Baldur Bjarnason

Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

Blog: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/
AI Book: https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/
Pronouns: he/him
Book: https://softwarecrisis.baldurbjarnason.com/

Public Key

npub1hr7087sk4yxl25nmx9c42p0zgk5kyfyvar5xeklezs23hjuenr7qr3jxyc

NIP-05 Address

baldur_at_toot.cafe@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqst3l8nlgt2jr042fanzu24qh3yt2tzyjxw36rvm0u3g9gmewve3lqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dskthsxm

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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Last Notes

2026-06-03 17:06:21 UTC

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Adding video to podcasts means the audience now knows that you don't know how to use your mid-range kit where before they could have just assumed the sound was because you were working with limited resources, which is entirely valid.
If your budget won't stretch beyond a cheap €15 Boya M1 lavalier or even a headset mic. Focus on the interviews, writing, and editing instead.
But if you're doing video, at least make sure to read the manuals for your kit.

2026-05-29 12:48:59 UTC

Looking over the CMS/blog landscape and it looks like Ghost is still currently one of the least bad OSS options available, despite slop shenanigans?
(As in software that has the features you actually need for a serious website: newsletter or serious newsletter integration, cookie-free analytics that don't suck, rich text editing for non-techie contributors, post types or templates, custom metadata, etc.)

2026-05-24 13:49:40 UTC

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Moving to Bristol in 2000 I was still using black and white film, mostly
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/869/398/680/607/original/e774c4fec44aaf3b.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/869/526/825/601/original/47aa8f2397254124.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/869/605/289/859/original/2f3ec3c21056d042.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/869/674/811/601/original/bfc59a7b64a9ad41.jpg

2026-05-24 13:19:36 UTC

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These were taken after my shift in the newsroom studio on the last day that the Icelandic national broadcasting service broadcast from their old facilities in Laugavegur. Late 90s
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/749/545/662/208/original/63598e86ad8ee8d2.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/749/686/673/925/original/00f2c44b8e425af6.jpg

2026-05-24 13:12:45 UTC

If you’re one of my new or recent followers that came here because of my newsletter, you might not know that I regularly subject my audience to my photography. So to give you some context I figure I might as well post a little bit of an overview of the kind of photography I’ve done as a hobbyist.
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/724/395/685/863/original/d213449db9a51217.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/724/512/026/020/original/3cca30aead4a0546.jpg

2026-05-17 21:21:25 UTC

This photo definitely does not work but I am fond of how it's capturing the moment
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/592/009/113/474/738/original/294fa7b1f6ec57f1.jpg

2026-05-11 08:27:31 UTC

RE: https://mstdn.social/@marick/116550557064314183
So a recurring observation I’ve encountered from educators of various stripes is that their students are resisting doing the work to a greater degree than earlier students because they are extremely uncomfortable with looking foolish, bad or incompetent
Tawny Platis noted this in a recent video on voice acting students, for example
The problem is that feeling like an idiot as you make crap is an integral part of all creative processes
#note1nha…hqcy

2026-04-29 11:41:52 UTC

Apparently, subsidised code automation tools ("coding agents") that make it 10x easier to generate code is a big part of why GitHub has been having issues
So, it really is their own fault since GitHub and Microsoft are pretty much ground zero for offering LLM-based coding tools and promoting the bubble, it's just not breaking for the specific reasons some of us have been thinking
https://xcancel.com/kdaigle/status/2040164759836778878#m

2026-04-13 11:44:53 UTC

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If you warn about a problem before it's FELT, people will ignore you even after it hits them
A warning with enough foresight to precede the catastrophe will be less credible BECAUSE it was early.
People would rather be angry than feel responsible and an early warning proven right takes that away

2026-03-14 11:35:59 UTC

This time of year, when the ravens congregate in town before scattering into the countryside for the summer, I tend to stalk their regular hangout spots. #raven #ravens #iceland #nature
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/227/314/966/714/052/original/010dbbcb2e63b3a1.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/227/314/966/508/791/original/f9c55757bc0a3be4.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/227/314/986/886/271/original/ba2167aa8f0c1c66.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/227/314/994/395/176/original/452bd346b641956d.jpg

2026-02-20 13:48:21 UTC

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I'm Icelandic and I know a bit of Danish and French, and I can tell you right now that for the languages I'm familiar with, LLM translators are worse, less accurate, and very prone to fabricate nonsense, than the non-LLMs they are replacing. Maybe they're great for other languages but they're horrible for the ones I know.

2026-01-28 11:35:32 UTC

Is there no way to disable dragging a tab to a new window completely in Firefox or Firefox-based browsers (like Zen)? It keeps happening on regular clicks. Click on a tab and pop! it's in a new window.

2025-10-29 15:21:13 UTC

“Róisín Murphy pulled from Istanbul festival over "transphobic" statements - Mixmag.net”
https://mixmag.net/read/istanbul-festival-wouldnt-be-comfortable-hosting-r%C3%B3is%C3%ADn-murphy-transphobia-accusations-backlash-news
Róisín Murphy's turn towards transphobia has been one my biggest musical disappointments in recent years

2025-10-21 13:36:42 UTC

“Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country | Insects | The Guardian”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/21/mosquitoes-found-iceland-first-time-climate-crisis-warms-country
Guardian covers the Icelandic mosquito news.

2025-10-20 16:54:11 UTC

The inevitability of anger: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/the-inevitability-of-anger/

2025-10-16 09:35:19 UTC

“Lifespan of AI Chips: The $300 Billion Question - CITP Blog”
https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2025/10/15/lifespan-of-ai-chips-the-300-billion-question/
> Per my calculations, this hole grows to over $1.5 trillion annually if the true total cost of ownership is taken into account

2025-08-31 11:29:14 UTC

At the risk of exposing just how much of a non-listener of audiobooks I am, but how do audiobooks handle references and footnotes in non-fiction?
Or is the format so dominated by narrative prose that it doesn’t really come up?

2025-07-21 13:55:23 UTC

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In the Mood for Love (2000): this one I did catch in the cinema at the time and have rewatched regularly since. Simply one of the best movies ever made.
That's it! Still got a few interesting ones in my stack to watch so I might post another set of updates in another 2-3 months

2025-07-16 09:54:49 UTC

“Michael Tsai - Blog - Gatekeeper Change in macOS 15.4”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/07/15/gatekeeper-change-in-macos-15-4/
Since I'm not a free software zealot, I occasionally consider switching back to the Mac but shit like this makes me sceptical
Desktop Linux is fine for dev, garbage for media work, and has generally poor usability. The usability gap between it and Windows is closing, but that's helped by Windows being an ongoing slow-motion train wreck where the cargo is manure and monopoly-inspired overconfidence

2025-06-12 08:49:21 UTC

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Also, the only thing I’d really add to the iPad, beyond fixing the shit that’s perpetually broken (like text selection), is an always-present pair of floating undo/redo buttons.

2025-06-11 10:09:25 UTC

It’ll be interesting to see how Apple’s redesign plays out now that they’re in an era where native productivity apps for the Mac are a tiny niche whose aesthetic is to UI design what “mid-Atlantic” is to accents
Not convinced the impact will be as big as they expect.

2025-05-19 08:45:31 UTC

This post from Bluesky is a good example of why I’ve been saying for a long long while, using LLMs for your work or in your business is like giving US tech CEOs a centralised society-wide bigotry dial for your writing and your research.
> Since the release of the HHS report, both Copilot and ChatGPT have begun to reference "gender exploratory therapy" as a "first line approach" for gender dysphoria by elevating the Therapy First website to the top of the SEO food chain.
https://bsky.app/profile/jessdkant.bsky.social/post/3lpidiydxhk2x

2025-05-05 09:56:58 UTC

“Pedro Almodóvar on Trump: You Will Go Down in History as a Catastrophe”
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/pedro-almodovar-slams-trump-catastrophe-1236380848/
Watching Almodóvar's movies was a very formative experience for me as a teen. Glad to see him continue to point in the right direction.

2025-05-03 10:11:05 UTC

“The AI jobs crisis is here, now - by Brian Merchant”
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-jobs-crisis-is-here-now
> The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is unusually high—and historically high in relation to the general unemployment rate
"AI" is killing entry-level jobs, which means that a few years down the line companies won't have senior labour to hire.
This also shows that talk about “AI literacy” and “AI skills” is a joke. You’re not gonna need any skills if employers aren’t employing in the first place

2025-05-02 10:10:00 UTC

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Convertkit rebranding as Kit because they’re worried people will think they’re only for managing mailing lists and they have higher aspirations is like Microsoft rebranding to “Soft” because they’re worried people don’t know what a “microcomputer” is anymore. It was always a nonsense argument

2025-05-02 09:55:53 UTC

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The rich text editor is specifically baffling because it was clunky and buggy from the outset, with issues both in the front end (extremely awkward UX) and in the back end (occasionally lossy conversion of feed HTML into email HTML). It’s a core feature. You’d think it’d be their first priority
What’s worse, I suspect they don’t even realise that their core editor is a bit shit, which is a worrying sign of the taste and judgement of the people managing the place.

2025-05-02 09:48:14 UTC

Is there a term to describe what happened to companies like ConvertKit? Uselessly generic rebrand to "Kit" because of vague aspirations of becoming a "platform", spend tons of dev effort reskinning the entire app, then focus on complicating their code with more and more extensibility, meanwhile their core features are clearly showing signs of abandon. Like the rich text editor for their emails is a clunky mess filled with UX bugs. Because "enshittified" doesn't feel specific enough

2025-05-02 09:26:14 UTC

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“Not everybody in software dev is like that! Some coders genuinely care and put in the work needed to make good software”
True, but I feel confident in saying that next to none of those are leaning hard into “AI coding”
The target market for “AI” is SPECIFICALLY people who don’t care

2025-05-02 09:12:50 UTC

Laughing at "AI" boosters worrying "vibe coding" is becoming synonymous with "AI coding". Tech is vibes througout. Vibe management. Vibe strategy. Vibe design. Coding has been a garbage fire for decades and, yeah it's a vibe-based pop culture from top to bottom and has only been getting worse

2025-04-30 09:29:13 UTC

“Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI | TechCrunch”
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/microsoft-ceo-says-up-to-30-of-the-companys-code-was-written-by-ai/
Company famous for making a repeated mess of software security "brags" that 30% of its code is written using a tool famous for making a repeated mess of software security.

2025-04-22 14:41:52 UTC

Gmail trying to gaslight me by claiming that the word institution doesn't exist in English. Only to change its mind once I added a period at the end of the sentence.
(We used to have working spell check in our software. What happened? Don't answer, I know what happened.)

2025-04-16 15:29:51 UTC

The feeds I follow used to mostly be free of “AI” topics, but lately it seems like it’s in every other post in my feed reader. Even as the financial side of the AI Bubble is getting shakier, the cultural side of the bubble and the mythologising of “AI” capabilities only seems to go from strength to strength
There are still holdouts. Especially in the creative industries, but it feels like we might be close to a tipping point where we become a minority, at least in tech

2025-04-13 12:26:37 UTC

After seeing a few people on social media point it out, I can't unsee the parallels between the efforts of both the US and UK governments to dismantle education, media, research, and knowledge work in favour of "proper" jobs like factory and farm work and the beginning of Mao's cultural revolution

2025-04-03 10:11:31 UTC

If the US tariffs against the EU hold then cutting off or drastically reducing EU use of US-based tech cos becomes an economic necessity to get back to a non-catastrophic balance of payments. Up until now, the EU has primarily been concerned with US tech co interference with EU markets. This requires an entirely different response

2025-04-01 09:46:52 UTC

Perfect timing volcano. Perfect timing. https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/2023-12-18-bein-streymi-fra-gosstodvum-399932

2025-03-27 11:15:32 UTC

Anti-terrorist spy movies, the end of James Bond, and remembering my grandfather: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/2025/james-bond-and-my-grandfather/

2025-03-26 09:42:52 UTC

“Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot”
https://futurism.com/the-byte/chatgpt-dependence-addiction
> Researchers have found that ChatGPT "power users," or those who use it the most and at the longest durations, are becoming dependent upon — or even addicted to — the chatbot.
Possibly related: what I wrote a couple of years ago on how LLM chatbots function like a mentalist's con
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

2025-03-25 19:07:59 UTC

"Hitchcock’s Notorious, Defence in Depth, and the weakness of Nazis" https://youtu.be/i2-5OKQVanM
Explaining defence in depth, data security, and the weakness of authoritarian organisations through Hitchcock's 1946 movie Notorious
And a couple of the references mentioned:
That time when Microsoft's executives got hacked https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24051708/microsoft-hack-russian-security-attack-senior-leadership-emails
That time when a company accidentally hired a North Korean agent https://blog.knowbe4.com/how-a-north-korean-fake-it-worker-tried-to-infiltrate-us

2025-03-25 18:59:38 UTC

Met this little fella on my walk. He was quite friendly.
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/224/605/591/411/187/original/fbc153e557d2e132.jpg

2025-03-24 11:42:48 UTC

TIL that Google Translate thinks that "fóstbróðir" means "foster brother" but the actual translation of foster brother is either "uppeldisbróðir" (literally brother you were brought up with) or "fósturbróðir" (note the UR)
"Fóstbróðir" actually means sworn brother or blood brother.

2025-03-23 14:35:59 UTC

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So that’s the interesting part. The lawn is very much out of the way of human foot traffic.

2025-03-23 12:26:06 UTC

Any guesses which path the local cats always (and I mean always) take through this lawn?
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/211/728/994/922/302/original/45f0a398e89f6f63.jpg

2025-03-23 11:38:11 UTC

Me, thinking to myself: "I wonder how the LinkedIn post went?"
The post: 3000 impressions and 19 comments.
Including this:
> Is a volcano bad because it’s unpredictable and volatile? What about a hurricane? Is the way a gas distributes through an empty chamber suboptimal because it’s chaotic?
>
> It sounds like you’re frustrated that these robots’ answers are qualitatively different from the robot answers of your grandfathers robots.
>
> Maybe old man cloud yell at a different thing?

2025-03-22 12:09:43 UTC

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The weird part is that the most extreme cases are almost always techies and programmers who absolutely do understand how it works and claim they're using it "responsibly" even as they're manifestly not.

2025-03-22 10:56:53 UTC

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Also constantly annoyed by analysis that assumes the tech works as promised or will work as promised. The fact that it is unreliable and nondeterministic needs to be factored into any analysis you do. But people don’t do that because the resulting conclusion is GRIM as hell
LLMs add volatility and unpredictability to every system they touch, which makes those systems impossible to manage. An economy with pervasive LLM automation is an economy in constant chaos

2025-03-22 10:08:30 UTC

Keep hearing reports of guys trusting ChatGPT’s output over experts or even actual documentation. Honestly feels like the AI Bubble’s hold over society has strengthened considerably over the past three months
This also highlights my annoyance with everybody who’s claiming that this tech will be great if every uses it responsibly. Nobody’s using it responsibly. Even the people who think they are already trust the tech much more than it warrants

2025-03-21 12:16:43 UTC

“Apple loses $1B a year on prestigious, minimally viewed Apple TV+: report - Ars Technica”
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/apple-tv-reportedly-loses-1-billion-a-year-and-thats-okay-for-now/
I wonder whether Apple TV+ will shutter before it even gets rolled out to Iceland?
Also, the fact that tech cos and multinationals can afford to lose money for years is one of the reasons why the industries they invade end up in such a poor state

2025-03-18 12:48:48 UTC

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Oh, that's exactly the sort of thing I was thinking about, thanks!

2025-03-18 12:16:42 UTC

My Mother's Advice on How to be a Great YouTuber: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/my-mothers-advice/

2025-03-16 15:25:13 UTC

Not a big fan of landscape photos despite taking a bunch of the (kinda have to with this environment) but I do kinda like this one
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/172/799/398/303/512/original/0266397fe8ef8614.jpeg

2025-03-14 12:22:22 UTC

“Sigma BF review: the perfect camera for a minimalist | The Verge”
https://www.theverge.com/camera-review/628519/sigma-bf-camera-review-photography-specs
This here is a great example of how tech media enables and promotes user-hostile design. This "minimalist" camera is harder to hold, more complex to wrangle and use, and deliberate omits features like stabilisation that are there to make cameras easier to use
It's "simple" but not simple to use

2025-03-14 10:28:48 UTC

My mom is on Bluesky so I guess any truly unhinged posting on my part is going to be reserved for Mastodon from now on 😝

2025-03-12 22:11:50 UTC

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🙂 👍

2025-03-12 22:09:59 UTC

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Absolutely. And it's no bother. 🙂 You bought via Teachable, which I've stopped using
Anybody who wants an updated version of the ebooks they got from there can just contact me (like you just did)
The original download URL should still work but obviously doesn't contain the new version
I've sent you an email to your original purchase email with details on how to access the updated bundle.
Let me know if there's an issue or if the email doesn't arrive.

2025-03-12 14:31:35 UTC

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The buried lede here is the sale I'm running to ease over the transition, especially for those in countries with low to no sales tax or VAT on ebooks. A €5 EUR discount until the 19th of March using the discount code:
JACKPOTBEGINS
Direct links with the discount included:
- The Intelligence Illusion: Second Edition. https://store.baldurbjarnason.com/buy/cd2b8ac5-4409-4567-b90d-ed83998c5c74?checkout%5Bdiscount_code%5D=JACKPOTBEGINS
- Out of the Software Crisis. https://baldurbjarnason.lemonsqueezy.com/checkout/buy/02e0f69a-aef4-41f7-8a6c-cd3739da6c73?checkout%5Bdiscount_code%5D=JACKPOTBEGINS
- Every Ebook Bundle. https://store.baldurbjarnason.com/checkout/buy/41c768ad-b673-4313-a206-5b2cc8d8ff8e?checkout%5Bdiscount_code%5D=JACKPOTBEGINS

2025-03-12 14:19:30 UTC

Switching my pricing to Euro, but also making it tax-inclusive: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/2025/euro-pricing/

2025-03-12 10:54:46 UTC

Lukka, one of my cat neighbours, came for a short visit yesterday. If I don't let her come in and do a quick inspection tour she will relentlessly try to sneak in so it's simpler to just let her check the place out. (At one point she climbed in through an open second story window.)
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/149/087/658/929/184/original/6950e882657307e4.jpg

2025-03-12 00:32:28 UTC

A couple of photos of birds perched on roofs. Frist one is a pigeon. The second is a raven on the local church
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/146/632/806/536/212/original/89633779b7b44d41.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/146/632/816/558/690/original/d5af59492b9708b5.jpg

2025-03-10 10:09:23 UTC

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We’ve had three years of github copilot and two of chatgpt, both promising magical productivity gains for software dev, and the only change noticed by regular users is that everything keeps getting shittier, but now with more useless chatbots

2025-03-10 09:59:50 UTC

The software industry keeps talking about increasing productivity without giving a damn about whether any of it works. Everybody keeps adopting magic solutions and becoming so much more productive even as the software itself just keeps getting shittier.
https://c.im/@matdevdug/114137494259127155

2025-03-09 11:54:38 UTC

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What most people don't get is that critics like me are the optimists in this scenario. A future where the fundamental issues with LLMs will lead them to causing more problems than they solve, resulting in much of it being rolled back after the bubble pops is the least bad future for dev as a career.
Because monitoring automation is a low-wage activity and an industry dominated by that kind of automation requires much much fewer workers than one that's fundamentally built on expertise.

2025-03-09 11:50:57 UTC

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I'm sure you're being bombarded with replies
But, brushing past the issues with the software industry that are enabling problematic use of LLMs: it's understandable that coders to feel conflicted about them, even if you assume the tech works as promised, because you've just changed jobs
You've gone from thoughtful problem-solving to babysitting
Monitoring automation will never be an engaging activity
And, in the long run, a babysitter gets paid much less an expert

2025-03-09 11:02:22 UTC

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Straddling tech and media is more and more feeling like a good way to step both feet into bear traps.

2025-03-09 09:56:58 UTC

“Where do you get your ideas from?”
https://joelmorris.substack.com/p/where-do-you-get-your-ideas-from
> I’ve never known anything like it, where perceived success, and making a workable living, are so rarely connected. Where people perceived as the best in their field – world class, experienced craftspeople – are struggling for money, applying for benefits, changing careers
Tech has basically destroyed the creative industries and I honestly don’t know if it’s possible for them to recover

2025-03-06 12:02:20 UTC

The massive disparity between what managers and politicians think of “AI” and how rubbish everybody else thinks it is, continues to boggle the mind
It’s hard to think of a more concrete demonstration that tech is an oligopoly that doesn’t need to worry about competition or customer demand

2025-03-04 18:56:47 UTC

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Sure. Can't guarantee a response, though. Signing off of social media in a few minutes for the day 🙂

2025-03-04 18:53:43 UTC

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Thanks! Yeah, noticed it on one of my walks and just had to stop and take a picture. 🙂

2025-03-04 18:42:29 UTC

A few recent photos from around Hveragerði
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/105/621/790/732/272/original/7b02eba570a25dd7.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/105/628/611/285/405/original/2ec95bfd5b9fe91b.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/105/628/634/787/830/original/024f1eddfdf4a6fd.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/105/628/634/959/366/original/24faa6b4b6d89058.jpeg

2025-03-04 17:44:40 UTC

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Turns out that due to me buying the Lightroom subscription via the Microsoft store while in Canada, Adobe thought I was still based there. But the Microsoft Store Lightroom subscriptions max out at 1TB. So I cancel that and head to Adobe's site to upgrade, then discover they don't let me change my region from Canada to Iceland and the card always declines because of a country mismatch. And when I go to try and change the region, Iceland doesn't seem to be an option.
🤷‍♂️

2025-03-04 17:43:20 UTC

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Really don't want to boot the desktop into Windows, or y'know splurge on a Mac, to get a reliable photo workflow but desktop non-cloud photo apps seem to be at least marginally less shitty than the rest

2025-03-04 17:41:39 UTC

In the continuing saga of "most software seems to be getting substantially worse over the past year" I've been having a hard time finding a reliable photo workflow lately.
- OSS photo software on desktop Linux is just outright garbage
- Adobe seems incapable of selling a Lightroom cloud subscription to Iceland
- The new version of Apple Photos is A. much worse and B. still doesn't properly support Fuji raw
- CaptureOne on the iPad regularly crashes

2025-03-03 21:46:47 UTC

So, I wonder if it’s common knowledge or not that you’re supposed to dim the lights when watching film or videos that play at 24/25 frames per second?
As in, 24fps specifically relies on the lingering afterimage in your eyes created from watching something brightly lit in a dim setting to function.

2025-03-03 10:46:12 UTC

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Also, the methodologies and approaches of each field varies enormously. The context you take in, the ways you read, and the way you discuss the Bible varies depending on what your actual field is. History, comparative literature, comparative theology, and philosophy all read it in completely different ways. Doing a generic "humanities" reading of the Bible is a nonsense activity. It's cosplay.

2025-03-03 10:46:12 UTC

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The core issue here is that reading the Bible without context, without notes on the translation, the history of translations, theories of how the text evolved and was constructed, is a religious activity and not something done by any of the fields of the humanities

2025-03-03 10:46:11 UTC

“Humanities Crash Course Week 9: The Bible | Jorge Arango”
https://jarango.com/2025/03/02/humanities-crash-course-week-9/
This is a good demonstration of why techies talking about "humanities" are just cosplaying intellectuals and not actually engaging in any intellectual or academic activity. (Quoting Nietzsche is the hallmark of an asshole but his "bildungsphilister" is the perfect name for this.)

2025-03-03 10:21:30 UTC

“Hollywood’s obsession with AI-enabled ‘perfection’ is making movies less human - Fast Company”
https://www.fastcompany.com/91285846/hollywood-ai-enabled-perfection-the-brutalist
> Throughout 2024, Cage spoke against AI every chance he got.
I'm with Nicholas Cage. Modern media's obsession with making seamless artefacts is a good way of making works that nobody can relate to.

2025-02-28 11:56:21 UTC

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Tangentially related to this: blog posts written by managers and execs in tech are getting weird: filled with explanations that are odd for the audience ("node.js is a C++ runtime"), weird tangents, stilted phrasing, awkward language, and references that are horrendously outdated (1936? really?)
Weren't LLMs supposed to help elevate crap writing into mediocrity? Seems to be having the opposite effect for many.

2025-02-28 11:49:49 UTC

Torn between linking to a piece of hot nonsense and explaining in detail why, even though it's hot nonsense, it's an indication of a five-alarm fire for the node.js job market, or just keeping it simple like so:
That managers are writing nonsense posts that are variations of "node.js is perfect for AI" means the node.js job market is about to get substantially worse
Huh? Guess I didn't need to link to the nonsense post.

2025-02-25 09:43:46 UTC

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- Coding isn’t the biggest “win” for LLMs but its biggest risk
Software dev has a bad habit of skipping research and design and just shipping poorly thought-out prototypes as products. These systems get increasingly harder to update over time and bugs proliferate.
LLMs for coding magnify that risk

2025-02-25 09:43:46 UTC

So Ed Zitron has been digging into the numbers behind the AI Bubble and coming away pessimistic and, unusually, I actually think he’s downplaying the risks a bit because much of them are hard to quantify as hard numbers
https://www.wheresyoured.at/wheres-the-money/
- The only plausible growth story today for the stock market as a whole is magical “AI” productivity growth. What happens to the market when that story fails?

2025-02-24 10:58:31 UTC

“It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds”
https://werd.io/view/67bba568f860f66c1f028082
> many US companies also feel that way about European cloud services, in an effort to avoid having to adhere to the GDPR.
It's not quite a comparable thing. EU co worries:
- extortion by whichever oligarch is currently in favour
- US-based customers lose their freedom or lives because of your data
US co worries:
- Getting fined for abusing their customer's trust

2025-02-23 10:10:23 UTC

“The Guy Who Invented Those Annoying Password Rules Now Regrets Wasting Your Time”
https://gizmodo.com/the-guy-who-invented-those-annoying-password-rules-now-1797643987

2025-02-22 16:59:39 UTC

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Apple's Mail app is slower and more cluttered
TV now occasionally tries to shut itself off for "power management" halfway through a broadcast, as if it's not been playing anything for the past hour.
And that's without getting into the constant push of "AI" features and chatbots where none are needed.
It's all so incredibly annoying.

2025-02-22 16:59:26 UTC

A running themes over my past year is software getting substantially worse with each update.
And I'm not just talking about the usual, "fuckers moved everything and introduced a bunch of bugs so now my productivity will need a few weeks to recover". Outright declines in reliability and quality.
The Android-based devices now all have less reliable wifi.
Autocomplete and overall touch keyboard reliability and responsiveness is much worse for both the iPhone and iPad.

2025-02-20 09:48:22 UTC

The cognitive dissonance of Icelandic radio can be wild sometimes. Half the time it’s radio edits, like that of Doechii’s latest, and then the next DJ will turn around and play “Fuck the Pain Away” by Peaches.

2025-02-20 08:48:41 UTC

“The reality of long-term software maintenance”
https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/reality-long-term-software-1892
> writing the initial code for a feature is only a fraction of the work, once you take in to account everything else you also have to do in the long term
Very few managers genuinely understands this

2025-02-19 17:44:01 UTC

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The meeting actually went well. Everybody agreed that there was enough shit going on in the world without us making additional problems in the building
😮‍💨

2025-02-19 13:29:35 UTC

That feeling when you have a stress headache, not because of the ongoing collapse of the world into authoritarianism and fascism, and not because of the decline in the tech job/freelancing market, but because of the homeowners association meeting scheduled for later this day.

2025-02-18 13:24:53 UTC

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The reason why I’m posting about this now is that for the first time ever I’ve gone through the effort to frame and hang my own photos, something I’ve always thought was a bit tacky, but this set was personal enough for me to get over myself and just do it 🙂
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/025/108/637/504/749/original/4ce7f9fbf7a75561.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/025/109/322/742/597/original/1d39cabe00391ca8.jpg

2025-02-18 13:24:53 UTC

I’ve written about this before but in 2018 I was living in Montréal, trying to go through the immigration process, and feeling quite alienated. One of my coping mechanisms was going to Parc Jarry and take photos. Last year I finally narrowed the thousands of pictures I took down to a proper four photos, one for each season. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring.
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/025/103/025/531/329/original/c15e73e9798df15a.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/025/103/524/885/051/original/273b4dcc1d6963ab.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/025/104/174/204/074/original/5212d9576ebb62e4.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/025/104/895/484/689/original/b970853627133980.jpeg

2025-02-18 11:22:35 UTC

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A big chunk of my writing on "AI" is available on my website under the "AI" tag:
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/tags/ai/
The oldest posts are just over two years old, now, which is why I think I've earned the right to say "I fucking told you so" when "AI" shit happens these days 🙂

2025-02-18 11:22:27 UTC

I suppose I should try to remind people more often that I recently published the second edition of my book "The Intelligence Illusion: Why generative models are bad for business"
I originally began work on it around three years ago with the idea that I'd look into how the tech is best used in business before coming to the conclusion in the current subtitle (it's a really bad idea for every use case that has any business value to speak of)
https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/

2025-02-17 12:29:51 UTC

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TBF, I'm not really worried about the new generation of coders. I'm worried about the industry being run by people who think this is desirable and being uninterested in hiring people who can actually code.

2025-02-17 12:23:07 UTC

“New Junior Developers Can’t Actually Code | N’s Blog”
https://nmn.gl/blog/ai-and-learning
JFC. Reading this just as I'm feeling especially discouraged about staying in coding was probably not a good idea.

2025-02-16 10:55:10 UTC

“Turns Out the “Killer App” of AI—Summarizing Things—Is, Um, Really Bad at Summarizing Things | The Internet Review”
https://theinternet.review/2025/02/15/bad-summaries/
I was pointing this out over a year ago.
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2023/ai-summaries-unreliable/

2025-02-14 14:08:46 UTC

"AI is Stifling Tech Adoption"
https://vale.rocks/posts/ai-is-stifling-tech-adoption
> the advent and integration of AI models into the workflows of developers has stifled the adoption of new and potentially superior technologies due to training data cutoffs and system prompt influence
I warned about this specific risk last year https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/letters/ai-code-quality/#:~:text=Some%20of%20these%20pitfalls%20have%20to%20do%20with%20age.%20Platforms%2C%20libraries%2C%20and%20APIs%20become%20obsolete%2C%20insecure%2C%20and%20outdated%2C%20but%20language%20models%20are%2C%20because%20of%20their%20design%2C%20stuck%20in%20the%20past.%20Newer%20methods%20are%20going%20to%20be%20underrepresented%20in%20their%20training%20data%20set%20if%20they%20appear%20in%20it%20at%20all.

2025-02-14 11:51:56 UTC

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"Keep silent"? How would they know unless they're actively searching their name on social media?
I'm not talking about discussions about the works of mutuals. I'm talking about the regular thing that happens when writers search for their name and then involve themselves to try and control discussions about their writing.

2025-02-14 11:40:58 UTC

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Responding when they were not mentioned makes them an asshole

2025-02-14 11:17:40 UTC

Possibly controversial opinion: people should have the freedom to talk on social media about writing that has been released into the public without either involving the author, the author involving themselves, or somebody snitch-tagging said author.

2025-02-14 11:13:53 UTC

Seems like the key to growing a newsletter is to not publish anything and the key to shrinking a newsletter is to remind subscribers you exist.