On European Defence, Energy and Growth - Imagining big changes in European priorities: changing policy to get more energy, more emphasis on militaries.
AI Agents and the CEOs - “At the risk of saying the quiet part out loud, the way CEOs are talking about agents sure sounds like how they talk about employees–only cheaper!” // “Companies are dedicating significant spend to AI–approximately 5% of the revenue of large enterprises (revenues over $500 million) according to one survey by Boston Consulting Group, and yet only 25% claim they are seeing value from their AI investment."
Semiconductors, Security, and the DeepSeekFreak, along with Ass Semiotics
In this episode: AI eschatology, assology, and a deep, intellectual commitment to hating mayonnaise. Tariff trouble, security panic, and NVIDIA shrugging off DeepSeek. Young voters shift rightward, no one agrees on ‘medium roast,’ and Hollywood still relies on glue to critique its own youth obsession.
Wastebook“immanetize the AI eschaton,” Charlie Stross.
“The ass is a very strong symbol of how our body is not neutral in the public space. How our body is constantly scrutinized, has been shaped to please the man’s eyes, has been seen as a body part that was objectified, that was detached from the person who was simply bearing it.
What is AI Middleware, and Why You Need It to Safely Deliver AI Applications - AI middleware is the glue that holds your AI-driven apps together, making sure models, data, and existing systems actually talk to each other instead of breaking everything. It saves developers from reinventing the wheel, adds security layers, and keeps AI projects from becoming yet another unmaintainable mess.
A head full of bologna
Lots of links and stuff this episode: AI isn’t a coworker, it’s just automation wrapped in hype. Tech moves fast, but nothing lasts—except bad takes, questionable business models, and the creeping realization that managers just want fewer humans to manage. Meanwhile, we live like kings and don’t even notice.
Put it on iceGood episode of Software Defined Talk this week, especially the opening moment of absurdity where we, yet again, try to solve Europe’s ice problem.
The danger of relying on OpenAI’s Deep Research - Some valid critiques of Deep Research. Though, none of them really amount to “it’s not good.” To sum-up: it can’t do complex research, let alone come up with original ideas nor cover obscure topics. It can’t only tell you what the Internet knows. This is actually not fully accurate: you can also upload your own files and put in your own knowledge. For me, the main problem is the readability of the reports. While they are long and detailed, they’re not written in an engaging way they makes it easy to read. I have a pile of them that I’ve yet to fully pick through. // Yeah, these robots have little creativity and original thought and father own, they can only do the predictable. But, man, they sure can do a lot of it.
New estimates have ChatGPT using 10x less power than previously thought - ”it would actually be more energy efficient for you to have an LLM turn off your furnace than to walk across the house to manually turn the dial.”
[Learning from my mistakes…](https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisduncania/p/learning-from-my-mistakes?r=2d4o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false) - It’s tough to monetize content that has near zero value or originality, and be easily pirated. This especially true if the price is wrong. That sort of applies to every product. // “In the end though, you can’t optimise your way out of a black hole, the gravity is too heavy. We were marketing a product at a price point that was material to our customers, and giving them content which was largely available from our competitors for free. All the tweaks in the world couldn’t change that."
One Year With the Vision Pro - Basically, not enough ROI for $3,500.
The Tyranny of Now - ”What Innis saw is that some media are particularly good at transporting information across space, while others are particularly good at transporting it through time. Some are space-biased while others are time-biased. Each medium’s temporal or spatial emphasis stems from its material qualities. Time-biased media tend to be heavy and durable. They last a long time, but they are not easy to move around. Think of a gravestone carved out of granite or marble. Its message can remain legible for centuries, but only those who visit the cemetery are able to read it. Space-biased media tend to be lightweight and portable. They’re easy to carry, but they decay or degrade quickly. Think of a newspaper printed on cheap, thin stock. It can be distributed in the morning to a large, widely dispersed readership, but by evening it’s in the trash.”