Ted Chiang, writing in the New Yorker (New Yorker link, Archive.org link) finds a neat analogy for what ChatGPT does with the information it was trained on: Think of ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg of all the text on the Web. It retains much of the information on the Web, in the same way that… Continue reading A blurry image…
Tag: internet
Nickeled-and-dimed
If Welcome to Web 3.0! is what the World Wide Web is destined to become a decade from now then I’m going back to Usenet and Gopher. [Via Memex 1.1]
Keming
David Friedman has had enough: A few weeks ago, on April 14th, the theme of the New York Times crossword puzzle was “keming.” I think it’s time we talk seriously about elevating that word from internet joke and finally adding it to the dictionary. To that end, I’ve started a petition imploring Merriam-Webster to add… Continue reading Keming
Dave Winer, Revolutionary
Dave Winer wants publishing platforms to stop locking writers into using the platforms’ own writing tools to compose content:1 I’d like to see someone like Substack or Medium, for example, who says “Write your stuff in your favorite writing tool, export it in Markdown, and give us the link. We’ll take it from there.” That… Continue reading Dave Winer, Revolutionary
In Pain
With hindsight, it’s so obvious… in the 90’s, computers would scream every time you went online. that was foreshadowing — soul nate (@MNateShyamalan) June 29, 2021 Nowadays they’re screaming just as hard (even louder, if anything), but by default we’ve muted that sound. Clever us. [Via RT by @BenHammersley]
The Soundtrack Of Their Census
Turns out that Canada’s 2021 Census has a soundtrack: 2021 Census soundtrack As Canada’s statistical portrait, the census is a reflection of who we are and what makes us Canadian. Listen to our Spotify and YouTube playlists while you complete your 2021 Census questionnaire to experience the different facets of Canadian culture through the sounds… Continue reading The Soundtrack Of Their Census
Worth<1000?
Dan Hon reminds his readers of Layer Tennis: Ben Hammersley [tweet] and Anil Dash [tweet] both chimed in later to remind me about Layer Tennis, which used to be both a website (perhaps initially community run, and then unsurprisingly and smartly sponsored by Adobe) and then a live event (Ben’s got a photo from 2009).… Continue reading Worth<1000?
An experiment
Matt Webb is running an interesting little experiment on his site, aiming to build an awareness that someone else is reading a given page at the same time as you are) and letting readers highlight a portion of the content on that page for other readers who happen to be around at the same moment… Continue reading An experiment
Newsletters
How on earth did the World Wide Web ever get to the point where this needed to be written: Newsletters; or, an enormous rant about writing on the web that doesn’t really go anywhere and that’s okay with me I know it’s very pretty to look at, but that’s an awful design to actually use… Continue reading Newsletters
Hashtag
Watching , I can’t help but notice that it’s unclear from the film’s storyline how far our protagonist’s lifestyle differs from that of a male social media influencer trying hard to keep their position near the top of the tree. In the near future the film depicts, are the menfolk participating in the influencer business… Continue reading Hashtag