Andy

I once read an analysis of systems failure that keeps flickering to mind. To paraphrase, it went: as humans, we're usually pretty good at identifying the part of a system that isn't working. Then, having found it, we work aggressively to push it... in the opposite direction it needs to go to.

Worth a watch:

Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

I'm pleased to announce Brainy, a MIT licensed graph+vector DB built in collaboration with the brilliant @dpsifr.bsky.social. Brainy is the backend for @sodal.io's community intelligence platform (more soon), providing an extensible, local-first way to model and interact with the data around us.

Comic. [block quote] “Far better an approximate answer to the *right* question, which is often vague, than an *exact* answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.” -John W. Tukey, The Future of Data Analysis (1962) [caption] Happy Approximate Birthday to John Tukey, author of my favorite statistics quote, who was born 110.000 years ago sometime this week.

Tukey

xkcd.com/3104/

Testing this out. Took about ~5 minutes to get an account setup and link everything 👍

This discussion in this thread is a must read.

I want an "invitational silence" button.

Deus Ex Machina On the myth of AGI

Spent the past week contemplating ai-2027.com

This is where I landed: blog.andyschwab.link/p/deus-ex-ma...

Deus Ex Machina On the myth of AGI

Thanks for sharing this. I ended up spending a ~week working out a response. blog.andyschwab.link/p/deus-ex-ma...

Mastodon-to-Bsky bridged usernames remind me of old FidoNet-routed email addresses

Apple, tell me 32GB iPads are EOL without telling me they're EOL.

To friends.

1st Lt. Scott Milley - Nov 30, 2010 - Baraki Barak

Sgt. Maj. Barbaralien Banks - Apr 6, 2005 - Ghazni

Master Sgt. Edwin Matos-Colon - Apr 6, 2005 - Ghazni

Spc. Isaac E. Diaz - Dec 1, 2004 - Sharona

Cpl. Billy Gomez - Oct 27, 2004 - Naka

Hey friends, quick note: the Bsky default feed is an old-school, chronological timeline - so while A:B testing for engagement with a variety of different descriptions for the same content may still have use, releasing them all at once can have a spam-like quality in-feed. Anyhow, love the content!

FWIW, I'm a big fan of sortition.

Until they hash out where longterm differentiation will come from (and 80/20 dominance emerges), I expect it'll continue to get worse. Then, it'll resolve overnight as the long tail of also-rans adopt the winner's approach to minimize switching costs🤞

The tech-topia perpetual motion economy: a solid state, solar powered datacenter enabling AI chatbot content consumed by other AI chatbots, monetized with AI-generated ads for AI-provided services, purchased by bots with revenue from AI-delivered work building AI chatbots, ads, and services 🚀

OK! We now have the short and cute ATProto Wiki domain atproto.wiki -- thanks @baldemo.to (who is admin on the wiki and part of the community docs working group and has the keys to the hosting now too)

Previous links redirect with full paths, you'll just need to login again on the new domain.

In the latest ep of the slow hunch podcast, I spoke w/ @jay.bsky.team, CEO of @bsky.app.

Originally conceived as an initiative within Twitter by Jack Dorsey, Bluesky was supposed to transform Twitter from a closed platform to an open protocol-based network.

This resolved or reframed 5 years of questions that had been accumulating in the back of my head.

I started watching one of the @atprotocol.dev videos from #ATmosphereConf, and now I'm watching basically all of them...

YouTube video by AT Protocol Development Where did we come from where will we go Paul Frazee ATmosphere Seattle 2025

Where did we come from, where will we go, @pfrazee.com CTO of @bsky.app

Covers history of publishing & distribution, building out to now, and a v1.0 protocol roadmap that includes sync 1.1, OAuth with scopes, lexicon resolution, private data, and e2ee messaging

#ATmosphereConf

However disquieting it may be for my tech friends, the reality is that safe physical spaces is the predicate to any serious effort to preserve & advance human agency.

Europe is entering a critical moment, and @bctallis.bsky.social does a great job capturing the risks and opportunities.

Off By One xkcd.com/3062

"Caesar (Zuck) or nothing", vs "a world without Caesars".

I started experimenting with Puter after your original post. I love that it, and things like it, exist - for two reasons: (1) I'm old, apparently; (2) I still feel the DT metaphor is superior for exploratory production. SaaS UX is about "known known" workflows, and mobile favors consumption.

The Next Social Wave: Open, Competitive, and User-Controlled | LinkedIn For years, social media has been dominated by a handful of companies, shaping how information flows and limiting innovation. The dangers have never been clearer. But a new paradigm is emerging—one wh...

Social media has been dominated by a handful of companies, shaping how information flows and limiting innovation. But change is here.

Join us March 21st @marietjeschaake.bsky.social @emilyliu.me @robin.berjon.com

Cc @freeourfeeds.com

www.linkedin.com/events/thene...

The videos are epically good - some of the best I've seen bridging the chasm between abstract capability and accessible value. Would be particularly interested in how the planning process helps achieve this.

So much to think about here. Highly recommend reading.

I'm flabbergasted that Apple Intelligence can expertly employ that latest tech to perfectly summarize the contents of an (already short) text message... yet remain blind to the most obvious & essential inference: it's phishing 😐

These are unfeatures.

If only I knew... the scary part is the recent total collapse of civic good faith. "People might disagree with me because they're knowledgeable" has become "people only disagree with me because they are evil and dumb." This is not an environment that fosters understanding of complex ideas.