Stewart Webb
@nuclearpidgeon.bsky.social
codebase historian / professional computer wrangler, proud one-fifth of the australian bluesky user base (melbourne chapter).
also online at https://swebb.id.au
also online at https://swebb.id.au
This post from @j2bryson.bsky.social is such simple plain English that perfectly distills many of my qualms with LLM AI systems, and reasonable, plain, sensible cautions to take when using them. A breath of fresh air.
joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2025/02/gene...
joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2025/02/gene...
Generative AI use and human agency
artificial and natural intelligence, including politics, policy, ethics and security
joanna-bryson.blogspot.com
November 7, 2025 at 7:17 PM
This post from @j2bryson.bsky.social is such simple plain English that perfectly distills many of my qualms with LLM AI systems, and reasonable, plain, sensible cautions to take when using them. A breath of fresh air.
joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2025/02/gene...
joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2025/02/gene...
Reposted by Stewart Webb
ladies and gentlemen...we got him
October 30, 2025 at 7:10 PM
ladies and gentlemen...we got him
I scored 15/21 on e-mail.wtf and all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.
Email is Easy
Everyone knows what an email address is, right?
e-mail.wtf
November 7, 2025 at 5:02 AM
I scored 15/21 on e-mail.wtf and all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.
every day I struggle and wade through the waves of enshittification trying to get back to our lost paradise of “going on the computer and having fun”
October 17, 2025 at 9:59 PM
every day I struggle and wade through the waves of enshittification trying to get back to our lost paradise of “going on the computer and having fun”
Reposted by Stewart Webb
Bring back inscrutable security posters
October 7, 2025 at 3:05 AM
Bring back inscrutable security posters
Reposted by Stewart Webb
“EXTRA, EXTRA - READ ALL ABOUT IT! BRITISH MAN YELLS AT TECH INDUSTRY ON INTERNET!”
October 3, 2025 at 4:15 AM
“EXTRA, EXTRA - READ ALL ABOUT IT! BRITISH MAN YELLS AT TECH INDUSTRY ON INTERNET!”
Reposted by Stewart Webb
Also: please put in the newspaper that I’m mad
My Financial Times interview got reprinted on the front page of the newspaper The Australian Financial Review with an incredible illustration of the contents of my mind and the big handle I turn when I blog
www.afr.com/technology/t...
www.afr.com/technology/t...
October 2, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Also: please put in the newspaper that I’m mad
Another news event in the TikTok ban / forced U.S. sale, another time to repost this from @junlper.beer
September 26, 2025 at 1:34 AM
Another news event in the TikTok ban / forced U.S. sale, another time to repost this from @junlper.beer
just incredible. absolute cinema. where do I invest
September 18, 2025 at 8:07 AM
just incredible. absolute cinema. where do I invest
Reposted by Stewart Webb
i constantly think about this post
September 3, 2025 at 3:15 AM
i constantly think about this post
Reposted by Stewart Webb
This is not the AI boom creating a new type of work, this is a classic example of managers using automation to deskill old ones. Creative workers who once made a higher wage creating original art and writing are now paid in piecework to edit automated output. Bosses are using AI to cut labor costs.
The AI boom has created a new type of work: fixing botched AI. Designers are being hired to remake wonky AI art. Writers are asked to make ChatGPT’s writing sound more human. Even software developers are tasked with fixing buggy vibe coding.
www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...
www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...
Humans are being hired to make AI slop look less sloppy
In the age of automation, human workers are being brought in to fix what artificial intelligence gets wrong.
www.nbcnews.com
September 2, 2025 at 11:12 PM
This is not the AI boom creating a new type of work, this is a classic example of managers using automation to deskill old ones. Creative workers who once made a higher wage creating original art and writing are now paid in piecework to edit automated output. Bosses are using AI to cut labor costs.
Reposted by Stewart Webb
Meanwhile a very common piece of feedback I hear about the thing I've spent the last nine years pouring my heart and soul into is 'this sucks, my LLM doesn't know how to write it' which translates as 'I am incapable of building anything without a robot holding my hand'
fuckin bleak
fuckin bleak
August 28, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Meanwhile a very common piece of feedback I hear about the thing I've spent the last nine years pouring my heart and soul into is 'this sucks, my LLM doesn't know how to write it' which translates as 'I am incapable of building anything without a robot holding my hand'
fuckin bleak
fuckin bleak
Reposted by Stewart Webb
okay one more sorry i just like sharing information via the correct format
August 7, 2025 at 5:40 AM
okay one more sorry i just like sharing information via the correct format
Reposted by Stewart Webb
Did you know that Microsoft has a hallway that is just a wall of GPUs? devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/wall...
Direct3D team office has a Wall of GPU History - DirectX Developer Blog
When you are the team behind something like Direct3D, you need many different graphics cards to test on. And when you’ve been doing this for as long as we have, you’ll inevitably accumulate a LOT of ...
devblogs.microsoft.com
July 16, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Did you know that Microsoft has a hallway that is just a wall of GPUs? devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/wall...
Reposted by Stewart Webb
RIP Freud, you would've fucking loved reddit and chatgpt
July 13, 2025 at 6:59 AM
RIP Freud, you would've fucking loved reddit and chatgpt
Spelling of disc - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
July 4, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Reposted by Stewart Webb
Reposted by Stewart Webb
There's a thread on AskReddit asking, "People who have had to drain their life’s savings on a single event, what happened?"
99% of the answers are depressing American stories about medical bills, 1% is an Australian who found a wombat burrowing under their house.
99% of the answers are depressing American stories about medical bills, 1% is an Australian who found a wombat burrowing under their house.
June 16, 2025 at 2:40 AM
There's a thread on AskReddit asking, "People who have had to drain their life’s savings on a single event, what happened?"
99% of the answers are depressing American stories about medical bills, 1% is an Australian who found a wombat burrowing under their house.
99% of the answers are depressing American stories about medical bills, 1% is an Australian who found a wombat burrowing under their house.
Reposted by Stewart Webb
How long could it take to read a book, Michael? 2 hours?
June 15, 2025 at 10:33 PM
How long could it take to read a book, Michael? 2 hours?
Reposted by Stewart Webb
We're living through the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore, while the government stomps its uncaring boot on our necks. But there's an easy way to fight back: Care.
I wrote about it: dansinker.com/posts/2025-0...
I wrote about it: dansinker.com/posts/2025-0...
May 23, 2025 at 11:27 PM
We're living through the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore, while the government stomps its uncaring boot on our necks. But there's an easy way to fight back: Care.
I wrote about it: dansinker.com/posts/2025-0...
I wrote about it: dansinker.com/posts/2025-0...
Reposted by Stewart Webb
If you load this page it contacts 82 IP addresses executing 256 separate HTTP transactions to download 18MB of data writing 64 cookies to your device to tell you “no”
May 24, 2025 at 10:37 AM
If you load this page it contacts 82 IP addresses executing 256 separate HTTP transactions to download 18MB of data writing 64 cookies to your device to tell you “no”
Reposted by Stewart Webb
Microsoft in 2020: “We will be carbon neutral by 2030!”
blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01...
Microsoft’s “Chief Sustainability Officer” in 2025: that was “a moonshot”, “and five years later, we have had to acknowledge that the moon has gotten further away”
technologymagazine.com/articles/how...
blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01...
Microsoft’s “Chief Sustainability Officer” in 2025: that was “a moonshot”, “and five years later, we have had to acknowledge that the moon has gotten further away”
technologymagazine.com/articles/how...
Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030 - The Official Microsoft Blog
The scientific consensus is clear. The world confronts an urgent carbon problem. The carbon in our atmosphere has created a blanket of gas that traps heat and is changing the world’s climate. Already,...
blogs.microsoft.com
May 23, 2025 at 12:20 AM
Microsoft in 2020: “We will be carbon neutral by 2030!”
blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01...
Microsoft’s “Chief Sustainability Officer” in 2025: that was “a moonshot”, “and five years later, we have had to acknowledge that the moon has gotten further away”
technologymagazine.com/articles/how...
blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01...
Microsoft’s “Chief Sustainability Officer” in 2025: that was “a moonshot”, “and five years later, we have had to acknowledge that the moon has gotten further away”
technologymagazine.com/articles/how...
Months later I finally got around to watching all of @freya.bsky.social's video on Generative AI. It puts a lot of what has irked me so much about the tech into words that I hadn't been able to put together. Particularly eye-opening to me was the view of it all being "fundamentally deceptive" (1/4)
live in about 10 hours from now - subscribe/mark your calendars/tell your friends/share etc. c:
Generative AI is a Parasitic Cancer
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-opB...
Generative AI is a Parasitic Cancer
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-opB...
Generative AI is a Parasitic Cancer
YouTube video by Freya Holmér
www.youtube.com
May 20, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Months later I finally got around to watching all of @freya.bsky.social's video on Generative AI. It puts a lot of what has irked me so much about the tech into words that I hadn't been able to put together. Particularly eye-opening to me was the view of it all being "fundamentally deceptive" (1/4)
Reposted by Stewart Webb
Generative AI has helped me to understand why, in Star Wars, the droids seem to have personalities but are generally bad at whatever they're supposed to be programmed to do, and everyone is tired of their shit and constantly tells them to shut up
May 10, 2025 at 4:21 AM
Generative AI has helped me to understand why, in Star Wars, the droids seem to have personalities but are generally bad at whatever they're supposed to be programmed to do, and everyone is tired of their shit and constantly tells them to shut up
Reposted by Stewart Webb
modems screaming at us in the 90s was a warning and we didn't take it
May 3, 2025 at 12:57 AM
modems screaming at us in the 90s was a warning and we didn't take it