iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bernie Michalik @berniemichalik.ca · 19h

It's crazy for me to think that when I started working at IBM, this was all there was to the Internet (technically ARPANET, which had just split from MILNET) www.computerhistory.org/internethist...

computerhistory.org

000

Bernie Michalik @berniemichalik.ca · 19h

I forgot all about the old AI program PARRY. If anything, LLMs are closer to PARRY than ELIZA :) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARRY If you haven't heard of PARRY, it's worth reading about.

en.wikipedia.org

PARRY - Wikipedia

000

First the drones, now this. I can't figure out who Loblaw went with that convinced them that guerilla marketing would be suitable for them.

000

In my mind, LLMs still don't pass the Turing Test, never mind approach AGI. But as I said earlier, the AI folks don't get hung up on details...they prefer to stick to grand pronouncements.

100

Third, I find it fascinating that we have just jumped over the Turing Test right to AGI. I think they assume we've passed that Test, but honestly, if you were speaking to someone who contradicted themselves as much as LLMs do, you might at least think that person was not right in the head.

100

Second, I think the AI folks deal poorly with many topics that belong to the realm of philosophy, especially when it comes to areas having to do with Intelligence, Consciousness and Ethics. Instead of thinking: we should engage philosophers on these areas, they just come to their own conclusions.

220

Bernie Michalik @berniemichalik.ca · 21h

I want to say a few things about this. First off, I agree with it. And if you are someone who is not categorically against AI, I think you'll benefit greatly from reading it.

100

I am going to buy this book while it is still warm from being printed.

000

Bernie Michalik @berniemichalik.ca · 23h

Agents are going to have to be considered a new form of spam by prominent websites and dealt with accordingly.

Also food writers and food media went from focusing on low cal / low fat to focusing on high flavour / good fats.

000

The Social Reckoning - Wikipedia

My cynical view of these pieces are they are part of Zuck's comm strategy of getting in front of and diluting the power of this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soc...

en.wikipedia.org

000

Introducing Mistral Large 4 | Mistral

I am a fan of Mistral's models, and while Le Chonk is a fun name for ML4, there's some red lights blinking there for me. I expect more rogue agents in our future mistral.ai/news/mistral...

mistral.ai

The most powerful AI platform for enterprises. Customize, fine-tune, and deploy AI assistants, autonomous agents, and multimodal AI with open models.

000

Even if FDA is taken away, I believe these Meta agents will start building social graphs of who you communicate with and commercial graphs of who you shop with. Worse, even if you don't use the product, your friends and family might.

000

I didn't realize that: thanks for the update! My memory of neutrinos is that they were singular and fascinating things to try and measure.

000

A good sleep is better than a gift.

000

Turns out that I had to get rid of my "me@<mydomain.ca>" because spammers must just assume people will set one of those up and spam away. :/

000

Oddly not on the NYtimes yet. Also, bad.

000

In case you thought this was limited to American AI companies...

000

Clef-Flash is a 9B multimodal model that turns a state and a schema of typed questions into decisions.

More decision models, this one from from Cloudflare. These are the new hot AI thing, it seems ollama.com/library/clef...

ollama.com

clef-flash

000

It's got "cult classic" written all over it.

If you need ideas on what to read, librarians have you! www.ala.org/bbooks

000

I got Clay patrols on the Knuth Patrols / Foes that want to make sure the problem folds

Omg! That’s insane. Even one time with shingles is awful

Opinion | Assisted Death Is Not a Choice of Last Resort in Canada (Gift Article)

A thoughtful examination in MAID in Canada > ‘Death Must Not Become the Only Kind of Relief People Can Imagine’ (gift article) www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/o...

nytimes.com

Assisted dying accounts for more than 5 percent of deaths in Canada.

011

What will make companies go green is saving greenbacks

000

A good vaccine to get is now even a better vaccine to get

110

I love a non-typical colored suit like the tobacco one here. I had a Hugo Boss forest green suit in the 80s and I wore it until it could no longer be reasonably repaired. It had old necktie material in the pockets and behind the collar. It was great.

000

A great example of sprezzatura.

100

I guess it is safe to say IG condemns Nazism so it gets a pass. I'd be curious to know if there were any films where it was more problematic.

100

It's like the AI guys think, "how can we make people distrust us and this technology more?", and then go do that.

000

Guardian US @us.theguardian.com · 04/10/2026

The essay is really good! The construction of that sentence..less so 😄

000

Reposted by Bernie Michalik

Whenever I thought about getting a handle on life – decluttering, sorting my finances, improving my health and productivity – I felt defeated. So I tried this month-long experiment to feel more in control

theguardian.com

I was disorganised and overwhelmed. Could a daily to-do list turn my life around?

0102

The Dinner Yotam Ottolenghi Can’t Wait to Eat in Front of the TV

Does this look delicious? Yes. Is this a fine essay that you should read? Also very much yes. (Gift) > The Dinner Yotam Ottolenghi Can’t Wait to Eat in Front of the TV www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/d...

nytimes.com

000

American politicians coming up with new ways to attack Canadians. Noted.

000

Lots of people playing chess. Also good.

100

Nuit Blanche was a good way to walk around downtown last night. Good city.

110

I think highly of Claude too. I think much less of the people who develop Claude. Compared to nutbars like Thiel and Musk they seem reasonable, but they are not when compared to most.

"This group of roughly three million “Main Street Millionaires,” as the authors call them, have an average net worth of $25 million, and as a group, they commanded $54.8 trillion in 2022, the most recent year cited in the book. " 13X more than the billionaire class. Worth a read.

000

This all comes down to money. There might be other woolly headed thinkers out there with AI companies with better technologies, but no one listens to them because they don't have money. People treat other people with lots of money seriously.

100

And by folks I mean the people at Anthropic.

110

I tell people that about technology too. People will say: oh I don't understand why this technology works this way and I must be using it wrong. I tell people to stop assuming they are using it wrong and start assuming the technology is badly designed.