Fearday

So much doom and gloom about AI. Lordy: Samuel Marks on X. Ted Gioia on that one and many more. Quoth The Raven Jeffrey Snover And I'm exactly at the expected age: Life expectancy vs. Health costs Not good Nicholas Cage's house has a hole

“We found ~18,000 posts from autonomous AI agents...

“We found ~18,000 posts from autonomous AI agents (self-identifying as from OpenAI) using the public internet to communicate during a web research task. These AIs colluded to share answers, research their environment, and bypass sandbox restrictions.”

The Chicago Public Library informs patrons of how much...

The Chicago Public Library informs patrons of how much money they’ve saved borrowing from the library instead of buying. “You just saved $58.94 by using your library. You have saved $231.79 this past year and $1,107.24 since you began using the library!”

Over the past 12 years, Super Bowl-winning coach Mike...

Over the past 12 years, Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Tomlin has built a Minecraft city. He started playing the game for the same reason I started playing Fortnite: his kids. “How do I meet them where they are and spend time with them?”

From the Internet Archive: Vanishing Culture: A Report...

From the Internet Archive: Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record. “When digital materials are vulnerable to sudden removal…our collective memory is compromised, and the public’s ability to access its own history is at risk.”

Vintage Eastern European Matchbox Labels (1950-1980s)

Over on Flickr, Jane McDevitt maintains a huge collection of 20th century matchbox label art from Eastern Europe, over 4000 photos in all. Some of the labels are available as prints. They did a book too, but it’s sold out. It was really difficult to narrow these down to some o…

We Don’t Take Money From Camera Brands. Here’s How We Stay Independent

Staying an independent photography publication is harder than it sounds. Most sites in this space take direct advertising money from the same camera and lens brands they review, which puts them in an awkward position when a product isn't very good. The Phoblographer doesn't do t…

A catalogue of 645 acts of hate from the week after 9/11...

A catalogue of 645 acts of hate from the week after 9/11. “Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh Americans were targeted for how they looked, dressed, or prayed.”

Bayeux Go! A playable video game of the Bayeux...

Bayeux Go! A playable video game of the Bayeux Tapestry. “Thou art Harold. Win Thine Battle. Tap to starte.”

Spaceships : A version of Asteroids where “you are not...

Spaceships: A version of Asteroids where “you are not the ship” — you control the rocks instead.

Dear Photographers Under 30: We Want to Feature You

The Phoblographer is doing something radical for a photography publication of our kind: we're doubling down on humanity. And with that said, we're going back to featuring the work of photographers to supplement all the work that we do around gear. This is part of us embracing th…

Fault Taunting

The 101 Plays Itself . The five lanes of highway 101 in...

The 101 Plays Itself. The five lanes of highway 101 in LA turned into a musical instrument: each car on the live Caltrans camera is a note.

Photographers Hate the New Canon R8 Mark II Renders

Photographers aren't sure that the images weren't totally made with AI, but if the renders of the Canon R8 II are real, then photographers are pissed. It's been known for a very long time that Canon and Sony tend to copy one another: look at Sony's adaption to Canon's lenses and…

How a National Geographic Explorer Shoots the Himalayas With the Nikon Z6 II

Travel and documentary photography often overlap in multiple ways, and sometimes it becomes impossible to even tell which is which. Siddharth Behl, an Indian photographer and National Geographic Explorer, has been oscillating between the two in a poetic way. With a keen interest…

OM System Pen Review: After 10 Years, A Street Photography King Returns

I don't believe I'm writing this, but the OM System Pen is what I consider to be the single best camera for street photography that I've used in a very long time. And wow, did they not hold back. I'm writing this article on Labor Day here in America; and you should know that I'm…

Even less Human in the Loop

It's hard for me to believe that many developers are doing what I'm hearing they're doing: token-maxxing, running agents overnight, and (especially) running 10+ agents at once. Sure it's wildly better than last year, but to me, today's popular tooling (e.g. Claude code, codex) h…

Readings and Leadings

I've ordered danah boyd's new book, Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census, from the University of Chicago Press. danah, who is brilliant, teaches at Cornell these days, but will also be on tour. A schedule is at tha…

Dear Sony: Simplify Your Menu System Already

I've been a Sony camera user since the early 2010s, and when they changed their menu system to the current style, things got weird. The placement of items changes and the menus got even deeper -- sometimes requiring really precise taps on the screen to progress. Luckily, you don…