I’m very aware that what I’m about to start talking about are first-world problems, but then isn’t that the irony, that so much that’s meant to make life better and easier in fact ends up making it more difficult?

• Cars that intervene supposedly to make your driving safer, but in fact end up with you being distracted by the car, fighting the car, and not paying attention to what’s happening around you.

• Security systems on bank accounts that, when they’re reset, involve changing every bloody setting on every bloody online service.

• Health appointment booking systems that just don’t work in so many ways.

• EV car charging systems that sometimes work, sometimes don’t, present you with unique interfaces each time, and without which you’re going nowhere!

And all of that is just this morning. What a start to the week.

Another great review of Hannah’s show in Brighton.

I find it fascinating that one of the main criticisms of AI systems, and claims about their consciousness, is that they’re just regurgitating the patterns that they have been fed and been exposed to. 

Is the same not true of ourselves? 

Aren’t most of the themes of the prattling voice in our heads just memes and patterns we’ve picked up along the way, some consciously fed to us by our cultures, some based on petty recollections of our own of past grievances, some driven by media fuelled paranoias about our future?

How “real” are most of the thoughts that pass through our minds unbidden? How in control of them are we? 

How different from AI are we?

I have often said that with the new tech platforms we are building a fascist state one click at a time. 

I have also warned of the potential for autonomous systems to put two and two together to make five and to then “decide” that we are guilty of some crime that didn’t even exist when we did what we did. 

Lastly, I once described the software industry as dodgy characters in cheap suits selling wish fulfilment to out of their depth execs. 

As if it wasn’t bad enough that the NHS are selling our data to Palantir it now appears that the Met Police are considering supping with the devil too. 

Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Mollie’s play is back on in London again. Details linked from the image below. As you can see from the comments it’s a cracker. (But then I am a biased Dad)

I was just listening to This Week in Tech where they were discussing the closure of the CBS newsroom. They got on to talking about broadcasters and podcasting and why broadcasters weren’t particularly good at podcasting. As someone who worked in radio for 10 years of my career at the BBC, I always felt the answer was about tone. My work was in the BBC World Service and I liked the fact that news was just presented as neutrally and factually as possible. There was very little “journalese” involved.

Domestic radio, and especially television, always seemed incredibly artificial to me. They talked funny. They still do. And they still do when they’re doing podcasts. That rumpty‑tump unnatural radio voice makes me wonder if they go home and talk to their partners like that!

This artificiality was absent in podcasting in the early days. Podcasting was people who were enthusiastic and knowledgeable about subjects, wanting to share or discuss things they cared about. The intent was very different, the tone was very different. I didn’t feel talked down to.

This is why I love Leo Laporte’s podcasts so much and have listened to them for 20 years. Leo came from a professional broadcasting background and can turn on trumpty‑tump tone like he’s turned on a switch. But normally he’s just someone who’s fascinated by the same things as I am, conveys his enthusiasm in a very open and accessible way, and has been my companion on many, many long distance journeys.

I still feel talked down to when I listen to speech radio, and sadly, even when people like the BBC try to do podcasting. As more and more money gets pumped into podcasting, it’s all starting to sound the same. It feels like we’ve lost something special.

We use Apple’s HomeKit and Wi-Fi switches to control lights in various rooms. We had a new Wi-Fi switch installed in a central ceiling light, and Penny could never quite remember what I had labeled it, so we decided to call it Fred. This means we just ask Siri to turn Fred on or off. 

There was then a particular sidelight we wanted to turn off regularly in the lounge, and again, inaccuracies in saying the name meant it didn’t always turn on or off. 

So I just said, “Let’s call it Mary,” off the top of my head. There are two other sidelights in the lounge, so of course, they have now become Joseph and Jesus.

Following on from my last post about the passing of Michael Borland, it made me realize how important it is to reach out and connect with people online, and to say how much you appreciate their writing. 

It’s too easy to assume that we will all go on forever.

Very sad to hear just now about the death of Michael Borland. I never met him but have been following his blog for a while now. He came across as a thoroughly nice, upbeat guy despite incredible challenges from cancer, which I’m assuming finally killed him.

It’s always moving when a relative posts onto someone’s blog, not sure who they’re connecting with, but with the desire to let us know what has happened.

As of today, I have been blogging for a quarter of a century. Now there’s a scary thought.

Watched I Swear last night. What a lovely film.  Highly recommended.

(Especially if you are aware of the stoochie at The BAFTA Awards.)

It would appear that you can't teach this old dog new tricks. I let my enthusiasm for the new and shiny get the better of me when I posted about Current the other day.

I've been using it for a week or so now, and I just can't get used to the way it works. It may be me, it may be the app, but I've gone back, yet again, to NetNewsWire.

There are lots of other RSS readers out there, and friends have recommended a couple, so I'll still keep tinkering — but apologies if any of you were swayed by my enthusiasm and bought Current. 

I know I have written about this before, but I’m sitting here in my office listening to the sound of gunfire drifting over from the nearby woods and yet again feeling utterly bewildered at the idea of killing innocent creatures for fun. 

Once you’ve made that step, taking pleasure in the act of killing a living creature, what’s to stop you moving up the evolutionary food chain if you deem your quarry sufficiently lacking in value?

To say that RSS is a big part of my life is obviously an overstatement, but I have been using it since back in the day when people argued about the merits of its different flavours. And since deleting all of my social media accounts, it is principally how I interact with the web.

There are currently about 350 or so feeds in my Feedbin account. Some of them are news sites, although mostly technical and other subject-oriented news. I stay away from anything smacking of mainstream news with their  lists of things to be afraid of that you can do nothing about! But it’s mostly made up of blogs. Some of those blogs don’t get updated very often; some of them may never be updated again. But the great thing about RSS is it doesn’t matter, because I don’t have to go and consciously seek out those sites, but just wait patiently until something happens and it’s delivered to me. They don’t add any noise to my signal, but when they do post, I get to see it.

Although I have tried most of the RSS readers that have come and gone over the years, I’ve pretty much stuck with NetNewsWire since it began. There’s a bit of a backlash at the moment about the original design of NetNewsWire, which adopted the same sort of metaphor as an email inbox. We have a list of incoming posts, which you mark as read or unread, and you’re given a total of the unread, which sits ominously, making you feel guilty for not having got round to reading them. Up until now I’ve been willing to just shoulder that burden because none of the alternatives appealed to me.

But Jason Kottke, one of my all-time favourite bloggers, recently shared Current, which is a new attempt to make reading RSS feeds and ingesting the information they contain a more relaxed and pleasurable process. It’s actually proving really interesting.

Even if you don’t download the app, it’s well worth having a read at the thoughts that are behind it, in terms of user interface design and how we consume information.

And finally, if you’re not using RSS, why not?

Why is it that every police thriller these days has to have what I’m beginning to call “wankers in fancy dress”? Pumped up macho blokes in pseudo-military outfits walking in that strangely stylised way that they have as they burst into houses and search them with all their headgear on and microphones and cameras.

I watched One Battle After Another last night and there were lots of them in it. Wankers in fancy dress as far as the eye could see.

I occasionally, by mistake, catch footage of ICE as they terrorise America. More wankers in fancy dress.

How can they take themselves seriously?

It was on this day in 1945 that Auschwitz was liberated. Visiting that camp was one of the most profound experiences of my life. 

It is just inconceivable that we continue to demonize, dehumanize and persecute entire populations on the basis of perceived difference.

What does it take to learn?

Compelling drama, but I am struggling with the idea of a spy who has the keyboard sounds turned on on his iPhone...

If you are remotely close to anyone who has any power or influence and you see them making crazy decisions, have the courage to stand up and say, are you sure? Are you crazy? Have you lost the plot? 

You never know, asking these questions might make a difference…