Bookmarks 11
Bookmarks usually appear at the end of my weeknotes, but I spent most of November travelling around Japan. I like to share these bookmarks anyway, as a dated archive for myself but also for anyone else who might find the links interesting.
(I used to share an annual round-up – or reading list – but I failed to do that last year. I’ll bring it back this year!)
There’s a whole bunch of stuff in there on various different topics. I’ve added a summary for each bookmark too, so you’ve got more than a title to help you decide whether to read it or not.
For robot voice transparency: if the summary wasn’t provided by the original author or publication, Ghostreader’s auto-summarisation helped me write it. I’ve adapted what it spat out. I’m working towards a different reading and note-taking system though, so these will be Steve-generated in future.
‘We are striving to recreate pub utopia’ — the rise of the backyard boozer, 2 mins. A trend kick-started for many during the pandemic has taken on a life of its own, accelerated by pub closures and the cost of a pint.
Can nationalisation fix England’s rail network?, 2 mins. Move by Labour government will trigger a wave of state takeovers in the struggling, cash-strapped sector.
Where OpenAI Sees Paying Customers for o1, 1 mins. OpenAI has a first-mover advantage in a realm known as reasoning, or artificial intelligence capable of solving complex problems with little human oversight, as we reported this week. Now, the startup is moving to cash in on that headstart by selling its reasoning model, known as o1.
AI Makes Tech Debt More Expensive, 3 mins. AI is making it more costly for companies to manage tech debt, as it greatly favours those with high-quality, low-debt codebases. Tools like generative AI struggle with complex, legacy code, so teams should focus on refactoring and improving their code before relying on AI.
GenAI costs follow a Moore’s Law-style curve, VC claims, 4 mins. “To a large extent, it is a rapid decline in cost of the underlying commodity that drives technology cycles.”
UK nails the coffin shut of the “New Payments Architecture”. Now, burn it?, 6 mins. The UK government’s New Payments Architecture (NPA) is now considered a failure and is being replaced with a new National Payments Vision (NPV) aimed at improving payment systems. Pay.UK, the organisation responsible for the NPA, may face significant reform or even abolition as the government seeks more efficient payment regulation.
Apple ramping up India manufacturing expansion to avoid Trump tariffs on China, 3 mins. Apple is expanding its manufacturing in India to avoid potential tariffs on Chinese imports.
AI is doing exactly what its creators want it to do, 8 mins. James Bridle on how AI is primarily a tool for corporations, often used to further capitalist goals while harming the environment and society.
Box117: Obsidian, 14 mins. Tobias goes into great detail on how he uses Obsidian for PhD research and personal knowledge management.
Trump victory tipped to break logjam of exotic US crypto ETF filings, 5 mins. Donald Trump’s election victory may lead to more cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs) being approved in the US, as industry experts expect a shift towards a more crypto-friendly SEC.
My Internet: Jasmine Sun, 11 mins. Jasmine Sun, a product leader at Substack, shares her thoughts on online media and culture.
Feedback is about change, 4 mins. Feedback is essential for improving digital public services and making them more responsive to citizens’ needs. It helps bridge the gap between service providers and the community, fostering trust and co-production. For feedback to be effective, it must be designed to be clear, actionable, and impactful.
The Onion to acquire Infowars out of bankruptcy, 2 mins. The Onion plans to acquire Infowars as it goes through bankruptcy.
7-Eleven starts talks with ACT on $47bn takeover bid as ‘white knight’ emerges, 2 mins. 7-Eleven is discussing a $47 billion takeover bid with ACT, as a potential “white knight” emerges. Actually fascinating to read about Japanese family tradition and how it bleeds into the mega-business world.
The long lunch blamed for Spain’s flood alert failure, 2 mins. Survivors accuse regional government of errors as experts warn climate change is creating volatile natural disasters
BOX113: There’s No App for Everything, 7 mins. Tobias chats about how he consumes media and/or “content”.
3 ideas to shape the government digital vision, 3 mins. Sarah Gold on what she’s pitching to the roundtable to help shape the UK’s digital public services.
Box116: Slipping a Disk for Squirrels, 6 mins. Tobias shares some notes on the rhetoric in VC talk.
The 3 AI Use Cases: Gods, Interns, and Cogs, 1 mins. Drew Breunig introduces a framework for AI use cases, categorising them into three groups: Gods, Interns, and Cogs.
Please publish and share more, 1 mins. Simon shares a note from Jeff Triplett, encouraging everyone to write and share more, even if it’s just a quick thought. I’ve been working towards doing that since 2022, but formed a better plan while on holiday.
Shaping a new digital centre of government: how we’re listening, 4 mins. Emily Middleton on what the Digital Centre Design is doing to figure out how to improve digital public services in the UK.
LLMs are smaller than you think, 2 mins. Running AI models at home is now easier and more accessible (and smaller, focused models are usually more applicable). Good for shifting your personal use of AI to renewable energy sources. The added interaction cost could counteract Jevon’s paradox.
Box114: I suppose it’s a gift. But not a good one., 15 mins. Tobias talking about how he uses speculative design (and creative writing, IMO) to explore futures. This happily confirmed that some of the workshops I ran when exploring personalisation on GOV.UK were legit.
Weeknotes 432, 6 mins. Roger reflects on the importance of alignment and collaboration in product management and service design. The vertical/horizontal model is handy.
Box115: It’s Your Fault if it Doesn’t Work, 9 mins. Tobias shares notes from his PhD on how the rhetoric around AI gaslights (?) people into buying it.
Week notes: 4 – 10 November 2024, 6 mins. Neil’s weeknotes are always good.
Week 26: Commuting, 2 mins. Frankie reflects on commuting!
Short update on the work of Digital Centre of UK government, 2 mins. Martha Lane Fox shares an update on her work with the Digital Centre of Government’s Advisory Board. (I don’t know if it’s a proper noun though. Emily Middleton talks about Digital Centre Design and ‘digital centre of government’. The press release on GOV.UK says ‘digital centre’, in quotes.)
Is an AI winter coming? Diminishing returns and scaling limit fears freeze AGI hopes, 6 mins. Experts are concerned that recent advancements in AI, particularly large language models, are showing diminishing returns, leading to fears that progress towards artificial general intelligence may be slowing.
iOS Apple Intelligence in EU in April 2025, 2 mins. Apple Intelligence will be available in the European Union starting in April 2025, despite earlier claims that EU tech rules were a barrier.
Do we have a civil duty to re-design social media platforms?, 4 mins. Thoughts on civility, civilian, civil as a design lens for social media. I think it’s a bit dangerous to think about social media platforms as ‘town squares’ or being anything close to actual democracy. Feels a bit 2014.
The meaing of “AI”, 3 mins. The term “AI” is confusing because it has different meanings in science fiction and in current technology, like large language models. This confusion can lead people to focus on unrealistic sci-fi dangers instead of real issues, such as exploitation in tech. Using a clearer term, like “applied statistics” would help avoid this misunderstanding. 💅
‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ says he also designed the Twitter logo, 2 mins. An FTAV frontline dispatch from ‘a historic event in the cryptocurrency landscape’.
AI groups rush to redesign model testing and create new benchmarks, 1 mins. Rapidly advancing technology is surpassing current methods of evaluating and comparing large language models.
Bashō, 3 mins. Overview of Matsuo Bashō.
CONFIRMED: LLMs have indeed reached a point of diminishing returns, 4 mins. Gary Marcus argues that large language models (LLMs) are hitting a limit in their effectiveness, leading to diminishing returns on improvements.
Tokyo’s Fukagawa Fudo Temple Fire Ritual, 4 mins. My mate Craig took us to see the Goma, an esoteric Buddhist fire ritual for the god of justice at Fukagawa Fudo temple in Tokyo. It was super cool. Plus there were like 10,000 crystal statues in the basement.
‘The best travel guide in the world’ celebrates its 100th year, 2 mins. The death of the guidebook has been long predicted — but the ‘South American Handbook’ keeps on trucking.
Column: These Apple researchers just showed that AI bots can’t think, and possibly never will, 7 mins. Apple researchers found that AI models struggle with basic math problems, often misunderstanding irrelevant details.
Steve Ballmer: the tech billionaire asking if voters in the US election want ‘just the facts’, 7 mins. Former Microsoft boss seeks to build better democracy with data.