickler’s dark forest theory of the Internet, something to explain the declining realness of the web. This tracks with my own usage of ‘the web’.
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    Essay
    10 Mar 2024
  • Feeding Alpacas

    For mother’s day in the UK we went to feed the animals at J and J Alpacas. This was a really nice experience and we also saw some lambs being born. Of course I couldn’t resist taking my Ricoh GRiiix along and snapping a few shots.
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    Photos Essay
    10 Mar 2024
  • Blogging and AI: A Personal Take

    I’ve been mulling over this clash between AI and the content it’s trained on for some time now. As a frequent user of AI and a regular online publisher, I see both sides of the coin. I’m well aware that the articles I put out there probably end up as fodder for some AI training algorithm. And while I know many writers are upset about their work being used this way without compensation, I personally don’t get too riled up about it.
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    Essay
    08 Mar 2024
  • My Enjoyment Is Always Last

    On their Bear blog, tiramisu writes about their family: it doesn’t matter what he thinks or feels about things like family vacations. He does them because they’re things he should do, and moments like that illustrate how differently our brains are wired. This cuts very close to home for me. I am a father, a husband and everything else first before I am an individual. That’s just the way I am.
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    Essay
    08 Mar 2024
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