Technicalities
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Thought Experiment
Let’s say you’ve come up with a genuinely clever new gizmo that can do lots of things fairly well, and sparks people’s imaginations because it looks a lot like the imaginary gizmos from super-popular movies and TV shows, especially scary ones. You and your friends start companies and manage to raise insane amounts of money… Continue reading
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Fashionable or able to fashion
Years ago, mobile phones were designed with easily-swappable batteries, memory cards, and SIM cards. You could even disassemble them (to a point) and repair or replace components. Not that you generally had to; many phones from that era were far more durable than the iPhones and Android devices nowadays. Yes, I know you can still… Continue reading
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Decisions, decisions
There are a lot of ways to make decisions, from rolling dice to analyzing data. Some approaches to decision-making define entire fields of human activity. Voting is the realm of politics. Experimental evidence and independently verifiable results means science. Then we have Pluto, which is evidently still controversial (who knew). It was “demoted” in 2006… Continue reading
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The Grift Also Rises
Ed Zitron’s latest overly long missive about the AI industry and its misdeeds includes this: “LLMs Are Built To Help Grifters and Imbeciles Do Impressions Of Work.” I’m sure it gets a lot of agreement. I mean, look how much grift and scamming surrounds LLMs, vendors, and many users. But grifting existed for a looong… Continue reading
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Ocean’s 128GB
Wired magazine reports on thefts of “hardware destined for AI data centers” that are right out of scenes from action movies. Car chases, accidents intentionally induced, cargo trucks disappearing. It’s all predictable, I suppose, given that there’s a new commodity that’s very valuable and in short supply. But what I’m thinking about, also partly from… Continue reading
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Sometimes it’s not an improvement
Digital technology, and indeed technology in general, seems like it moves in cycles of usability and utility. I’m not sure whether the cycles apply equally to every user, or if it depends on the features you, as a specific user, find most helpful. Printers connected to personal computers are one example. Long ago it could… Continue reading
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Do you have the time?
If you have a reasonably detailed understanding of modern physics, you probably know about the Schrödinger equation. It’s as fundamental to quantum physics as Isaac Newton’s Second Law is to classical physics. Newton’s is easily expressed in English: The change of motion of an object is proportional to the force impressed; and is made in… Continue reading
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Writing, Generative and Symbolic
Writer has been my self-description for my whole adult life. Not the only one, but probably the one with the longest standing. I’ve had a daily writing practice for longer than I remember. As I’ve occasionally mentioned, a writing practice, at least for me, is not necessarily aimed at producing anything to be read, even… Continue reading
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Commode-Door
Back in the day — way way back in the day — personal computers were diverse and came with communities of fellow users of whatever brand you had. And of course you would tease those other folks by making fun of their brand. If you had a TRS-80, you’d call Commodore systems “commode-doors.” Commodore users… Continue reading
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Design as divisive; design as inclusive
Among other pursuits, I’ve been a software interaction designer. That’s basically a user interface designer without doing the graphics. When I was doing interaction design, I always started from user research. In order to design something that works for users who are not like you, it’s critically important to learn about them. You start by… Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer (among other things) located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. No surprise, she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my newsletter, Artisanal Scribbles, where I’m grappling with writing, authentic human authorship, integrity, and the craft of beauty in the AI age. You can also find some of my old software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly wrote tiny utilities in Python and shell scripts. I’m mostly retired from coding nowadays.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
Recent Posts
- The Cycles within the Arc
- I’d rather have a taco
- 20-something Hubris
- You can’t be a leader without followers
- Candy Trees and Handkerchiefs
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