iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 10/09/2026

I'm just going to leave this here for no reason at all.

"What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people." - Joseph Weizenbaum (1976)

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 17/06/2026

So... turns out Mistral is really bad at detecting propaganda and other information campaigns. That's such a bummer :/

Screenshot of an article summarizing a study that found that open source AI model Mistral is worse than other models at detecting propaganda and other malicious information campaigns

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 02/03/2026

"A certain danger lurks there." Indeed.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 02/03/2026

Joseph Weizenbaum meant ELIZA to be a warning, not an inspiration. Looking at you, gen AI chatbots!

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 02/03/2026

"friction-maxxing" when I first heard the term it struck me as a neologism, something really fresh; the BBC have caught on pretty quickly, though

a screenshot of the text of a BBC article about friction-maxxing

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 17/02/2026

I keep coming back to this (it's a couple of years old by now), it's kinda stuck in my head bruces.medium.com/preliminary-...

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 13/06/2025

MiniDisc had a very short future but I have to admit: Of all the outdated physical media, Minidisc are my favorite. So satisfying and gorgeous.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 20/05/2025

Over the last few months Henriette Litta (of @okfde.bsky.social‬) and I took a closer look at the state of Openness. The concept is super important but it's in a *weird place*! Anyway, the English version of the report is live now, would love to hear your thoughts! thewavingcat.com/2025/05/new-...

Cover image for a report. Simple geometric shapes overlayed by the title and subtitle: "From Software to Society. Openness in a changing world."

A pullquote from the report: "From Open Access to Open Source - Openness has been a powerful and historically important concept. However, Openness needs an update so that it can continue to contribute value in a radically changed political environment." says Dr. Henriette Litta

A slide showing 5 "key insights at a glance": 1) Give Openness a purpose. 2) Protect Openness by adding guard rails. 3) Open innovation and infrastructure need investments. 4) Openness is not neutral. 5) Market domination needs to be curtailed.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 20/02/2025

Garbage Day continues to offer some of the clearest analysis of what’s happening online

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 05/02/2025

The weather app really rubs it in with its daily reminder that the air pollution in Berlin is consistently terrible

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 10/01/2025

Just looked up the DSA rules on dark patterns (Art. 25) and after reading this, all I can think of is YOUTUUUUUUUBE

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 16/12/2024

"Precisely Detailed Berlin Division", as created by Claude, based on a map of East and West Berlin, including a grid system. Hmm.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 13/12/2024

@genmon.org matt, the rabbit can write time poems about the time 😂

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 12/12/2024

Flashback: ThingsCon 10 years ago

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 03/12/2024

This is super fascinating 👇

A screenshot of a passage of the linked article that states (in summary) that taking an epidemiological approach to the study of fake news can help predict and fight the spread of fake news.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 20/11/2024

Curve goes up, pretty steeply

graph showing increased user engagement on bluesky

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 14/11/2024

(Though I will say that the language they use over there at crypto bro heaven "Praxis" reeks more than a little of your run-of-the-mill fascist rhetoric preamble.)

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 14/11/2024

I left the bird site quite a while ago and deleted all my posts, but it's still dormant so I can occasionally look at links referenced elsewhere. And boy oh boy are the crypto bros still at it over there.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 03/09/2024

Is this Brazil entering the picture big time?

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 24/04/2024

MercatorForum was excellent. And @afelia.bsky.social gave a dope keynote, too

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 17/04/2024

Ryan over at Garbage Day nails it

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 13/04/2024

Stumbled over an old box with some newspaper articles and printouts from when I was a kid - maybe around 1989-1992? Two articles literally called out kids who were interested in computers and the internet as „freaks“. /1

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 10/04/2024

An actual exchange with the current state of the art generative AI. What’s not to love.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 24/03/2024

There are these private security company cars in Berlin now that are designed to closely resemble police vehicles. Is this even legal?

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 05/03/2024

just wait until we invent smart paper

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 27/02/2024

Gotcha! Ever since we all started talking about the Digital Services Act (DSA) this hidden MS Office auto-correct has been messing up my writing by changing "DSA" to the German article "DAS". No more!

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 17/11/2023

This looks like a legitimately good digital literacy initiative for school children, teachers and parents but/and *wow* what a name

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 17/11/2023

One of these is the logo of Musk's dumb new chat bot play, Grok. The other is Deutsche Bank's. 🤔

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 04/11/2023

Is it possible (within reason or a huge investment) to retrofit this lamp to use LED bulbs? A family member doesn’t want to ditch the lamp but would prefer energy saving bulbs…

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 01/11/2023

This recent report from the CDT about the state of trust & safety and of election disinformation is... very sobering. Also very, very good. cdt.org/wp-content/u...

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 31/10/2023

To make up for the work-related questions, please welcome this cute little piggie

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 22/10/2023

Dramatic Berlin sky earlier tonight

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 18/10/2023

Meanwhile over on LinkedIn, "collaborative" articles that are AI written and then quality checked or improved by experts.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 18/10/2023

This always hits me like a brick to the head, no matter how often I see it

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 16/10/2023

Baden-Württemberg's tax chatbot really is a sight to behold. Not only does it not understand the most basic questions; it's not an AI-powered chatbot but rather just an alternative FAQ. But also, the assumptions baked into the project are questionable if not borderline rude.

Screenshot of a conversation with a chatbot that keeps repeating that it does not understand the question.

Screenshot of the explanation for what the chatbot aims to achieve. Highlighted is a section that indicates that this dumb chatbot solves the problem that citizens allegedly don't know how to understand a FAQ and that it's their problem.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 22/08/2023

„The Barbaric Society“ - I assume it’s a short history of Twitter

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 05/08/2023

So… integrated headphone-air filter combos are apparently a thing now. This is peak 2023.

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 04/08/2023

What's that, you ask? Oh, just a 2.000 year old fresco of a someone's dinner including pizza and wine. Found in Pompeii. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66031…

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Peter Bihr @peterbihr.com · 24/06/2023

Look I know this is a couple of weeks old but can we still reflect for a moment on the idea that Twitter’s new CEO thinks Twitter can be best for *info* and that these two statements are mutually exclusive? Townsquare = social. Info = news. Nowhere near the same.