In a heatwave the Tube is just about the last place I’d want to be.

Clearly people don’t understand: we simply didn’t brexit hard enough. /s

If you’ve heard the language spoken to you as a child, you might be surprised by your ability to learn it.

Past week was good, topped up by a nice weekend. Next few days look to be rather hot. Stay safe, folks!

Remember when email was useful? I remember when it was magical!

Time for a story from the ancient times. I had this idea and asked my professor for advice. He said he knew a person on the other side of the world who would know all about it. “This is his ‘email’ address.”

I had never heard about ‘email’ so I needed to learn what it was and how to send one. I wrote my message and off it went. The very next morning I had a reply. One of the best experts on a topic I was keen about had shared their thoughts from the other side of the world, just like that.

In that time, a long time ago as you’ll appreciate, that interaction was magical.

In an instant I understood the power of the Usenet. A while later and with a couple of additional protocols they started calling that the Internet.

I’m old enough to have gone through a number of these technology bubbles, so much so that I haven’t paid much attention to them for a fair while. This AI bs feels a bit different, though. It seems to me that lots more people have completely lost their minds this time.

Like all bubbles, this too will end up in the same rubbish heap.

Good to see you here @[email protected] !

The most eco-friendly phone is the one you have right now: make it last as far as possible, changing battery or screen if you have to, instead of buying a new one.

ML techniques have a lot of productive uses. Perhaps even LLMs and other generative approaches find their useful place one day. It takes effort and grit to find those productive uses and make them pay, which has been the case for any new technology I’ve seen come to the fore over the past good few decades. Chasing quick profits never delivered the results, and it never will.

Having seen it unfold, I’d struggle to assign the blame to a single party, because they were all dumber than the others. Here is how it happened:

• 1 stopped far too early in the junction to wait for 3, which was an entirely unnecessary wait anyway (1 being dumb)
• 2 moved to the lane even though 1 was blocking them (2 being dumb) — I presume 2 did that because 3 was far away and surely 1 would make their turn well before 3 arrived at the scene
• 3 drove close to 2 and blocked 1 instead of allowing 1 to turn, thus completing the gridlock (and trifecta of dumb)

It’s been a bit dicey here too.

Thank you, Ozzy. R.I.P.

I switched to Tidal a few weeks ago, primarily because of lossless streaming, but also fuck Spotify for your price hikes. Not going back.

This happens easily for big successful organisations. Over decades a strong culture aligned with how they succeed forms. Once the market changes requiring a culture change, a seemingly invincible company suddenly stumbles. They simply can’t respond even if they what they should change.

Ex. Rolls Royce CEO stated this phenomenon well: culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Daily Fail, consistent as always, so far up Tory arse one wouldn’t believe possible.

I made my decision to leave as soon as I saw how the app devs were treated. Been back only to edit all my comments to state what I think about spez & co. I’ve simply been waiting to add my little weight to the end of month exodus.

Both the American and rest of the world versions of their respective ball games are played on foot, as opposed to polo that is played riding a horse. The latter was originally invented by Ralph Lauren, as commemorated in ubiquitous t-shirts with a gentlemanly collar.

Fake! The spine is not going to carry weight.

The story of Nokia the company is long and meandering. Its roots go back to late 1860’s in the town of Nokia in Southern Finland, near the city of Tampere, from where they’ve gone through all sorts of businesses, including rubber boots and industrial capacitors to name just two. You might even find an old Nokia TV knocking about. The mobile handsets phase was in some sense but a blip in the story, although a spectacular one. I’m sure they’ll keep going in one way or another for a fair while still.

I give the Tories this: they leave nobody under false impressions about what they stand for. Keep the ground rent racket going, homelessness must be a crime, being sick is no reason to skip work, mental health issues are just life’s normal ups and downs, ad infinitum. Quite charming, aren’t they.