Dan Brickley

Doubling every century is also exponential

I’m half Chinese, but the most tiresome type of person on here wants me to apologize to asians for calling an anti-toxicity feature “zen mode.”

The flute is older than the wheel.

A flute fashioned from the bone of a vulture was discovered in a cave in Germany and thought to be 35,000 years old, making it tens of thousands of years older than the wheel.

Don’t reinvent the woodwinds.

“making improvements to the software's quality” #busted #breaking #latecapitalism

Ethan Mollick on X: "I have gamely kept posting a little on BlueSky, and I think the X commentary on BSky ignores a feature that shapes that site a lot nowadays: you can subscribe to a blocklist from someone else. People do this a lot It basically turned BSky into a bunch of separate Discord servers https://t.co/OiMtJyPsks" / X I have gamely kept posting a little on BlueSky, and I think the X commentary on BSky ignores a feature that shapes that site a lot nowadays: you can subscribe to a blocklist from someone else. People do this a lot It basically turned BSky into a bunch of separate Discord servers https://t.co/OiMtJyPsks

One of the most level-headed commentators about AI is apparently blocked by 146,000 bluesky users. Decentralised blocklists are important and useful but also a way of outsourcing decisions to someone who may be angrier and more polarised than you.

x.com/emollick/sta...

YouTube video by Apple Developer WWDC25: Verify identity documents on the web | Apple

Maybe Wallet APIs will bridge the gap eg youtu.be/R3EgtCX1r-E ?

I believe bluesky original design targetted this but its twitter/PTSD’d user culture is suspicious of the data access required to implement an alternative algorithm

GitHub - roostorg/awesome-safety-tools: A curated collection of open source tools for online safety A curated collection of open source tools for online safety - roostorg/awesome-safety-tools

*bird noises*

We heard from many developers and organizations that even finding open source tools that can be used for online safety is a challenge. Our first baby step is putting together this curated list of awesome safety tools.

We welcome contributions and feedback!
github.com/roostorg/awe...

@philarcher.bsky.social do you still have your PICSfail doc online somewhere?

Lots of open positions at GS1 Global Office right now at all levels. Brussels, New Jersey, hybrid, remote... are any of these you or someone you know? www.gs1.org/about/careers

ChatGPT agent: "create a PDF of a novel D&D adventure, add illustrations, make it super interesting and deep, add tables, etc"

"Fix the formatting, build it out more"

Got a 19 page PDF. Agent doesn't do layouts well, but pulls off building a coherent adventure, historically very hard for LLMs.

If anyone can explain to me why this is still such a common occurrence for people with apostrophes, hyphens, etc - please get in touch! I’m going to write about it

I think it’s more the backend systems around airline IT, rather than solely the web form developer. Does the “machine readable” bit of your passport have anything except “A”-“Z” and “<“?

Gephi Lite: a lighter web based version of Gephi | Alexis Jacomy | #DH2025

“contain” is an awkward choice of word. Did you mean “combat misinformation” or “include misinformation”?

Powerful study forthcoming in PETS showing how Apple’s claims that the Apple Watch cannot be made to interoperate with Android are false. arxiv.org/html/2507.07...

There are glimmers of hope aroubd digital Wallets

There's a real paucity of policy discussion on the left about the problems we're going to face if AI does in fact carry on getting better.

“Language that once clarified is now obscuring”: NewsGuard retires the labels “misinformation” and “disinformation” The end of an era? Since its launch in 2018, NewsGuard has been in the business of labels. The company has rated the reliability of online news and information, giving publishers "nutrition labels" t...

Whatever you think of NewsGuard’s approach or the usefulness of its labels, the decision speaks to how the internet, political landscape, and notions of collective truth have polarized beyond recognition since 2018. www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/lang...

[DSIT] ‘said Google Cloud … had “agreed to work with the UK government in helping public services use advanced tech to shake off decades old ‘ball and chain’ legacy contracts which leave essential services vulnerable to cyber-attack”.’

Wow. Nobody talks about Google Cloud’s charity work.

Sovereign AI AIRR launch opportunity: call for researchers

Are you a UK AI academic that wants to be GPU rich this summer?

The Sovereign AI Unit has a call out for high ambition proposals in our core priority areas.

Apply by July 7th! www.gov.uk/government/p...

It does at least give AI summaries a reason for existing, although if nobody then engages with the clickbait’s ads maybe there eventually won’t be anything to summarize…?

@jarkman.bsky.social fyi, “fundamental AI research (especially embodied AI)”

Tom Westgarth on X: "Many top academic AI researchers are GPU poor. The Sovereign AI Unit wants to change this story. We are seeking ambitious AI research proposals for UK academics aiming to take their research to the next level. Read below to find out more and apply 🧵👇 https://t.co/A9zYMwuK52" / X Many top academic AI researchers are GPU poor. The Sovereign AI Unit wants to change this story. We are seeking ambitious AI research proposals for UK academics aiming to take their research to the next level. Read below to find out more and apply 🧵👇 https://t.co/A9zYMwuK52

@tomwestgarth.bsky.social can you post x.com/tom_westgart... here?

“Boids Demo Reel” survived as a videotape cassette on my bookshelf for many years, then was digitized for a documentary around 2010. “Breaking the Ice” was on broadcast quality reel-to-reel videotape until 2023 when Tom McMahon and others worked on a remastering for the 50ᵗʰ SIGGRAPH conference.

Craig Reynolds (left) having just received the 2025 IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award from Yevgeniy Vorobeychik at AAMAS 2025 in Detroit, Michigan, USA, on May 22, 2025.

I enjoyed being invited to attend AAMAS last week in Detroit to receive the 2025 IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award for my 1987 SIGGRAPH paper “Flocks, Herds and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model.”

aamas2025.org/index.php/co...

#autonomous #agents #multiagent #boids #flocks

Excellent nature photos:

“A Photo Appreciation of Life in Our Oceans — A collection of images showcasing some of the incredible marine biodiversity across our blue planet”

#photography #nature

Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/photography/...

To expand a little, despite @danbri.bsky.social's best efforts I still can't get excited about AI or indeed horrified by the so-called 'hallucinations'. I am, however, fascinated by C-Suite hallucinations when elders and betters start displaying some form of primitive pattern recognition