mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06
Ed Zitron writes some of the most lucid and well-reasoned commentary on the AI bubble, specifically around LLMs. This interview with MacRumors provides a good summary of his key criticisms. The Apple-specific angle is a neat bonus.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LLM
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/07/27/ed-zitron-apple-watch-it-burn-ai-bubble-bursts/
The threat of AI-generated (and not human-reviewed) content explained in one paragraph:
#AI #GenAI #ArtificialIntelligence… (1/3)
BMW's new X5 lacks door handles, offering touch-sensitive "fins" instead.
These doors won't open if the power's out. Emergency responders lament how difficult it is to open these doors in a crash. And people struggle with grasping the mechanism. As the article's writer states, this is "funtional nonsense." Why, then, did this deeply flawed #InteractionDesign ship at all?!
“Within Microsoft Word, you’ll find a free #accessibility checker.”
I'm not so sure whether "free" is the appropriate adjective here. "integrated," sure. "free," though? 🤔
Public Service Announcement:
There is no hyphen in “Parmigiano Reggiano."
You're welcome.
"An Evening With John Petrucci & Jordan Rudess" is a stunning album of two #ProgMetal giants, demonstrating how intense and lyrical a duet of piano and electrical guitar can be. Especially the ballads — “Truth," ”State of Grace,” and “The Rena Song” — are true, and truly majestic, gems.
P.S.: I'd really love to hear what @rotnroll666@mastodon.social thinks of this.
Yet again, I'm running into the situation that I want to pick beneficiaries for an investment account, and the site requires entering a Social Security Number, and the phone field only supports US-format numbers.
Thank you so much to the narrow-minded designers, who very obviously cannot possibly imagine that an immigrant to one of the world’s most prominent immigrant nations would want to elect a beneficiary who lives outside the country.
Think of @gruber@mastodon.social what you will, but: nuggets of (#UX) wisdom such as this one could use a lot more "publicity" than being featured on one guy's blog. And yet it's his writing that quotes them all the time. 🤷♂️
"Good #documentation is a tell-tale sign of a great product and a company that puts users first. There exist good products with bad or no documentation, but there are very few poor products with great documentation.”
Source: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/12/kagi-snaps
Well, then again, as we all know, (too) many fellow-Americans have zero problems shrugging off everyday violence — including regular mass murder — whereas anything even remotely related to sexuality is Of The Devil and will undoubtedly lead to the very end of our civilization. 😕🤷♂️ https://ohai.social/@redsad/116166544639635994
Marvin Gaye's “What's Going On,” one of the greatest albums of all time, was released 55 years ago today. And its messages are just as relevant today as they were back then.
Chain of events:
1. Heard the term “razzmatazz" in an aside during an online presentation.
2. Searched Wikipedia for that term to find more info on its etymology.
3. Failed to find a dedicated article for the term, but…
4. … saw reference to an album by that name by band, “I Don't Know How But They Found Me”
5. Looked up the album on Apple Music. And…
6. … have been listening to that album with delight for a while now.
Internet rabbit hole bliss. It still happens. 😎
Among all the non-skeptical hype about #AI, it's a silver lining that one of the major players is doing the right thing. And it's not discounting any issues with #Anthropic, but it does deserve respect that they walked away from massive revenue.
In a similar vein, Sam #Altman has demonstrated with his instant sucking up to the Trump regime that _his_ “moral” compass will always point to where the money is.
If you do want to use AI, at least make sure it is not #ChatGPT. https://mastodon.nu/@janhoglund/116171711409396779
The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA is a magical place if you're at all interested in the history of computing and digital technology. The best way to experience it is, of course, to visit in person. Thanks to a project dubbed #OpenCHM, you can now also explore plenty of the museum's vast collection online!
A blog post, "A Collection Unbound" provides some neat behind-the-scenes info on OpenCHM, and makes for a good starting point of your explorations:
So often, minor things have a big impact on #Usability.
In this case, I was stuck on this screen, because the Reject All and Accept All buttons only change the selection of the toggle switches. They do not, however, submit the selection and dismiss the window. For that, you need to tap that near-invisible Confirm button at the bottom.
That's the result of applying primary button appearance to secondary buttons, and vice versa.
And now imagine what it means that LLMs are also trained on this…
Here's an interesting reality check to counter all the AI hype we're seeing. My favorite quote from the article is this one:
"I heard this from my students all semester. They use AI, and they hate AI. This stuff is the future, and it’s a bad future, and they’re just kind of stuck with it."
"Kind of stuck with it" is, of course, just the other side of the coin from the proponents' "AI is inevitable, just get over it." It's obvious, though, which side has more to gain.
The Orion browser by @kagihq@mastodon.social has taken a minor versioning step forward from 1.0.8 to 1.1.0.
Consider me exited!
During last month's Global Accessibility Awareness Day (aka #GAAD), Allyant offered an unusual webinar. Where plenty of companies tout their products in thinly-veiled sales pitches, Allyant ran a discussion panel made up of five of their employees. This quintet of #accessibility experts discussed their everyday lived experiences as people with disabilities: what products work for them, what products don't, and why. (1/4)
You live in California and you care about privacy and the personal freedoms that open-source software in hardware devices provides? Great. Please read this information by the @eff@mastodon.social on bill AB2047 about requiring 3D printers to (try to) block printing gun parts, and urge your state senator to oppose the bill:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/we-can-still-stop-californias-3d-printer-surveillance-scheme
