Engineer Brains

Stop Citing AI A response to ‘But ChatGPT said…’

Tired of people interrupting you while you're trying to explain something or just trying to do your job with "But ChatGPT said..." Things to say to get them out of your hair: stopcitingai.com

Hey, don't touch that! It's my box of emotional support cables!

Source: 9to5google.com/2025/10/29/y...

*End users* can opt out, and will be able to check in the player whether they are watching a real or upscaled video. But I am very curious, if you could put an exact cost on this decision in terms of kWh/atmospheric CO2, what the total would come to.

Saying "I don't know" Is a Sign of Seniority For Me Best engineers are honest and curious -> They openly admit when they don't know something, and they are curious to find out what the right answer is!

Saying "I don't know" Is a Sign of Seniority For Me newsletter.eng-leadership.com/p/saying-i-d...

The Case Against Generative AI Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age - First It Giveth Before we go any further: This is, for the third time this year, the longest newsletter I've ever written, weighing in somewhere around 18,500 wo...

Newsletter: This is The Case Against Generative AI, a comprehensive analysis of a financial collapse built on myths I’ll dispel, the markets’ unhealthy obsession with NVIDIA's growth, and the fact that there is not enough money in the world to fund OpenAI.
www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

Buying a wankpanzer is a sure sign of erectile dysfunction. Buying a custom plate for your Dodge RAM that reads "BONER-1" just makes it much, much worse.

Select all squares containing muffins, then click Verify to continue.

The AirPods Pro 3 Flight Problem — Basic Apple Guy Testing Apple’s latest noise-cancelling earbuds at 39,000 feet reveals a potential flaw most users won’t notice, until they fly.

Pro tip for AirPod Pro 3 owners: Don't use them for noise-cancelling on airline flights, it appears that as the jet flies higher the air pressure drops causing the tips to change shape, breaking the 'fit' and creating a feedback whistle. basicappleguy.com/basicapplebl...

Pftop laughing, you're nexpth.

My mother and grandmother were part of the letter writing campaign that saved Star Trek TOS. This photo was a thank you from the Star Trek folks and is an heirloom of my house.

A chalkboard sign outside a shop in Inversnecky reads: What has 4 letters, sometimes 9 letters, but never has 5 letters.

Correct.

Pre-launch photo of BYD's newest EV. Read more here: https://voi.id/en/mobil/527716 https://x.com/thinkercar/status/1945303062995984580 https://electrek.co/2025/07/18/byds-18000-kei-car-ev-revealed-up-close-with-new-details/

BYD's K-Car, due to debut shortly in Japan, is smaller than a Mini Cooper, gets about 180km on a single charge, and will sell for around US$18,000 (AU$27,000). I want one.

There's a LOT of fun to be had on this site. XD (takes me back to to the old Phoenix Wright "OBJECTION" site I used to mess around on.

A typical Telstra free public 'payphone' stand, shown here at the edge of a sea-side park. Completely free, you can talk to anyone in Australia for as long as you like, and doomscroll your youtubes at the same time. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/how-free-public-payphones-are-proving-to-be-a-lifeline-for-thousands-of-australians/a5vhrdebo

... Unless you visit Australia, where free public phones (that also provide free short-range wi-fi internet) are very common.

That moment in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan where Kirk turns to his faithful first officer only to find his chair empty.

The ghost of Vulcans past. We will always miss you, always remember you, Leonard. He lived long, and prospered.
#Spocktober

Silly lass rested her all-plastic shoes on the hot exhaust pipe.

How not to ride pillion on a motorbike:

Gmail Passwords Confirmed As Part Of 183 Million Account Data Leak As news of 183 million account credentials being leaked spreads, Gmail users have been confirmed as caught in the crosshairs. Here’s what you need to know.

Got a Gmail account? Might want to check it wasn't in the 180-million-odd accounts recently dumped on the dark web ... but change your passwords anyway.
www.forbes.com/sites/daveyw... archive.is/kz9r9
Check with the excellent free & safe Have I Been Pwned site:
haveibeenpwned.com

I think about this in how the guy who ran MySpace sold his company and then traveled the world doing photography, while the guy who runs Facebook never let it go and has gone out of his way to destroy democracy in order to gain more power.

If one person can donate enough money ($130 Million) to ensure the nations military get paid, that should tell you something about the obscene level of wealth inequality and greed in the country.

Minimalist display of Australian craftsmanship at the Parliament House gift shop, Canberra

Should you repair permissions? First we repaired disk permissions, until SIP made that impossible. Then we reset user permissions until Apple withdrew that advice. Next we ran repairHomePermissions in Recovery. Should you still …

Doing a permissions repair was a regular fix for Mac OS X (basically, before 10.11) but should you try to do it with modern macOS? Absolutely not.
eclecticlight.co/2025/10/27/s...

A very strange, very busy cockpit of some kind of flying craft. Through the window some bi-plane-ish things are leaving trails on a dark sky. https://mattiasadolfsson.com/lines-and-cables-thoughts-on-flight You may need to use the Wayback link, his site isn't always up: https://web.archive.org/web/20250324160311/https://mattiasadolfsson.com/lines-and-cables-thoughts-on-flight

The fascinating doodle-art of Mattias Adolfsson - this piece is called "Lines and Cables, thoughts on Flight". The detail is incredible!

Where's your coffee mug? Janeway always has a coffee mug in hand or near by.

Sony: Personal Audio - A Visual Journey 1955-2025 A visual tribute from Obsolete Sony celebrating more than seven decades of Sony personal audio devices!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/2o4...

A comet, tail, and background stars

Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon, 48.5 minutes of exposure across 97 images taken from Bear Divide in Los Angeles. This is the first time I’ve processed a comet observation like this so I had to do some quick learning and experimentation. Hopefully I’ll improve on this in the future.

flic.kr/p/2rBGQZv

& What's happening: Elon Musk confirmed that X will delete all heuristics from its recommendation system within six weeks. In other words, the familiar logic of likes, replies, and reposts that shaped Twitter for years is about to disappear. In its place, Grok, the platform's in-house Al model, will read and watch more than one hundred million posts and videos every day to decide what users see. At the same time, X is testing a new interface that keeps users inside the app even when they open external links.

How this hits reality: This marks the first time a major social platform has handed full control of content discovery to an Al model. Engagement farms, trend-hacking accounts, and traditional growth tactics may soon lose their edge. The new winners will be those who write in ways that Grok interprets as engaging, turning social media optimization into a new form of prompt engineering. This shift could reshape influencer strategies, ad targeting, and even political communication in a matter of weeks. • Key takeaway: X did not just change its algorithm; it replaced it with an Al reader. Your reach will soon depend on how fluently you can speak Grok.

Brace for another wave of x refuges

How Antarctica Became the Ultimate A-List Destination — And How to Do It Right From Lewis Hamilton to Prince Harry, stars are increasingly striking the White Continent off their bucket lists. Opportunities abound for the rest of us as well.

This is totally reprehensible! Who in their right minds would even CONSIDER Antarctica as a tourist destination?
Put on your asbestos thinking-caps before clicking this:
www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/li...

Frak this shit

wtf this article in @thr.com that reads like an advertisement for travel agencies, without even mentioning the environmental impact of the boom in tourism in Antarctica (starting with the richest, of course). 🗑️

Not up to par, guys.

Share a cartoon from the past of which kids today probably have never heard.
(Bonus points if you can tell me which show this was a segment of.)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWRg...

Jonny Quest Opening Titles In 1964, Jonny Quest aired to rave reviews as the first, adult action/adventure cartoon in prime time. It had cool jazz music by Hoyt Curtin and terrific, high contrast…

Check out the claymation remake, it is BRILLIANT! (and almost became an official reboot!)
vimeo.com/28278839