I was surprised to learn that Lucire might be the only magazine brand being licensed from Aotearoa New Zealand at the moment. Unless the search engines are all equally poor at finding local colleagues doing the same thing. There are other publishers I know here—I had a great yarn with a Christchurch colleague in […]
Category: media
Discussions about the media, journalism and news.
Andrew Niccol’s Simone: I think we are now there
Anyone remember Andrew Niccol’s film Simone? It remains one of my favourites—I liked it so much I saw it at the cinema in New Zealand, a country which never gave it a proper release. (I still remember the media going on about how much we supported Kiwi filmmakers around that time. Evidently not all […]
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Sharkonomics 2 reviewed
I wanted to add a few words to Amazon for Stefan Engeseth’s Sharkonomics 2, but it seems Amazon no longer lets me post reviews. I guess Jeff B.’s rich enough without needing my content. I thought some of the negative ones he got there were a bit rough, given that he’s not proclaiming that […]
Should I link back an “AI” or LLM-authored splog? I vote no
This was an incredibly interesting trackback in the queue for this blog: an LLM-authored summary about a blog post of mine, linking back to it. It’s better than a spun article to read, but at the end of the day, it’s not something I want to give oxygen to by allowing the trackback […]
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ChatGPT and other ‘AI’ aren’t that mysterious, after all
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has one of the clearest stories explaining ‘AI’, the misnomer used to describe the likes of Bing AI and ChatGPT (which, I understand, is French: Chat, j’ai pété translates to ‘Cat, I farted’). Vaughan-Nichols explains that LLMs (large language models) simply rely on statistics, which is why they get things factually wrong. […]
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The summer of ’01: Connecticut
I relayed this to one of my editors after recalling an old colleague we used to work with. He was kind enough to put me up once, pre-9-11, when I was on the US east coast. I was meant to stay with him for a few days and work on some stories together. I envisaged […]
Go for it, Harry
Say what you will about Prince Harry making millions from his book and TV appearances. What if it’s to help fund the destruction of one Keith Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., and save the very fabric of democracy itself in the UK? It’s not going to be cheap, but the dude is out for blood. […]
Reach out if you need a business mentor
I’ve served with Business Mentors New Zealand for 17 years. It might be time to depart, after my present client. This has always been a voluntary role and bless all those who have given their time, and continue to give their time, to business people around the country. I have made two real friends over […]
BMW iX takes Autocade to 4,700 models
We’ve hit 4,700 models on Autocade, and unfortunately the model that sees in the milestone is, to my eyes, visually challenging. Still, there’s a part of me that’s quite curious about the interior and how it drives. Goes to show that there’s no planning in making the BMW iX our 4,700th. I also want to […]
Mojeek v. Google v. Bing on a site: search—Google still largely failing to pick up PHP
After seeing how badly Google performed with site:jackyan.com, I wanted to get on record how it was with Lucire. I already knew it failed to pick up many PHP pages, preferring the static ones of HTML, but I didn’t realize just how bad it got. I’m pretty sure it’s worse now than even two weeks […]