Had a discussion today about some new designs at work. My colleague was using Claude Design.

Yeah, sure, it's impressive that it can put those designs together from prompts.

But OH DEAR GODS am I ever glad that I'm not a frontend/UI guy. Not because of "my job is gone" fears. But because that looked like the least appealing development process I've ever seen. And I've worked in companies that did document-heavy, sign-off in triplicate, waterfall approach projects!

It's a bit like getting a genetic algorithm to do a UI, only it might spontaneously mutate somewhere that you didn't plan for it to mutate. And the changes that you _do_ want to make are a guessing game of "how do I make it do what I want in this design?"

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Carl_Zimmer/117345065655681591

“The Anthropic scientists [..] said that their A.I. had taken “the first steps of a biological discovery on its own.””

[Mario Rodríguez Mestre, a computational biologist] “disputed that claim. “They are the same systems we have been studying for years,” he said. And they are the same enzymes, he said, that he had described to Anthropic’s A.I.”

—

AI companies stealing people’s work and claiming that their AI is making new discoveries. How long before humanity stands up to these companies?

I love how the "price per item" on toilet roll in supermarkets is often "Xp/sht".

They mean "sheet" (square). It looks like "price per shit".

GenAI 3D models are apparently a thing. And there's quite a lot of them. But hardly anyone buys them. And those that do often think they're rubbish or need heavy editing.

While "not popular" is great. They're still a scourge on society, because they're filling search results with crap so that it's harder to find the good stuff!

https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-3d-models-flood-market-but-almost-no-one-is-buying-them/

#FuckGenAI #YouAreNotAnArtist

Why do delivery companies keep insisting on delivering at lunch, right when I'm taking a break and going out for a walk?

You could deliver during working hours and I'd be able to stop and open the door. But no. It's 12:15 until 1:15 or something 🙄

BBC News: Why phones on loudspeaker may become just another noise

The BBC's in-depth article basically says that "being an inconsiderate dick" is mostly about expressing yourself and marking your "social territory" (as an inconsiderate dick)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3d3nlmeee0o

According to the filter options, I can get a 564,128l water butt. That's going to be… big 😆

That's 564 cubic metres. Which is about a bit over 8m cubed!

Trying to add more water butts to our garden and… it's weird how people don't want to give you clear and useful information.

Like whether the "227 Litre Water Butt Double Kit" is a double 227l kit or whether it's 227l because it's a double kit (so each one is half of that).

The "includes" just says "2 water butts". No size on them 🙄

Edit: Okay, there's a "100l double lit" that definitely looks like two of the slimline 100l butts. So it's _probably_ listing size of one butt.

Thrudd and the White Dwarf and Gobbledigook. Classic 1980s miniatures!

https://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-second-summer-of-citadel-c17-skeleton.html

#GamesWorkshop #Oldhammer #1980s #Nostalgia

Really definitely not watching Stargate Atlantis, though.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that I could cope with the absolutely detestable douche that is Rodney McKay for anything more than the few brief appearances in SG-1 😬

Nearly finished watching Stargate SG-1.

It's not terrible once they bring in Mitchell and Vala. But it's really not the same. Mitchell doesn't have the same gravitas as O'Neill.

(Not that ITV was ever a great channel, but…)

Well, looks like ITV is about to get a lot worse!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2wwgeg041o

HOLY FUCK, how is it taking until 2026 before Download Festival gets its first female-fronted headline band?!? 😒

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy0x5lgel5o

“Today, Last.fm begins a new chapter as an independent company.” https://support.last.fm/t/last-fm-is-now-independent/118591

"For 25 years, Google Search was built on a contract. The web provided the content – billions of pages, freely linked, freely crawled. In return, Google sent people back. The link was the unit of exchange. [...]

That contract is now broken. Generative UI doesn’t link to your article. It absorbs your article, synthesizes it into a widget, and presents it as Google’s own answer. Information agents don’t send users to websites." —@matthiasott

https://matthiasott.com/notes/ad-infinitum

BBC News: UK loosens Russian oil sanctions as fuel prices rise

So, we're not that serious about sanctioning Russia, then? 🤨

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy42x3g7r89o

BIIRD seem like a cool group. An Irish trad band, but all women _and_ wearing funkier/gothier corsetry, eye liner and mixing in dark tones.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz721w33ve1o

#IrishMusic #BIIRD

It would be very New Tories to say "No, don't work with the moderates and liberals in a cross-party coalition where we can still be The Right-wing Party. You need to lean in to the reactionary racists who can out-bigotry us at every turn!"

I guess they're probably upset that they formed a coalition with moderates and liberals, rather than leaning harder into bigotry and partnering with racist Reform.

Because it's not like they're getting any power on their own!

Good to see that central Tories are being so very Tory 😐

Worcestershire County Council agrees a Con-Lib-Green-Indy coalition (presumably to keep Reform out) and then apparently Badenoch is "aghast", tells them it isn't approved and suspends the local Tory leader 🙄

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1427x5zm26o

#FuckTheTories #UKPolitics #LocalPolitics