The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, a documentary by Daniel Roher, Charlie Tyrell

9 April 2026

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, is a documentary co-directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell, who hope to make sense of artificial intelligence (AI).

But tune into the trailer, and hear the likes of Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Denis Hassabis, and others, utter lines such as “if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong”, or “I know people who work on AI risk who don’t expect their children to make it to high school.”

Along with, “it’s being deployed prematurely. There’s so much potential for things to go wrong”, and “China, North Korea, Russia, whoever wins is essentially the controller of humankind.”

Do we really know what AI is, or, more the question, what it will become?

Forget artificial intelligence, aliens may usurp humanity instead

8 April 2026

Jehan Azad:

When people are in competition, they work harder if the game seems winnable, and decrease effort if they think they’ll lose. It’s implied that because humans are so far behind aliens, we are uncompetitive and so should put in less effort.

There’s — somehow — an idea, published on Marginal Revolution, that technologically advanced extraterrestrials have placed alien drone probes, which evade detection, across the solar system. These devices — if they exist — are apparently keeping an eye on what’s happening on Earth.

I even double checked the date the article was posted: Saturday 4 April 2026. So it wasn’t some sort of April Fool’s caper. On the other hand of course, Artemis II was on the way to the Moon by then.

The question though, what should we do if there are surveillance probes within the solar system? And who knows, maybe aliens are watching us. Maybe extraterrestrials indeed exist — there’s surely at least one intelligent alien civilisation somewhere in the universe — and they’ve found us.

But why they don’t make their presence known puzzles me. All those UAP sightings over the last several decades have somewhat given the show away, have they not? Let’s see you, not your incredible interstellar-space travel capable vessels.

But if we don’t want extraterrestrials to wipe us out, or simply stop us travelling beyond the limits of the solar system — things they may want to do — we need to lift our game. Work harder. Be more ambitious. Even if we remain uncompetitive in comparison. We also all need to work together.

If that’s possible. And if it’s not, I think that’s why they call it the great filter.

What a situation to be in.

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astronomy, physics, science

The Indie Internet Index, another new directory of independent websites

8 April 2026

Hot on the heels of Monday’s link to indie/independent blog post aggregator Blogosphere, comes the Indie Internet Index. The importance of these sorts of resources cannot be understated at a time when the independent, open web, is under increasing threat.

Yahoo, cornerstone of pre-2000 old web, is bouncing back

7 April 2026

Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge:

After a long series of mergers and spinouts and an extremely odd moment where it was part of Verizon, Yahoo is once again an independent, privately held company. And it has big properties in sports and finance, and, against all odds, email, where it’s growing with young people. Gen Z loves Yahoo Mail, people. You heard it here first.

If we want a return — at least in part — to the ethos of the so-called “old web”, a period — debatably — spanning the mid-nineties through to the advent of social media, circa 2008 or so, then Yahoo getting back on its feet is surely a prerequisite. It seems strange to think now, twenty-five plus years later, that prior to 2000, Yahoo’s search engine was just about the only player in town.

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technology, trends, web history

Long term, moderate, coffee consumption might lower dementia risk

7 April 2026

Carly Page, writing for The Register:

Researchers from Mass General Brigham tracked more than 130,000 people for over four decades and found that those who regularly consumed moderate amounts of caffeinated coffee or tea had an 18 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who rarely touched the stuff.

The thing is coffee consumption has to be consistent — spread across decades — and in moderation. Two, maybe three, cups per day. But caffeine seems to be the active ingredient, not coffee per se.

Drinkers of teas with higher caffeine levels might also enjoy the same benefits. Matcha, and black tea, are among tea beverages high in caffeine.

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caffeine, coffee, health

Blogosphere: an algorithm free blog post aggregator

6 April 2026

The new (to me at least) aggregator of blog posts aptly and cleverly titled Blogosphere, is the creation of engineer and writer Ramkarthik Krishnamurthy:

But it’s really about something bigger: rebuilding a thriving community of independent writers and thinkers who share their thoughts freely, without waiting for an algorithm to decide who gets to see them.

A list of recent blog posts can also be viewed in a more simple text style format. In addition, both listings of posts have their own RSS feeds.

Blogosphere joins other fine IndieWeb/SmallWeb blog post aggregators including Blogs Are Back, Blogroll Club, Blogroll, Feedle, powRSS, Oceania Web Atlas, and ooh.directory, to name but a few.

Britons social media use declines, but not because they now write blogs

6 April 2026

Data compiled by Ofcom, being the Office of Communications, Britain’s communications regulator, says 49% of adult social media users now post content, compared to 61% in 2024.

The slow down in publishing content cannot, however, be attributed to an IndieWeb/SmallWeb led switch-over to personal websites or blogs. Unfortunately.

Rather, British social media users are concerned old, long forgotten, posts may surface in the future, potentially causing embarrassment, or hamper their employment prospects, should a recruiter view an old post in the wrong context.

Fears the Artemis II heat shield may not be safe

1 April 2026

On the eve of the launch of NASA‘s Artemis II ten-day Moon flyby mission, Maciej Cegłowski warns that the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft and command module, which the crew will use to return to Earth’s surface, is not safe:

In a nutshell, Camarda argues that NASA is demonstrating the same dysfunction that led to the Columbia and Challenger disasters. Faced with an unexpected engineering failure, it has built toy models to convince itself that the conclusion it wants to reach (it’s safe to fly) are supported by evidence. These toy models are not grounded in physics, but because they appear to be quantitative, they create a false sense of security and understanding, an epistemic fig leaf for management to hide behind.

Cegłowski is not alone, and concerns about the re-entry vessel’s heat shield have been widely flagged in recent weeks. At this late stage in proceedings it can only be hoped NASA’s assurances that the heat shield is safe can be taken at face value.

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astronomy, science, space exploration

Australia facing an AI led job ‘wipe out’ that no one is prepared for

1 April 2026

The latest round of redundancies in the tech sector could well be a result of excess hiring in recent years, even though they are being attributed to greater uptake of AI technologies.

Then again, AI may be the precisely why there have been so many job losses. And there could be more, much more, to come.

This is the sentiment being echoed by a number of IT professionals who are working with AI, including Shaon Diwarkar, a Sydney based Australian entrepreneur and software developer.

Diwarkar is the founder, and sole employee, of InboxAPI, an email app for AI agents, which itself makes use of numerous AI agents including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity, to carry out much of the company’s work.

People are saying “adopt AI or die”. If a large number of enterprises can be operated in the same fashion as InboxAPI, I can see why. Companies previously employing half-a-dozen staff, maybe more, could well be able to get by with one person, working in conjunction with several AI agents.

The AI future is now; we all need to start thinking about it.

Stephen Colbert overshadows The Lord of the Rings Shadow of the Past sequel

31 March 2026

A sequel to New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, made between 2001 and 2003, is in the works.

Much of the interest in the story to date though has centred on Stephen Colbert, who is to be one of the screenwriters. Colbert will collaborate with Peter McGee, his son, and Philippa Boyens, co-writer of the earlier film trilogy screenplays.

Colbert is presently host of The Late Show, an American TV talk show, but his tenure concludes this May. It is said that participating in writing the screenplay is a dream come true for Colbert.

And while the point has been raised, not quite so much has been said about the source material for the proposed sequel, being several chapters — three to eight — from The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of the three volumes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novel. In other words, the sequel to The Lord of the Rings films will be based on events occurring relatively early in the epic.

The new film, tentatively titled Shadow of the Past, will be set about fourteen years after The Return of the King, the final part of the series. The story will reportedly see several characters recount some of the adventures of the departed Hobbit, Frodo Baggins.

There’s a clever way to contrive a sequel to story, where one doesn’t really exist. But Stephen Colbert is co-writing the screenplay. We shouldn’t be thinking about anything else.

Why though can we not write new stories all together, without the need to rehash and remix, ones that have already been told? Of course we know. The Lord of the Rings, along with the likes of Star Trek, and Star Wars, have captive audiences who can’t get enough of these stories.

The thing is Star Trek and Star Wars are set in large universes (galaxies) where there is latitude — within some degree of reason — for storylines to unfold in numerous directions.

The Lord of the Rings is something else though, and the story seems complete with the existing novels. Even Tolkien was against the idea, having tried to write a sequel himself, but later abandoning the attempt. Why can we not defer to Tolkien’s judgement in this regard?

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