Über gives up rides, website now specializes in puzzles

Every once in a while I try this Über thing everyone’s talking about. I’ve never been able to get the “app” to work but you can theoretically use the website. Except I believe Über is no longer doing rides and is now principally a puzzle website. Trying to get one for my partner from a […]

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Doctor Who actors ranked

Ncuti Gatwa wearing a brown leather jacket and striped shirt.

This was inspired by Craig Majors’ post on Mastodon, when he listed his favourite Doctor Who actors. A lot of Whovians will completely disagree with my ranking, but one hopes that the fandom is generous and tolerant enough to accept that everyone sees things differently. The only time the world agreed on who was their […]

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The Barnum effect of chat bots

Here’s a post that summarizes generative “AI” quite well. Hat tip to Brian Krebs, posting this on Mastodon. I can’t embed the post here—maybe he has his embedding turned off. The original that Krebs cites, by David Gerard, can be found here. Like the social media websites concocted by the graduates of Prof Fogg’s class […]

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Unpinning a collaborative Instagram post: it can’t be done when neither party pinned it

A few days ago, Lucire’s Instagram account had a pinned post that we never pinned. It was a collaborative post from our friend Michael Nelson in Dubai which he posted in March.   Above: Our Instagram page after Mike’s team attempted to edit the post, and we pinned our issue 51 cover to counteract the […]

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Running site: searches for four of our sites across four engines

Google is hiding the number of results for any given search. Google hid this under ‘Tools’ some time ago but now that link no longer works universally. I was able to access it using a vulnerable browser that let everything through, and for this blog, at least, the count is surprisingly poor. Google is so […]

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When referring to ‘a techno-authoritarian surveillance state’ is not alarmist

If you watch one in-depth interview this week, it should be this one: Jon Stewart interviewing Carole Cadwalladr, on broligarchs, “AI”, and a techno-authoritarian surveillance state. And no, not a single component of that title is alarmist. We have been watching the world head to this point right through the 2010s, except now it’s accelerating […]

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The two Ranis

I had suspected Anita Dobson’s Mrs Flood had a connection to the Rani in Doctor Who, only because I was trying to make a connection between the character’s last appearance in the 1993 charity special ‘Dimensions in Time’ (which, as far as I know, is canon) and Angie Watts, who, in EastEnders canon, was last […]

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The creative sector adds the most value, and we should be proud to say so

After sitting on a panel to approve a bachelor’s programme for one polytechnic, I was dismayed to read right after that some of the courses were being cut. I alluded to a disinterest in learning about design in an earlier post, but I was put right by some young people who said their courses were […]

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The “AI”-free joints are the places to hang out (where everybody knows your name)

Nice to get some link love from Mashable, though unfortunately Wordpress didn’t pick it up. I only knew because 13 spun splogs, including “AI”-translated ones, picked it up and linked us, and my blog had a queue of track-back requests. Chris Taylor’s ‘Welcome to Google AI Mode! Everything is fine’, with the sub-lede ‘Wait a […]

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Testing the occidental search engines with site:—Bing most improved

Having seen the number of results for Autocade drop on Mojeek—something which they said was unlikely—I thought it was about time I ran another series of site: tests, using our random cross-section. And I have to report that for some sites, the drop is real. I can’t speak for whether the others have actually removed […]

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