US voters hate AI — and politicians are noticing Everybody hates data centres www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCK5... - video pivottoai.libsyn.com/20260107-us-... - podcast time: 4 min 34 sec

The Mozilla plan is to win people over to Firefox with AI features while ignoring the feedback from people who use it because it's not running on the chromium engine. This makes the Gecko engine a liability for the company's mission. It's not unthinkable that they'll switch to chromium soon.

OK this probably doesn't count as a "good" product, but it's the kind of ridiculous vision I love seeing at CES. One man said, "no longer will I go two separate places for water and a modest breeze" and by God he made his dream a reality

it's unfortunate that we've ceded everything that uses machine learning to the "AI" category. A pen with a mic that connects to your phone and can do automatic translation, record and transcribe meetings is NOT the same thing as a chatbot tech bros think they can turn into God.

Color E-Ink phone cases and picture frames. You can connect the case to your phone and change the pictures, so you aren't stuck with a Waifu if you don't want one. I was mostly just surprised at the resolution in the picture frames.

in case you're wondering about the futility of it all, here's two job openings for the Firefox team www.mozilla.org/en-US/career...

This is my CES 2026 thread of AI slop. First off: astrologers, prepare to be out of a job! This bold new company is bringing AI to the world of Horoscopes and for some reason merging that with a visibly unwell Furby. Bonus: borderline illegal claims that it can "cure" certain behaviors.

This is probably OpenAI’s most dangerous product, and that’s saying something

"dell is not pushing AI" story is bollocks i went looking for anything other than that PCGamer selective quoting, and everything else Kevin Terwilliger said at CES is AI, AI, AI even the quotes are in the context of Dell pushing local AI really hard and pushing the suitability of their PCs for AI

incredible:

“Good tools have roots. Good tools show their age. I wish software did the same.” – Andrew Spittle andrewspittle.com/2026/01/07/g...

It's a sign imo of the kind of recklessness I see at the center of a lot of these products. This is an extremely basic question. Not a 'gotcha' by any means. The fact that it functioned as one means you literally did not consider used security for a second

so the thing that makes it clear the tech world is in a shared delusion is that *even if these things work* they are an incredibly boring, mundane, product offering that tries to domesticate the cubicle farm concept of productivity

as @fasterandworse.com says, a "use case" is what you put forward when your gadget doesn't have a defined purpose

the source of this site generated by faircamp is a breath of fresh air 12ax7.fm

oh this looks nice simonrepp.com/faircamp/ proper open source under AGPL too. static site generator for showing off your audio.

amazingly long thread of predominantly unified opinion "keep AI out of Firefox" which @mozilla.org will ignore mastodon.social/@firefoxwebd...

The ultrasonic knife blade sounds silly but it appears to be an actual innovation. I haven't tried it, but the guy who made it explains a solid design purpose and appears to satisfy that purpose really well.

inject youtube videos of breathless praise for the weirdest shit at CES directly into my veins

I wrote this in April 2024, about why people were refusing to leave X as it became undeniably a pro-white-supremacist site But holy hell could I not have predicted that by 2026, it would be a child abuse material production site and THAT TOO is not enough to get people to leave the fucking place

Can't let people find out that the x in "10x developer" stands for 0.08

The use of dark patterns in @firefox.com to force use of "link previews" www.quippd.com/writing/2026...

First fjord ice commute of the season. -10°C

If you thought Elon Musk's “Grok” chatbot couldn't get worse, read my latest article: Grok isn't just undressing women, it's now putting swastika bikinis on them. One woman who was targeted is a recently-deceased Holocaust survivor.

Couple ask friend to be wedding celebrant, wedding celebrant asks ChatGPT to write official speech, speech nullifies wedding because it doesn't meet legal requirements cc @davidgerard.co.uk

That thing in tech where the senior types mostly give sensible if 101-level advice on management in their writing but their actual jobs turn out to be some productivity-destroying “AI” bullshit or they work for an out and proud Nazi.

amazingly long thread of predominantly unified opinion "keep AI out of Firefox" which @mozilla.org will ignore mastodon.social/@firefoxwebd...

If you work for an organization that still cares about learning reality things. This is happening next week, and it is totally worth your time. www.eventbrite.com/e/lets-do-de...

sure do

all i want is a computer with more space that plays games better and (if portable) has better battery life. i have never met a someone buying a PC for non-specific work reasons who had any other concerns unit size was an issue years ago but we solved that problem a while back

Yes

Here’s Ep 3 of this week’s Better Offline CES coverage. I’m joined by @rorycj.bsky.social @vicmsong.bsky.social , @iwriteok.bsky.social, @adamconover.net and @chloebadcliffe.bsky.social to talk about many things from Peptides to Wearables. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr.ee/betteroffline

Most venture capital deals are now AI Burn more dollars! More dollars! More! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of7m... - video pivottoai.libsyn.com/20260106-mos... - podcast time: 5 min 25 sec

pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/05/c... - blog post

so the thing that makes it clear the tech world is in a shared delusion is that *even if these things work* they are an incredibly boring, mundane, product offering that tries to domesticate the cubicle farm concept of productivity

“The new devices promise to reduce friction, eliminate note-taking, capture fleeting ideas and surface insights you didn’t think to ask for.”

Finally someone has noticed: "they're not buying based on AI," Terwilliger says bluntly. "In fact I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps..."

I'm pretty sure Mozilla have muted me on mastodon now and I'm taunting into the void of the fediverse

Support Servo, make Mozilla regret laying off the team building what Firefox could have been. bsky.app/profile/fast...

another name for "best practices" is "design patterns" one thing they turn out to be good for is being free legitimisers for scam products

Well, I feel like I'm hearing the enormous, head-clutching, are-we-experiencing-the-same-reality argument behind the word 'uncertainty' :D This strikes me as someone trying *anything* to find a way through the impasse.

lol 💀 www.cs.uml.edu/~holly/teach...

All SaaS products merge and mutate towards the most general of purposes. They collect each others features and use "best practices" to absorb them. They become big blobs with a logo and we only use them because the boss paid for a subscription

The more universal a "best practice" is, the less it will be relevant to your specific problem. Managers who are not willing to take the time to understand the problem can use this to their advantage, by setting "implement the best practice" as their main goal. This creates ~0 value.

New Techtonic: talking about the year ahead with @wfmu.bsky.social station manager Ken Freedman. Full episode: techtonic.fm/episodes/202... More episodes: techtonic.fm

this is such a completely backwards approach it’s hard to fathom “artificial intelligence” will “play” a game for you… based on social media videos as training???

Gambling destroys another human life brought to you by hey wouldn't it be fun to gamble tho

other reporters in the room thought this was a mean thing to ask

I'll transcribe precisely but the gist of his first response was "We are talking about it with OpenAI". When I pressed him on the matter he reiterated Intuit's commitment to safety while admitting he had no idea what plans they had to protect the safety of user data.