Baldur Bjarnason

Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

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Last Notes

2026-08-22 09:57:15 GMT

I truly, genuinely hate what Apple is doing to the UX of its platforms. Beyond the ongoing decline of autocomplete, they’ve changed something about how buttons work on iOS so now I regularly trigger button presses when I try to scroll on both the iPad and iPhone.
(Don’t come at me with ‘but Android’. I’ve tried Android. In my experience, their UX is even worse.)

2026-08-21 10:03:10 GMT

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Did not expect this to draw out the antivaxx crowd, but I should have. What a world we live in.

2026-08-21 09:51:30 GMT

Citing “lived experience” as evidence something works is literally the tactic of homeopaths and antivaxxers when confronted by large-scale or structured studies disproving their claims. That this now seems to be the go-to argument of the pro-“AI” crowd is a huge red flag.

2026-08-19 10:23:32 GMT

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@nprofile…dfcs Yeah, I think fundamentally his pessimism comes from believing in the tech, not from a position of scepticism or critical thinking

2026-08-19 09:30:24 GMT

“The End of an Era - Hugh Howey”
https://hughhowey.com/the-end-of-an-era/
It used to be that I was the online publishing pessimist and Hugh was the optimist, to the point where a decade ago at a publishing conference in Berlin, after I'd delivered a particularly downer talk, he walked up to me afterwards and gave me a hug
But now he's more pessimistic than I am by a substantial margin and I’m not sure how to process that

2026-08-16 13:03:09 GMT

If you want to get a sense of the state of Icelandic healthcare: I've been on a waiting list for a check-up at a dermatologist for over 15 months with no appointment scheduled since they cancelled on me a couple of weeks ago.

2026-08-13 13:55:33 GMT

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@nprofile…8ac0 That same company moved offices at a short notice and I was told that, if anybody asked, I was to say that we were a photography studio. Turns out they were leasing a space subsidised by the council for local arts and crafts organisations. 😆

2026-08-13 13:52:23 GMT

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The replies to this are great
Turns out people on Mastodon have a lot of experience with failing companies 😁
A few more from personal experience. Possibly a little too specific
- You are told by a manager not to use the usual contact email address for a supplier or client and instead contact an employee directly using their personal email
- A manager quits at a short notice for "personal health"
- An angry scot shows up at the office, cursing the CEO and shouting "where's my money?!"

2026-08-13 12:30:28 GMT

Had a chat about company "nálykt" ("corpse stench"). I.e. common signs of imminent company collapse employees can spot. We came up with a few:
- Sudden sale that takes all of the employees by surprise
- Office rent agreements cancelled at short notice
- Managers suddenly evasive about previously promised promotions or pay rises
- Execs changing the topic whenever asked a pointed question.
- Execs getting antsy about how last year's acquisitions are performing
- Layoffs, natch
What else?

2026-08-12 09:26:59 GMT

If you lived in a world where smoking was returning in full force—through unethical, manipulative, and probably illegal tactics tobacco use was returning to 1960s levels—would you work within the tobacco industry to make it less bad? "Nicotine is an excellent ADHD drug so it can help accessibility!"
Because this is exactly what people in the tech industry are starting to sound like.

2026-08-11 13:18:05 GMT

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@nprofile…7nvc What on earth makes you think that?

2026-08-10 12:07:06 GMT

Responding to every post that notes something awful done by tech with “that’s capitalism” glosses over the fact that tech cos are spending all of their innovations points on coming up with new ways for capitalism to be awful. They’re the new vanguard of abuse.

2026-08-04 10:45:14 GMT

Yegge’s only intellectual asset was a complete disregard for NDAs while working for secretive organisations and even then he arguably misinterpreted much of what he saw. Taking him seriously was always a mistake. (And, yeah, that was a mistake I definitely committed myself at one point.)

2026-08-02 17:38:46 GMT

YouTube shorts has always been a bit shit but all of a sudden the quality of the recs/algorithm has dropped like a rock. Filled with bullshit videos like “AI” narration over a social media screenshot.

2026-08-02 17:37:43 GMT

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@nprofile…vfut @nprofile…40v7 No. We have oligarchs who think they’ll lose out if we join.

2026-08-02 10:41:53 GMT

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It’s analogous to the US’s old argument for asbestos: that asbestosis and mesothelioma were effectively consequences of irresponsible use or “deployment”
But you simply can’t get the honestly near-miraculous chemical properties of lead or asbestos without the poisoning, lung scarring, and cancers

2026-08-02 10:24:50 GMT

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In other words: a percentage of the people currently saying that the main problem with “AI” today is irresponsible deployment—managers, executives, and investors being foolish—are saying so in order to sell you a “responsible” deployment of LLMs at a later date not because they are genuinely concerned about the tech
And, since we can’t tell the grifters from the sincere-but-foolish, the only “responsible” thing we can do react to all statements along these lines with scepticism

2026-08-02 10:15:47 GMT

Anyway, since I’m always annoying my own brain by trying to come up with clearer and more specific wording for my own opinions:
I reject the notion that LLMs can be deployed “responsibly” at scale and believe that anybody claiming otherwise is fooling themselves, conning you, or possibly both

2026-07-28 20:27:35 GMT

Wandering around YouTube and on the videos I've been watching the comments for the software dev videos have been a cesspool of rightwing hate and nihilism while the comments on the rest are mostly just silly
Maybe I just got unlucky but it's not giving a good impression of the state of the field

2026-07-28 09:16:37 GMT

People keep using the "can't put a genie back in the bottle" metaphor for "AI", even though in the stories they always get back in and current "AI" is more of a "we're spending trillions of dollars and the energy output of a continent trying to keep this bastard out of the bottle" situation

2026-07-27 11:08:25 GMT

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@nprofile…uuks We’re already members of the EEA and Schengen. We already have that and access to the single market. This is about all of the other stuff: farming, banking/financial markets, participation in the political process, some of the subsidies, less red tape on EU trade, etc.

2026-07-27 10:36:22 GMT

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But what seems to unite Icelandic labour movement and our oligarchs is a belief that their position would be weaker in the EU
The oligarchs are right. They are small fry compared the EU's oligarchs and would be eaten alive in direct competition. Same applies to our banks and retailers. The EEA was already a body blow (currently Boozt is eating our retailer's lunch)
The left's antipathy stems from seeing the EU as a fundamentally capitalist project. (Not wrong, but also not that simple)

2026-07-27 10:36:22 GMT

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Our money, media, and activism is lined up behind 'no' on the referendum. And since that is a vote for the status quo (nobody's leaving the EEA) it's going to be the default position of many
Even though I'm voting 'yes' (our only other major ally is the US, so seeing what the EU can offer makes sense) I don't expect it to win. People seem convinced that even negotiating a potential entry would directly forfeit our independence, which is nonsense, but nonsense plays strong in modern politics

2026-07-27 10:36:22 GMT

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There’s also the fact that the EU seems to be deliberately pissing us off lately. They put tariffs on some of our metal exports, which we thought was illegal under the EEA. And the whole border entry fiasco has hit our tourism industry harder than we thought at first.
So, all in all, unless the EU goes on a charm offensive instead of their current “entitlement offensive” I expect the odds of “yes” winning to be just under 50%. Still a solid chance, but not the likeliest

2026-07-27 10:36:21 GMT

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The only reason this referendum is happening is because the left greens betrayed their base by collaborating with Iceland's main right wing party, which serves at the beck and call of our oligopolies, and left-wing voters subsequently united behind the social democrats specifically to keep the right out of power. The social democrats saw this as their last opportunity to push for EU membership

2026-07-27 10:36:21 GMT

I see English-language media is covering the upcoming referendum in Iceland—“do you want to reopen talks to join the EU"—without much context. This is understandable as Icelanders generally deliberately withhold that context to manage Iceland's image
So...

2026-07-25 11:58:56 GMT

Ceci n'est pas une pipe
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/980/496/230/927/392/original/c8f852366e7b841a.jpg

2026-07-24 10:27:36 GMT

In my humble opinion, many instances of ‘writer’s block’ are in fact ADHD or autistic burnout. Writing as a job is more forgiving of neurodivergence than most, so many writers are basically subsisting on caffeine and anxiety until they hit a brick wall and their executive function collapses
Which would mean that reading up on neurodivergent burnout is more likely to help get over a writer’s block than the fluff you find in books or blogs on creativity

2026-07-22 15:09:41 GMT

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Thinking out loud for a bit:
The problem with tech, as others have pointed out, is that tech as a whole isn’t exactly a humane environment filled with thoughtful and charming people, and it’s in a multi year cycle of layoffs. So, if the job itself is losing what fun it had most other industries start to look appealing in comparison.
And if I manage to get out of the coding-for-money racket and end up missing bits of it, I could always take up coding as a hobby

2026-07-22 11:52:30 GMT

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@nprofile…58zd Ah, sorry about that. Those shorthands are a bad habit of mine. AFAICT = As Far As I Can Tell.

2026-07-22 09:44:32 GMT

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I actually like coding and talking about code. What’s the point of the job if you take away the fun part?

2026-07-22 09:37:33 GMT

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The other issue is more personal: you can’t have conversations about code with people any more. Ask them for their personal opinion on a piece of code and you’ll just get a chatbot text extrusion back
Makes the job a whole lot less fun and personable.
This kinda bothers me more than the bug misrepresentation

2026-07-22 09:34:59 GMT

One disconcerting thing I encounter when working on projects with LLM users: their models do find some bugs (though also a tonne of stuff in the ‘that’s not a bug, that’s just software” category) but the explanations are often bullshit. As in, they misrepresent how the code works. The bug, though it exists, isn’t as described and the proposed fix would just make things worse
The understanding of anybody relying on these tools, AFAICT, could slowly drift away from factual reality of the code

2026-07-15 18:30:56 GMT

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@nprofile…9d4f Yup.

2026-07-14 17:08:51 GMT

It's worrying how often online banking apps here in Iceland just plain don't work:
Notification of an unpaid bill pops up.
You click it and pay the bill.
Then, since you're in the app, you check your balance and you notice the bill payment hasn't gone out.
Go check the unpaid bills section: no bill there
Check the balance again: no payment
Check the unpaid bills section: the bill now appears as if it were unpaid
Now you have to decide whether to try to pay the bill again and risk paying double

2026-07-14 13:45:17 GMT

I had a go this weekend at simply using in-camera processing for my photos because the Linux-based photo tools are kinda garbage. But the in-camera tools aren't fantastic either, so even minimal editing in CaptureOne on top of the built-in Fujifilm tone curves really can make a big difference. #photos #nature #iceland
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/918/623/563/116/406/original/2407aea9b375eaef.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/918/624/556/220/453/original/010529b4c04849df.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/918/625/500/011/969/original/acf3ee72247874f6.jpg

2026-07-11 10:59:18 GMT

Why is Apple so bad at anything that syncs data? I don’t think there’s a single device of theirs that doesn’t regularly just give up on syncing for a while. Why are they so bad at this?

2026-07-10 09:39:35 GMT

“Brown Professor Suspects Most of His Class Used AI to Cheat”
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/07/08/brown-professor-suspects-most-his-class-used-ai-cheat
Slight caveat: this is an economics course, so I'm guessing many if not most of the students were economics majors, where you're pretty much indoctrinated to always take shortcuts and disdain fields where you don't (hence my animosity to what's effectively the post-truth propaganda arm of academia)

2026-07-04 09:20:52 GMT

Only just now realising that the wish fulfilment of having a dedicated slave or polite servant might play a bigger role in the popularity of chatbots than I expected
I can be slow sometimes, but I also always thought the constant signals of servility these systems are made to exude were obviously distasteful, even when experienced second-hand through other people's reports

2026-07-01 09:20:19 GMT

I haven’t seen much coverage yet of the fresh round of layoffs at Bandcamp?
From the linked Bluesky post:
> my 13 years at bandcamp are coming to an end - i’ve been laid off along with most of the remaining engineers. best job i’ve ever had, working with the best people you could ever work with. unceremonious end to quite a ride.
https://bsky.app/profile/grmnygrmny.bsky.social/post/3mpgvo7l2v22t

2026-06-28 10:25:48 GMT

I’m genuinely tired of how often I run into the “you”’ve made too many requests” error after a single click on a domain. Your shitty SPA is DOSing your own server and for that you’re blocking me?

2026-06-18 12:30:02 GMT

“Why game developers don't want to use generative AI | GamesRadar+”
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/why-so-many-game-developers-dont-want-to-use-generative-ai/
> Perhaps pro-AI developers didn't want to talk to me or I just didn't run into any during my survey, because I heard an overwhelmingly negative assessment of generative AI's origins, capabilities, and risks. By the end, I'd heard dozens of developers make a case against using gen AI at all.

2026-06-15 15:34:38 GMT

This is such a long-standing issue that I had a long argument about this with one of the original RMSDK devs on Twitter fifteen years ago. They kept trying to convince me that the spec-violating behaviour was somehow better or had valid reasons.

2026-06-14 16:30:43 GMT

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@nprofile…m3xe I mean, I hope that pans out, and that it pays off for the project

2026-06-14 15:25:21 GMT

GIMP‘s hostility to users actually being able to productively use it is legendary as is its disdain for people showing concern about its name. It’s genuinely poisoned the well for the adoption of OSS creativity software.
(I need to try out Krita, though, which looks much more solid.)

2026-06-12 18:38:20 GMT

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@nprofile…8gs7 With our climate we only get berries late in the summer. So, too early for that sort of thing 🙂

2026-06-12 17:04:58 GMT

Summer #photos #nature #iceland
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/738/173/861/091/829/original/1412cf180ec66627.jpg

2026-06-12 10:01:14 GMT

“The AI Engineering Report 2026: The AI Acceleration Whiplash - Ten Takeaways”
https://www.faros.ai/blog/ai-acceleration-whiplash-takeaways?utm_source=fnf
> In our 2025 AI engineering report on the AI Productivity Paradox, bugs per developer were up 9% as AI adoption grew. In this dataset, that figure has risen to 54%. The relationship between AI adoption and defect rate is not flattening as organizations mature their AI programs; it’s steepening.
This shit is not going to end well.

2026-06-10 23:00:34 GMT

Horse doing horsie things. #photo #iceland #horse #nature
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/728/294/454/973/662/original/2831f36246febef9.jpg

2026-06-10 11:51:07 GMT

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I can't tell you how frustrating it is to warn about a risk when the fuck-around-to-finding-out time gap is on the order of 3-6 years.
Just year after year of watching people kick explosives around going all "I don't know what you were talking around, this thing doesn't explode".

2026-06-10 10:50:36 GMT

Apparently, this isn't because of "AI" or privacy regulations but because German courts decided that third party liability shields don't apply to "AI" summaries published by Google itself
This should not come as a surprise, I and others warned about this
I wrote this (see image) in The Intelligence Illusion back in 2023 (https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/)
"Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers"
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/725/418/014/094/771/original/fea7e4d543fd9241.png

2026-06-07 09:59:46 GMT

One of the lessons that many in software strangely never learn is that breaking something while being an asshole gets a very different response from people than breaking something while not being an asshole
And, given how “AI” continues to pour shit on the rest of society, using LLMs is widely going to be perceived as an asshole move
For better or for worse, using LLMs in OSS is going to be seen as an adversarial move that undermines community building

2026-06-05 11:28:06 GMT

So, is -webkit-text-stroke broken everywhere it's implemented or is this something that just affects browsers on Linux? (Tested in Firefox and Chromium. Tried to test in WebKit/Gnome Web but just discovered that the webkit rendering process crashes whenever I try to open the dev tools, which is disconcerting.)
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/697/237/626/727/555/original/95b1c47641a35f92.png

2026-06-05 10:11:04 GMT

That we should unconditionally trust people who violate our trust is abuser logic and, at the moment, the free/open source communities are full of this kind of abuser logic.
“Trust the leade” is how cults and dictatorships talk.

2026-06-04 14:51:52 GMT

I don’t have a high opinion of software dev in general but I’d never have expected “breaking without warning a popular backup and deployment tool is bad actually” to be a controversial statement.
Truly a triumph. Congrats.

2026-06-04 09:47:21 GMT

So, it’s becoming clear that some devs treat their peers as authorities irrespective of the nonsense they’re spouting. What matters is, effectively, “time served”
Been a noticeable part of the tech or OSS communities for years? Then your hallucinatory ravings get treated as a double-blind peer-reviewed study
Been less noticeable? Nothing you say will ever shift their opinion.
Sure, they’ll feel bad that you feel harmed, but they’ll always back their friends
(Yes. This is an rsync post)

2026-06-03 09:46:23 GMT

For fucks sake.

2026-06-01 13:42:43 GMT

Paraphrasing again:
We’re in a power struggle between those using “AI” to centralise and consolidate their hold over the economy, education, media, and politics and are willing to sacrifice much of the environment and society to that end (i.e. "rule the ashes") and those who think that would be bad
Standing in the middle and going “actually, I think we could find productive uses for LLMs” is not a winning move and it won't protect you from the winning side of the power struggle.

2026-06-01 11:29:25 GMT

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@nprofile…erf8 You really think the vibe coders take kindly to the idea that their LLMs are too unsafe for vibe coding and need extreme care at every step to be even remotely useful?
You really think the "this shit looks too harmful to use!" side is more extremist than the "let's make millions unemployed and usher in a great depression" side?
It had to be a fight. When you set out to reshape the entire economy at the expense of a big chunk of the people in it, a big honking fight is inevitable

2026-06-01 10:20:14 GMT

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@nprofile…erf8 it’s a reference to the old saying about who gets shot by the winner after a revolution.
Metaphorical in this case because nobody is actually going to get executed.
The point is that if either the pro- or anti-“AI” side decisively wins, the “moderates” who both acknowledge the flaws while still using the tools will suffer serious harm to their reputation and get pushed out of the industry because both will see them as an adversary

2026-06-01 10:04:33 GMT

The problem with positioning yourself as a sensible and reasonable moderate user of LLM software development tools is it means you’ll be the first up against the metaphorical wall if either the anti- or pro- sides truly gain the upper hand.
The idea that dev will settle into a stable “moderate” equilibrium is one of the riskiest strategic bets you could make today. Makes sense if it’s your only option, but otherwise pits you in a very precarious position

2026-05-29 12:53:32 GMT

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If any of you know of any better alternatives to Ghost, with a similar feature set (except the paid membership, can live without that), then I'm all ears. Otherwise I'm going to have to recommend Ghost

2026-05-29 12:48:59 GMT

Looking over the CMS/blog landscape and it looks like Ghost is still currently one of the least bad OSS options available, despite slop shenanigans?
(As in software that has the features you actually need for a serious website: newsletter or serious newsletter integration, cookie-free analytics that don't suck, rich text editing for non-techie contributors, post types or templates, custom metadata, etc.)

2026-05-28 15:18:53 GMT

“Funny but serious, Chieng issues an AI warning to grads — Harvard Gazette”
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/05/funny-but-serious-chieng-issues-an-ai-warning-to-grads/
> “I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI,” said Chieng.

2026-05-28 09:14:39 GMT

“The AI Bubble — No One's Happy”
https://nooneshappy.com/article/the-ai-bubble/
> The buildout is underwritten by an implicit guarantee that none of the people who made the bet will be the ones who pay for it.

2026-05-24 13:51:51 GMT

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Never really recovered from my admiration of black and white film although I don't miss the many inconveniences
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/878/125/288/071/original/1e2dc85b58770b2f.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/878/186/089/354/original/f565ecb2e9500bea.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/878/244/736/152/original/8a0bfad5ed4654aa.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/878/297/060/805/original/0b0b1c2e1f235946.jpg

2026-05-24 13:50:58 GMT

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Most of the photos were taken in Clifton, the centre, Redland, or Southville
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/874/535/237/542/original/ce124509499edb7d.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/874/601/306/744/original/30c49ac71b8d96a8.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/874/700/177/107/original/50b84dc5c97784fa.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/874/781/835/824/original/78a2e11c9e5e5944.jpg

2026-05-24 13:49:40 GMT

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Moving to Bristol in 2000 I was still using black and white film, mostly
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/869/398/680/607/original/e774c4fec44aaf3b.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/869/526/825/601/original/47aa8f2397254124.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/869/605/289/859/original/2f3ec3c21056d042.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/869/674/811/601/original/bfc59a7b64a9ad41.jpg

2026-05-24 13:24:01 GMT

Cross-posting tools still suck, huh?

2026-05-24 13:19:36 GMT

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These were taken after my shift in the newsroom studio on the last day that the Icelandic national broadcasting service broadcast from their old facilities in Laugavegur. Late 90s
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/749/545/662/208/original/63598e86ad8ee8d2.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/749/686/673/925/original/00f2c44b8e425af6.jpg

2026-05-24 13:12:45 GMT

If you’re one of my new or recent followers that came here because of my newsletter, you might not know that I regularly subject my audience to my photography. So to give you some context I figure I might as well post a little bit of an overview of the kind of photography I’ve done as a hobbyist.
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/724/395/685/863/original/d213449db9a51217.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/629/724/512/026/020/original/3cca30aead4a0546.jpg

2026-05-23 17:21:30 GMT

I'm getting a little bit more comfortable with saturated colours in my photographs. #iceland #nature #photography
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/625/036/880/557/731/original/aeeb43d13579b6d0.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/625/036/880/384/532/original/33e5116066b03a40.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/625/036/900/628/304/original/b8fa0ca141f70197.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/625/036/900/498/494/original/1ed3944432c62666.jpg

2026-05-22 10:12:42 GMT

I wonder how many of the people in tech who claim to be progressive but spout nonsense like “softness, comfort, and entertainment is a weakness and is why empires fall” realise that it’s literal fascist rhetoric that’s completely detached from actual history?

2026-05-22 09:45:43 GMT

Introduce yourself with 10 bands you’ve seen live:
I don’t like crowds (or people TBH) so, excepting the occasional non consensual exposure to an unfortunate local band at a pub, the list is quite short
David Bowie (during the Outside tour)
Sigurrós
I also once went to see Saint Etienne perform but I honestly don’t remember why I went

2026-05-21 09:20:28 GMT

So, because of an extremely dumb comment by one of the nuttiest pro-“AI”nutters of tech that I’m not going link to because I myself deeply regret having accidentally seen it, I have to ask:
How do Americans think Vietnamese ended?

2026-05-17 21:21:25 GMT

This photo definitely does not work but I am fond of how it's capturing the moment
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/592/009/113/474/738/original/294fa7b1f6ec57f1.jpg

2026-05-17 11:31:36 GMT

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@nprofile…lg8y Our nationalists are largely centrist these days, policy-wise (or, specifically most economic policies they have are grift for their allies, but what’s left over is middle-of-the-road stuff). They just hate immigrants, Europe, and minorities.

2026-05-17 10:33:21 GMT

So, the nationalist parties won a substantial victory in the municipal elections here in Iceland yesterday, which is honestly a bit discouraging.

2026-05-15 10:49:48 GMT

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I suspect this one will play better to the Mastodon crowd than to the Bluesky or newsletter folks.

2026-05-15 10:46:38 GMT

The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/the-old-world-of-tech-is-dying/

2026-05-15 10:40:00 GMT

"The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born"
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/the-old-world-of-tech-is-dying/
This ones leans a bit more into theory and politics than I usually do when writing about the industry, but this moment in time warrants it, I think.

2026-05-11 10:21:51 GMT

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@nprofile…dg5z I hate Emacs just as much as I hate Vim-style text editors. They are almost all GUI apps pretending they aren't GUI apps undesigned into perfect annoyance by people who hate user interface design and have the worst instincts for UX ever.

2026-05-11 10:11:16 GMT

So, I'm trying out Helix editor despite loathing the anti-GUI nature of most terminal text editors because of how frustrating most of the bigger editors have become
And one thing that's weird is that all of the language servers I use work much more reliably in Helix than in, say, Zed or Sublime. That on its own is shaping to be worth increasing the cognitive overhead of work by losing the file tree and mini-map
Also, turns out less lag while typing does partially make up for the mode bullshit

2026-05-09 14:11:17 GMT

Oystercatcher! On a lawn! #photo #bird #birds #iceland
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/545/019/162/326/976/original/64c9fae284400325.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/545/019/159/997/489/original/0c6e0aae42577946.jpg

2026-05-07 11:15:00 GMT

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This genuinely looks like a recipe for a US federal wire fraud charge down the line.

2026-05-07 10:59:51 GMT

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The fact that many payment companies seem to be all-in on "AI" feels iffy. Even iffier when most of them were all-in on cryptocoins.

2026-05-07 10:52:02 GMT

In today's "surely this is a bad idea?" news, as a part of my ongoing search for a non-shitty Merchant-of-Record service, I came across one called Kelviq that runs it's business verification (i.e. the bit that weeds out scammers, fraud, etc) entirely using OpenClaw
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/we-automated-our-business-vetting-with-openclaw-788b285744

2026-05-03 10:43:18 GMT

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This is a long-standing characteristic of the field and it explains a lot of what’s been going on in tech. If you can’t even emphasise with people doing the same job as you—that share your circumstances—what are the chances of you caring about the end user or the effects of your work on society?

2026-05-03 10:43:17 GMT

The class solidarity argument has been a part of “AI” discourse in many fields for a while now. It doesn’t settle the debate but it’s a rationale many will acknowledge even if they disagree
Except in coding. Mention it to software devs and most will look at you as if you just spoke in tongues

2026-05-02 09:30:35 GMT

“ignore the code: Please, Support Books”
https://ignorethecode.net/blog/2025/11/22/please_support_books/
> LLMs have had a significant impact on book sales, particularly technical books. These systems are killing the companies that created much of the content that made LLMs useful in the first place.

2026-05-01 12:27:55 GMT

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Here Halldór Laxnes sings his poem to the tune he originally intended. He's... not a great singer, but he delivers it with feeling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO7_CnZ_VZA

2026-05-01 12:21:51 GMT

It's become a tradition for me every year to post a link on the first of May to the performance of Halldór Laxnes's socialist anthem Maístjarnan at the centennial of the Icelandic Confederation of Labour. It captures the solidarity and hope that his poem conveyed.
> En í kvöld lýkur vetri
> sérhvers vinnandi manns,
> og á morgun skín maísól
> Tonight every worker's winter will end and tomorrow the sun of May will shine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDtJDD4Z2kg

2026-05-01 11:28:28 GMT

The black-tailed godwit has arrived. #birds #bird #iceland
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/499/078/973/342/245/original/6a2f04a3edaa6d68.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/499/079/308/349/008/original/b3c923c65fb4a051.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/116/499/079/698/366/422/original/8c89a64148aeee77.jpg

2026-04-30 10:14:43 GMT

Making a note of the phrase “right now, the instrument to make LLMs possible are through an industry that is ecologically harmful, exploitative, and devoid of accountability” for future use.

2026-04-29 15:12:33 GMT

I clearly have not drunk enough coffee today. Caffeine obviously well below optimal operating levels.

2026-04-29 13:59:53 GMT

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What I meant above is that many of us had idly wondered whether GitHub's unreliability was because of MS's drive to use LLMs for coding, leading to a drop in quality. Instead they seem to be seriously mishandling a demand increase driven by their own actions
And it only partially makes sense as an explanation
They've been through this before. When MS bought GitHub and made it free, demand exploded. In theory, they should have all the expertise and capability to handle another massive increase

2026-04-29 12:35:34 GMT

People keep linking to tech “thought leaders” who are too muddled in the head to be able to clearly articulate a difference between generative and non-generative ML models and I keep letting it annoy me
There was a time I was hoping the distinction would be obvious to everybody 🤷🏻‍♂️

2026-04-29 11:42:22 GMT

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> There were 1 billion commits in 2025. Now, it's 275 million per week, on pace for 14 billion this year if growth remains linear (spoiler: it won't.)
>
> GitHub Actions has grown from 500M minutes/week in 2023 to 1B minutes/week in 2025, and now 2.1B minutes so far this week.
https://xcancel.com/kdaigle/status/2040164759836778878#m

2026-04-29 11:41:52 GMT

Apparently, subsidised code automation tools ("coding agents") that make it 10x easier to generate code is a big part of why GitHub has been having issues
So, it really is their own fault since GitHub and Microsoft are pretty much ground zero for offering LLM-based coding tools and promoting the bubble, it's just not breaking for the specific reasons some of us have been thinking
https://xcancel.com/kdaigle/status/2040164759836778878#m

2026-04-28 12:02:07 GMT

After spending quite a bit of the past couple of weeks chatting with friends and family, asking them what they're taking from the news, I think it's clear most of our news media is substantially downplaying the economic effects of the Hormuz straight crisis
What I can't figure out is whether it's intentional or not. I know it's unintentional in Icelandic media as they simply no longer have the resources or expertise to properly outline what's happening, but I can't figure out UK or US media