Link
We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world
I like this guys’s take on defining what addiction and trauma are and how they correlate. Gotta figure out who you are before the healing starts 🧘
Little white lies about blue light
The frequently cited 2013 study about blue light and its affect on sleep had just 5 participants and questionable methodology…Melatonin levels—not sleep quality—were measured before and after the 30 minute experiment. There was no control group.
a 2021 study with 167 participants that tracked actual sleep quality between 3 groups of people…concluded there was no observable benefit from using Night Shift.
Reminds me of when Bionic Reading was going viral. It sounds like it makes sense but its probably just a really good placebo effect
The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending
The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in a fight to lend out scanned ebooks without the approval of publishers. In a decision on Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that permitting the Internet Archive’s digital library would “allow for widescale copying that deprives creators of compensation and diminishes the incentive to produce new works.”
Honestly I’m a little surprised physical libraries haven’t been outright banned at this point 🤦
I thought I had this profound thought about picking the people in your life, etc then I realized it’s already a thing:
If you can’t change the people around you, change the people around you
Cheesy? Maybe. But I like it 😜
New VWs will answer some of your questions with ChatGPT
I was just reading about how people don’t want fancy tech packages in their car if it raises the price. Then I saw this article from The Verge:
Drivers in cars that support ChatGPT will need to be subscribed to VW’s Plus Speech with AI service to get it
…the company says when drivers ask for things like restaurant recommendations or for the chatbot to tell you a story, that will go to the cloud
It’s like onboard navigation. A shittier (paid) version of a free thing your phone can do and probably no one wants built into their car
NaNoWriMo Says Condemning AI Is ‘Classist and Ableist’
Daniel José Older, a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic and author of multiple series including Outlaw Saints, posted his resignation from the NaNoWriMo writers board
I agree it’s dumb to allow AI in a writing contest but there’s been such an uproar from high profile writers on X. You can’t complain about how bad AI is for the planet and how it’s just a grift when you’re posting from Elon’s hellsite lmao it literally has a LLM built in and it’s ran by an actual supervillain. you’re directly supporting that if you use X
Former Riot Games employees leverage generative AI to power NPCs
Retail Mage is a roleplaying game that allows players to take on the role of a wizard working as a salesperson at a magical furniture store. The main goal of the game is to earn five-star reviews by helping customers. But it’s really up to the players to decide if they actually want to work or cause chaos. With AI NPCs as customers and human players being able to say and do almost whatever they want, the possible outcomes should vary widely.
Actually a really cool use for gen ai in games
AnandTech shuts down after 27 years
For the past several years it seems as if there has been a trend away from ultimate understanding in content online and towards the tenets of modern mainstream media (sensationalism and the general silliness you see on US cable TV news).
I never read AnandTech but I definitely feel where its founder was coming from when he said this in an interview with The Verge, all the way back in 2011
Black mold, flies and roaches, rancid smells: No wonder Boar’s Head caused a listeria outbreak!
Boar’s Head deli meat was recalled last month after it caused a listeria outbreak that killed at least nine people and sent 57 others to the hospital…A black mold-like substance was seen throughout the room at the wall/concrete junction…Inspectors also found “a green algal growth…dripping over product being held.”
Eww. I always thought Boar’s Head was a super high quality brand but I guess not 🤢
This Is Doom Running on a Diffusion Model
the diffusion model is trained gameplay footage of Doom to produce the next frame based on the frames that came before it and player input.
the development process for video games under this new paradigm might be less costly and more accessible, whereby games could be developed and edited via textual descriptions or examples images.
this feels like the worst kind of use case for ai that would directly affect human game devs o_O
Corn sweat: crop moisture amplifies humidity and heat in US midwest
One acre of corn, which is a little smaller than the size of an American football field, can can create 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of corn sweat, Clark said.
Can confirm. Source: am in Ohio
Former Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to shut down engines in-flight shares his story
On Friday night, the group took psychedelic mushrooms – a drug that can make you hallucinate and typically has effects that last a few hours.
“There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?”
One time I ate weed brownies that were too strong and had to call off work the next day. This guy is just fucking crazy lol
Man Spills Blue Cheese in Car, Interior Becomes Covered in Mold Overnight
…the closed car doors and lack of ventilation effectively created a greenhouse for the mold to grow, causing it to spread throughout the entirety of the vehicle, coating it in what looks like white film.
This definitely does not make blue cheese any less repulsive to me 🤢
In ‘Fictional Nature,’ Fabian Knecht Encloses Live Trees and Craggy Stones in a White Cube Gallery
Walk into one of Fabian Knecht’s installations, and you’ll likely smell the dewy, herbal scent of moss and the sweet musk of wood, fragrant evidence of life growing amidst clinical, fluorescent lights and stark walls. Branches, grass, and water features appear as if they’ve been cut to fit the exact dimensions of the gallery and transported from their native habitats into the classic white cube.
What We Learned In Our First Year of 404 Media
A year ago today, we published a blog post called “Welcome to 404 Media.” In that post, we explained that the four of us quit our jobs to start something new, and set some goals for ourselves.
They grow up so fast 🥲🎂
Authors sue Anthropic for copyright infringement over AI training
The complaint, filed on Monday, opens new tab by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, said that Anthropic used pirated versions of their works and others to teach Claude to respond to human prompts.
It’s one thing to debate on whether or not it’s okay to train on publicly available data, or the ethics of ignoring Robots.txt but this is a company with billions of dollars in funding, literally pirating books to train AI
Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse.
Representatives for LG and Samsung declined to comment to Ars Technica about how much of their respective company’s business is ad sales. But the deals they’ve made with data-collection firms signal big interest in turning their products into lucrative smart TVs. In this case, “smart” isn’t about Internet connectivity but rather how well the TV understands its viewer.
We’re literally turning into an Idiocracy
Mozilla’s New Logo Brings Back the Dinosaur Mascot (Kinda)
It could be viewed as a flag on a pole. Sort of like Mozilla planting its values in the ground to say “we’re here, come join”.
But it’s more likely a nod to the original Mozilla mascot (inherited from its Netscape beginnings), which was a red dinosaur (an interesting logo of itself as it was designed by Shepard Fairey who created other seminal design works, and the skate brand OBEY).
I’m a sucker for throwback design language and ASCII doodles. Wonder if this will stick?
The Scent Of UX: The Unrealized Potential Of Olfactory Design
Odors may not replace textbooks and lectures, but their addition will make remembering and recalling things significantly easier. In fact, researchers from MIT built and tested a wearable scent-emitting device that can be used for targeted memory reactivation.
This makes me uncomfortable o_O
Let this tiny bean bag chair for your lap hold your heavy handhelds
Doomscrolling isn’t going away any time soon, but there’s no reason you can’t be comfortable while doing it. Mechanism’s $59 Gaming Pillow is designed to shift the weight of gadgets like handheld consoles, tablets, XL smartphones, and e-readers from your arms to your lap
Honestly this looks useful but I’m too proud to own something called a “gaming pillow” lol