“Super weird to have innocuously added a silly personal anecdote to a post you didn’t realize was super popular… Only to have it cross your dash a week later and find out that like 12,000 people think you’re lying. ¯_(ツ)_/¯” www.tumblr.com/dduane/79…
“…. watching otherwise “progressive” people start to parrot jokes about like “Clanker with a hard R” and “screws will not replace us” and whatnot is like 🫥 “ www.tumblr.com/reverieau…
OpenAI is an arm’s-length subsidiary of Microsoft, and OpenAI needs GPT5 to convince Microsoft to keep the money flowing and not just swallow OpenAI outright. pivot-to-ai.com/2025/08/0…
Recent antitrust fervor is millionaire-on-billionaire violence. By Cory Doctorow. pluralistic.net/2025/08/0…
RFK Jr. wants a wearable on every America. That future’s not as healthy as he thinks. www.theverge.com/analysis/…
Victoria Song talks from personal experience how wearables can lead to obsessive thinking and create more problems than they solve. “My first three years with wearables wrecked my relationship with food.”
Song doesn’t even mention other important issues: RFK Jr. is a malevolent lunatic, possibly more dangerous than even Trump. RFK’s deranged theories about health could potentially kill millions of people. And he wants to put a surveillance device on every American.
One of the oldest known archeological sites on Earth, 12,000-year-old Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, meets up with conspiracy theorists and Joe Rogan. www.kpbs.org/news/inte…
Trump’s attack on Intel is a big dumb distraction. By my colleague Diana Goovaerts on Fierce Network. www.fierce-network.com/cloud/op-…
ChatGPT5 and other leading GenAI chatbots still fail hilariously at simple tasks like drawing maps and timelines of U.S. Presidents. But not always. www.theregister.com/2025/08/0…
On Reddit: What are some weird things you do at your desk because you WFH and would never do in the office? reddit.com/r/WFH/com…
Me: Nostril excavation. I’m a nose-pickin fiend. Gotta remember to keep my fingers away from my beezer when I’m on a video call.
A judge threw out the sex harassment suit against ex-San Diego county supervisor Nathan Fletcher. timesofsandiego.com/crime/202…
ChatGPT is bringing back 4o as an option because people missed it. People said ChatGPT 4o was their only friend. www.theverge.com/news/7569…
Masked government-employed thugs harassed and threatened a couple of American citizens for the crime of being brown while driving around looking for places they might want to go camping sometime. www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loca…
The couple, George and Esmeralda Doilez, voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024, and say they are surprised by his extremism.
AI Is Here, and a Quiet Havoc Has Begun. Everyone knows artificial intelligence will destroy a lot of jobs. But not how soon it is going to happen. By Peggy Noonan. www.wsj.com/opinion/a…
Will AI destroy jobs? Automation, in the past, has created more demand for knowledge work. Spreadsheets increased demand for accounting, even though much of the work accountants did was automated away.
Also, we don’t know whether AI can actually do these jobs that are being replaced. All we know is that people doing the hiring are panicking. Like Cory Doctorow says: AI doesn’t threaten your job. Your job is threatened by your idiot manager who thinks AI can do your job.
I am repulsed by AI chatbots' attempts to emulate human behavior, and have all of that switched off in my ChatGPT customization.
Maybe one day we’ll achieve AGI or artificial superintelligence, but I see no reason to believe it’s coming anytime within the next 25 years or so. I view these ideas the way I view other ideas I first encountered in science fiction, like contact with alien intelligence or time travel. Could these things happen? Most definitely. Yes. Absolutely. But we have no reason to believe they will happen anytime soon, or ever.
Meanwhile, I use ChatGPT to suggest passphrases, synonyms, do currency conversions, and suggest article descriptions, headlines, transitions, introductions and conclusions to reports, and do first drafts of the occasional LinkedIn post and business email. And more. I am very happy to do so.
But ChatGPT is not my friend and it’s certainly not my lover.
Dave Winer on ChatGPT5:
The big lie is that they want you to believe this is human. This is a carnival stand imitation of a human. It may be that it’s getting worse, or it’s always been this way and I’m seeing more clearly. It was and is still a miracle, but nothing like what was in the science fiction books.
Dave uses ChatGPT in ways very similar to how I do. He makes heavy use of it, but does not personify it.
The Grooms Smashing Wedding Cake in Their Brides’ Faces. “I was thinking, ‘We are going to be together forever. But I’m not going to be happy.’” www.thecut.com/article/g…
This is why wireless is so weird right now. www.fierce-network.com/wireless/…
Is “A Candle in the Wind” or “Highway to Hell” more emblematic of the state of wireless in the aftermath of T-Mobile’s US Cellular acquisition? My colleague Monica Alleven assesses the state of things on Fierce Network.
Unfortunately, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil still holds up, 40 years after its release. “Wildly inventive at every turn, Gilliam’s satirical vision of a cruel and violent bureaucracy rings eerily true of this political moment.” www.theverge.com/film/7193…
The U.S. Air Force will deny retirement pay to transgender service members being separated from the service. This is a disgraceful betrayal of people who pledged their lives to serve their fellow citizens. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/08/0…
Dear Leader did not do military service. He had bone spurs.