Use the AI compass to chart your AI archetype

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Use the AI compass to chart your AI archetype

7 July 2026

Find out where you sit on the AI compass, which is a little similar to the vote compass.

There are thirty AI classifications including sceptic, Luddite, conscientious objector, doomsday prepper, founder, and prophet. Each has a patron saint. Mine is Amanda Askell, though I’m not entirely sure I agree with my archetype, “The True Believer”, but who knows.

Simon Willison — should we dub him Mr AI? — is, according to the compass, “The Garage Tinkerer”, whose patron saint is none other than… Simon Willison. What are the chances?

Australian authors, songwriters, musicians demand payment from AI companies

7 July 2026

Individuals, educational institutions, and other organisations have to make payment in some form or other to access the work of writers, musicians, artists, and other creatives.

It seems like a naive question, but why should it be any different for the tech companies who are presently helping themselves to whatever material they can get their hands on, so as to train their AI agents? Particularly if the same tech companies expect users to pay to access their AI products.

Of course all writers, artists, musicians, etc, wherever they are, should be receiving compensation if any of their work is being used to train AI agents.

AI does not so much take work away as it changes the way we work

30 June 2026

CJ Chilvers:

Before influencers, there were bloggers. Before bloggers, there were TV stars, rock stars, and movie stars. Call them whatever you want, but individuals have always been the drivers of engagement and trust.

This is a point Alex Cowen reiterated in a recent talk given in the UK. It seems to me you don’t so much need a great of knowledge of AI — hard to gain when the technology is ever evolving — than you do a distinct personal brand. In whatever your field of endeavour is.

Cash strapped Australians yearn for the ‘happy’ days of COVID lockdowns

10 June 2026

Tangentially related to the previous post. Data recently published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) suggests some Australians felt better off during the COVID pandemic, despite lockdowns and other restrictions on their movements, than they do today.

In 2026 people are dealing with cost-of-living pressures, reduced real income, and the potential threat to their jobs from AI, among other things.

In contrast, during the pandemic, many Australians were the recipients of government UBI-like payments. Some were possibly also content with the prospect of not having to work, even if they couldn’t go too far from their homes.

Whoever could have thought some people might one day look on that difficult period with fondness?

The vinyl revival spreads to CDs, DVD, other physical media

8 June 2026

Some people are tired of streaming, says Iskhandar Razak, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

I’m not sure if it’s the actual process of watching, say, a movie online, or having to deal with streaming content providers, that’s fatiguing viewers, it sounds like a bit of both

I’m hardly the biggest consumer of small (not so small) screen media, it’s usually after nine in the evening before we lounge back on the sofa to watch something. The good news there, with such low consumption, is we only need to deal with one (subscription) streaming provider.

We’re fortunate to also have access to the likes of Kanopy, and iView, and their extensive repositories of movies and other shows. But I don’t even regard streaming as streaming, it’s simply a means by which to view a show or movie.

Others see things differently though. Some think streaming is too transient. They have come to miss owning physical copies of the films and shows they enjoy, and keeping them in a home library, sitting a on a shelf.

Surprisingly perhaps, the sentiment is not limited only to people with fond memories of watching movies on DVD‘s twenty-years plus ago. Many buyers of DVD’s and — incredibly — VHS cassettes, in 2026, are in their twenties.

It’s one thing to own all this physical media though, but a way to view it all is still needed. I assume VHS players, in working condition, are available. We still have a modest DVD collection, but need to hook up a small DVD player to a laptop, then to the TV screen, if need be, to watch them.

The DVD player, which isn’t much bigger than a DVD really, is fine. I’m not sure I’d be in favour of a larger player, and having to haul it around, let alone a VHS player. Plus a whole load of DVD’s and VHS cassettes. I’m having flashbacks to VHS cassette tape getting jammed in the player, and rental DVD’s glitching because of damage to the disc.

Streaming has made those particular playback hassles a distant memory. But that’s just the situation here. For others though, it seems owning a large collection of physical media, in addition to the required playback paraphernalia, adds to the viewing experience.

It has also offered a lifeline to some retailers of physical media, whose businesses were brought to the verge of collapse by streaming.

DuckDuckGo sees user uptick following Google plans for an AI search box

4 June 2026

Search engine DuckDuckGo has experienced a noticeable surge in users in recent weeks, says Rebecca Bellan, writing for TechCrunch.

Many of these new arrivals are concerned about Google’s proposals to significantly change its search experience, through the use of AI, something I think is being called AI Mode.

DuckDuckGo said U.S. app installs went up 18.1% week-over-week on average during the May 20 to May 25 period, compared to May 13 to May 18. The company said that growth was sustained for six consecutive days and peaked at 30.5% on May 25. On iOS, the rate of install is even higher, with week-over-week growth hitting a 33% average, peaking at 69.9%.

In addition to its regular search engine, DuckDuckGo also offers a completely AI-free search option.

Dickover: a name for annoying website call-to-action popups

1 June 2026

John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball:

You know what a dickover is, even if you didn’t know what to call it (until now). If you use the Internet, you encounter them every day. They’re popovers, but dickheaded. The web is absolutely lousy with them, and mobile apps present them too, with increasing frequency.

I’ve written before about my frustration with these popup box thingies, that present on the screen, before you even know what website you’re on. But dickovers — is there a way we can ratify this as the official name for them? — have been around for a long time, decades by now.

But it makes me wonder: is the blogosphere to blame for their prevalence today?

Popup boxes, in the form of a separate browser window, that usually carried advertising of some sort, were a scourge of the early web. Eventually, browsers allowed users to block them. But the call-to-action popups that followed, are something else. Not so easy to block out.

They began appearing on some of the blogs I read regularly, usually as a means to goad readers into signing up to a newsletter. In response, I’d ceased reading the blog if an RSS feed wasn’t available.

Maybe this is why I remain averse to newsletters. I’m subscribed to maybe half a dozen, tops. Tell me though call-to-action popups, AKA dickovers, didn’t escape from the old/early blogosphere, only to run rampant like a virus, infecting a large, and growing, number of websites?

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AI: you cannot live with it, you cannot live without it

1 June 2026

Daniel Jalkut:

My take on AI is, essentially, everybody who’s against it is too against it and everybody who’s for it is too for it.

From where I sit, somewhere in the middle of this, that’s the way it looks.

The abundance of available information is why you read less books

30 May 2026

Arnold King, writing at In My Tribe;

I now read many fewer books than I did ten years ago. This not because of “the phones.” It is not because I have lost my intellectual mojo. It is because alternative sources of information have become more compelling.

Essays, streaming video, podcasts, and (like it or not) social media, are among the alternative sources King refers to, and not even works of fiction are immune.

In short, there’s a lot more information in the world today, compared to even twenty-five years ago, and books are no longer the only way to consume this knowledge.

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British study finds individuals mostly responsible for ill health in later life

30 May 2026

Amelia Hill, writing for The Guardian:

Individuals bear at least 80% of the responsibility for their ill health in old age, according to a report aimed at challenging the belief that physical decline is either inevitable or primarily the responsibility of the state.

This finding is from the Oxford Longevity Project, conducted in the United Kingdom.

Eighty-percent sounds high to me, considering people are not always in control of the circumstances they might find themselves in.

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