1. Oh Perplexity, why must you test me so?
I have been a big proponent of Perplexity for a while, mostly because I found it incredibly useful as a research tool. Turns out the reason it was useful as a research tool was it was scraping a load of data that it shouldn’t, pretending to be academic researchers to get access to Twitter, and more. Suffice to say, I no longer recommend it. But more than that: organisations which engage in this kind of perfidious conduct should be actively shunned.
2. The cows are lying down
And speaking of AI, 404 Media decided to conduct an experiment: how much would it cost to basically clone their site using LLMs and off-the shelf tools? The answer: $365.63. And they wouldn’t have to employ any of those pesky journalists to do it.
3. Better by you…
What was the internet like 20 years ago? Without coming across like an old git, the answer is just “better”. Like Richard, I started blogging using Radio Userland, a long-forgotten application developed by Dave Winer. Like everything Winer makes, it was really an outliner (when I first worked at Apple in 1989, we used MORE for presentations – it was also a Winer product, and also really an outliner). It was also local: it generated all the HTML for your blog on your Mac and then uploaded the changed files. I still there there’s something in that approach.
4. Are you though? Are you really?
Ever wondered what it’s like being a low-ranking professional tennis player? No, I hadn’t either — but this great piece in The Guardian had me laughing, then shaking my head, then laughing again. My favourite line: ““I am going to fight my natural hand-to-eye coordination, no matter how bad it is, I am going to hit all of these motherfucking balls until I develop a shot. I am going to do this for months and months and months: I am not going to let these rich fucks beat me.”
5. Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law
Confession time: whenever I buy an ebook which is encumbered with DRM, I crack it and save a local copy. I don’t give it away, loan it, upload it anywhere — but I don’t trust companies to keep their unspoken promise that I will always be able to access that book. Why don’t I trust them to? Here’s why. And yes, I did have books which used this DRM system.
6. And speaking of Microsoft DRM systems
Oops. Repeat after me: DRM is pointless.
7. Creative destruction
Look, in the great long list of terrible things that the Tories have spent fourteen years doing to Britain, the effective destruction of much of the support for the arts that had been built up for decades may not seem like the worst. But in terms of the breadth of people it affects, it’s probably the broadest. Obviously, underfunding organisations and forcing them to spend more time chasing money than supporting creative work is bad. But they have also hammered funding for adult education cources which aren’t “vocational”, which means that drawing, painting and other creative practice classes are not being cut – something disproportionately affects older people. Capitalism hates creativity.
8. PRs: please don’t do this
I don’t get that many unsolicited press releases these days (don’t think of this as a request) and I doubt that even during the Journalism Peak of my career I got as many as Jay Rayner, but I completely sympathise with his public letter asking that PRs do at least the minimum amount of research before sending him stuff.
9. The grumpiest man from Wales is back
God I love John Cale. Way back in the first years of this century I was lucky enough to see him do readings from his book What’s Welsh for Zen? at Komedia in Brighton, and he almost bit the head off an audience member who was trying to video him. In the twenty four years since he’s just got grumpier and he remains a vital creative force. I adore him.
10. The best reason not to use AI
We really do not need another global power crisis while we’re trying to stop the planet burning.
