FeedCity

David Pogue, at Pogue’s Posts:

Amazon’s “50+ things to try” list mentions that Alexa can “find a home maintenance professional.” So I tried it.

ME: I need a septic-system repair.

ALEXA: That service isn’t currently supported. I can help with plumbing services instead.

ME: Okay, fine. Plumbing services.

ALEXA: What’s your plumbing issue?

ME: I have untreated sewage pouring out of my kitchen faucet.

ALEXA: Is this urgent?

Uh … what do YOU think, dumbass? But OK:

ME: Yes.

ALEXA: When do you need it by?

Displays four responses: ASAP, Within a week, Further out, and I haven’t decided yet.

ME: ASAP.

ALEXA: I’m Alexa, not Shaq.

This could only have been funnier if Alexa had responded “The Aristocrats!”

(Which great film, is, in fact, available to stream on Amazon Prime.)

Link: pogueman.substack.com/p/alexa-is-a-buggy-embarrassment

Back in 2024 I tweeted screenshots of a game concept generated by GPT-3 and some concept "art" created using DALL-E. Today, on the fourth anniversary of that tweet, I decided to see if Claude Fable 5 (running in Claude Code for web) could build the entire game from the conte...

Release: llm-anthropic 0.26 Includes new features enabled by LLM 0.32: New models: claude-fable-5, claude-sonnet-5, and claude-opus-5. #75, #76 Added server-side tools for WebSearch, WebFetch, CodeExecution, and AnthropicMCP, available through LLM's -T interface o...

I look forward to this level of class and brand prestige coming to Apple Maps.

Link: mastodon.social/@gruber/117044545772667716

Back in 2022 I tweeted screenshots of a game concept generated by GPT-3 and some concept "art" created using DALL-E. Today, on the fourth anniversary of that tweet, I decided to see if Claude Fable 5 (running in Claude Code for web) could build the entire game from the conte...

The Computer That Helped Win World War II. “…it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the fascination of a Colossus at work: its sheer bulk and apparent complexity; the fantastic speed of thin paper tape round the glittering pulleys…”

In 2016, Mitski did an episode of Song Exploder about her song “Your Best American Girl.” She had just released her second album, Puberty 2. Later, Pitchfork named “Your Best American Girl” one of the top 10 best songs of the past decade, and Billboard named it as one of the songs that defined the decade. And in honor of the 10th anniversary of the album, there’s a new deluxe version that’s out digitally, and a limited edition vinyl is coming in October. I thought this would be a good time to revisit Mitski’s episode, where she and her collaborator Patrick Hyland break down how “Your Best American Girl” was made. 

To learn more, visit songexploder.net/mitski

Whitestone Gallery in Seoul presents the artist's solo exhibition, 'Spiral of Energy.'

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Monumental Painted Wood Carvings by Jiang Miao Center Mindfulness appeared first on Colossal.

Do you remember the video I posted last summer of YouTuber Benn Jordan where he “uploaded a picture of a bird to a bird and then downloaded the bird picture from the bird”? So cool. Jordan is back with more data encoding tricks in his latest video, There Are Files Stored in ...

Lidar and other discoveries continue to show that the Amazon rainforest was home to a “sprawling ancient civilization much bigger than researchers expected” (possibly up to 3 million people around 100-300 CE).

"In 2002, a group of friends from North Carolina told a story that ruined all their lives. What if it wasn’t true?"

A new book from Dan Rimada, with photos by Gulce Kilkis, is slated for release in November.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Bodega Cats of New York’ Advocates for the City’s Beloved Feline Shopkeepers appeared first on Colossal.

Hey folks. I just wanted to hop in here quickly to let a cat out of a bag: I am in the midst of moving. Not going to get into the wheres, whys, and hows right now; there’s a bigger post coming at some point about all of that. I’m excited and anxious about the transition (it’s a pretty big one), but it’s been taking up a lot of time, energy, and bandwidth that I would usually be putting into KDO.

The move is happening in early Sept, and I’m probably going to be taking some time off between now and then (timing tbd) to get everything packed & organized, spend time with family & friends before I go, and generally not run myself completely into the ground. Thanks for your patience & understanding; I’m excited to get back to focusing on the site in mid-Sept. ✌️

Tags: Jason Kottke · kottke.org

Paul Thurrott: We didn’t need more evidence that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 compute platform is superior to anything in the x86 world. But here it is, regardless: The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is yet another nearly-perfect laptop running Windows 11 on Arm, an ideal combination ...

This is an old list but still interesting: the 12 most linguistically influential American movies since 1980. If you were compiling a list of linguistically influential movies since 2000, what would be on it?

Scientists believe the upper section of a SpaceX rocket has crashed into the surface of the Moon at seven times the speed of sound. Also: police in Mexico are investigating why a social media influencer was shot dead during a live stream. The World Food Programme warns that ...

There’s an old adage that you should never bring a knife to a gunfight. My take on OpenAI’s response yesterday was expressing incredulity that OpenAI was bringing, like, a box of chocolates to the gunfight. Apple is trying to kill io, and OpenAI’s public response is basically “We love you guys, can’t we just be friends?”

This thread on Hacker News though points out that their response doesn’t even explain what they’re responding to. There’s no context. They just assume the reader is up to date on the lawsuit Apple filed. If you didn’t know anything about the suit and started with this post, it would make no sense at all. I’ve heard from friends there that the OpenAI culture is “too online”, and this might be the best proof of it.

Link: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49164649

Tressie McMillan Cottom’s reading list for fighting back against Big Tech. “Put simply, there is too much money, some of it too untraceable, giving a small group of unelected people too much power over the people.”

Emily Wilson takes another crack at a critique of Nolan’s “visually stunning, emotionally empty” Odyssey. “Verbally, we are told that people matter; visually, we are shown that they do not.”

Surfing Alaska’s Turnagain Arm (home to a twice-daily tidal bore wave) can be fun (10-foot waves you can ride for miles) but also dangerous: “You need a Plan B, a Plan C and a Plan D because no one is coming to rescue you.”