The Curious Engineer

All blogs / Tech news / industry

Ian Betteridge

ianbetteridge.com

Invented Betteridge's Law of Headline, but I'm actually a writer, content strategist, technologist, and leadership mentor.

Tech news / industrySociety / politics / economyEssays / personalAI / ML

’15’16’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
355 from 13 Feb 2015 to 11 Jul 2026
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monthly (21 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 14

  1. Ten Blue Links, “this one’s for you, Ian” edition
  2. Self-driving, Tesla and the influence of brand
  3. Frumentatio!
  4. Ten blue links, "fork you" edition
  5. The worst of us
  6. The freedom stack
  7. Zen fascists will control you...
  8. Ten Blue Links, "cough cough cough" edition
  9. The fundamental error that doesn't exist
  10. Ten Blue Links, "Cometh the hour, cometh the man-baby" edition
  11. Ten Blue Links, "Greenland isn't green" edition
  12. Ten Blue Links, “featuring Peter Thiel, again!” edition
  13. Of ants, Saul Bass, and lost dreams of a cybernetic ecology
  14. Ten Blue Links – "Platforms, promises and bad habits" edition

2025 44

  1. Weeknote, Sunday 29th December 2025 * I have been up in Suffolk, spending the week with my sister and her family. This means – as they live
  2. Weeknote, Sunday 5th December 2025 * Not working this week, which means it’s been a bit of a quiet one. * I spent Thursday in Whitstable,
  3. Ten Blue Links “Orion rising, EV prices falling and ads arriving” edition
  4. Ten Blue Links, “Pop goes the bubble” edition 1. Being a Luddite is cool, actually For years, calling someone a “Luddite” was the ultimate insult in Silicon Valley—
  5. Ten Blue Links “Don’t Be Evil (some conditions apply)” edition 1. This is fine dot gif of the week, part the first Cookie banners are theatre. Consent is supposed to
  6. Ten Blue Links, “forever blowing bubbles” edition This week’s topic is AI. In some ways at the moment, every week's topic is AI, but
  7. Ten Blue Links "Toxic optimisation" edition 1. Your job is making you anxious. ChatGPT isn't helping If 21st-century capitalism has one central tenet,
  8. Ten Blue Links, "the robots are coming!" edition Hey, I actually wrote some things this week! The first was about politics, riffing off Amazon's plan to
  9. The iPhone and the termite mound We like to imagine that there’s a clean border between technology and nature. Out there are trees, rivers, fungi,
  10. The politics of the missing middle Every industrial revolution has created winners and losers, but this time the scale of displacement — and the indifference of those
  11. Ten Blue Links, Jazz-hands Edition 1. The problem with cloud services is who owns them Ahh, the cloud. Or, as we used to call it,
  12. Ten Blue Links, "I'm off for a bit" edition Well yes, I am indeed off – but not for long. I'm going on a trip to China for
  13. Ten Blue Links, "will people stop doing interesting things with AI" edition 1. Vivaldi sets out its stall on AI Vivaldi has taken a bold stance against the growing trend of integrating
  14. Ten Blue Links, "A kind of homecoming" edition First off, a quick apology — I’ve been under the weather. Most of last week was spent offline, recovering from
  15. Ten Blue Links, “Peter and the whales” edition 1. Required reading of the week Let’s start with something a little doom-laden: how societies collapse. How “civilisations”
  16. Ten Blue Links, "the wrong timeline" edition 1. Data sovereignty as a global issue You are probably already aware of the EU’s (slow) moves promoting data
  17. Ten Blue Links, “I went on holiday by mistake” edition And I’m back! Thanks to a combination of busyness at work and personal time off, I had a bit
  18. Ten Blue Links, “Sunday Sunday here again” edition 1. Apple’s retort to the possibility of AI scaling is a dagger through the heart of the boosters I’
  19. Ten Blue Links, “If I sound angry, it’s because I am” Edition 1. Claude’s system prompt is a wild work of AI art Behind every LLM lies a system prompt. This
  20. Ten Blue Links "what Jony did next" Edition 1. Future has been OpenAI's £5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive's io startup represents more than
  21. Ten Blue Links “Life, the UAE, and Everything” Edition 1. Only Cook could go to China Two hundred and seventy five billion dollars. That’s how much Apple planned
  22. Ten Blue Links “Bros, nopes and Popes” Edition 1. Hey Siri, what does “oligarchy” look like? It looks like this, my friends. It looks like this. If there
  23. Ten Blue Links "Good news, bad news" edition 1. Pete Hegseth in "does something good" shock Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth's latest memo on right-
  24. Oh Apple A story about Apple? Catnip for me. An antitrust story about Apple? Absolutely gold plated gourmet catnip for me. The
  25. Ten Blue Links “Mars, attacked!” Edition 1. Put your Mars dreams back in the toy box, boys Via Phil comes this wonderful beat down on the
  26. Ten Blue Links “Spivs, Spies and Slowdowns” edition 1. Betteridge's Law of Headlines, Macalope edition You know the Macalope, right? The legendary "part man, part
  27. Ten Blue Links, "though cowards flinch and traitors sneer" edition 1. Neither Microsoft nor Apple, but international tech liberation You might have noticed that it's been the 50th
  28. Ten Blue Links, “The madness of King Donald” edition Was there really an idyllic time when technology wasn't political? Almost certainly not: anything capable of changing the
  29. Ten Blue Links, “Cute, Kittens and Conservatives” Edition 1. The anti-big tech conservatives have lost Another great piece by Cory Doctorow – who is essential reading – on how
  30. Ten Blue Links, "fly me to the Moon" edition 1. Musk has harmed Tesla. But that’s not the only problem it has. It’s easy to blame Elon
  31. Ten Blue Links, “good news, bad news, old news” edition 1. John Gruber is angry I don’t think I have seen a more angry post from John about something
  32. Hardware Dreams, AI Nightmares: Apple's Crisis of Imagination It's incredibly rare for Apple to announce a delay to one of its products. But that's
  33. Ten Blue Links, "parachuting with Glass" edition 1. From the department of super-genius ideas Sergey Brin wants Googlers to work 60 hours a week in the
  34. Ten Blue Links, “How do you like them Apples?” Edition 1. The front line of enshittification Printers are probably the most maligned of all technologies. Everyone -- and I mean everyone
  35. Apple’s Advanced Data Protection: what’s going on in the UK? OK, so perhaps it's time to post something about what Apple’s Advanced Data Protection is, what it
  36. Ten Blue Links “Love me tender” Edition 1. Subscriptions made easy(-ish) When it comes to building a media business based on subscriptions there is probably no
  37. Ten Blue Links "Oh you crazy Brits" Edition This week, I’m a little late as every time I thought I had finished, there was another change to
  38. Ten Blue Links, “I thought I was done with Trump, then he dragged me back in” Edition 1. The days of an SEO-only content strategy are over A great thread by Mordy Oberstein, who highlights something
  39. Ten Blue Link, “only for oligarchs!” edition 1. Naughty Guardian, Naughty Why are people often anti-AI? Because of things like this. Honestly, please don't
  40. Weeknote, Sunday 19th January 2025 * I have barely made any progress on writing (other than blogging) this year. Something I need to address PDQ. * I
  41. Ten Blue Links, "a day late and a dollar short" edition I sometimes wonder about writing so much about politics when I am, at heart, a technology journalist. How did I
  42. Weeknote, Sunday 12 January 2025 * It's been COLD. Cold weather always reminds me of being a kid because the home I grew up
  43. Ten Blue Links, “Marky Mark Special” edition 1. Why I’m not on Threads these days Mark Zuckerberg does not give a rats ass about the effects
  44. Ten Blue Links, “2025 already?” edition 1. AI is the triumph of capital If you know your classical economics, you will know production involves three factors:

2024 95

  1. About MacUser A story about the magazine that made me
  2. Ten Blue Links, “it’s just me, my MacBook, and Jesus” edition AI, Apple at its best, Apple at its worst
  3. Weeknote, Monday 23rd December * A week off work, yay! Obviously that has not stopped me checking and replying to a few emails. My team
  4. When dealing with Musk, Labour needs to understand the world has changed There are plenty of objections to preventing Elon Musk from donating to Reform. The first is it’s politically motivated.
  5. Ten Blue Links, "your time is up" edition This week… 1. OpenAI begs for copyright to be bent their way 2. Why I love iA (not AI) 3.
  6. What I can do for you
  7. Coming soon This is Ian Betteridge, a brand new site by Ian Betteridge that's just getting started. Things will be
  8. Weeknote, Sunday 15th December * I’m pinching the bullet pointed style of week note from Alice Bartlett. * Last week at work, and not back
  9. Ten Blue Links, "I am your BFDL" edition 1. Tech benevolent dictators are still… dictators in the tech community there is a concept of the “benevolent dictator for
  10. Weeknote, Sunday 8th December 2024 This time of year, work becomes a tension between two opposing forces: the inevitable winding down of the year, as
  11. Ten Blue Links, "rapid evolution of form" edition 1. Why should Trump deliver for anyone but Trump? This Bloomberg piece forgets one important fact: Donald Trump is not
  12. 20241202 Ten Blue Links, the late late late show edition! Technically this is eight blue links, because I spent the weekend in Bristol and we’re getting towards Christmas. Next
  13. Ten Blue Links “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date” Edition 1. Who rules us? Google changed its rules on what kind of behaviour it regards as “spam” and, of course,
  14. Ten Blue Links, “I’m sorry about the politics” edition 1. The Reach saga rumbles on I’ve banged on about the parlous strategy of Reach plc before, but the
  15. Weeknote, Sunday 10th November 2024 It’s been a while since I wrote a weeknote, although I’ve kept up with the other kinds of
  16. Ten Blue Links, “ignoring the election” edition 1. UK university fees going up (but not by enough to make the system work) For those of you not
  17. Ten Blue Links, “stoically facing the end times” edition 1. When is AI coding not AI coding? You might have heard something about how Google now creates a quarter
  18. Ten Blue Links "Sometimes we must make a quirkafleeg" edition 1. How do you tell an AR product doesn’t have a mass market application? When people start talking about
  19. Nuvia, Qualcomm and ARM’s license to print money Ah, the nuclear option. So why is ARM cancelling Qualcomm’s right to make ARM-compatible chips? To understand what’
  20. 10 Blue Links, "WordPress+SEO+WWIII" edition 1. The era of the search engine traffic strategy I spent a good ten years knee-deep in SEO and
  21. Ten Blue Links "my god, what have I done?" edition 1. Well who could possibly have seen this coming? I wrote a while ago that the era of major levels
  22. Ten Blue Links, literary salon Edition 1. Apple’s built in apps can do (almost) everything One of the characteristics of hardcore nerdery is the tendency
  23. Ten Blue Links “reinventing drink ordering” Edition 1. Inventing the future If there is a book about Apple, I have probably read it. On my first day
  24. Ten Blue Links, "Turn to the left" edition QuickTime My first look at QuickTime came before it was publicly released. I was working at Apple in IS&
  25. Ten Blue Links, “hell of a lot of Apple here, Ian” edition 1. Oh was there some new Apple stuff? Apparently there was. I didn’t get chance to watch the keynote
  26. "Ireland doesn't want the money" John Gruber on the EU ruling that Apple owes 13bn euro in taxes to Ireland: Ireland doesn’t want the
  27. Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech I could — and probably should — write an entire essay about the cult of the founder in Silicon Valley, how it
  28. Why do people get the history of Apple so wrong? Dave Winer (who really should know better): Graham uses Steve Jobs as an example. He knew what was and wasn’
  29. DOJ, Nvidia, and why we restrict monopolies A 1600, a group of English merchants were granted a royal charter, a legal document which allowed them to venture
  30. Ten Blue Links, “I was a teenage anarchist” edition 1. Model collapse isn’t just for AI When a large language model starts to ingest a lot of content
  31. Ten Blue Links, "Cthulhu lives!" edition 1. The smartest comment you will read about AI and art this week From the wonderful Laurie Anderson, about an
  32. Ten Blue Links, "Gnarls Barkley is innocent" edition 1. Just because we killed you doesn’t make us liable Dr. Kanokporn Tangsuan died after eating a meal at
  33. Ten Blue links, "so much Apple, so little time" edition 1. IBM 1956 = Google 2024 (and Apple, and Microsoft, and and and) As I’ve noted before, you are likely
  34. Ten Blue Links, "Sunday is the new Friday" edition Yeah, this one is late. I’m doing some extra work, OK? Anyway, onward. 1. Nerdy. Very nerdy First something
  35. Taboola targeting Eric Seufert, on Threads: Regarding Taboola’s partnership with Apple: I’ve seen people claim that this is somehow hypocritical
  36. Ten Blue (Screen of Death) Links, "Why is my PC not working?" edition 1. Oh come on, Apple Back when Apple changed its app guidelines to permit emulators and HTML 5-based mini
  37. Block, block and block again Jack Dorsey, Bluesky, decentralised social networks and the very common crowd – Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: There’s a
  38. Ten Blue Links, "Three Lions On My Shirt" edition 1. Couldn’t happen to a nicer billionaire What’s interesting about the European Commission’s charges against Twitter (which
  39. Ten Blue Links, "delayed by the election" edition 1. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you Surprise! The use of energy-intensive AI to make stupid graphics that
  40. Ten Blue Links, Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it infamy edition 1. Oh Perplexity, why must you test me so? I have been a big proponent of Perplexity for a while,
  41. Microsoft 1998 = Apple 2024 Daring Fireball: European Commission Launches Investigation Against Microsoft for Integrating Teams With Office: My read on this is that the
  42. Apple delays AI in the EU. Maybe. Another day, another spat between Apple and the EU. I’m not going to focus on the ridiculous idea that
  43. Ten Blue Links “Liberation Serif is cool now” edition 1. Dell to employees: “screw you”. Employees to Dell: “you first” Everyone enjoys seeing a few chickens coming home to
  44. Ten blue links, "what a beautiful day, hey hey" edition 1. Looks like a publisher, is actually an AI content farm I’m still hearing about publishers who think the
  45. Weeknote, Sunday 2nd June 2024 First of all, how the hell is it June already? Is it just me? Is time passing at a ludicrously
  46. Ten blue links, just when I thought I was out edition There’s a lot of AI in this edition. Sorry. One day I’ll stop talking about it, probably when
  47. Google lies If you are interested in any way in the worlds of SEO — black, white, and every shade in between — you
  48. Weeknote, Bank Holiday Monday 27th May 2024 It’s been a while since I wrote a proper Weeknote. To be honest, I am struggling with them a
  49. Ten Blue Links, All Your Computer Screengrabs Are Belong To Us edition What a weird week. You might have noticed Microsoft had a few announcements. I’m not going to dwell on
  50. Hate to say I told you so I don’t think I was the first person by a long way to draw the conclusion that AI posed
  51. Some thoughts about Apple’s new iPads Mark Gurman’s last minute “maybe an M4…” rumour turned out to be absolutely correct. No one would have batted
  52. Ten Blue Links, "Did they really crush that lovely piano?" edition 1. Yes, Apple, we’re also talking about you Cal Newport reckons that it’s time to dismantle the technopoly.
  53. On the iPad becoming a Mac Jason Snell wants the iPad to be able to be a Mac: The iPad no longer feels like the future
  54. Ten Blue Links, Sunday rail replacement bus service edition I managed not to do any writing at all this week, as I’m off work over the coming days
  55. Why do people try and forbid linking? Websites That Forbid Other Websites From Linking to Them – Pixel Envy: Some of these are even more bizarre than a
  56. Ten Blue Links, “gosh is that the time” edition 1. Who among us has not been surprised by needing people to do things Spotify’s Daniel Ek is shocked,
  57. Weeknote, Sunday 21st April 2024 This has been a week of feeling my age – but also wondering exactly what that means. I’m currently working
  58. Did IQs drop sharply while I was away? AppleInsider: –”EU’s antitrust head is ignoring Spotify’s dominance and wants to punish Apple instead“: Speaking to CNBC the
  59. Ten Blue Links, “my, how you have changed!” edition 1. Four years is a long time in tech punditry I’m going to break one of my self-imposed
  60. What a difference four years makes John Gruber in 2020 on the tracking industry led by Facebook: The entitlement of these fuckers is just off the
  61. On the fine art of technology reviews Nearly thirty years ago I reviewed my first product. It was a Lexmark solid ink inkjet printer, created for designers
  62. Ten blue links, it's been a while edition Yes, it really has been a while. Sorry about that: I started a new job and have been knee-deep
  63. Antitrust, Meta, Apple and more John Gruber: More on the EU’s Market Might: If they follow through with a demand that Photos be completely
  64. Ten Blue Links, Country Life Edition Currently holed up in Suffolk. And I almost got away without mentioning Apple… 1. The Atlantic gets it AI “will
  65. Weeknote, Sunday 24th March 2024 BOY that was a week. You might have noticed that I didn’t write a weeknote last weekend… well there’
  66. Sky falls in, Walt Mossberg may be wrong Over on Threads, Walt Mossberg has commented on the Apple/DOJ case. First up, if you do not respect Walt’
  67. A few thoughts on the Apple DOJ antitrust case, from someone who isn't riding his first rodeo From 1995 through to about 2008, I made my living from technology journalism (we called it “computer journalism” then, because
  68. Ten Blue Links, AI is bad now edition First up, apologies that there’s been no long form post this week. I’ve had some family stuff which
  69. Weeknote, Sunday 10th March Last week we went to see Dune. It’s a pretty amazing film, the kind that you just let wash
  70. Ten Blue Links, Too Much Apple Edition It’s FRIDAY! 1. Substack now has three million paid subscribers I left Substack because I didn’t want to
  71. The future of search-driven affiliate content This week, rather than focus on a single topic, I thought I would look at a couple of different things
  72. Weeknote, Sunday 3rd March 2024 I’m a little bit tired: a two hour journey back from Folkestone this morning (thank you farmers, tractor convoys
  73. Ten blue links, Folsom Prison Blues Edition 1. Oh, WordPress! Not content with their CEO getting into a stupid public spat with a user and apparently revealing
  74. The end of the line for Google “Personally, I don’t want the perception in a few years to be, ‘Those old school web ranking types just
  75. Ten Blue Links, "Gloom and doom" edition It’s been a gloomy week. Sorry. 1. Surprise! Apple’s sync stuff is entirely cryptic The magnificent Howard Oakley,
  76. HouseFresh and the challenges of affiliate content You might have noticed a post from HouseFresh doing the rounds, especially if you have anything to do with creating
  77. Weeknote, Sunday 19th February 2024 The good thing about not writing a weeknote for a week is you have plenty of things to write about.
  78. Michael Tsai - iOS 17.4 Changes PWAs to Shortcuts in EU Michael Tsai – Blog – iOS 17.4 Changes PWAs to Shortcuts in EU: Apple had two years or so to prepare
  79. Daring Fireball: The European Commission Had Nothing to Do With Apple’s Reversal on Supporting RCS Daring Fireball: The European Commission Had Nothing to Do With Apple’s Reversal on Supporting RCS: China, unlike the EU,
  80. Ten Blue Links, 12 Feb 2024: the work from home edit I like links. You like links. Everyone likes links! 1. The dirty fight of “return to office” I’ve written
  81. Ten Blue Links, "Tech is Bad Right Now" Edition I remain a technology optimist, but weeks like this give even me an “are we the baddies” moment or two.
  82. Weeknote, Sunday 4th February 2024 Quite a busy week, all told. I finished off a feature for PC Pro magazine, which will be the first
  83. Some thoughts on Apple Vision Pro (and VR/AR in general) * As many people have noted, the ultimate platform for augmented reality is something that is both portable (can be worn
  84. Ten blue links for 3rd Feb, 2024 I mentioned a while ago on Mastodon that I had such a backlog of stuff I had saved to read
  85. Adapting to the new reality of search It’s obvious at this point that the landscape of search traffic for publishers is rapidly changing, and not generally
  86. Some thoughts on Apple's response to the EU DMA There is always a point in every Robin Hood film where Robin stops robbing the rich to feed the poor
  87. John Scalzi has a new Mac John Scalzi has done a terrific overview of the new 16in MacBook Pro (with M3 Max, naturally) that he recently
  88. The Mac Without the Mac, I wouldn’t have had a career. The first time I encountered a Mac was in 1986.
  89. The information grey goo I’m broadly positive about the future of LLMs and AI, but no one should pretend there will not be
  90. Weeknote, Sunday 21st January 2024 So much blood this week. Fortunately, all of it was removed from me under medical supervision. On Tuesday, I had
  91. How to roll out AI in a creative business I talked recently about how changing the culture of learning in your business will be important if you will make
  92. AI is about people, not just machines It would be a little remiss of me if I didn’t mention the launch this week of Microsoft’s
  93. Weeknote, Sunday 14th January 2024 This week there were some exciting work-related developments which I can’t really talk about yet, but I might
  94. The continuing challenge of return to office This is the first post-Substack edition of my newsletter, the first one delivered via WordPress. At some point in
  95. Weeknote, 7th January 2024 I was going to write a sort of yearnote last week, summing up 2023. I didn’t, in the end,

2023 66

  1. Christmasnote, 25th December 2023 Technically, I should have written this yesterday, but somehow Christmas Eve feels like an even less appropriate time to be
  2. Substack and "platform risk" It’s quite ironic that I spend part of my professional life warning publishers and content creators about platform risk
  3. Removing cloud storage providers from macOS One of Apple’s most annoying habits is changing things to make them harder for users to “make mistakes”. Almost
  4. Weeknote, Sunday 17th December 2023 I’ve been thinking a lot about how I use computers this week. As I have written before (at great
  5. What the Epic vs Google case means for content A games company and a search giant tussling over Fortnight doesn’t sound like it has much to do with
  6. Weeknote, Sunday 10th December 2023 On Tuesday, I attended (virtually, of course) an International Association of News Media (INMA) talk given by Benedict Evans on
  7. Weeknote, Sunday 3rd December 2023 How did it get to be December already? And how did it get so cold? The Byte archive I was
  8. How to get a glimpse of the post-Google future of search What does the search engine of the future look like? Forget 10 blue links… You can break down the creative
  9. Latenote, Monday 27th November 2023 Between getting ridiculously excited about the goings-on OpenAI, I didn’t get a lot of writing done this week.
  10. What the heck is going on at OpenAI (and why should I care?) Confused? You should be. I’m deliberately not looking at Techmeme so I don’t have to update this post
  11. "Journalism is picking up the phone" Remembering the craft and process of original reporting can help build a loyal audience. So far this week, I have
  12. Telling human stories: where AI ends and people begin The second area where humans can do a better job than an LLM: real life storytelling One of the best
  13. What kinds of content can humans do better than AI? Sometimes, you just need the human touch… What kinds of content can humans do better than AI? The last few
  14. Weeknote, Sunday 12th November 2023 This felt like a busy week, perhaps because it actually was On Monday I had a call with Peter Bittner,
  15. What a 36 year old video can tell us about the future of publishing The future is arriving a little later than expected… I have had the best life. Back in 1989, I left
  16. Weeknote, Sunday 5th November Time passes. The highlight of this week was at the Royal Festival Hall on Monday, when we drove into London
  17. AI content: Publishers' next burning platform moment LLMs remove a key competitive advantage of publishers. You need to find a new one. It still surprises me that
  18. Weeknote, Sunday 29th October 2023 An abbreviated weeknote this time, as I’ve not long got back from Orford Ness. Orford Ness is a strange
  19. SEO will be over for publishers. You need to adapt. Position one for a query is no longer close to enough I don’t know of a single person in
  20. Weeknote, Sunday 22nd October It’s been a while. I have missed the last couple of weeks not because I was too busy to
  21. Weeknote, Sunday 22 October 2023 It’s been a while… It’s been a while. I have missed the last couple of weeks not because
  22. Coming soon This is Ian Betteridge’s Three to Five.
  23. Weeknote, Sunday 1st October 2023 How the heck is it October already? That’s just not possible. It’s been a relatively quiet week. On
  24. Weeknote, Sunday 24th September 2023 I spent Monday and Tuesday working on a short story submission. The workshop that I went to last week at
  25. Weeknote, Sunday 17 September 2023 I spent Monday down in Brighton visiting my friend Vicky, who I haven’t actually seen face to face for
  26. Weeknote, Sunday 10th September 2023 I’m writing this slightly later than normal after we got back from a trip down to the Bristol to
  27. Resurrecting Technovia I have no idea where the name came from, but I started writing a blog called Technovia somewhere around the
  28. Weeknote, Sunday 3rd September 2023 Time is strangely stretching. When I started writing this post I had to check my calendar to see what I
  29. Weeknote, Sunday 27th August 2023 Being on my own is weird. Many of the things that I tend to do when Kim is at home
  30. Weeknote, Sunday 20th August 2023 This has been a week of joining. First, I joined the Society of Authors. Although I’m not a published
  31. On Cnet deleting its archive CNet Deletes Thousands of Old Articles in an Attempt to Game Google Search – Pixel Envy: Google says this whole strategy
  32. Latenote, "Sunday 12th August 2023" (but really Monday) This week a classic “I don’t have to work” project: sorting out my music library. My music collection has
  33. Weeknote, Sunday 6th August 2023 I bought a watch. A normal, not-in-any-way-smart watch, for less than £30. That feels like better
  34. Things you might be interested in - 31/7/23 Cory has a new book coming out which builds on his work on “enshittification”. You can pre-order it as
  35. Latenote, Monday 31st July 2023 This week, I mostly gave myself a week off which meant I hit level 60 on my character in the
  36. Weeknote, Sunday 23rd July At long last, I have some news. After six years, I’m leaving Bauer and moving got to pastures new
  37. Weeknote, Sunday 16th July 2023 It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote and a few things have happened: * I spent a
  38. Apple and Disney are happy to fund Nazis Far right influencers are first to get paid by Musk’s Twitter: The first beneficiaries appear to be high-profile
  39. Some quick thoughts on Threads This is very obviously v0.9 Some fairly fundamental things are missing. Support for ActivityPub, which would allow you to
  40. Weeknote, 2nd July 2023 Having teased you all with some big news that I thought I was going to be able to talk about
  41. Latenote, Monday 26th June 2023 Oh gosh I’ve missed two weeknotes in a row. In fairness to me, there has been a lot going
  42. Meta and Mastodon – What's really on people's minds? There has been a lot of chatter about the decision of some instances on Mastodon to pre-emptively block Meta’
  43. Weeknote, Sunday 4th June 2023 I’ve been feeling somewhat melancholy this week. I suspect the cause of that is mostly physical: I have also
  44. The time of seclusion and loss I think it’s only now, with the benefit of two years of processing, that I’m really able to
  45. Weeknote, Sunday 28th May 2023 Bank holiday! Another one! Yay! On Friday we went over to Margate to see The Chimera Function, a performance lecture
  46. Weeknote, Sunday 21st May 2023 There’s been a lot of London this week. I’m doing a stint of training sessions for various teams
  47. Weeknote, Sunday 14th May 2023 This week was mostly about training at work. Not me doing training: me training other people, and developing supporting materials,
  48. Weeknote, Monday 8th May I hate being ill, so I have hated this week. After having a tickly throat on Tuesday, Wednesday morning I
  49. Mastodon, BlueSky, and Highlander Syndrome I am total agreement with Jamie Zawinski here. There is no way I will trust anything that Jack Dorsey has
  50. Weeknote, 30th April 2023 I missed out on my week note last week because I was incredibly tired, and when I’m too tired
  51. Weeknote, 16th April 2023 Bit of an abbreviated week note as we have not long got back from seeing my sister up in Suffolk.
  52. Just why do journalists love Twitter so much? Om Malik highlighted a survey by Muckrake which shows a bigger proportion of journalists expecting to spend more time on
  53. Weeknote, 9th April 2023 Everyone I know has been desperate to get to the release of the bank holiday weekend, four days when you
  54. Weeknote, 2nd April 2023 I bought a new Mac. There was a bonus from work and it was exactly the amount that a new
  55. AI, like Jon Snow, knows nothing This is a great illustration of how AIs don’t “know” anything – they generate an answer one word at a
  56. Weeknote, Sunday 19th March 2023 Where exactly is the year going? This is week twelve, which means we are 20% of the way through 2023.
  57. Weeknote, Sunday, 12 Mar 2023 Is it just me or are the weeks at the moment a weird mix of being both extraordinarily long and
  58. Weeknote, Sunday, 05 Mar 2023 This will be a bit of an abbreviated weeknote because I have a lot to work on today. In particular,
  59. Weeknote, Sunday 26th February 2023 Looking through some old documents, I rediscovered Cory’s notes on a talk that Danny gave at Notcon in 2004
  60. Weeknote, Sunday 19 February 2023 It’s been a week of what I would call “faffing”: poking around at the decaying corpses of ideas and
  61. Weeknote, Sunday 12th February Quiet week. I went along to give blood on Wednesday, only to be turned down because my iron levels were
  62. Weeknote, Sunday, 05 Feb 2023 Sometimes weeks are quite fractured and this was one of those. Bitty. Lots of little things happening which get in
  63. Weeknote, Sunday, 29 Jan 2023 This week has mostly been a cavalcade of getting things sorted in my little office. I finally decided that it
  64. Weeknote, Sunday 15 January 2023 This was quite a busy week for work, with many meetings and even a day in London at the new
  65. Weeknote, Sunday 8th January 2023 This was the first week back at work since the middle of December, so it was a bit of a
  66. Yearnote, 2022 When the first day of a year falls on a Sunday, I suspect it’s a good idea to look

2022 29

  1. Going down the Twitter memory hole M.G Siegler on Mastodon: Yes, yes, the network is under immense strain as people flee the Elon strain infecting
  2. Weeknote, Sunday 25th December 2022 I feel like in the past week I’ve travelled the country — and that’s mainly because I almost have.
  3. Weeknote, Sunday 11th December 2022 This week has been almost my last time at work this year. I’m off to the middle of nowhere
  4. Weeknote, Sunday 4th December 2022 Thursday saw the arrival of my Kindle Scribe, which I pre-ordered on the day it was announced. I’ve
  5. Musk could make his own phone. But no, he won't. Daring Fireball: Should Be Easy, Indeed: The hard part is that what he’s really talking about is making his
  6. Weeknote, 27th November 2022 My notebook, like my week, is blank. This is not a good sign: when there’s nothing scrawled there other
  7. Weeknote, 13th November 2022 This week has mostly revolved around the trapped nerve in my shoulder, which came on last Sunday evening. It took
  8. Weeknote, 30th October 2022 I had a week off work. I intended to get a lot of writing done, but I slept a lot
  9. Weeknote, 23 October 2022 This has been a pretty busy week at work because I HAVE A WEEK OFF THIS WEEK. I’ve promised
  10. Weeknote, Sunday 16th October 2022 I spent a lot of this week being ill, with the really noxious head cold that Kim had been poorly
  11. Weeknote, Sunday 9th October 2022 OK PEOPLE I got so excited doing some other writing I nearly forgot to write this. I’m slightly tired
  12. Weeknote, 2nd October 2022 It seemed like a good idea at the time. Go down to Brighton. Kim doing a drawing group with some
  13. Weeknote, 25th September 2022 Today was a bit of a double art extravaganza, as we went down to Folkestone to see Sara Trillo talk
  14. Weeknote, 18th September 2022 This has been a week of tech-futzing and annoyances. I converted my ThinkPad back to running Windows because I
  15. Weeknote, Sunday 4th September 2022 I spent yesterday at Interesting 2022, organised by the redoubtable Russell (Not T) Davies. Of course, the talks were all
  16. Miscellany, August 3rd 2022 Apple is delaying the launch of iPadOS 16 until October, a month after the launch of iOS 16. If you
  17. A collection of miscellany - 2nd August 2022 You know how websites want you to use their app instead? There’s a good reason for that: apps can
  18. Weeknote, Sunday 3 July 2022 Some weeks fly by and leave you feeling that nothing has been done. Unfortunately, this is one of those weeks.
  19. Weeknote, Sunday 26th June 2022 This has not been much of a week. I missed last week’s week note because I was sick: I
  20. Weeknote, Sunday 12th June 2022 One of the many useful things about writing a week note is it give you a regular reminder that life
  21. Weeknote, Sunday 5th June 2022 This might be abbreviated as we have just returned from spending a long weekend camping with some lovely friends. Memo
  22. Stuff I’ve been reading today: 29th May 2022 edition Google has delayed its third party cookie ban till 2024. Of course, all this is doing is just giving browser
  23. Weeknote, Sunday 15th May 2022 Yesterday we went to London (a trip into the big city!) for the Art Car Boot Fair, held in Kings
  24. Weeknote, Sunday 8th May 2022 With the demise of the ivy on the back fence came the discovery there wasn’t much in the way
  25. Weeknote, Sunday 1st May 2022 A wedding! Friday evening saw the lovely betrothal of an old friend and his darling in Kew Gardens (which has
  26. Weeknote, 24th April 2022 A brief note this week: we have only just got back from Oxford so there’s not much time to
  27. #Weeknote- 10th April 2022 It took me a few days but I feel like I’m finally over the bought of Covid which I
  28. Weeknote: 3rd April 2022 It’s a week since I tested positive for Covid which means it’s been a week when not much
  29. Weeknote w/e 13th March 2022 This week I have mostly been working – which is not, of course unusual. We did manage a trip out to

2021 3

  1. Weeknote, w/e 23 May 2021 Greetings everyone, it’s been a while hasn’t it? There’s been quite a bit going on. This week
  2. Weeknote: w/c 31st January 2021 I always have a temptation with these notes to begin them with “this week, I have mostly been eating elderberries”
  3. W/e 24 January 2021 I realised a few days ago that, apart from taking out the bins and refilling bird feeders, I hadn’t

2020 15

  1. Just why did a company owned by a former UKIP leader pay Andrew Bridgen £500? Here’s an interesting one. According to the register of members’ interests, on 17th November 2020, prominent Tory MP Andrew
  2. Weeknote: 15th November 2020 I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the course of the last week, some of which manifested itself
  3. Weeknotes: Sunday 1st November 2020 It’s hard to write anything meaningful at the moment without referring to COVID-19, and the prospect of another
  4. Weeknote, Sunday 25th October 2020 I’ve been watching episodes of The Computer Chronicles quite a lot lately (they’re all available on a YouTube
  5. Weeknotes- Sunday 20th September 2020 This week was the deadline for the latest piece of coursework in the masters that I’m working on (senior
  6. Weeknotes: Sunday 30th August 2020 There are a hundred little ways which the pandemic has changed our lives, often without us noticing. For example: despite
  7. Weeknotes: Sunday 16th August 2020 I missed last week’s note thanks to a huge bout of tiredness which left me pretty exhausted and sleepy
  8. Weeknote: Sunday 2nd August 2020 I try not to grumble too much when I’m writing these notes. However, 36 degree heat isn’t really
  9. Weeknotes: Sunday July 26th 2020 I started writing a post this week about the two major trends in computing devices at the moment: pervasive computing
  10. Weeknote: Sunday 19 July 2020 I’ve been on holiday this week. Of course that means I spent the first few days being anxious about
  11. Weeknotes- Sunday 12 July 2020 I have a week on holiday! Because I am an idiot this is the first time off that I’ve
  12. Weeknote: Sunday 5th July 2020 We’re starting to emerge from lockdown (too early, maybe) but the world still feels very weird. Boris Johnson is
  13. Weeknote 27 June 2020: WWDC, social media, and a whole lot of linking I think you basically have to not be looking at the state of the country to not be anxious about
  14. Weeknote: Sunday 14th June 2020 One of the things they don’t tell you about COVID: you’ll still be feeling it weeks later. It’
  15. 31 May 2020 Weeknote Habits, as I’ve learned over the past few months, are a good thing. They’re also something I resisted

2015 1

  1. On David Carr and 20 years of journalism Originally published: 13th February, 2015 When I started my career as a journalist in 1995, I realised pretty quickly that

Undated 88

  1. Thinking again about Stage Manager on iPad The big reason I was eagerly awaiting Stage Manager wasn’t using it on the iPad’s screen: it was
  2. The iPad's confusing lineup John Gruber on the iPad’s current lineup: A lot of people are now complaining that the iPad lineup is
  3. How to run Scrivener on Linux Scrivener is easily the best application around for long-form writing. Yes, you can do it in Word or LibreOffice
  4. Keyboards! Apple being shit! Ducks! Or, as you might call it, links for today Oh good. An attack on machine learning algorithms that secretly gives language models a point of view. No idea how
  5. Downgrading screens, misogynists losing money, and some Apple stuff I recently downgraded my screen – my ThinkPad is a 1920×1200 display – so I think John Gruber has got this
  6. Some stuff that's interesting (not featuring Liz Truss) Cory’s written a great post on how the FTC uses dormant powers and obscure provisions in existing bills to
  7. The Das Keyboard Professional 4 for Mac If you want to start a fight, ask people who are serious about keyboards what their favourite model is and
  8. The new iPads A lot of people are drawing attention to the fact Apple released the new iPad and iPad Pro with a
  9. Some stuff which caught my eyes this week Oof. Apparently, Windows 11 is installed on just 3% of existing PCs, which is less than Windows 7. That is
  10. TFI Friday notes: No one loves the Metaverse and podcasts I wish I could find No one loves Meta’s Metaverse. Including the people working on it. I still haven’t found a compelling reason
  11. Musk! Twitter! And why Google is a bit cheeky with its RCS claims There’s some new Google stuff out, but I am just not excited about it. The Pixel Tablet looks interesting,
  12. Does my alien have a penis and other interesting things for today Only a so-called “gender critical” could turn the sex of a cartoon intended to get kids reading into a
  13. On the fine art of not finishing I learned, over time, not to be a finisher. I would start grand projects, read the first 20 pages of
  14. On Michael Moorcock I once wrote a letter to Michael Moorcock. I have no idea how I found some kind of address for
  15. Leaving Ulysses? I wrote a little about this in my weeknote but I thought it was worth expanding a little on why
  16. Google isn't bored of Android John Gruber, writing about Counterpoint Research’s note that iPhone has overtake Android in US usage share: I also continue
  17. Please won't someone stop the bullshit about RCS? I am so tired of how tech sites preach the gospel of RCS as the “solution” to interoperability between messaging
  18. Miscellany, 6th August Web3 provides both anonymity and accountability, they said. It has its own built-in protections against bad actors, they said.
  19. What I’ve been reading today: Firefox, Spotify sucks, spoken word recording and combat drones The latest version of Firefox includes better support for ProMotion displays, for those lucky lucky people who have a new
  20. Some people really do want their Instagram back Taylor Lorenz has written a piece on why you don’t want the old Instagram back and I couldn’t
  21. Weeknote Sunday 24th July “The hottest day of my life so far” is an event which should cluster in your childhood. I suspect that
  22. What is an "editorial line"? Journalism isn’t the most transparent of trades. And a trade it is — despite the best efforts of all involved
  23. Weeknote, Sunday 29th May Three days in the office this week! THREE WHOLE DAYS. Commuting is such an odd thing: spending an hour on
  24. Apple's "repairwashing" Cory Doctorow on Apple’s cement overshoes: “In fact, nearly every part of Apple’s official repair process was worse
  25. Weeknote, Sunday 22nd May I spent some time restructuring my setup in Ulysses for writing. It had spiralled completely out of control, with countless
  26. The New Victoriana In 1997 I wrote a piece for the long lost and much missed Rewired about a cover story from Wired.
  27. Dipping my toes into Linux (again) I’m no stranger to Linux. I went through a phase in the noughties of running it, partly inspired by
  28. On the prospect of Keir Starmer resigning The pressure from Conservatives on Durham Police to investigate Keir Starmer – and their jubilation when Durham agreed – perfectly illustrate why
  29. Weeknote, Sunday 17th April A sunny bank holiday feels like such a pleasure after the winter. Our ancestors knew a thing or two about
  30. What will it take to change people’s minds on Brexit? In 5 years brexiters have gone from 'we hold all the cards' through 'global britain', '
  31. “We survived” The only heated room was the living room when the coal fire was alight. The kitchen only had heat when
  32. Time lies Who remembers living in a house without central heating, no double glazing, no loft insulation etc. and waking up and
  33. Paul Thurrott is very unhappy Paul Thurrott is really unhappy with the current direction of Windows (subscriber only link, and I think he has a
  34. (untitled) An interesting little app for quick capturing on the iPhone – either text, audio or scanned text https://quickcapture.xyz/
  35. Flotsam I wrote this piece 17 years ago for fun as part of a series about the life I was living
  36. Thinking about the iPad Pro Want to see the best example of why the iPad isn’t really a multi-tasking professional machine yet? Try
  37. (untitled) Yesterday blue skies.
  38. Weeknote: Sunday 4th April Bank Holiday weekends are traditionally the time when everyone piles into a car and heads for the coast, or has
  39. Weeknote: Sunday 21st March Hello again. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I wish that I could tell you that I have
  40. Some thoughts on the Surface Duo Despite Microsoft pricing the device to fail in the UK I’ve somehow ended up buying a Surface Duo. Yes,
  41. John Gruber on Jason Snell on iOS Markdown Editors Gruber: “I have no idea why there are now apps that use Markdown as their back end storage format but
  42. (untitled) That’s quite some sky
  43. (untitled) I don’t think I can disagree more with this. If you asked 100 people what freedom means to them,
  44. (untitled) I think I like this version best.
  45. (untitled) Apple: “Here is our new flagship phone. It costs £1099” Samsung: “We can beat that! Ours costs £1149!” Guys… https:
  46. (untitled) Yep.
  47. (untitled) [www.wsj.com](https://www.wsj.com/articles/group-of-gop-senators-plans-to-reject-some-electoral-college-results-11609613305)
  48. (untitled) [2021 iOS Predictions: New iPad Pros, less drama – Macworld](https://www.macworld.com/article/3602289/2021-ios-predictions-new-ipad-
  49. (untitled) George’s ability to find the warmest spot in the house is really quite spectacular.
  50. (untitled) 23 books read in a year isn’t a bad effort, especially given the fact that remarkably few of them
  51. (untitled) Chaffinches are funny little birds – like something drawn by a three year old, all triangular body and spindle legs. They
  52. (untitled) An average afternoon view
  53. (untitled) Decided on a whim to make a quick Swedish-style cake. Turned out pretty well.
  54. (untitled) Cat beard
  55. Weeknote: Sunday 27th December This is the last week note I’ll write this year. So, how did 2020 feel to me? I’m
  56. (untitled) This bag is sitting, waiting, for when I can travel again.
  57. An M1 Mac vs the Surface Pro X: How do ARM devices compare? I suspect that the Venn diagram of people who own both an M1 Mac and a Surface Pro X is
  58. Weeknote Sunday 6th December Sometimes weeks drift by with only one or two things to write about, and because those things often involve super-
  59. (untitled) And so to bed.
  60. (untitled) After having tried hey.com when it first came out, and decided it wasn’t for me, I’ve decided
  61. Adam I almost didn’t answer the message. When Chris popped up asking if he could call, I was just pondering
  62. Weeknote: Sunday 22nd November Writing this weeknote started out as a kind of training wheels for getting back into blogging. Having not written regularly
  63. I bought a Mac mini I lasted a day without preordering a new Mac running Apple’s M1 processor. That’s an improvement, right? Better
  64. A letter to my 23-year-old self Dear Ian, Congratulations on leaving Hatfield and getting a pretty good degree! I’d like to say that you worked
  65. Writing with the Freewrite For anyone that has spent the last 20 years or so typing on ever less satisfying keyboards, writing with the
  66. Weeknotes, Sunday 18th October Tuesday saw us head again to the Curzon to see Kajillionaire, which is a lovely film that I’d recommend
  67. Weeknote: Sunday 11th October On Tuesday we ventured out to the cinema (again) to see Sofia Coppola’s On The Rocks. Our local Curzon
  68. Weeknotes: Sunday 6th September Abbreviated this week, basically because I want to do some more reading today. But I have some links for you.
  69. Weeknotes, Doh edition Of course, a couple of weeks go I should have said that I was on holiday so wouldn’t be
  70. Ambitions When I left school in 1983 my ambitions boiled down to owning a van and being in a band. The
  71. Weeknote, June 21st: a big ol’ week of very little In technology it’s the calm before the storm: Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC to most, dub-dub inside
  72. Weeknotes, Sunday 7th June Some notes on anger I’ve found myself getting astonishingly angry over the course of the week. There’s a
  73. Tot I hadn’t heard of Tot before I read MacStories’ article about its new share extension in iOS, but when
  74. COVID 19 is tailor made for our culture I should start with this: I’m not an expert. You should listen to those that are. COVID is an
  75. Scamware, malware, viruses. Who cares? John Gruber: Computer viruses are called viruses because like biological viruses, they spread by themselves. What Malwarebytes is talking about
  76. Thinner, lighter, faster John Gruber, on the “thinner, lighter faster” Galaxy Book S compared to the MacBook Air: Well, there’s the small
  77. ChromeOS I was an early user of ChromeOS. Not as early as David Ruddock, who has written a post on how
  78. Goals January 2nd, or “the death of goals day”. You spend the first day of the year thinking about all the
  79. Happiness How often do you think about what makes you happy? Not “how often are you happy?” but how often do
  80. So I got a Surface Pro X Earlier this year I bought myself a shiny new Mac. This was the first Mac I’d bought since 2015,
  81. The Pixel Slate and why I still really love it The Pixel Slate has had a rough ride. When it was initially revealed, there was a level of excitement around
  82. My week with the Pixel 3 XL Never let a bunch of people decide anything that you have to do via a Twitter poll. In my case,
  83. The Pixel 3 XL experiment Here’s a lesson for you: never, ever ask your Twitter followers whether or not you should use a particular
  84. Learning to love silence I’ve always been someone who has background noise around them. Growing up, the TV was always on, and my
  85. You've got to know when to fold 'em Lots to agree with in Owen Williams piece on “Foldable phones: right tech, wrong place?”, starting with this: If I
  86. Becoming a creator OK, this sounds trite. But… The difference between you and the creators you follow is simply they are creating while
  87. Remembering Project Marklar Nick Wingfield mentioned something which took me back a long way: Ok, reading this report about Apple contemplating dumping Intel
  88. Rebuilding Back in 2002 (or thereabouts), I started writing up my thoughts on technology at a site that I dubbed “Technovia“