Showing all posts about technology
Apple Intelligence, merely smoke and mirrors?
15 March 2025
John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball:
What Apple showed regarding the upcoming “personalized Siri” at WWDC was not a demo. It was a concept video. Concept videos are bullshit, and a sign of a company in disarray, if not crisis. The Apple that commissioned the futuristic “Knowledge Navigator” concept video in 1987 was the Apple that was on a course to near-bankruptcy a decade later. Modern Apple — the post-NeXT-reunification Apple of the last quarter century — does not publish concept videos. They only demonstrate actual working products and features.
This is heavy duty.
Apple’s AI offering, Apple Intelligence, isn’t even artificial, it is very much non-existent.
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artificial intelligence, technology, trends
Are there alternatives to the misunderstood, confusing, Fediverse?
12 March 2025
The Fediverse is impossible to use even for people who understand what it’s trying to do, and most people have no idea. The answer: Stop trying to reinvent Twitter. It wasn’t a great idea! And figure out what really works in a decentralized system. It requires some serious brain work.
I’m supposed to understand the Fediverse — just another name for the web? — but sometimes feel the idea will go the way of the really simple RSS (just another way to follow a website). The concepts are easy for those in the know to comprehend, but seem to be utterly confusing for anyone else.
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social media, social networks, technology
digg, once front page of the internet, slips on AI superpowers for a return
7 March 2025
News aggregator website digg — styled with a lower case d, just like disassociated — was once known as the front page of the internet, before falling on hard times in 2010.
Reddit went onto assume the front page of the internet mantle, but who knows, digg might be about to reclaim the crown. That’s if a comeback, masterminded by original founder Kevin Rose, together with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, gains traction.
A splash page presently declares digg is “the front page of the internet, with superpowers.” The superpowers in question are likely the AI technologies that will play a part in curating content. This I look forward to seeing. A few of my posts made it to digg’s front page way back in the day, which meant traffic spikes for days, and of course, profile.
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The origins of the Linux operating system, by Lars Wirzenius
3 March 2025
A 2023 article about the early days of the Linux operating system, written by Lars Wirzenius, who worked with Linus Torvalds, in the early 1990’s to develop the Linux kernel:
After finishing the game, Linus started learning Intel assembly language. One day he showed me a program that did multitasking. One task or thread would write a stream of the letter “A” on the screen, the other “B”; the context switches were visually obvious when the stream of As became Bs. This was the first version of what would later become known as the Linux kernel.
A kernel is an integral component of an operating system, which has complete control over everything in the system.
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Drop the S, add a 16, the iPhone SE is now the 16e
28 February 2025
Aside from a two-year gap, from 2018 to 2020, I’ve had one or other of the iPhone SE handsets since 2016. A distinct feature of the SE models was their size. They were generally smaller than the other handsets in the iPhone range. I have big hands, prompting people to say to me, why the f**k did you choose an SE? I selected the SE precisely for its size. It fits perfectly into my back pocket. I also figured that the smaller size might deter me from using the device too often.
Well, that was back in 2016. The big hands, small handset combination meant — to my mind at least — the device would be that little bit more difficult to use. This especially while I was out and about, forcing me to wait until I was back at my laptop to do any heavy-duty sort of work tasks. That was partly successful at first, but given my phone also doubles as a watch, hands-off time was actually pretty low. Yes, I know: what ever was I thinking.
But now the SE is no more. The range has been superseded by the 16e. This name has been the subject of much conjecture, if that’s any surprise. Dropping the S, but keeping the E, means it is different from the old SE range, but only sort of. Adopting the 16 title is seen by some as bringing Apple’s SE-type handset offering into the annual handset update, meaning there will be a 17e next year. The SE-type handsets will no come along on a now-and-then basis.
That’s what some people are speculating anyway. What Apple ends up doing with the e range, remains to be seen. The 16e is a little bigger than the SE 2 — good, it’ll still slide nicely in a back pocket — and is the lowest priced handset in the 16 range. The camera remains similar to the SE’s, meaning I’ll still be unable to take high-definition video photos of the full Moon.
Not that’ll be switching over just yet, even though the 16e becomes available in Australia today, I think my old SE still a little bit of life left in it. From what I can tell, reviews of the 16e have been somewhat mixed, with some writers saying something like, “it’s good, but…”, while others are unsure why Apple even released the model. John Gruber meanwhile, describes the 16e as an iPhone for people who don’t want to think much about their phone.
That pretty summed up what I liked about the old SE range.
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smartphones, technology, trends
How would you like to go without technology for twenty-hours?
18 February 2025
This fund raising event, taking place in Perth, Australia, on Monday 29 March 2025, has been popping up in my news feeds in recent weeks.
Two hundred and fifty participants will spend twenty-hours in a space just two metres square, sans screens and devices. Talking is also out of the question. Instead, those taking part will write their thoughts in a journal. The goal is to raise a quarter of a million dollars to create two thousand and one hundred Mental Health Maintenance scholarships for young adults.
Twenty-hours without screens, devices, and talking? This sounds like an opportunity some people would want to jump at…
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What is a digital mending circle? A sign of the times I think
18 February 2025
Jack Cheng, an author based in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States, hosts a now fortnightly online get together called a digital mending circle:
What, you ask, is a digital mending circle? A virtual co-working session for the kinds of oft-neglected maintenance tasks that accrue around our digital lives. Instead of darning socks and patching jeans, we update personal websites, delete unused accounts, work on side projects, or even just catch up on email.
The sessions run for ninety-minutes. It’s a smart idea, blocking off a set amount of time on a regular basis, to devote to these sorts of minor, but still important, matters. I find myself trying to do things like this when a free ten to fifteen minute window randomly opens up.
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If social media was all you knew, would you start a blog?
7 February 2025
Tangentially related to yesterday’s post. This is something Jatan Mehta asked a few weeks ago. It’s an intriguing question. If social media platforms, Twitter/X, Instagram, etc, had remained as they started, maintaining chronological feeds, displaying content posted by accounts a member had chosen to follow in their feed, and keeping algorithms and political whims out of the mix, then no, maybe not.
As I wrote yesterday, I was there when (the original) Twitter landed. Quite a number of people who hitherto had been blogging, eventually went all in with the micro-blogging platform. It was just so much easier, plus no financial cost was involved. After a time, many of these people completely stopped posting content on their blogs, which all gradually disappeared as domain name registrations lapsed.
So it doesn’t entirely come down to come to the presence of social media, it comes down to what suits an individual. Maintaining a self-hosted website is more effort, but, to me, feels like second nature. Nevertheless, I still had a Twitter account, and even a Facebook page (it’s still there, somewhere), as having one for your brand was once a thing. However, I always regarded these social media presences as “out posts”.
They were extensions only of my online presence; not an integral part of it. Even back in 2008, there was the risk the service might shutdown abruptly, or the administrators might pull the plug on your account for whatever reason, without warning (or recourse). To some people, going “all in” on social media seemed foolhardy. Others were obviously prepared to take their chances, in exchange for the convenience the platforms offered.
But the social media platforms have changed a lot since 2008. All the more so in recent months. Being reliant on social media platforms has become a liability for some. Even the more “indie” platforms, such as Mastodon or Bluesky, are not, for various reasons, completely risk free either. The question then of starting a self-hosted blog, after being a lifelong social media user, now seems more a matter of necessity, rather than familiarity.
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social media, social networks, technology, trends
Bluesky reaches 30 million members, are you excited, or not?
6 February 2025
Social media and micro-blogging platform Bluesky passed the thirty-million member mark last week. It must be an exciting time for the Bluesky founders and backers. Exciting also for members who had been looking for an alternative to the likes of Twitter/X. I say this as one of the earlier members of Twitter, which I originally signed up for in 2007 I think. At that point though, Twitter was one of a kind; it was the first of its kind. It would spawn numerous competitors, including Plurk, and Identi.ca, though few struggled to gain traction. By the end of 2009, after being online four years, with about twenty-six million members, Twitter was the place to be.
Up until that point, I’d met close to one-thousand people, many of whom knew of me through this website. But a lot were people who’d just stumbled upon my account, and wanted to connect. Here was a place that was one, big, on-going, conversation. Making Twitter friends was easy in those early days (I could say the same about blogging). Twitter seemed like a big old friendly village. But once sky-rocketing growth came — something founders and backers has been eagerly anticipating — things began to change. And that was good. For some. Good, for instance, for the Twitter gurus, those taking it upon themselves to educate the rest of us about the “correct way” to use Twitter.
And of course of influencers. I’m not exactly sure when either arrived en masse, but I’d say many had made their presence felt by 2010. I think that’s when I began to lose interest in the platform: it’d become too much noise, and not enough signal. Having said that, I kept my account going, ticking over, for another decade, then some. But Twitter was no longer that big old friendly village. And nor, of course, could it stay that way. The platform had to grow, and begin making a return for its backers. Some of the people I followed, and who followed me, became gurus and influencers. Some became both. But by then, I wasn’t really interested in them.
I’d been using Twitter for three or four years, I didn’t need someone lecturing me, especially someone who’d spent less time on the platform than I had. As for the influencers, little of what they said meant much to me. But as a platform, Twitter had matured. It was no longer the exciting, pioneering, experience it had once been. I might — if I were more of a social media power user — call Bluesky exciting, but I could never describe it as pioneering. Twitter, for better or worse, is/was the only micro-blogging slash social media platform to stake that claim. Everything else now, like it or lump it, is a case of been there, done that.
Twitter opened up the frontier, blazed the trail. Kind of like the Telegraph Road, no? Twitter built the cities and the roads between them. Bluesky, Mastodon, and whatever else, may be new, relatively new, but they are picking up were Twitter left off. Micro-blogging slash social media platforms are no longer the undiscovered country. I don’t mean to run down Bluesky in particular. Thirty-million members in two years is impressive. But I dare say there are a few gurus and influencers among that number. Maybe too many, all bringing with them more noise, and less signal. It’s enough to make me fear we’re seeing an early-stage re-run of late-stage Twitter.
I might be a member of Bluesky, and Mastodon, but late-stage Twitter is not something I want to see a repeat of. Give me, I say, a tried and true, though hardly new, personal website, any day.
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history, social media, social networks, technology, trends, Twitter
Jump scares will keep you away from websites you want to avoid
29 January 2025
TabBoo is, I think, a Chrome only extension that helps deter you from visiting websites you don’t want to see, but can’t help looking at nonetheless.
Load the desired (or undesired, as the case may be) URLs into TabBoo, and each time you go to one of the included sites, a horror movie like jump scare image will appear at random.
I don’t know about anyone, else but after looking at the demo, it struck me TabBoo might actually make seeing some websites more fun, with a jump scare image appearing unexpectedly.
Something like this is also needed for social media, to help those trying to wean themselves off doomscrolling the socials day in and day out.
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