2026-10-04 18:45:36
When I got into machine learning it was all about making the world a better place. I worked for Microsoft and had access to projects and the smart people behind them that all were for the benefit of humans.
We used visual analysis, natural language detection and reinforcement learning to build technology that made life better and even saved lives.
Then COVID hit and with it two things happened. First of all, we had to admit that technology companies aren’t as good as they said they were in delivering fast, secure and sensible tools. And the all out war on intelligence, science and decency started.
That COVID had such an impact was shocking. I thought we were further along in dealing with and battling diseases. But instead of a swift period of protection, analysis and countering the virus we failed on many levels. Even the most simple ones like creating a tracking app that shows who’s infected and who’s been vaccinated.
In this period we also saw a concerted effort to discredit science and governments by movements who want to get power over people. Social media got weaponised to claim there is no pandemic and that vaccines are dangerous and here to control folk. The depth of ridiculousness allowed the re-emergence of dozens of hitherto debunked conspiracy theories and by repetition their osmosis into daily discussion and even political discourse.
Meanwhile technology advanced in leaps and bounds and artificial intelligence – as we call it now without hesitation – is everywhere. The power of computation and the impressive results of almost weekly new models is staggering. But instead of taking these to tackle the world’s problems, and create solutions for humans as shown in the beginning of this post, we have people in charge that have no interest in other people, but instead want to make their mark on history and find a way to reach immortality. They make no qualms about considering empathy a weakness, innovation for the common good being akin to socialism and they are revered as visionaries and great leaders for that. It’s staggering to see it happen. We make sociopaths and egotists not only the norm, but the right way to become successful.
Here are things that are an immediate concern – some of them even a mortal danger – that we should be solving with AI and state-of-the art computers:
Instead, we live in a world of hype, headlines and self-proclaimed tech visionaries complete with a cult following. There’s an all-out social media and propaganda attack on the things listed here:
One could argue that the way we measure them is outdated and that school curriculums are outdated, but the fact is that sooner or later we will need these basic skills. That we teach them in a boring manner and ask students to repeat things learned by heart without understanding them to get a good grade is another problem. AI repeats that mistake. Instead of telling us the why it tells us the how. The problem solution is not the goal, reaching the verifiable result as fast as possible is.
I am a huge fan of space and the science that comes with exploring it. I have a high school astrophysics degree, a hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy themed leg tattoo and know a lot more about Star Trek than sane people should. I am also a huge fan of the 50s space age optimism and thrive to reach for the stars. I am not a big fan of a repeat of the 60s space race when superpowers used scientific endeavour to promote the cold war and as a slightly veiled attempt to build more powerful weapons. And this is happening right now.
Heralded tech visionaries promote going to space as a necessity instead of focusing on fixing our home planet. That is not about us, that is about them dealing with their own mortality and wanting to make a mark before they die (check their ages for a clue). They also use it as a distraction to not having to deal with real matters that everyone would benefit from if we fixed them. Make no mistake, replacing landlines and fiberoptic cables with satellite connectivity run by a few companies is not about getting people online. It is about making them dependent on those few providers and controllable.
I don’t care for bipedal robots that run faster than humans. I don’t see robot dogs that can run over ragged terrain as something worth promoting. I see them as weapons and means of controlling people. We’ve been promised smart bombs and drones for years that could strike surgically and only hit the right people. Instead we now see cheap, disposable kamikaze drones hitting civilians in the Ukraine conflict every day.
We had a chance to use technology for good and to make our lives better and the world more livable. We gave this up for a world of a few loud and socially crippled people selling us a world of technological wonders but in reality only want us to be dependent on them. Let’s rebel against that. Let’s go back to using our AI and technology skills to make things that humans and our world benefits from. No, we will not leave this planet that we messed up behind any time soon. Some super rich people might, but I for one see nobody talking about a public transport system to safety yet, do you?
2026-09-08 23:33:38
WeAreDevelopers is coming to San Jose, California on the 23rd this month for the first time to run an event almost as big as the World Congress we did the last 10 years! – we now still need some people to moderate stages. Your job is to introduce speakers, run the Q&A and keep time. You get a free ticket to the event and for a +1 and you get access to the VIP parts of the event to talk to speakers and leaders of companies. Contact me at [email protected] if you are interested.
2026-08-26 22:01:26
On the 23rd of September we will come to San Jose to run the We Are Developers World Congress North America and I am dizzy with planning and excitement. 10k attendees, 600 speakers, tons of content. If you use WEAREDEVSDAY on checkout, you can now get half price tickets!
2026-08-12 07:52:58
Translating documents isn’t hard these days, but when it comes to long documents, it still gets tricky as most translation services are limited to a few paragraphs and charge for larger texts.
If you use Microsoft Edge, you can use the immersive reader mode to translate huge documents for free though. You can trigger the immersive reader on any text heavy document by activating the icon on the URL bar.
Once activated, you can pick another language from the translation menu:
And the whole document will get translated for you to copy and paste.
You can see this in action in this video.
2026-08-12 02:10:43
[prompt: create a viral hero image that shows what I mean. Or, don’t]
Currently I am on a half diet of social media as I am still locked out of X and by now I really don’t mind any more. Social media is dead and has been weaponised into a distraction, propaganda and rage discourse machine. I wished it weren’t that way, but we truly and thoroughly allowed the “social” web to become a dumpster fire that fuels hate, distrust and confusion. The goal is not shared experiences or creativity, the goal is to keep people glued to the screens and pissed off enough so they comment on other people being wrong on the internets using pre-made memes, AI slop and sound bites.
I am talking about the mainstream platforms here, Meta’s offerings (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) and X, but this downward spiral is also taking over BlueSky, LinkedIn and yes, even Mastodon. The biggest annoyance I see is that people don’t use the social platform to publish their thoughts, ideas and creativity, but instead create a persona of themselves that follows every silly rule the platform comes up with. The most grating part of this is posting about their work without including the link to it, but to add it in the first comment. This has been mandated by platforms to boost engagement over views, which is also the new metric that defines possible monetisation.
In other words, the platforms turned people into content creators and interaction baiters. There is nothing social about it, and you hardly see people even following a link let alone comment without redirecting to their work or disagreeing whilst spouting ready-made soundbites. The overall endgame seems to be for everybody to be an influencer. Guess what, if everybody is an influencer, nobody is…
And that’s not even the bots. Or, maybe they are, after all the human on social media is an endangered species. So, why bother at all?
I’ve been around when social media became a thing, when “web 2.0” was the new cool. I worked on things like Delicious, Flickr and posted tons on Twitter despite being wary of it from the get-go. I blogged long before and it felt weird to be limited to 140 characters. But it was cool that you could text Twitter (that died quickly). I loved that people got a simple way to publish on the web using Geocities, Neopets and the likes. I liked when people learned a bit of HTML by tweaking their Myspace profiles.
I really enjoyed the first social networks that gathered people around something they can feel something about. With Flickr, it was photos, with LastFM, it was music. We used Upcoming to find events to meet people and we used b3ta.com and worth1000 to create horrible but funny and unique photoshop experiences. Specialist sites like Ravelry gathered millions of knitters and Etsy was a place for people to show and sell their craft (and boyfriends to suffer).
One thing that irked me about these things already back then though was that they locked people in. This, of course, makes it easier to grow and quality control a community, but it als means that if anything happens to the platform – like a sale to a larger corporation – all of it can be gone in a snap.
The real beginning of the end was when we stopped even caring about a central idea, or emotional heart, of the products. All-purpose platforms had nothing people can rally around, all they did was offer users to post whatever they wanted. It wasn’t about being a platform specialising in hosting a certain kind of content, companies didn’t even bother with a content plan, it was all about the UGC or “user generated content”. And constant and explosive growth.
When I worked on Yahoo Answers, the idea was to give human answers to problems people had, rather than algorithmic and SEO poisoned web results. Later on Quora and the unfortunately named Expertsexchange did similar things. This was good and we had wonderful stories where people found a special screw to fix their fridge there that saved them a $5,000 repair and similar random successes. Then the company stepped in and demanded much more growth and traffic, so we turned off the quality settings and allowed any old tosh to be asked and answered. The rest is history and a quick death of the platform. This is what happens to all of them now, it is a race to the bottom. Engagement trumps quality, baiting trumps thought.
One thing I find fascinating is that main stream media never reports favourably about social media. Instead all the news reports are about battling addiction, misinformation and how social media hard-core addiction machines like TikTok rot the brains of our children. This could of course be seen as defending their turf, but I see it as a wake up call. Social media has become antisocial.
Thing is that within systems that are going down there are glimmers of hope. I gave up on the main thread in Facebook, but I do still have a lot of fun in specialist groups. In my case, 8 bit computing, BASIC programming, lots of dog stuff, vintage lego sets, Star Trek and filmmaking. It is a joy to see how all these groups take a special stand against AI generated content and remind people to just post because of the joy of it.
Of course, there is always the indie web and fediverse movement to find joy in. It is frustrating to see though that everything federated and open seems harder to grasp for people and whilst I have tons of fun with people on Mastodon, it feels hard to share that joy to the mainstream. Maybe on purpose, but I think it is more about trying too hard to be open and independent which puts the onus on the end user to take part in it.
I just finished a podcast and the guest, a CMO of a company explained that almost daily he finds himself thinking “why am I doing this?”. Why do we write blog post only for agents? Why do we comment and share things that are obviously created by AI? He also talked about the lack of joy and fulfilment he feels creating content that is 95% by Claude and optimised to go viral and 5% himself. We frustrate ourselves with efficiency maxing. Maybe social media should be an effort. Maybe we will get more out of it if we allow ourselves to be ourselves. Currently social media feels like being in a cover band and we’re so good in repeating the work and thoughts of others that nobody wants to hear or can even find what we want to say.
