I generally don’t re-share stuff that I find on Kottke because I figure everyone has already seen it there, but this ldial.org site is fantastic. I have been returning to it over and over all week long.
Maybe I’m biased from growing up in the 1980s when most local radio stations had not yet been bought and completely homogenized by a few huge national broadcasting companies, and the radio was still mostly listenable. That said, there are still great stations out there doing good work.
đź”— Is AI really trying to escape human control and blackmail people? - Ars Technica:
Consider a self-propelled lawnmower that follows its programming: If it fails to detect an obstacle and runs over someone’s foot, we don’t say the lawnmower “decided” to cause injury or “refused” to stop. We recognize it as faulty engineering or defective sensors. The same principle applies to AI models—which are software tools—but their internal complexity and use of language make it tempting to assign human-like intentions where none actually exist.
The switch in the KIN coffee mug warmer I bought a few years ago seems to be dying, as the thing now goes on and off somewhat randomly, and has a tendency to switch heat setting when I move my mug on and off of it.
So, I’m in the market for a new mug warmer.
I don’t feel like my needs are particularly complex. I need a small thing that sits on my desk, plugs in, and keeps my mug (and the coffee in it) warm through the morning. I don’t even really need multiple temperature settings—just “warm” is fine. It also needs to work with whatever mug I’m using.
đź”— Are We Cooked? - by John Warner:
Since ChatGPT first appeared, rather than relentlessly focusing on the limits of generative AI, I’ve instead been trying to make an affirmative case for the importance of writing in this age of automated syntax generation, but I didn’t know what case to make against GPT-5’s parlor trick other than “Who cares?”
I don’t know how to fight against something that comes without any coherent value proposition other than, “Look at how fuckin’ cool this shit is.” If I say it’s not cool, then I’m out of touch. If I say that how cool something isn’t a great metric for utility toward human thriving, I’m against “progress.” I began to wonder what I’m even doing here.