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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

What newspapers falling for the "AI existential threats" corporate fanfic missed in their reporting of Anthropic's leaked IPO.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Dire state of news reporting - Anthropic's leaked IPO includes (1) evidence supporting AI hype being an unprofitable speculative bubble (2) corporate fanfic about existential threats from AI with no real evidence. Can probably guess which most news sites went with for their headlines.

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Patrick Harvie @patrickharvie.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A reminder that the term "green data centre" has not been defined, and the industry itself cannot be trusted to do so.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Reasons I'd never trust a vibe coded app #94: Using AI to run various tests for any issues. In testing translation, it noticed the app language remained English. Instead of doing sensible thing of changing environment variable for locale, it started writing a 500+ line 'workaround'...

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 14/09/2026

Free newsletter: The idea that we're nearing the creation of AI systems that we can't control and that pose an existential threat to humanity is a lie and a distraction from the tangible harms and problems caused by LLMs and AI labs' near-unlimited resources. www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-alread...

wheresyoured.at

https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-already-in-dangerous-hands/

If you liked this piece, you should subscribe to my premium newsletter, and you can subscribe on the following links: $70 a year, $18 a quarter, or $7 a month. In return you get a weekly newsletter…

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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Many "existing peer-reviewed studies that say AI is an effective learning tool are based on flawed methodologies and analyses that rely on misapplied, miscalculated or misinterpreted statistics." Good to see the severe limits of research on AI in education covered in IHE here.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Sick of dishonest AI disclaimers. Too many code repos claim 'AI assisted' - or very dishonest language like 'AI-human pair programming' - yet contain strong evidence it is actually near 100% vibe-coded slop with little to no human review. One project had over 900k lines of code in two months.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 13/09/2026

None of the stuff about “AI slowdown” actually explains what that means or what’s being slowed down. Anthropic’s blog about it says they’ll still train new models. I guess if it’s a “slowdown” maybe that’s how hyperscalers could reconcile with letting them out of compute deals?

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Alan Pope @popey.me · 12/09/2026

Got an old, slow laptop gathering dust? Bring it to Glasgow's Software Freedom Day repair café on 19 Sept — #OpenSource Glasgow will help you fix it up or install #Linux, free. Details: discourse.ubuntu.com/t/software-f...

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Prof James Robinson: “It seems like immature playground boasting writ large, underpinned by billions of dollars and the potential for significant environmental damage in an age when climate change is probably the biggest challenge we face.”

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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

My first long-form video is up: Myths Around AI and Productivity! Based on the work we’ve been doing at @dairinstitute.bsky.social with The Luddite Lab, we dispel 5 common myths around AI and labor by looking at what studies actually say about AI’s impact on labor. youtu.be/3BO0iy91lfU

youtu.be

Myths Around AI and Labor

YouTube video by Dr. Alex Hanna

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 11/09/2026

I joined the Times Tech Report to talk about why the media should be embarrassed they fell for an Antrhropic researcher’s specious “dire warnings” that are completely disconnected from reality, and Anthropic and OpenAI’s $1.3tn “reset wall” of commitments starting in 2027. youtu.be/Svwmd0xSoXM?...

youtu.be

AI is about to hit a cashflow wall | Ed Zitron

YouTube video by The Tech Report

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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Everyone knows AI-written academic papers are embarrassing now, including their "authors", which is why even the publishers - who stand to benefit most from AI-amplified publication volumes - are now offering "Affordable human expert editing for AI-drafted or AI-edited manuscripts" 🤯

Screenshot of T&F editing services, reading:

Editing for AI-Assisted Manuscripts
NEW
Affordable human expert editing for AI-drafted or AI-edited manuscripts.

Starting at $0.031/ word

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 11/09/2026

Holy shit. Bloomberg just verified one of my biggest scoops - that Microsoft only has 2gw of operational capacity. I had it at 1.993GW in prep for the story that @aishadown.bsky.social and I did for the guardian. Vindication! www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Brody Ford @BrodyFord
Lot of speculation out there about how many GPUs are actually deployed.
Today, Microsoft has about 2GW of Al-specific capacity live. around 17% of the total fleet.
Only about 2 gigawatts of the company's current 12-gigawatt capacity is centered on Al-specific chips, the people said. This is expected to grow to about a third of the 38 gigawatts Microsoft plans to have online in 2032, they said.
Brody Ford @BrodyFord_ • 23h
scoop: Microsoft is planning a massive expansion of its data center fleet to 38 gigawatts. $msft w/ @mattmday bloomberg.com/news/features/...
3:15 PM • Sep 11, 2026 • 12.5K Views

Are Microsoft's AI
plans being held back by a shortage of chips?
Guardian investigation finds
apparent discrepancy between what tech company has said about its AI capacity - and the
number of advanced chips it
has in operation
By Aisha Down and Ed Zitron
A Microsoft datacentre in the North Holland village of
Middenmeer in the Netherlands. Photograph: Ramon van
Flymen/EPA

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MetaBrainz @metabrainz.org · 11/09/2026

As with many of our peers, we are starting to feel and show the strain from AI scrapers up the wazoo (and also increased legit/good traffic 🥳❤️) and double to quadrupled server costs. If you have a rich aunt or uncle please consider asking for a MeB server or two this xmas: metabrainz.org/donate -a

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 11/09/2026

Better Offline monologue: I run through the nonsensical, pro-AI lab scare campaign driven by a former researcher, how the media keeps falling for grifts, and how dangerous AI is already in the wrong hands - those of Anthropic and OpenAI. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr.ee/betteroffline

podcasts.apple.com

Monologue: Jacob Coxon and the AI Safety Grift

Podcast Episode · Better Offline · September 11 · 16m

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I love how Microsoft rejects account authentication as it gives only one chance to correctly verify fingerprint straight after entering code on an unlocked phone -- & yet an alternative option it offers due to that is sending a code via text anyone could read without unlocking the phone.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

As usual with AI bullshit the contrast between headline & content is telling: "evidence that businesses involved with AI AND RELATED TECHNOLOGIES helped to boost the sector" "APPEAR to be involved with AI" "said it is DIFFICULT TO QUANTIFY THE EXACT IMPORT OF AI" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

UK economy sees surprise growth in July helped by AI boom

The economy expanded by 0.4%, official figures show, whereas analysts had predicted no growth.

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 10/09/2026

the only way AI is killing us all is if we let the AI CEOs get their way and build so many fossil-powered data centers they trigger runaway warming. stop giving any fuel to the sensationalist, science fictional notion they’re building an intelligent computer that will decide to murder us all.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 09/09/2026

I will say it is funny watching OpenAI boast about solving a complex math problem using millions of dollars of compute (and someone else’s work) all while remaining unable to solve the most obvious math problem (how to make their services profitable)

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

UUK expressed concern about students' uneven access to AI, citing a HEPI report Below is a graph from the same report. How are students using AI to "improve efficiency" in doing assessed work? Plagiarism. - 25% included AI generated text after editing it - 12% included AI generated text directly

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

New website idea: Pairing pro-AI articles with examples from the obvious AI slop they claim is "high-quality" content. Today's article: www.theguardian.com/technology/2... The slop spoken about as "high-quality educational content": kidopoly.com/history/about/ & open.spotify.com/episode/0Xz4...

theguardian.com

I’m a father of three who studies the impact of artificial intelligence: this is what parents need to know about AI

A Dr Seuss-style story written in seconds alerted me to the power – and perils – of the technology. But how can children embrace it without forgetting core skills?

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Molly White @molly.wiki · 05/09/2026

I would add OpenStreetMap, which is also community edited. This administration has really underscored some strengths of the wiki model.

Map screenshot showing label "Lake Ontario"

clay_c
Clay Smalley
United States moderator
5d
Although I don’t moderate this section of the forum, here’s a friendly reminder from last time the US government instigated a frivolous naming dispute over an international body of water:

These are the guidelines we use to determine what should be considered the name of a feature:

Names
Multilingual names
Disputes
Currently, the Gulf is tagged with name=Golfo de México, name:en=Gulf of Mexico, and official_name:en-US=Gulf of America. This is unlikely to change, unless the US government reverses its position, or (less likely) English speakers across the world all agree to start using the US government name. That last tag, official_name:en-US=*, is quite obscure and doesn’t show up on any map renderers that I’m aware of. But its inclusion allows people to, for example, search for “Gulf of America” and be redirected to the Gulf of Mexico.

Please keep comments on-topic and substantial. We all have opinions, and it’s easy to drop your two cents in an online forum. However, a discussion about OSM naming guidelines or real-world name usage statistics might be worth at least a few dollars here.

In this case, the lake is tagged with name=Lake Ontario, official_name:en-US=Lake America. For this situation to change, the government would need to reverse its position.

The guidelines on naming disputes apply to every country equally. This is far from the only naming dispute around the world. Let’s not get bogged down in American exceptionalism when we consider how the tagging guidelines should or shouldn’t change.

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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 05/09/2026

You can use this UN-approved Equal Earth projection right now in #rstats #gis #databs

library(tidyverse)
library(sf)
library(rnaturalearth)

world <- ne_countries() |> filter(sov_a3 != "ATA")

ggplot(data = world) +
geom_sf() +
coord_sf(crs = "+proj=eqearth") +
theme_void()

A basic world map using the Equal Earth projection

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Alan Pope @popey.me · 02/09/2026

Glasgow: bring your old laptop to Software Freedom Day (19 Sept) and Open Source Glasgow will repair it or install #Linux for free: discourse.ubuntu.com/t/software-f...

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Be interesting to know how many of those paying for AI slop cleanup ever acknowledge the human work involved - sadly, I reckon companies buying into the AI hype despite needing such services will still speak of the final result as if it was solely produced by AI. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

Freelancers are getting buried with ‘soulless’ AI slop cleanup: ‘It’s a shame we need to do it’

As more companies turn to AI, they’re hiring freelancers to clean up its mistakes rather than create original work

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Also created a couple of slides that may make the default for inclusion at the end of all my slides.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Using each presentation I do as opportunity to continue making small tweaks to my Quarto slides template design.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

As an amatuer self-taught programmer it's astounding how many obvious issues coding "agent" slop includes. For example, the default API useage pattern they often default to is best described as "unintentional denial-of-service attack via incompetence".

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Marko Bajlovic @marko.tech · 26/08/2026

State of SaaS

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Anyone know how to fix the issue with new ScotRail app refusing to accept any payments? No matter which payment option I click I get error message saying issue with my payment info... before it asks me to even enter the payment info.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

KDE has done some fantastic work as well over past few years expanding cross-platform availability of their apps beyond just Linux I'd highly recommend Windows and macOS users sick of Adobe Acrobat Reader try Okular.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

If you just need plain full-text search, Recoll is fantastic. You can setup multiple collections to index - including emails & attachments from Thunderbird - with various ways to customise results. Everything stays local, nothing sent to "the cloud", no AI. www.recoll.org/index.html

recoll.org

Recoll

Recoll is a desktop document search application for Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows and MacOS, based on the Xapian search engine library.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

An example (albeit ugly) of what a semnatic search app could look like that exposes more controls to the user without the LLM slop. Screenshots show quick index on around 50 PDFs (& one accidental word document) from my Zotero collection and random assorted of Obsidian notes from various folders.

Example showing search results for "dialectics as the movement of the concept". Results are chunks of text from PDFs and Obsidian notes, including any tags and pages numbers, with buttons to open PDF as exact page or open the note in Obsidian.

Example searching "dialectics, monads, and folds" with results filtered to just my Obsidian notes. Top results are from my messy overgrown 15k+ word "brain-dump" note that is mess of things never got round to processing / quick-caputeded from my phone. The note has been chunked using section titles from the note itself which are show it title above each chunk. The app could be modified to open the note at the exact section within Obsidian too.

Example of being able to search for existing Obsidian notes and selecting whether to use the whole text of a note or specific section of it to use as the text to use for the semantic search. Its a simple example but could add more filters and options, including a button for "use currently open Obsidian" with auto-update so could have this app open at the side whilst browsing your notes.

Again another quick example of fairly simple feature but exposes what tools like NotebookLM obscure - ability to filter results to show results only from notes in specific Obsidian folders. Other options are for specific Zotero collections, and any Zotero/Obsidian tags. Not implemented, but could add endless amount of other options to expand upon this, such as for Obsidian results show not just the chunks, but all other Obsidian notes that link to/from the note the chunk is from with ability to expand these to preview the notes.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

NotebookLM may be the best example of something initially promising - where its best feature didn't actually rely on a LLM - that over time has more and more exemplified the issues with assumptions about LLM use cases & how companies want people to use "AI" in apps. (Warning: rant)

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404 Media @404media.co · 19/08/2026

We tracked a purchase of rare books to an Amazon warehouse that scanned and destroyed books. @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social on our investigation and why the practice of cutting books, which libraries do to preserve knowledge, is different when AI companies do it. WATCH: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sf2...

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

An Artha inspired app that combines dictionaries + thesauri + example sentences using locally stored datasets+tools, including a half-working reverse dictionary. *Disclaimer* this is 'vibe-coded' prototype. I'll eventually get a non-slop version up on GitHub.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

To be fair to the guy: The piece whilst reading like pure AI slop is also filled with all the repetitions and patterns AI uses when iteratively prompting it to make edits to its original slop. So, there is evidence his workflow is as claimed, but it is also evidence of why you shouldn't do it.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 18/08/2026

Free Newsletter: It's time to talk about what happens if OpenAI dies. With $800bn in obligations and decelerating revenue, it's unclear how this company survives, and today I dig into what it'll take for it to do so, and what happens if it fails. www.wheresyoured.at/what-happens...

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

A lingering concern I've had with genAI materials I made is examples meant to show mix of alternatives / AI limitations still risk impression that AI use is way to go. Going to need to flesh out "existing alternatives" pages, but also need more examples that show other ways of working/learning. 1/5

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404 Media @404media.co · 17/08/2026

NEW: An expert witness testifying in a lawsuit about liability for a Houston explosion that killed three people and destroyed roughly 200 homes used ChatGPT to write significant portions of his “expert report.” He literally prompted ChatGPT: "Show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion."

404media.co

‘Show How 3M Is 0% at Fault:’ Expert Witness Used ChatGPT to Write Report Defending Company in Deadly Explosion Lawsuit

ChatGPT prompts show how an expert witness report was created in a $61 million lawsuit over an explosion that killed three people.

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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

404media.co

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Very quick mock-up (disclaimer by Claude) Using my "brain-dump" quick capture notes that have had zero proofreading so bit obvious which are human given typos, no evidence the author understands basic grammar, & swearing. Added wee reference to bodysnatchers film if guess fully AI text is human.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Further idea: "Invasion of the Voice Snatchers" quiz. Going to tidy up various notes of my own writing on AI into 500 word texts, then get AI to do different levels of "proofreading" & "improvements", & fully AI written texts on same topic where users have to guess which is which.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Using OpenPangram to create reports with sections from Hitchhiker's Guide, Communist Manifesto, and Distinction that include AI edits & additions. Purpose is to show how easy AI voice can take over what was originally 100% human writing if over rely on it to "proof-read" and accept all it's edits.

Commandline output from Python script that passes segments of text to OpenPangram showing the text segment and the predicted bucket (Human-written - AI generated) it falls into.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

University online webpages and scattering of documents so infuriating to navigate and find relevant information from I have resorted to dumping everything into a folder and using Recoll to search for what I need.

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Alasdair Stewart @abestew.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Anyone know whether there are any good tools to run local models in style similar to original GitHub Copilot? Similarly, I don't know whether could customise something like Pi to setup local models that work within same broader paradigm of reviews and suggestions only, no direct editing of code?

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