The costs of war
The American cemetery in Cambridge.
Quote of the Day
”I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it.”
- Shakespeare, As You Like It.
I felt the same about Cambridge when I first arrived in 1968. Still do.
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Leonard Cohen | Democracy
A good way to end this week. Many thanks to Ian Clark for suggesting it.
Long Read of the Day
AI Behaviour as an Engineering System
Erik Larsen’s brilliantly succinct analysis of the Hugging Face hacking fiasco.
When an AI system exhibits supposedly unexpected behavior, the first questions should be technical.
What was the prompt? What objective was specified? What tools and permissions were available? What feedback mechanisms were operating? How was the search space constrained? What exactly was the system designed to optimize?
Best overview I’ve seen. Goes right to the heart of the matter.
My commonplace booklet
Just watched De Gaulle: Résistance, the first part of Antonin Baudry’s two-part biopic of a fascinating man. It’s terrific. Now heading to Part Two, Liberté and looking forward to it.
RIP Salon
One of the great innovations of the early Web has thrown in the towel. An unsigned farewell message says that
The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years. After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable. We know this news will be deeply disappointing to many of you, and we share that sadness.
Me too. It was good while it lasted.
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
- An English country house on the 84th floor. Link
Amazing what you can do when you’ve got more money than sense.
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