I know you don’t want them to want AI, but… - Anil Dash by Anil Dash

I don’t know why today’s Firefox users, even if they’re the most rabid anti-AI zealots in the world, don’t say, “well, even if I hate AI, I want to make sure Firefox is good at protecting the privacy of AI users so I can recommend it to my friends and family who use AI”. I have to assume it’s because they’re in denial about the fact that their friends and family are using these platforms. (Judging by the tenor of their comments on the topic, I’d have to guess their friends don’t want to engage with them on the topic at all.)

AI is not going anywhere, so we better contribute to better ways of using the tool.

OpenAI Releases GPT-5.1, Along With Renamed and New Personalities

Robot was the personality that changed how I felt about ChatGPT. Before, I found ChatGPT useful but frequently annoying; after, I’ve found it purely useful.

I have not changed these settings in the past, which is to say, I keep it at default. After reading this, I’ve set it as efficient, just to see if I like it better.

Oedipus is about the act of figuring out what Oedipus is about

So I believe that Oedipus Tyrannus, the original auto-whodunnit, is the ur-exemplar of this razor: what Oedipus tells us is that we can search and search and search for the meaning of a story, and search some more, and ultimately what we’ll find is ourselves, searching.

University education as we know it is over by Simas Kucinskas

AI now solves university assignments perfectly in minutes. Students often use LLMs as a crutch rather than as a tutor, getting answers without understanding. To address these problems, I propose a barbell strategy: pure fundamentals (no AI) on one end, full-on AI projects on the other, with no mushy middle. Universities should focus on fundamentals.

Take home assignments are useless if the end product of it is a report. Of course you can use LLMs to do everything. Focusing on the fundamentals with no AI use makes sense. Focusing on full AI use also makes sense. With the amount of workload a student is usually under, it might not be possible to not take a shortcut for all subjects.

Maintenance versus making | Note to Self

Challenging beliefs like this is a major part of my personal productivity detox. The idea that building new things is more valuable than maintenance or care is some capitalist bullshit, and it’s worth deprogramming.

I tend to think this way too, unfortunately.