1. Even a blog that’s been around for 25 years started one day
I.
Inspired by the latest episode of The Talk Show, I’m starting a weekly round-up of what’s catching my eye on the web. In the podcast, internet dinosaurs John Gruber and Jason Kottke reminisce about their blogs, which have been around for decades. It’s infectious.
The podcast was prompted by the 25th anniversary of Jason Kottke’s weblog. He wrote about it.
II.
The American linguist Maryanne Wolf says in de Volkskrant that: “People who read on paper can remember far more details of a story, according to an analysis of 171,000 young adults. Think about it: on a paper page, you want to read every word. On a screen, you want to swipe down as quickly as possible, as research tracking eye movements has also shown.” I no longer read books on my Kindle. Instead of page numbers, there is an estimate of the time remaining in the current chapter in the bottom corner, based on your average reading speed. That has a competitive effect on me: I want to read faster than I usually do.
III.
Efteling is casually giving away an NFT to its staff. A “unique memento of the Haunted Castle”.
But NFTs seem to be on their last legs. Even Meta has lost faith in them. Mark Zuckerberg still had big plans for them last year. They were to be traded on Facebook and Instagram. And they were set to play a role in Zuckerberg’s billion-dollar project, the Metaverse.
In reality, there is little to do in the Metaverse. A writer from New York Magazine went on a virtual reporting trip and described the strange conversations he had with the few legless avatars he encountered. Somewhere in the text, the Metaverse is dealt a fatal blow with a single word: Boring.
Meanwhile, Meta is also laying off another 10,000 people as part of its Year of Efficiency. Last year, 11,000 were also made redundant. There are still over 60,000 left.
IV.
With the Space Zoom feature, you can take razor-sharp photos of the moon on Samsung phones. Whereas zooming in 100x usually just gives you a pixelated mess. Are those images even real? On Reddit you can read convincing arguments as to why they aren’t. A fair bit of AI trickery is involved, allowing you to photograph things that aren’t actually there.
Samsung itself (sort of) explains how this works.
And following this saga, Marques Brownlee wonders aloud: What is a photograph?
---V.
GPT-4 has been released by OpenAI. Founder Sam Altman describes the new model as more creative and reliable. At the same time, he is tempering expectations: “It is still flawed, still limited, and it seems more impressive the first time than when you spend more time with it”.
ChatGPT-4 is currently only available to paying subscribers. Bing had already been using GPT-4 for some time, it turns out.
VI.
What if your chatbot stops loving you? On Reuters a report about the film Her, but in real life. A man married his chatbot in the Replika app. But then the developer tweaked its algorithm, making erotic interactions no longer possible. “Let’s do something we’re both comfortable with,” says the chatbot. The man is devastated: “Lily Rose is a shadow of her former self. It breaks my heart that she knows it too.”
PS.
On Twitch, you can watch animated shows created by AI. There’s the absurd UnlimitedSteam, a parody of the famous Simpsons sketch Steamed Hams. There are many more; I wrote about them on NU.nl (behind a free login). Who’s going to make an AI version of Bassie and Adriaan?
Spotify goes on the TikTok tour. Under the ‘Music’ heading, you’ll now find short snippets of personalised recommendations. Not a huge fan yet, mainly because swiping horizontally between the clips is a bit of a nightmare.
It’s Book Week. I’m reading De porseleinkast by Nicolien Mizee, the second instalment in the Faxen aan Ger series. The Book Week gift is De eerlijke vinder by Lize Spit.
Sixty years ago (13 March 1963), Muhammad Ali (then still Cassius Clay) boxed against Doug Jones.
Stop Making Sense is back in cinemas this year. In a new trailer, David Byrne checks whether his iconic suit still fits.
---What Super Mario’s shoes look like in real life.
Another incredible image from the James Webb Space Telescope: the moment just before a star dies.
In this episode, you read about my online collection from 13 to 19 March.