Thomas Claburn
@lot49.com
Journalism: https://www.theregister.com/Author/Thomas-Claburn
Fiction: https://lot49.com
Code: https://github.com/dotnaught
Fiction: https://lot49.com
Code: https://github.com/dotnaught
If you develop software and your employer is requiring the use of AI tools, would you be willing to chat about it? tclaburn (at) theregister (dot) com
November 19, 2025 at 5:47 PM
If you develop software and your employer is requiring the use of AI tools, would you be willing to chat about it? tclaburn (at) theregister (dot) com
@shriekback.bsky.social is working on album #19. All is good with the world. There is continuity and coherence.
SHRIEKBACK 'Things with Heads'
YouTube video by ANAXATON6
youtu.be
November 6, 2025 at 4:50 PM
@shriekback.bsky.social is working on album #19. All is good with the world. There is continuity and coherence.
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
“We are replacing pluralism with personalization, and surrendering our information-gathering to validation machines that always tell us we’re right.“
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
The Validation Machines
Humanity thrives on friction—so why are the tools of the future built to make everything seem so easy?
www.theatlantic.com
November 2, 2025 at 2:08 PM
“We are replacing pluralism with personalization, and surrendering our information-gathering to validation machines that always tell us we’re right.“
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Choose musicians over AI.
Live from Meyhouse Jazz: Andrea Claburn sings Ella Fitzgerald
YouTube video by Meyhouse
youtu.be
October 30, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Choose musicians over AI.
"We study how Elon Musk's polarizing and partisan actions have impacted Tesla vehicle sales in the United States... Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles."
www.nber.org/papers/w34413
www.nber.org/papers/w34413
The Musk Partisan Effect on Tesla Sales
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
www.nber.org
October 27, 2025 at 11:17 PM
"We study how Elon Musk's polarizing and partisan actions have impacted Tesla vehicle sales in the United States... Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles."
www.nber.org/papers/w34413
www.nber.org/papers/w34413
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
the duality of man
October 26, 2025 at 1:18 AM
the duality of man
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
While the AWS team has resolved the severe us-east-1 outages, reading this post-mortem makes one thing clear: they are still suffering from a critical shortage of paragraph breaks
October 23, 2025 at 5:49 PM
While the AWS team has resolved the severe us-east-1 outages, reading this post-mortem makes one thing clear: they are still suffering from a critical shortage of paragraph breaks
For those in Palo Alto on Oct. 25:
Andrea Claburn Sings Ella: A Tribute to the First Lady of Song (5pm) | Meyhouse Jazz
Jazz vocalist Andrea Claburn honors the legendary Ella Fitzgerald in an evening of timeless swing, soaring scat, and heartfelt ballads. With Matt Clark (piano), Dan Feiszli (bass), and Michael O’Neill...
www.meyhousejazz.com
October 18, 2025 at 4:54 PM
For those in Palo Alto on Oct. 25:
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
"The Labor Department warned in an obscure document filed with the Federal Register last week that 'the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens' is threatening 'the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.'”
Trump administration says immigration enforcement threatens higher food prices
U.S. farmers face labor shortages and potential food price hikes due to Trump’s immigration policy, the administration acknowledged in a Federal Registry document.
wapo.st
October 11, 2025 at 12:28 PM
"The Labor Department warned in an obscure document filed with the Federal Register last week that 'the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens' is threatening 'the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.'”
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
Love this from @lot49.com -
We would argue that political bias ... is not only unavoidable in LLMs trained on human-created content but desirable.... The more interesting question is how LLM bias should be tuned.
www.theregister.com/2025/10/10/o...
We would argue that political bias ... is not only unavoidable in LLMs trained on human-created content but desirable.... The more interesting question is how LLM bias should be tuned.
www.theregister.com/2025/10/10/o...
OpenAI claims GPT-5 has 30% less political bias
: AI model maker touts effort to depoliticize its product
www.theregister.com
October 10, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Love this from @lot49.com -
We would argue that political bias ... is not only unavoidable in LLMs trained on human-created content but desirable.... The more interesting question is how LLM bias should be tuned.
www.theregister.com/2025/10/10/o...
We would argue that political bias ... is not only unavoidable in LLMs trained on human-created content but desirable.... The more interesting question is how LLM bias should be tuned.
www.theregister.com/2025/10/10/o...
Tick, tick, tick...
Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net
October 4, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Tick, tick, tick...
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
The Register: "Curl project, swamped with AI slop, finds not all AI is bad"
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/02/curl_project_swamped_with_ai/
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/02/curl_project_swamped_with_ai/
Curl project, swamped with AI slop, finds not all AI is bad
: Artificial intelligence works when humans use it wisely
www.theregister.com
October 2, 2025 at 8:37 PM
The Register: "Curl project, swamped with AI slop, finds not all AI is bad"
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/02/curl_project_swamped_with_ai/
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/02/curl_project_swamped_with_ai/
🔥
Dropkick Murphys "Who'll Stand With Us?" Music Video
YouTube video by Dropkick Murphys
www.youtube.com
October 2, 2025 at 1:46 AM
🔥
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
Matt Seybold ( @mattseybold.bsky.social )
"I ask my fellow educators to consider some measures for reducing our complicity in efforts to steal our students identities, attention, and right to education, even indenture them to train algorithms"
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/against-te...
"I ask my fellow educators to consider some measures for reducing our complicity in efforts to steal our students identities, attention, and right to education, even indenture them to train algorithms"
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/against-te...
Against Technofeudal Education
Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI
theamericanvandal.substack.com
August 27, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Matt Seybold ( @mattseybold.bsky.social )
"I ask my fellow educators to consider some measures for reducing our complicity in efforts to steal our students identities, attention, and right to education, even indenture them to train algorithms"
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/against-te...
"I ask my fellow educators to consider some measures for reducing our complicity in efforts to steal our students identities, attention, and right to education, even indenture them to train algorithms"
theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/against-te...
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
The problem with AI isn’t just that it uses a lot of power, it’s how it uses it
Like a volume dial that jumps straight from 1 to 11 with nothing in between.
Modern grids weren’t designed for that. Which makes Googles latest move all the more important.
www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/g...
Like a volume dial that jumps straight from 1 to 11 with nothing in between.
Modern grids weren’t designed for that. Which makes Googles latest move all the more important.
www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/g...
Google agrees to pause AI workloads when power demand spikes
: On hot summer days, air conditioning is rather more important than search summaries
www.theregister.com
August 5, 2025 at 2:55 AM
The problem with AI isn’t just that it uses a lot of power, it’s how it uses it
Like a volume dial that jumps straight from 1 to 11 with nothing in between.
Modern grids weren’t designed for that. Which makes Googles latest move all the more important.
www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/g...
Like a volume dial that jumps straight from 1 to 11 with nothing in between.
Modern grids weren’t designed for that. Which makes Googles latest move all the more important.
www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/g...
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
“Here at Apple, we have no ideas, and we can’t wait to show you what we haven’t been working on.”
August 1, 2025 at 12:59 AM
“Here at Apple, we have no ideas, and we can’t wait to show you what we haven’t been working on.”
Majorana or ... ?
Bitter fight over 2020 Microsoft quantum paper continues
Deep dive: Ground control to Majorana
www.theregister.com
July 31, 2025 at 7:22 PM
Majorana or ... ?
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
new albums - vinyl and all sorts now available at shriekback.com/store and fridge magnets.... always with the fridge magnets
shriekback
Home page of shriekback, an alternative group from london
shriekback.com
July 5, 2025 at 1:48 PM
new albums - vinyl and all sorts now available at shriekback.com/store and fridge magnets.... always with the fridge magnets
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
My cartoon in this weeks @newyorker.com
June 30, 2025 at 2:40 PM
My cartoon in this weeks @newyorker.com
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
The singularity is awesome
June 28, 2025 at 5:19 PM
The singularity is awesome
If you're in the Bay Area on Friday...
Andrea Claburn (5PM) | Meyhouse Jazz
Powerhouse storyteller, charismatic performer, and renowned Bay Area jazz vocalist Andrea Claburn returns to the Meyhouse stage for another night of stellar music.
www.meyhousejazz.com
June 12, 2025 at 3:13 AM
If you're in the Bay Area on Friday...
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
a bird feeder with Hitchcock ties 😄😄
June 1, 2025 at 11:41 AM
a bird feeder with Hitchcock ties 😄😄
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
The idea that you can just “teach computer science” and be apolitical is a beautiful dream that expired in the 2000s, at the latest. Computer science has re-organized every facet of our society: it is inherently political. Instead of taking this idea seriously, we ran from it. Now we live in hell.
May 3, 2025 at 3:27 PM
The idea that you can just “teach computer science” and be apolitical is a beautiful dream that expired in the 2000s, at the latest. Computer science has re-organized every facet of our society: it is inherently political. Instead of taking this idea seriously, we ran from it. Now we live in hell.
Reposted by Thomas Claburn
Love this. In his “I Agree” installation Dima Yarovinsky-Yahel took the content from terms of service statements for companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder and printed them out on A4 paper with a standard font size for legal contracts to demonstrate the length of these agreements.
April 27, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Love this. In his “I Agree” installation Dima Yarovinsky-Yahel took the content from terms of service statements for companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder and printed them out on A4 paper with a standard font size for legal contracts to demonstrate the length of these agreements.