For a research report, I’m looking for companies outside the tech industry that are doing interesting work with artificial intelligence. If that’s you, or if you have any leads, email me at mwagner@questex.com.
Anil Dash: The purpose of a system is what it does
Dash: Unlike physical machines, the institutions that make up society are never broken. They always do precisely what they were designed to do.
… when our carceral system causes innocent people to be held in torturous or even deadly conditions because they could not afford bail, we must understand that this is the system working correctly. It is doing the thing it is designed to do. When we shout about the effect that this system is having, we are not filing a bug report, we are giving a systems update, and in fact we are reporting back to those with agency over the system that it is working properly….
In my own life, I’ve found the greatest reluctance to embrace this idea, and strongest rejection of its obvious truth, comes from the politically moderate, centrist-leaning suburban folks…. “
Accepting the principle of POSIWID is “a prerequisite for optimism that actually has impact. Mindless optimism says, ‘this system is supposed to have a good output, therefore if we support it hard enough, it’ll do the right thing.’”
Kid Rock Threw the Party. MAGA Faithful Brought the Joy, Rage and Smirnoff Ice..
A music festival headlined by the pro-Trump musician offered a snapshot of a maturing American subculture, with a mash-up of hedonism, rebellion and beer-guzzling pursuit of happiness.
Frank Zappa was a musical genius and a difficult father. His four children, now in their 50s, are still grappling with his legacy; Dweezil doesn’t even talk with the others.
Canadian sci-fi writer Robert Sawyer has released a free version of the venerable WordStar word processing program
The app includes a DOS emulator so it can run on modern Windows, and Sawyer says it also supports Mac and Linux, according to Lia Proven at The Register.
WordStar users include Sawyer, who’s still using it, as well as Arthur C. Clarke, Anne Rice, George R. R. Martin (who still used it as of 2014), William F. Buckley Jr. and Ralph Ellison.
Sawyer’s project may be illegal — he declared WordStar to be abandonware but it may still technically be somebody’s intellectual property.
I was more of a XyWrite guy. I wonder whether there’s a version that runs on the Mac?
Facebook has decided I want to get notifications anytime somebody posts to any of the dozens and dozens of groups I’m a member of. Spoiler alert: I do not want to receive these notifications.
I have asked Facebook to change the name of the page I manage. Apparently, I have to ask for permission to change the page’s name? Because I’m five years old and Facebook is my auntie?
Facebook is such a shitty platform.
I think I may have figured out how to turn off Facebook notifications when someone reacts to one of my posts. If it works, this would make Facebook a million times friendlier.
TimWalzFixedYourBicycle.com. I’m just going to refresh that the rest of the day.
I just finished writing and submitted a major report for my editor’s review.
Proofreading it, I was amazed how many ways I could find to spell “Kubernetes.”