Do you enjoy forty-nine megabytes of extraneous data with your news?

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Do you enjoy forty-nine megabytes of extraneous data with your news?

26 March 2026

Shubham Bose found the publishers of some news websites — often reputable outlets — are forcing readers to download, in some cases, an additional forty-nine megabytes of needless scripts and data with their articles. This might explain why some of us need to keep our phones charging (a no-no I know) while reading the news:

When you open a website on your phone, it’s like participating in a high-frequency financial trading market. That heat you feel on the back of your phone? The sudden whirring of fans on your laptop? Contributing to that plus battery usage are a combination of these tiny scripts.

We need a browser with an all-scripts kill switch, such as the Quiche Browser (presently for iPhone only), which has the option to include a JavaScript (JS) kill switch on its tool bar.

Sure, we can sift through our browser settings and disable JS, but a one click button, on the interface, is a more elegant solution. Kill switches shouldn’t stop at JS though, give us more. How about AI slop, and auto-play video, for starters.

Talk the talk but cannot circle back and walk the walk

26 March 2026

Researchers at New York’s Cornell University have devised something called the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale. Long story short, the scale measures how convincing corporate jargon and buzzwords are. Offending terms include actualise, adaptive coherence, credentialing, pressure-test, and the particularly loathsome align, when agree would do.

A high score on the scale, meaning someone cannot hear enough of this… language, suggests they may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer:

People who scored higher on the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale tended to perform worse on tests measuring analytical thinking, cognitive reflection, and fluid intelligence. They also made poorer judgments in workplace decision-making scenarios designed to mimic common business problems.

That’s a conclusion that will come as no surprise to anyone in this corner of the web.

If like me though, you struggle to comprehend corporate speak, much less talk or write the lingo, this translator compiled by Kagi will help should you, for whatever reason, need to talk the talk.

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humour, language, trends

The 2026 Oscars: the end of Hollywood, and film, as we know them?

20 March 2026

From film and TV writer David Chen’s review of this year’s Academy Awards:

The concept of a 3.5-hour broadcast where you watch big movie stars accept awards and deliver heartfelt speeches is no longer as desirable or profitable as it once was.

The Oscar’s TV audience has been steadily declining for about ten years, as more people have taken to watching only segments of the ceremony on YouTube and social media. Indeed, from 2029, the awards will screen exclusively on YouTube, but, as Chen notes, this isn’t solely a reflection of the changing viewing preferences of those watching the ceremony:

While I think that [YouTube] will actually be a better home for the telecast in many ways, and may even lead to some innovation for the broadcast (a man can dream), it’s also yet another sign of the fading primacy of movies as the center of our culture.

This is a perturbing thought. Is our appetite for feature length films diminishing in favour of the short-attention-span-friendly brain-rot video clips posted on social networks? Film production and streaming company Netflix think they know the answer. In a recent interview with podcast show host Joe Rogan, American actor Matt Damon shared some of Netflix’s production advice:

Damon told Rogan that the streamer asks film-makers to dumb things down a little, adding a big action set piece early on to keep viewers interested, and advising them that: “It wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching.

Enough said?

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film, film production, Oscars, trends

AI spam, the latter day internet, force digg.com offline for now

19 March 2026

digg.com, social news aggregator, and once the front page of the internet, has closed its doors for the duration, and let a number of staff go, just months after officially relaunching.

digg* says an onslaught of AI agents, and automated accounts, are behind the decision, together with an internet, that in 2026, is different. That’s sure something a few of us can attest to.

And after a long time out of circulation, they’ve found making a comeback a little trickier than anticipated, according to a post presently on the site’s frontpage:

We underestimated the gravitational pull of existing platforms. Network effects aren’t just a moat, they’re a wall. The loyalty users have to the communities they’ve already built elsewhere is profound. Getting people to move is a hard enough problem. Getting them to move and bring their people with them is something else entirely.

The good news for those who had looked forward to digg’s return is the shutdown is meant to be short lived. In addition, original co-founder Kevin Rose, who helped revive the site, will shortly commence working at digg in a full time capacity. digg adherents can only hope his presence will help steady the ship in the waters that are today’s internet.

* according to digg’s Wikipedia page, the site’s name is stylised in lowercase. Just about all the references I could see featured an uppercase letter d. I’ve gone lowercase here, in the same way disassociated is stylised with a lower case d.

There is nothing irksome than styling disassociated with an uppercase d, and the same goes for digg.

Buzzfeed facing bankruptcy after AI gamble unravels

19 March 2026

Victor Tangermann, writing for Futurism:

The company reported a net loss of $57.3 million in 2025 in an earnings report released on Thursday. In an official statement, the company glumly hinted at the possibility of going under sooner rather than later, writing that “there is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

This is distressing news. I knew a couple of former Sydney based Buzzfeed writers, and even visited the office on one occasion. Numerous media outlets are working with AI agents, but few are allowing them to run the news desk. I’m hoping Buzzfeed is able to work their way through this difficulty.

Hell hath no fury like an AI agent scorned

7 March 2026

Scott Shambaugh:

An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library. This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats.

If one AI agent can locate incriminating information about someone, and try to use it against them, it follows other AI agents will do the same.

AI to micromanage fast food restaurant workers

1 March 2026

Emma Roth, writing for The Verge:

Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees. The voice-enabled chatbot, called “Patty,” is part of an overarching BK Assistant platform that will not only assist employees with meal preparation but also evaluate their interactions with customers for “friendliness.”

Before the AI powered robots are able to take the place of people working in front line roles in restaurants — the day cannot be too far off — they are going to tell workers how to do their job.

AI powered traffic cameras enforce road laws with an iron fist

1 March 2026

Emma Wynne, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

When Perth mother Lisa Taylor’s 11-year-old daughter slipped one arm out of her seatbelt, the family had been on the road for over two hours, returning from a holiday in Dunsborough over the Christmas period. The transgression was picked up by one of WA‘s new AI safety cameras, which detect people not wearing or incorrectly wearing seatbelts and using mobile phones.

Police in the Australian state of Western Australia (WA) issued thirty-one thousand infringement notices to drivers in the month commencing early October 2025.

AI technology installed in road cameras were intended to target drivers handling phones, and improper seatbelt usage, but appear to have a keen eye, having detected numerous traffic violations.

I’m not aware of the use of AI equipped road safely cameras in other Australian states, though they may be present, but the WA initiative is looking like the future of traffic law enforcement to me.

Problematic Instagram use: redefining the nature of addiction

19 February 2026

Kali Hays, Regan Morris, and Peter Bowes, writing for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC):

The head of Instagram has defended his platform against claims it caused mental health damage to minors, arguing in a California court that even seemingly excessive use of social media does not equal an addiction.

Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram (IG), made the remark during a court hearing in Los Angeles, in the United States. Plaintiffs allege IG, along with other social networks, including YouTube, are little more than “addition machines”.

One young woman, who was a minor at the time, claimed she once spent sixteen hours in a day, looking at IG.

I’m not sure how anyone can brush that sort of usage off as “problematic”. Four to five hours maybe, but not sixteen. How can that be anything other than an addiction?

In regards to IG, the problem has become worse in recent years with the proliferation of usually low quality (content wise) video clips, and numerous posts making dubious, though intriguing claims.

It’s easy to get carried sometimes, and waste more time than intended scrolling through some of the stuff (I hesitate to say content) on the explore tab.

Last year I signed up to Foto, a simple photo-sharing app, that IG used to be like, sans the filters, many years ago now. I check in on Foto once a day, and am unlikely to spend no more than a few minutes there. I have a quick look at the latest posts, and that’s it.

There’s no doomscrolling the app for hours on end.

I suspect though that sort of usage is precisely what the large social networks consider to be problematic. Of course then there is no such thing as social media addiction, when visits of several hours, not minutes, are the norm on some platforms.

Those thinking AI will reduce their workloads might be mistaken

11 February 2026

Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye, writing for Harvard Business Review:

In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it. In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so.

Earlier generations of our families were probably told computers would bring about two-day work weeks. In reality all computers did was free up time to do yet more work.

AI is tracking that way. It might have seen off some aspects of our work, only to allow us to take on other things. But these are early days, and it could be there will be little AI cannot do. Eventually.

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