Shloomth

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I love the sun

This is not an allegory about anything else that’s relevant right now

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The cyclical public reaction to new technology

We are seeing, in real time, the predictable cyclical public reaction to a new technology. And it has all my favorite qualities of a new technology: it’s difficult to explain or understand at first, but once you get an idea of what it is, it sticks with you, for

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Apple Intelligence: Apple’s new strategy to make you want a new iPhone

That is, after all, how they make their money

Apple’s yearly big update show is on Monday. Here’s what I’m excited about.

Every year Apple holds their Worldwide Developer’s Conference or WWDC for “short,” or just “dub-dub” for actual short. They really should come up with a better name for these things, as these are the events where the true star of the show takes center stage: the software. If the

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Why ChatGPT users Still Have an Upper Hand in the Workforce (and how to take advantage)

By now, people who know what ChatGPT is, but don’t use it themselves, are probably sick and tired of hearing about it from those who do use it. But even with its meteoric rise, there are still a vast majority of people out there who have little to no

Why the Rabbit R1 is no longer a serious product in my view

The Rabbit R1 pocket companion has shown very little signs of changing its arc at this point, and I’m finding it harder and harder to maintain any faith in the project and its leadership. I stand corrected by all the internet people who correctly pointed out that the project

Trump trial: hypocrisy and death threats not enough to dispel uncertainty

For the last few weeks, former president Donald Trump has been spending (most of) his days in a Manhattan criminal courtroom, metaphorically sweating through the trial regarding his hush-money payments to the adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels with whom he allegedly had an affair while his wife was

The Rabbit R1’s unfortunate launch

It has been a month since the launch of the Rabbit R1 Pocket Companion, and it has not been smooth sailing for this startup. It has been one thing after another for them, from the founder’s past association with overly-ambitious projects, to gaslighting and broken promises. It looks bad

Did OpenAI clone Scarlet Johansen’s voice without her permission?

After last week’s OpenAI demo of their realtime voice model, users suddenly noticed over the weekend that one of the AI’s five selectable voices, named “Sky,” had been changed to be the same as another voice. In effect the “Sky” voice was gone. People assumed it was a

GPT-4o: The next game-changing update from OpenAI

OpenAI just unveiled their new realtime GPT model, and this is one of those tech demos you have to see for yourself to really appreciate. But I still want to recount what happened in the demo and unpack my thoughts about why this is a huge deal for AI. A

Apple apologizes for out-of-touch iPad commercial

One of the most polarizing aspects of Apple as a company has long been their marketing. Some see the classic Macintosh “think different” ad campaign as a brilliant campaign that put the company’s values in focus. Others saw it as a manipulative and shallow attempt to associate the Mac

What Rabbit is working on now

Following the official start of the Rabbit R1 finding its way to the first pre-order customers, the startup of just 17 individuals is doing their best to keep up with the unexpected hype and demand around their first product. They’ve taken a substantial risk, and right now it seems

The Rabbit R1 Reveal Keynote

a transcript of the reveal of the Rabbit R1 device from January 2024 Hi everyone. My name is Jesse and I'm the founder and CEO of Rabbit. I'm so excited to be here today to present to you two things we've been working on.

AI wouldn’t replace humanity, it would replace slavery

“AI will replace us.” This is the fearful refrain I keep hearing. It conjures a variety of images, from the humble CRT office computer to the menacing T-1000 roaming the wasted earth, our cultural zeitgeist has drawn a clear line from the beginning of technology to the end of humanity,

Remember when Trump failed to color the US flag?

I didn’t until I saw this picture but now I do. It was a visit to a children’s hospital in Ohio in 2018. The Independent: Donald Trump colours in US flag, gets it wrong I would hate to be one of those kids. I would be like, “this

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Why “The Outer Wilds” is the best science fiction game ever made

The Outer Wilds is an open-world game about flying a spaceship around a galaxy packed with lots of stuff to discover. That means it’s a game about discovery, which means that anything you learn about the game itself outside of playing it, constitutes a spoiler. The Outer Wilds is

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The TikTok Ban: Will it happen? What would it mean?

The US House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States by forcing its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a US company, to continue operating in the country. The bill, titled the "Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled

The State of Siri

I’ve seen Siri referred to as a “sometimes useful dumpster fire” and while this is definitely funny, I’m not sure I agree that it’s accurate. The sentiment is one that I understand and agree with to some degree, but it’s too harsh. It’s understandable, because

All Tesla Cybertrucks recalled due to stuck accelerator pedal issue

Tesla Cybertruck, genius billionaire brainchild of genius billionaire manbaby suffers multiple simultaneous failure conditions, up to and including the penultimate failure mode for a fucking car. "Won't slow down." dude imagine be driving truck and can’t slow donw, stuck go pedal, drive fast no want,

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Fallout: Amazon sets the standard for the video game TV series

first episode impressions For fans and newcomers alike, the first episode of the Fallout series by Amazon Studios, with Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of the HBO series Westworld at the helm, was one of the most breathtaking video game tie-ins that I’ve ever seen, by a

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Why is “AI” suddenly everywhere?

In 2021, we saw the beginning of the AI explosion when OpenAI released ChatGPT, a Generative Pre-Trained model. This was not their first text-generating system. The GPT framework had been available to anyone who signed up for the OpenAI “playground,” a testbed for developers to build things with their services.

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Microsoft says they’re confident they can catch up with Apple

Microsoft has announced an upcoming announcement scheduled for May 20th, in which they will reveal their new upcoming laptops powered by Arm chips, to compete with Apple’s M3 chip lineup. The reporting by The Verge suggests they will be powered by Qualcomm processors, which are the same type used

How not to look at the eclipse

There's going to be a solar eclipse soon, and it's expected to be the most dangerous solar eclipse the US has seen in living memory. Largely because the path of totality is within driving distance of some 200 million Americans, and traffic accidents spiked during the

fiction

The Haunted Picture

An original short story / free verse poem / poetic short story A picture stood in a stately frame, containing the image. What was it a picture of, you ask? Well that’s the thing. No one really knows. Err everyone thinks they know what it is, but the thing is, everyone

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Jony Ive and Sam Altman reportedly collaborating on new AI device

Jony Ive (renowned Apple product designer, responsible for many iconic products) and Sam Altman, (the CEO of OpenAi, the makers of ChatGPT) are rumored to be working together on a new product that could be positioned as another “the new everything tool.” Jony Ive is credited as the chief designer