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• Post #4431305

  Food for thought.

• Post #4422247

  "If you make something idiot-proof, the world will create a better idiot." - an early description of what we now know as 'cognitive displacement', where people reduce their thinking efforts the moment they can get away with it. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-could-be-making-you-stupider

• Post #4384736

  Typing something on how modern software sucked even pre-AI, and picked this glorious painting to explain "the stack": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tower_of_Babel_(Bruegel)

• Post #4377433

  “Deploying office AI tools does not mean you are now “a future-proofed AI company”.” https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/ai-for-decision-makers/

• Post #4372054

  I'm sick of doing digital sovereignty video calls over Teams. Signal is not quite there in terms of video quality, and I'd love to self-host something. But things like Jitsi and BigBlueButton appear to have so many moving parts that I worry about running them (securely). Did anyone build something minimal perhaps?

• Post #4370413

  So if you want to know if you are counting visitors or counting bots, check if your statistics correctly show highly reduced traffic during the night for the relevant demographic. The blue line is the Dutch version of an article, the orange one is in English. It appears I'm measuring people and not bots.

• Post #4312669

  RE: https://social.tchncs.de/@cgudrian/117010067489179003 And will be treated like a witch. We may fantasize that the people who can still read and do computers will be thanked for cleaning up the mess. But it won’t be like that.

• Post #4274077

  AI: Considerations for people who make decisions. There is enormous pressure to deploy AI, and if you believe the LinkedIn thought leadership, you'd think that if you don't get on board NOW you'll be lost forever. Meanwhile other people severely detest AI, so much so that it damages their (worthwhile) arguments against it. Below, thoughts on what to do now, and what things might best be postponed. Finally, some stimulating words on what we actually DO at the office: https://berthub.e...

• Post #4244614

  Well isn’t this ironic! https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/26457ef4-57e9-40c2-b647-e25cbe2238a2

• Post #4241261

  I know it is in Dutch, but through a translator you might still enjoy this piece that discusses the AI situation. It talks about the perceived rush that isn't real, and points out you'd do well to wait it out a bit. However, the article also details how AI can't be disregarded as useless. It actually does stuff for people. However, the post then also wonders if this is in fact helpful: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/ai-voor-wie-erover-gaat/

• Post #4170412

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@gvwilson/116997366488785600 Source: https://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/dali/english/e_dali "Some Notes on Salvador Dali" by George Orwell.

• Post #4166248

  Incidentally, these last two posts are of course incredibly relevant (again) in the age of AI. Because if you let the LLM do the writing, you miss out on almost all benefits of writing.

• Post #4163106

  I have seen the future, and it does not look good. I replied to an unsolicited but well drafted personalized email message asking if it was sent using AI. And the AI itself answered instantly:

• Post #4159841

  "If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking." - Leslie Lamport, quoted in https://fs.blog/how-to-think/ , which also states "Writing is the process by which we realize we don’t understand and the process by which we come to understand".

• Post #4116931

  Regarding the non-action from governments, I'm often reminded of Jean-Claude Juncker's quote "We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it". He wasn't talking about climate change, but the point stands. I fear that many European politicians do believe in climate change, but are consciously not doing the right thing. https://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/pages/publication12586_en.pdf

• Post #4109274

  "Whichever way, AI scepticism now feels like the consensus. As for what to do in preparation for a crash, you’re basically on your own. But if the music does stop playing, an awful lot of people are positioned and ready to say they told you so." - https://ftav.substack.com/p/this-is-nuts-whens-the-crash

• Post #4091945

  News made for mastodon! Some Dutch #trains slowed down this week & eventually were stopped because multiple kittens & mother were walking on or too close to the tracks. Once stopped, cages were placed & the #cats have now been collected. The traindriver who called in the problem says that if no owner can be found he'd like to adopt the felines. Your translator will make sense of: https://nos.nl/artikel/2624400-treinverkeer-stilgelegd-om-poezen-van-het-spoor-te-redden-in-drenthe /...

• Post #4035616

  So I wonder, OpenAI disclosed accidentally hacking Hugging Face. They had to since Hugging Face went public. But did they hack into other places as well perhaps? Would they tell?

• Post #4034198

  RE: https://eupolicy.social/@hpod16/116964489850031088 The European Commission social media people *get* Mastodon:

• Post #3997661

  For the fans of #RSS I posted an article today without announcing it in any way, and likely based solely on RSS, it has attracted 300 visitors and 2.7 pretty well *validated* reading hours. I can definitively prove that 65 people came via RSS (retrieved the index.xml from the same IP address). A lot of the rest looks plausible too (perhaps via an aggregator).

• Post #3954144

  RE: https://eupolicy.social/@bert_hubert/116951027722426433 "This writ demonstrates that Texas has the legal authority and the proven tools to reach beyond its borders and hold foreign operators accountable. "

• Post #3953255

  Because a (terrible terrible no good) Dutch owned website contravened Texas law, Verisign was ordered to remove the domain name from the .COM zone, and they complied. This has happened before, and it will likely happen again. If a US state doesn't like what you do, your .COM domain name may disappear on you. Mirror of Texas statement, cuz the original is not accessible from the EU: https://archive.is/kOmc4#selection-838.0-838.1

• Post #3909719

  Peak mastodon is where someone writes an article stating that AI is a massive failure and someone lambasts the author for not being negative enough about AI. Amazing work everyone.

• Post #3906288

  Reading (too much) AI-news is quite upsetting if you try to square it with observed realities of what people are actually achieving (not much). Here @ludicity@mastodon.sprawl.club assures us that we are not wrong. The world of business is no longer able to meaningfully evaluate AI or even talk about it coherently: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/

• Post #3856190

  The world of climate science has been correct in predicting our climate upheaval. However, it is now clear things are even worse, in ways that we don't understand nor can predict. Here an insight into what is going on from The Economist (gift link): https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/07/15/the-rate-at-which-earth-is-absorbing-energy-is-alarming-climate-scientists?giftId=NjdjNThjMTgtYjkwOC00ZmRhLWEyYjctNTk1N2NkZTBmODAw&utm_campaign=gifted_article if it expires, let me k...

• Post #3830841

  In Dutch, but applies to governments across Europe & beyond. Governments are *utterly* dependent on IT systems, but simultaneously keep their distance from IT. Here a comparison with how a large organization deals with a broken toilet: fighting with vendors. And this is exactly how they deal with IT problems too. Feast your translator on: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/ben-je-van-de-it-of-niet/

• Post #3744165

  RE: https://c3d2.social/@oxapentane/116901733859328567 The just passed legislation does not apply to WhatsApp, signal or any platform with end to end encryption. It is still terrible, but important to know.

• Post #3701549

  Three times now the European Parliament has voted against a proposal to allow Meta, TikTok, Snap etc to scan all your private communications for child sexual abuse material, "just in case". 1/

• Post #3700705

  And who is behind all this? Member state governments who madly deeply want to be able to scan all your encrypted communications. Their attempts have been going on for years, here is my 2025 overview (which I thought would be the last...) https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/chatcontrol-in-brief/ /ends

• Post #3660319

  I smell like WD40 now. But my problems are (dis)solved!