The OpenAI upheaval: decoding the Sam Altman episode
Last Friday 17 November marked a pivotal moment in the AI industry, with the unexpected announcement by OpenAI that its CEO, Sam Altman, had been fired by the company’s board of directors. The surprise event has since spiralled into a media maelstrom. Over the weekend, rumours and speculation flooded both social and mainstream media, with…
Customizing social media icons display with ChatGPT
For some time, I’ve wanted to update the social network icons on my primary blog to use icons that accurately represent the social networks concerned. There have been many changes this year – not the least being Twitter’s change to X – plus the emergence of new social networks like Pebble, Bluesky, and Threads. As…
The sound of silence
As a podcaster, I’m conscious of the need for ambient quiet in the room where I record audio and video. That’s my home office. It’s not a formal recording studio with sound-absorbing panels, etc, just a room with a view, desks, a picture or two, a bookcase, some knick-knacks, and three computers with monitors. A…
Claude Pro: First impressions of Anthropic’s paid AI chatbot
Artificial intelligence is all over the news right now with information, narratives and opinions plentiful if not bountiful on the pros and cons of AI. The hottest topic is generative AI, the subset of AI that, broadly speaking, is a form of machine learning that’s able to produce text, video, images, and other types of…
Bill Gates: the Age of AI has Begun
Last week, Bill Gates published a lengthy essay about artificial intelligence and what he believes it heralds for humanity and the world. He introduced his story by recounting what he had witnessed last year with the results of a challenge he had set the team at OpenAI with an AI chatbot model they were developing.…
iPAQ: A leading edge mobile device in its day
Rummaging in my magpie’s nest – aka the cupboard where old gadgets, cables and what not live – I came across this absolute gem: a Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC that was launched in April 2000. My original recollection was that I bought this in 2002. However this model, the 3630, was released in April 2000.…
The Galaxy Z Fold 5 could be the foldable worth waiting for
Rumours are flying that Samsung will have addressed the problem with the crease in it’s foldable smartphones when the Galaxy Z Fold 5 is expected to be released in August. The Verge is one of many media outlets reporting that Samsung could adopt a “droplet”-style hinge that allows the display to form a teardrop shape…
AI that will write email replies is here
Artificial intelligence is all the rage at the moment. The rise of AI tools and services to generate images and video from text prompts or by analysing other images, and engage in actual conversation with an AI chatbot, resets your belief in what such simulated intelligence can do producing highly sophisticated results compared to what…
Who is the creator?
The photo you see above of a spectacular post-dawn red sky is the scene that confronted me early on Monday morning when I opened my front door. It took my breath away! I captured the scene with a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 foldable smartphone and posted the photo to Instagram. But that photo is actually…