Matt Hill

I once avoided crashing into Baby Spice with my chair.

Sorry I'm not more open-minded about LLMs, it's just some fucking maniacs shoveled out a bunch of useless bloatware featuring that technology, did not give me any chance to opt out, reorganized the entire economy around it, zeroed out gains made by green energy, and made it impossible to buy RAM

Yesterday I read an interview with the singer in a punk band who uses GenAI to help with writing his texts.

Punk. The whole point of punk was that if you know how to play 3 cords badly and have something to say just fucking go for it.

This simply cannot happen. The work of creatives, who contribute billions to the UK economy, is not Keir Starmer's to give away. This would amount to a staggering betrayal.

🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work.

This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public.

Please spread the word.

🧵 1/4

The greatest risk of AI in higher education isn't cheating—it's the erosion of learning itself Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ba...

“Cognitive psychology has shown that students grow intellectually through doing the work of drafting, revising, failing, trying again, grappling with confusion, and revising weak arguments. This is the work of learning how to learn”
phys.org/news/2026-02...

I'm open for work again! I'm looking for interesting opportunities; want to work with me?

My experience includes web archiving and digital preservation, devops, and internal developer tooling. I'd love to put that experience to work for you and your team.

Robert Lowe’s challenge is real: Do we want a politics of care, or of hate? A commentator here drew my attention last night to a new policy paper from the Restore Britain group that has been launched by former Reform MP Robert Lowe, who now sits as an independent MP for Great...

This is probably one of the most important pieces I have ever written. Robert Lowe MP is proposing the forced expulsion of millions of people from the UK. Full-on fascism is being put before people. We have to decide. Do we want a politics of care, or of hate? www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/02...

I've never noticed this! How long have they been doing it!? :-)

Shrove Tuesday. The day that we go out and buy extra food to make extra things to eat to remember a time when people did the exact opposite.

Me: I'll use this precious hour to make some art
Mac: Do you want a useless OS upgrade first?
Me: No! Don't you...
Mac: Ha, tough, you're getting it anyway!
Mac: And I'll just lock this thing up until I'm done...
Mac: Wait, what are you doing!
Me, enraged: It's hammer time! [smashing noises...]

Some of us have been warning against relying on Discord for years. It's maddening that no-one listened.

I buy collectible books from around the world as a hobby. The packaging these books arrive in is... highly variable. Pro sellers do it properly, lots of wrap layers and sturdy boxes. The amateurs dump the books in what's effectively an envelope and expect it to arrive pristine. Absolute nutters.

I should clarify the above: that's a description of MP3 and why they don't always loop well. Wav flies don't have the extra space, so they loop perfectly. Also Ogg loops perfectly and us a better format than MP3 anyway, so use Ogg if you can.

It uses a similar compression technique as jpeg, whereby data is saved in predetermined block sizes. If the audio data doesn't fill the last block completely, it leaves some empty space which equates to a gap in the sound.

But yeah, if you want to really get into real conversations with people who enjoy your art, this sort of social media probably isn't the way to do it sustainably: stuff moves too fast. Discord et al probably better in that regard.

I've commented on your Quake stuff in the past, less so your other art because I don't get it (I'm mostly a "traditionalist" when it comes to art appreciation, no reflection on your talents which are clearly immense). Hopefully though, people who do get your art are giving you comments?

Cool, yes, it does seem that the algo isn't pushing things wide enough. I look at my Discover feed every now and then, and some new stuff gets through, but because I've muted a lot of art that I don't like, I guess I don't see much new if BlueSky mainly has that kind of art.

I'm an old dude and my art tastes are from a different era. A lot of art on here just doesn't float my boat, so I mute it. I do sometimes engage with artists whose work I enjoy, but mostly I hit like, repost it and move on. I guess the question is: what sort of engagement do you expect?

A little update to the above thread: my first edit on ISFDB was accepted. The correct artist, Michael Embden, is now attributed to this cover art. It's nice to help preserve the rich visual history of books and their covers. #books #bookart
www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.c...

Amazon just announced another round of 16,000 layoffs, months after it laid off 14,000 workers.

Reminder that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raked in over $40M in 2024.

And Amazon is spending at least $75 million producing and promoting the Melania documentary.

The system is rigged.

If you are a person who works in social media, and your job requires you to manage an account on Twitter/X, please ask your boss, in writing, to verify that you are required as a responsibility of your position to be on a platform that knowingly creates and monetizes child sexual abuse material …

Something I've been thinking about since the AI hype started is that the inevitable end game here is that human interaction will only be for people who can afford to pay for it. This isn't accessibility, it's automated inequity

So good. I'd love to capture the essence of this in a Quake level. Quake loves nooks and crannies.

Super cute! Might see if I can convert these to brushes and use as decoration in Quake maps.

The UK government didn't want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse. I'm not surprised | George Monbiot It took an FOI request to bring this national security assessment to light. For ‘doomsayers’ like us, it is the ultimate vindication, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Please spread this far and wide, as stories don't get much bigger than this. When the government blocks even the intelligence services from telling us we're heading for environmental catastrophe, you know we have a problem. A very big problem.
Thank you.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Nice. I see you've used Astro, how's that compared to 11ty? I'm late to the 11ty party and only learning it now as required for a project at work. But now I see many moving to Astro and I'm intrigued as to why...

Those sounds are great. Reminded me a lot of the original Lara Croft sounds. They really add to the collective atmosphere of the mod and give it a distinct vibe separate to Quake. Great stuff, thank you.

I can't imagine the time you've all invested in this. It's an immense achievement. I hope you're doing better (I saw the note in the credits room!). I just downloaded monolith mod and noted the interesting licence... Own game!? Please have a very long rest before starting that!

Ah I see, ok that makes sense. Thanks for the reply, and getting the article out there. It's kind of amazing to see a free community made project reported on with such vigour and enthusiasm in main stream press. I hope we'll see more of this.