Artificial authorship: Why I’m betting my blog on ChatGPT’s wit

In a groundbreaking move that has both the media industry and my two loyal readers reeling, I, John Band, have decided to embrace the inevitable future. With a nod to my past adventures in experimenting with AI text generators like Grover and Transformer, I've chosen to leapfrog into a new era. Henceforth, all content on … Continue reading Artificial authorship: Why I’m betting my blog on ChatGPT’s wit

Australia vaccinated by Christmas? It’s more likely than you think

Australia has had a less awful time with covid-19 than most of the world. The 80% of Australians who don't live in Melbourne have been living mostly-normally for almost a year. Even Melburnians have done far better than the rest of the rich world as far as illness and deaths go. They've also done better … Continue reading Australia vaccinated by Christmas? It’s more likely than you think

Lumpy scarred clumps of empty seats

As part of my ongoing mission to replace myself with a robot intelligence, I've been playing with a new AI text generator. This one, called Grover, is designed to help readers detect fake news - but also has an option to generate it. Know your enemy, and so on. It's done a pretty good job … Continue reading Lumpy scarred clumps of empty seats

A Transformer is turning on its side. Moby looks at its side and decides that maybe Moby will take its side as well!

Today I have mostly been playing with Transformer, an easy online interface for the 345M OpenAI neural network. The network uses a predictive text model with 345 million parameters to generate plausible endings to any sentences that you give it. I made some lists on Twitter, starting with Borges' Taxonomy of Animals (follow the link … Continue reading A Transformer is turning on its side. Moby looks at its side and decides that maybe Moby will take its side as well!

And Bayes and Bayes and remembering nothing boy

I have a thingo up at Citymetric on how agent-based modelling would have helped the poor sods at Govia Thameslink Railway realise how stuffed they were, at least in time to everyone from getting fired. There is a bit of dispute* in the extremely nerdy parts of the Internet about whether I'm being reasonable in … Continue reading And Bayes and Bayes and remembering nothing boy

Dumb Ways (for your train service) to Die

I wrote a thing at CityMetric on the Melbourne rail-fail yesterday - go and read it. It turns out that 40-year-old state-of-the-art technology doesn't age super-well if you don't upgrade it, and that only having one train line through your city isn't a great idea either. Disappointingly, they rejected my suggested song-based title, so I'm … Continue reading Dumb Ways (for your train service) to Die

Don’t believe the 500 million quid passport story until you see it on the side of a bus

The UK's worst tabloids are running today on the Glorious Brexity News that the government is planning to spend £500 million on returning British passports to their former glory - changing them from the wicked EU's suspiciously French-sounding burgundy to good traditional English blue/black. The interesting thing about the £500m passport change story is not that it's … Continue reading Don’t believe the 500 million quid passport story until you see it on the side of a bus

On moving to SSL, infinite loops, and the downright impossible

Those of you who pay attention to such things (and, realistically, most of the people who read this blog are tremendous nerds about one thing or another) may have noticed the exciting green secure HTTP padlock to the left of the URL in their browser bar. Yes, we're now officially just as secure as a … Continue reading On moving to SSL, infinite loops, and the downright impossible

Dropping the dynamic, because everything is awful

Because I am a naive optimist, when I migrated various defunct blog archives from elsewhere to here, I assumed that running them on auto-updated WordPress would be fine. This was a stupid move. Not specifically because WordPress is bad, but because everything is bad, and hacking is easy. And, of course, happened. After several months … Continue reading Dropping the dynamic, because everything is awful

Long-haul flying: we’ve never had it so adequate

Something which gets neglected by most travel writers - I think because long-haul economy-class flying is inherently a bit shit - is the immense extent to which the actually-flying bits of the long-haul rigmarole have improved over the last 15 years. The pre- and post-flying bits have worsened, of course, which makes short-haul flight far, … Continue reading Long-haul flying: we’ve never had it so adequate