Doug Winter

BBC Radio 4 Extra - The State of the Art by Iain M Banks A spaceship arrives on Earth and finds a planet obsessed with alien concepts like 'money'.

Here's a link to the page on BBC Sounds. Should be able to listen live at 1600 GMT today (07/03/2025), it's 45mins long and due to be available online in full shortly after broadcast.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

does anyone know this story?

the corporate form actually dates to ancient Rome, where the idea - of an organisation being treated in law as a single person - gave rise to the creation of universities and colleges, guilds and political parties

BYD just killed your EV argument with a battery that competes with gas engines The Chinese carmaker's new batteries feature a 5-minute charge and 621-mile range, plus a 620,000-mile lifespan and lower prices.

If this turns out as described, this is massive news.

www.fastcompany.com/91503415/byd...

I really do dislike this aggressive informality in corporate comms sometimes

We're 18 months off 'uwu it seems you've been a smol bean and not paid the mortgage. We're evictereening you in 14 days'

dudes rock

It Wasn't Fascism All Along Conservatism was a distinct ideology but it is dead and it is not coming back.

"Despite endless obfuscation, sanitizing, and sanewashing from the mainstream media, the debate on if we’re living though a resurgence of fascism is now over. And, honestly, it’s been over for some time. We are." www.liberalcurrents.com/it-wasnt-fas...

Let's talk about "kek".

1/

having used claude extensively for the past couple of months, i think there is still a lot of value to understanding your code and steering it intentionally. the amount of incidental complexity claude accumulates otherwise (which mostly results in bugs that it can't ever fix reliably) is staggering.

Today is six weeks since Trump said we would have details of the Greenland deal in two weeks.

New York considers bill that would ban chatbots from giving legal, medical advice | StateScoop A bill under consideration in New York would provide a private right of action, allowing people to file lawsuits against chatbot owners who violate the law.

The latest NY chatbot bill would bar chatbots from conveying information that could fall within the scope of a licensed profession.

It’s basically a censorship bill disguised as licensure protection.

statescoop.com/new-york-bil...

Calif. lawsuit accuses Meta of sending nude video from AI glasses to workers An investigation by Swedish and Kenyan journalists prompted the lawsuit.

So this is fun or horrifying.

If you wear META's smartglasses, there's a significant chance that META subcontractors will be able to see everything you do through your glasses, and I mean everything.

That thing you do, that you hope no one knows you do, yeah META knows about that now.

before I got into professional analytics work (in 2020) I was a believer in the "technosurveillance state" or whatever, that like, Capitalism was collectively surveilling us and inferring all of our actions with basically magic AI tech

it was disillusioning to learn that wasn't real (and it's not)

I just did the maths and I pay $7.59 a gallon for diesel anyway. Not that I ever have to drive anywhere.

Hey this is like the most serious oil guy i know and this is worse than i expected

This is super thoughtful. I largely agree though I would add that I don't actually think AI is as much of a wild west as we think. We can apply the laws we have on the books to the providers of the AI tools.

We did that with the DoNotPay bot that was engaging in UPL.

Have they always been like that, or is this a new "disordered discourse" type thing, do you think?

I fear I must have a romantic view of the place.

It's France and Italy that surprised me.

Your regular reminder that the UK is in fact a high trust society and anyone who implies it isn’t is either selling you a pup or has bought one.

"The British State is unable to articulate a consistent strategy with regard to basic financial principles" appears to be a thing which has been going on for ages and nobody cared.

Yeah, experienced users are pretty good at working around the default behaviours, but it is very poor design that we have to.

Combined with people seeking help for complex mental health needs it's borderline criminal how little care has been taken.

Which is a shame, they could be better.

Don't forget immanentizing the eschaton.

Social media content and Armageddon, two sides of the same coin.

Developing a new hermeneutic: AI cannot create art or replicate the works of man but it can write code because code is outside the light of God

Currently helping an elderly family friend figure out if an email is a scam (which it obviously is) and hey, people who make mobile email apps, it's a dark pattern to not make the email address of the sender visible without needing to click on the little arrow thing.

Just thought you should know.

Yes it has completely upended software engineering. Baffling to see people claiming it doesn't work.

Politely fried tf outta my man

Very good, and brief.

I have a steam deck and never take it anywhere and also use it all the time. It's great.

Every incoming US President has to be briefed about the British believing in the "special relationship", because no one in the US has ever heard of it.

If you smell toast, you might be having a stroke... a stroke of luck that is. It’s toast time.