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The online home of Jeremy Keith, an author and web developer living and working in Brighton, England.

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The meaing of “AI”

There are different kinds of buzzwords. Some buzzwords are useful. They take a concept that would otherwise require a sentence of explanation and package it up into a single word or phrase. Back in the day, “ajax” was a pretty good buzzword. Some buzzwords are worse than u...

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FFConf 2024

I went to FFConf on Friday. It did me the world of good. To be honest, I haven’t much felt like venturing out over the past few days since my optimism took a big hit. But then when I do go and interact with people, I’m grateful for it. Like, when I went out to my usual Wed...

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Optimism

I think of myself of as an optimist. It makes me insufferable sometimes. When someone is having a moan about something in the news and they say something like “people are terrible”, I can’t resist weighing in with a “well, actually…” Then I’ll start channeling Rutger Bregma...

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Information literacy and chatbots as search • Buttondown

buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/information-literacy-and-chatbots-as-search/

If someone uses an LLM as a replacement for search, and the output they get is correct, this is just by chance. Furthermore, a system that is right 95% of the time is arguably more dangerous tthan one that is right 50% of the time. People will be more likely to trust the output, and likely less able to fact check the 5%.

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Daring Fireball: Kottke on the Art and Power of Hypertextual Writing

daringfireball.net/2024/11/kottke_on_the_art_and_power_of_hypertextual_writing

Hypertext links are an information-density multiplier.

The way I’ve long thought about it is that traditional writing — like for print — feels two-dimensional. Writing for the web adds a third dimension. It’s not an equal dimension, though. It doesn’t turn writing from a flat plane into a full three-dimensional cube. It’s still primarily about the same two dimensions as old-fashioned writing. What hypertext links provide is an extra layer of depth. Just the fact that the links are there — even if you, the reader, don’t follow them — makes a sentence read slightly differently. It adds meaning in a way that is unique to the web as a medium for prose.

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Myth and magic

I read Madeline Miller’s Circe last year. I loved it. It was my favourite fiction book I read that year. Reading Circe kicked off a bit of a reading spree for me. I sought out other retellings of Greek myths. There’s no shortage of good books out there from Pat Barker, Nata...