We’ve all heard of those network effect laws: the value of a network goes up with the square of the number of members. Or the cost of commun...
How does AI impact skill formation?
Two days ago, the Anthropic Fellows program released a paper called How AI Impacts Skill Formation. Like other papers on AI before it, this one is being treated as proof that AI makes you slower and dumber. Does it prove that?
The Algorithm, Singular
A new European ruling on algorithmic amplification determines if an operator controls how content spreads on a platform. But applying it to open social networks turns out to be a problem.
What AI coding costs you | Tom Wojcik
What's the effect of the prolonged AI usage among coders and is it tracked correctly, if it all?
Data Center Opponents Have Blocked Or Delayed Projects Worth Nearly $130 Billion In 2026 - Slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The first quarter of 2026 produced the most blocked and delayed data center projects on record, according to a new study shared with NBC News. The study -- conducted by Data Center Watch, a project of the AI intelligence firm 10a Labs that tracks lo...
Software Acceleration and Desynchronization
A look at the ever-present drive to make software delivery faster and how it might break down various activity loops in organizations.
AI, I tried to love you – Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider
Among my peers who study the cultures and economies surrounding technology, I often find myself more tech-positive than most. On the whole I like computers, like the internet, and like in general the emergent human creativity that these things have enabled and revealed. A source of my appreciation is that I expend a lot of effort on the practice of “slow computing,” which is to say, choosing tools and technical communities that I can feel in right relationship with. I tend to approach new socio-technologies (like gig economies, blockchains, and social media) not from a perspective of why is this so bad? so much as asking how could we do this right?
The Pac-Man Rule at Conferences
I firmly believe that conferences can provide a lot of value for people in an industry. Conferences allow people to create a network, which helps them feel integrated in a community and profession....
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Summary There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
Requisite variety and its implications for the control of complex systems
Recent work on the fundamental processes of regulation in biology (Ashby, 1956) has shown the importance of a certain quantitative relation called the law of requisite variety. After this relation had been found, we appreciated that it was related to a theorem in a world far removed from the biological—that of Shannon on the quantity of noise or error that could be removed through a correction-channel (Shannon and Weaver, 1949; theorem 10). In this paper I propose to show the relationship between the two theorems, and to indicate something of their implications for regulation, in the cybernetic sense, when the system to be regulated is extremely complex. Since the law of requisite variety uses concepts more primitive than those used by entropy, I will start by giving an account of that law.
Can we billionaire-proof inference? - Graze Newsletter
A small, federated compute co-op called co/core — and the wider experiment it's a part of.
Holdfast 0: Situating
This post introduces the written version of some optimistic and constructive thinking on knowledge in networks that I’ve been wrestling with since the end of last year.
The AT Protocol's interesting design - LittleBit
Bluesky's backend was made to be more than a social network