I’ve spent nearly two decades working in the internet space, and there’s a troubling pattern I keep seeing: once promising products becoming the victims of their own success. It’s like watching the same sad film over and over. A small team creates something genuinely useful, that makes you think “finally, someone gets it!” Then the …
Today, I’ve been playing piggy in the middle. Between the non-technical technical project manager in the technical team and the non-technical head of delivery with the supplier. At the mention of our content security policy, both sides draw a blank. Perhaps it’s the first time any of the supplier’s customers have had one. I’m the …
What I’ve mostly learned the last few days is how little I know, and how outdated my knowledge. It turns out that not only do I not need to upgrade my own hardware, but even the notion of streaming a desktop is tenuous. Sure, Vagon holds promise as a cloud hosted remote desktop with access …
AI has promise, certainly, but a lot of it is just hype. Unfortunately, I learnt that the hard way. Often, the latest and greatest model, touted as the one to kill all competition, turns out to be anything but stable. You can get good results, but only after a great deal of experimentation and refinement. …
https://youtu.be/eYVPThx7yss?si=t8MXHuZGvMVVEpy5
There’s an easier way of protecting young people from harmful online content than changing the law, requiring internet service providers to take down harmful content. It’s called parental responsibility. Don’t give your toddlers and pre-teens smartphones. And don’t give them unsupervised access to the internet in their bedrooms. My generation, I feel, has widely abdicated …
Tragic that, despite being forever weary of hype, I fell for the hype. Alas, marketing departments are getting better and better at pushing half-baked products as the next best thing, where in practice they’re largely just vapourware. Disappointed not so much with these companies as with myself. How did an arch cynic get so taken …
Today, I asked Microsoft’s AI Assistant, Copilot, if it has the capability the enable me to create a shortcut to a prompt template I might use regularly. It replied, no, sorry, but here’s a work around… “You can create a standard template text and save it in a document or note on your device. Whenever …
Modern tech companies use their customers as beta testers for their flaky services — and yet manage to convince us to pay for the privilege.
Generative AI has exploded onto the creative scene, offering tantalising possibilities for image creation. It promises instant art at the push of a button. But as anyone who has spent time with these tools will know, the reality can feel more like feeding a slot machine than commissioning a masterpiece. You sit there, crafting your …
There’s a reason tech companies market their AI products as assistants, copilots, companions, and underlords. No, not ethics. It’s because they’re still not very good. Don’t get me wrong. For many mundane tasks, they can be amazing. But it’s when you push then that they fall apart. That’s when the hype runs hollow, as if …
Generative AI is the closest I’ll ever get to colleagues who understand me. It’s so nice having an assistant that just gets it, delivering the goods with minimal fuss.
Oh, I was raised so proper-like, always so polite. Even when interacting with my AI assistants, I’m still all please and thank you, and “Do you think so?” or “Do you mind?” You should see my expressions of gratitude to the complex algorithm, conversing with the data centres like they’re a helpful friend. Which, really, …
Despite working with technology professionally, I have always been cautious embracing it in my personal life. I came late to the world of smartphones and social media — and swift to jettison the latter too. And so it is that I have been a late adopter of AI. As all around me rushed to try …
One more reason I don’t regret not accepting an invitation to act up into my former manager’s role: the insistence on the exec team on in-person meetings which could just as easily—and effectively—be conducted online. So it is that the poor chap who took the role must set out on a two-hour jaunt from a …
