"In automation theory, a 'centaur' is a person who is assisted by a machine. You're a human head being carried around on a tireless robot body. Driving a car makes you a centaur, and so does using autocomplete. And obviously, a reverse centaur is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine." Start the New Year right by reading the transcript of @pluralistic's lecture for the University of Washington, a preview of his upcoming book about his thoughts on AI, and how to be a good AI critic. "AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more."

https://flip.it/B1emjI

#Technology #Tech #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #CoryDoctorow

"In automation theory, a 'centaur' is a person who is assisted by a machine. You're a human head being carried around on a tireless robot body. Driving a car makes you a centaur, and so does using autocomplete. And obviously, a reverse centaur is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine." Start the New Year right by reading the transcript of @pluralistic's lecture for the University of Washington, a preview of his upcoming book about his thoughts on AI, and how to be a good AI critic. "AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more."

https://flip.it/B1emjI

#Technology #Tech #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #CoryDoctorow

Cory Doctorow continues to present a winning strategy for those that want to cut down American tech giants and increase people's freedom:

Use Trump's tariffs to delete the anti-circumvention laws that protect US tech.

US trade partners should move forward with this immediately. Even better if we have a wave of nations doing it all together.

#Bigtech #Computing #Tech #Apple #Google #Microsoft #Capitalism #Enshitification #AntiCircumvention #Democracy #Fascism

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

Clicks Communicator

https://www.clicksphone.com/en/communicator

#HackerNews #Clicks #Communicator #Tech #Innovation #Communication #Tools #User #Experience

Punkt. Unveils MC03 Smartphone

https://www.punkt.ch/blogs/news/punkt-unveils-mc03

#HackerNews #Punkt #MC03 #Smartphone #Tech #News #Mobile #Innovation #Gadget #Release

More people are questioning the effect of digital tech, AI, and even streaming on culture — and some are even going back to analog!

In light of that, this week #TechWontSaveUs is replaying a great interview with Liz Pelly about music, streaming, and Spotify.

Listen to the full episode: https://techwontsave.us/episode/309_how_spotify_remade_the_music_industry_w_liz_pelly_replay

#tech #music #spotify #culture #streaming #ai #artificialintelligence

FracturedJson

https://github.com/j-brooke/FracturedJson/wiki

#HackerNews #FracturedJson #open-source #tech #JSON #parsing #dataformat

Cory Doctorow continues to present a winning strategy for those that want to cut down American tech giants and increase people's freedom:

Use Trump's tariffs to delete the anti-circumvention laws that protect US tech.

US trade partners should move forward with this immediately. Even better if we have a wave of nations doing it all together.

#Bigtech #Computing #Tech #Apple #Google #Microsoft #Capitalism #Enshitification #AntiCircumvention #Democracy #Fascism

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

If you need help with finding interesting New Year's resolutions, I got you covered. Well, @parismarx 's got you covered:

https://disconnect.blog/we-need-to-reassess-our-relationship-to-digital-tech/

#tech #internet #UnitedStates

Meri and I put together a short clip... that ended up going for over 15 mins... on our first impressions of the Pickle 1 AR glasses after watching the promo video! 😎

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DS_53tGE-FK/?igsh=ZDJ1dGl3aWVzb3Z3

#RealityCrafters #Tech #Pickle1 #AugmentedReality #AR

Mercari wants to be the go-to marketplace for international customers seeking high-quality Japanese entertainment products, especially anime and manga. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/01/02/companies/mercari-cross-border-strategy/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #business #companies #ecommerce #fleamarkets #mercari #shopping #tech #secondhand

Enroll, a tool to reverse-engineer servers into Ansible config mgmt

https://enroll.sh

#HackerNews #Enroll #Ansible #reverse-engineer #config #management #servers #tech #tools

WebAssembly as a Python Extension Platform

https://nullprogram.com/blog/2026/01/01/

#HackerNews #WebAssembly #Python #Extensions #Programming #Tech #Innovation

More than 20% of YouTube's feed is now "AI slop," report finds

https://www.techspot.com/news/110735-over-21-youtube-now-ai-slop-report.html

#tech #technology #socialmedia #ai #artificialintelligence #aislop #YouTube

If this year was about getting off US tech, 2026 is the year to reassess the digital revolution — what works, what doesn’t; what to keep, and what to reject.

I’ve only just started to consider what needs to change about how I use digital technology, but I’m excited to learn more next year.

https://disconnect.blog/we-need-to-reassess-our-relationship-to-digital-tech/

#tech #ai #newyear #luddite

@leo Leo, seeing your post made me flash back to watching you and your crew doing live commentary during WWDC something like twenty years ago. Thanks for so many years of helping people make sense of #tech 🤙🏼