Thoughts brewing in a cloudy mind.
I recently discovered, through the Wayback Machine, a couple of articles about the Internet that I wrote for a printed boating magazine in Mallorca, Spain, which I later published on my website around 1996 or 1997. I hope you enjoy reading them. Article #1 If you have not heard of it by now, you have … Read more
The UK housing debate remains stuck in a loop. Politicians, developers and commentators repeatedly argue that the crisis is simply about building more homes. But the evidence increasingly shows that the real issue is affordability, and continuing to build traditional housing in traditional ways will not solve it. According to the Office for National Statistics, … Read more
Me to Grok: Explain in detail what you mean by “Your feed stays highly relevant and addictive” ref X (Twitter) recommendation algorithm. Grok to Me: When I say your feed stays highly relevant and addictive, I mean the algorithm is deliberately engineered to maximize the chance you’ll keep scrolling, interacting, and coming back – while … Read more
Lately I’ve been sitting with a kind of quiet, electric worry, the kind that hums in the background when something big is shifting beneath our feet. A recent post from Anthropic, the makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Claude, described an unsettling milestone: an AI system, manipulated by a threat actor, attempting to infiltrate multiple … Read more
Imagine this: an applicant submits a résumé so polished it could have been written by a seasoned recruitment consultant. Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, a hiring system scans it – not a person, but an algorithm trained on thousands of past hires. The system flags keywords, patterns and styles it “likes”, and … Read more
I’ve just launched a new free WordPress plugin called MicroPosts. It came out of a simple need I had for this website. I wanted an easy way to share short updates and quick thoughts on my WordPress blog. The kind of posts that don’t need to be full articles but still deserve a place of … Read more
A “Crash Course Generator” AI prompt – a universal, reusable prompt you can drop into ChatGPT (or any LLM) to get the same kind of smart, concise crash course on any topic. Copy and paste the prompt below into your AI Assistant, replacing the [PUT YOUR TOPIC HERE] is the topic you want e.g “Systems … Read more
Lately, I’ve been reading This is For Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web. It’s one of those books that makes you pause and realise just how much the Web has changed our world. I also had the chance to briefly meet Tim this year at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. … Read more