cursed artifacts

I've said it before and I'll say it again: this tech breaking through at the same time as Trump II reorganizing all of American culture around the repugnant vices of him and his cronies is an inseparable factor in the backlash to it

The problem of big tech is much more about legislative capture, horrifically bad regulation and years of governments not knowing how tech funding works. And yes there are bad actors. But the majority of people I meet in tech are just ordinary people trying to make a living.

The people who cancelled Jimmy Kimmel after Charlie Kirk's assassination will now control television stations that reach 80% of Americans, twice that what was legally allowed before Trump's takeover. The state capture of network television is almost complete.

Do you enjoy old computers and live in the US Pacific Northwest? We're six weeks out from the first Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest since 2019! We'd love to see you there and we'd love your help getting the word out. Reposts appreciated! vcfpnw.org

This episode was a natural extension of a chat I had with @jamesaltonsanders.com around the launch of MacBook Neo last week and I'm happy to see it published without the blooper reel!

I had a fun (and clearly unscripted) conversation with @esmithtech.bsky.social about the MacBook Neo for @techinsightsinc.bsky.social, and the implications that Apple's entry into the value-end market has for PC OEMs. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ9R...

This will be fun.

Every time I hear about OpenClaw this scene pops into my head.

コナンを観てて思ったけど、やっぱりVALSHEさんのButterfly Coreクソかっけぇな。全人類聴いてほしいわ

republicans are in charge of everything and they are getting everything theyve ever wanted and doing everything theyve ever wanted and the world is on fire and the global world order is collapsing. is there a correlation? who can say

It is snowing in Seattle. Today is March 13th.

ooooh temu figured out it's now shorthand for "cheap off-brand garbage" and is not happy about it

I had the opportunity to test out the MacBook Neo for the last few days and wrote about how I see this fitting into the PC landscape of 2026: library.techinsights.com/hg-content/6...

It'd really be nice if I could get through a Windows Update reboot without Microsoft rolling the full-screen OOTB setup insisting that I use Edge as my default browser.

Here's a helpful primer for why this was (and remains) an intensely strange set of circumstances: www.law.cornell.edu/wex/publicity

Selling my *very slightly* cursed laptops to balance my nerd budget. This is a 2007 Vista-era laptop I bought as new-old-stock in 2021 from a company that does IT for defense contractors. It's got S-Video, VGA, and HDMI out, for some reason! And a 512 GB SSD. $100 + shipping, or local-ish pickup.

If I had a nickel for every time Franz Ferdinand was involved in the precursor events of a world war, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice

Breaking: SC newspaper verifies portions of Trump accuser's story. Textbook journalism. Local journalism. Support your local news outlets. www.postandcourier.com/news/epstein...

Between a recent trip to Japan and buying a new laptop, my nerd budget is in a significant deficit. Anyone want to buy a *very slightly* cursed Sony Vaio? $100 plus shipping, or local-ish pickup.

Dredging this one up again, as Daylight Saving Time sadly reappears. I actually owned one of these watches. It’s still a good idea (well, it’s nearly a good idea). Too bad about Nick Negroponte, though.

Adopting this phrase, generically. “I wouldn't waste the tokens.”

PageMaker and Aldus founder, pioneer Paul Brainerd 1947-2026 blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/04/p... <- a personal hero of mine. Aldus had more taste in design than Adobe ever could aspire to.

We turned away from the light when we invented a way to go online without the computer screaming in warning.

SCOOP: Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data that the FBI then used to determine who was allegedly behind an anonymous account affiliated with the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, according to a court record reviewed by 404 Media.

The lights in my house keep blinking like this. Lesson learned: don’t buy cheap bulbs.

Panasonic is removing the VGA port from new models of the "Let's Note" series of business notebook PCs in favor of HDMI, putting an end to the approximately 40-year-old video connector. (The Let's Note series is only sold in Japan.) www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZ...

Are you editing em-dashes out of your prose? Leaving “artisanal” typos in your articles as proof of humanity? No one wants their writing mistaken for “AI slop.” But in avoiding that charge, we risk surrendering some of the best tools in the literary tradition. Full story out tomorrow.

I'm not about to make a @neilcic.com -style mashup, but I'm realizing this morning that the vocals and medley Billy Preston's "Nothing from Nothing" and Maroon 5's "This Love" can be relatively straightforwardly swapped with each other, and this information is probably dangerous(ly stupid).

Fun with English: There's a really important difference between "In Operation" and "Inoperation".

I voted today but it was the strangest experience… went to my normal place to vote and was told I now have to vote at another location. Cool. Went to that location and they “couldn’t find me”. I pulled up my voter registration online and then they asked for my drivers license….then further proof

SCOTUS has denied cert. in Thaler v. Perlmutter. That means that outputs generated by AI will continue to be ineligible for copyright protection under US law. This is welcome news for musicians!

In 2019, I lost like $5 on PredictIt because they wouldn’t pay out a contract on the result of a government shutdown on a technicality, which is how I clocked this entire industry as suspect (to put it mildly). Can’t say I’m surprised by this one, but I’m glad to have learned this lesson early.

Be extremely wary of sharing videos without verifying their sourcing. Plenty of AI videos, old videos & videos of things unrelated being posted. If someone isn't posting the source of the video, that doesn't help.

I’m playing video games today.

The truth is not the average of a fact and a lie.

I’ve never really been a stickers-on-laptop person, but I’m seriously considering putting stickers on my laptop.

so… the whole thing was a play by Altman to shiv Amodei and destroy his company? that’s sort of what I’m getting here

Happy Pokémon Day, everyone! Fun fact: in Japan, “Jolteon” is “Thunders”, but Japanese lacks a “Th” sound, so it’s サンダース… which I also use to write my family name. So, I’m a Jolteon, I guess?

Casual reminder to everyone that you can just turn off the computer

Michael Moore was joking about media consolidation in 1999. It's now dramatically worse in 2026. (If I had the time, I'd photoshop @bencollins.bsky.social's face on Moore for this bit, but I'm on deadline and don't have the time.)

Kind of an interesting logo choice here…

"'Those things won’t make it three years before they are antiquated. It’s a huge gamble,' said an investor who has turned down multiple GPU financing pitches." www.ft.com/content/3ea1...

Here's a thought: Maybe your customers don't value AI slop!

Hey, you, go hire Jon. I can attest that he’s excellent at marketing, and I suspect he’s also excellent at making jam (and if you hire him, I can find out.)

Kansas used to have a proud history of standing up against racists and tyrants. Their university mascot is a Jayhawk. Again, a Jayhawk is not a real bird. A Jayhawk was an extremely violent anti-racist white man, who said, "I don't rob civilians. But if you think slavery is OK? You're fair game!"

My colleagues—including the wonderful @mobilewayne.bsky.social—are headed to #MWC26 and I, very fortunately, am not. (Barcelona is lovely, though, I'm told.) Here's what to expect at this year's conference: bit.ly/ti-mwc26

Oh, don't know who needs to hear this, but the American Max Headroom series is back up on Tubi. Don't sleep on some of the best SF of the 80s (which got roundly mocked because it was so ridiculous and as I look around, nope, it got more right than wrong.)