Baldur Bjarnason
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baldurbjarnason.com
Baldur Bjarnason
@baldurbjarnason.com
3.5K followers 460 following 6.3K posts
Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/
https://softwarecrisis.dev/
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baldurbjarnason.com
Baldur Bjarnason @baldurbjarnason.com · Oct 27
I figure since there's been a recent influx of people here on Bluesky, it might be worthwhile to do "highlights reels" of sorts for my newsletter, which is at www.baldurbjarnason.com

The biggest topic on my newsletter is software and web development, usually from a bit of a systemic perspective.
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
hypervisible.blacksky.app
So glad this is being used in schools and universities.
Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal
Guardian found OpenAI’s platform cited Grokipedia on topics including Iran and Holocaust deniers
www.theguardian.com
January 24, 2026 at 2:40 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
bestonetx.bsky.social
So, I moderated a local history panel last weekend. An organizer just sent me a "summary" to approve. They uploaded the audio to some AI, which fabricated an outline and "pull quotes." The quotes are fake. No one on the panel said any of that.

It had the full audio and STILL made up quotes.
January 24, 2026 at 1:04 PM
baldurbjarnason.com
Once again, TikTok as a whole has not been sold, not even the US part in its entirety, just a part of their US operations. Even the ads and ecommerce features are AFAICT still under Bytedance, so the US operation seems to mostly be user data and custom training for the ‘algorithm’
January 24, 2026 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
davidgerard.co.uk
it's because silicon valley is full of genteel nazis, OP

anything venture capital funded, you should assume has a complement of neoreactionary race and IQ guys near the top
lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · May 1
have never understood the tech community's passion for thinking the nazis can just have their own back room if we can just make it kind of hard for them to cross over into the rest of the bar
May 1, 2023 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
jfsculpts.bsky.social
My favorite Bob Kane story:
"Bob had gotten to the point where he never drew anything. Never drew anything on the Batman comics, anyway. [Sheldon] Moldoff was ghosting them all and when he didn't, someone else did. The only thing I think Bob ever drew was when we'd be out somewhere, in a restaurant or someplace, and a pretty girl would come over to him and say, 'Are you really the man who draws Batman?' Then he could whip out a little sketch for her, a big sketch if she was wearing something low-cut and would bend over to watch him draw. One day I'm over at his house to discuss this newspaper strip idea we had and he's talking about who we might get to draw it. I was going to write it and we were going to get someone else to draw it. I'm not sure what Bob was going to do on it except sign his name. I said to him, 'Bob, isn't it disappointing to you that you don't draw any more? You were once such a great artist.' He wasn't but you had to talk to Bob that way. He said, 'Oh, no. Let me show you something.' He took me into a little room in his house. It was his studio. I didn't even know he still had a studio. It was all set up with easels and things and there were paintings, paintings of clowns. You know the kind. Like the ones Red Skelton used to do. Just these insipid portraits of clowns, all signed very large, 'Bob Kane.' He was so proud of them. He said, 'These are the paintings that are going to make me in the world of art. Batman was a big deal in one world and these paintings will soon be in every gallery in the world.' He thought the Louvre was going to take down the Mona Lisa to put up his clown paintings. I didn't have the heart to tell him. So a few months later, I'm up at DC and I ran into Eddie Herron. Eddie was another writer up there and we got to talking and Bob's name came up. Eddie said, 'Did you hear? Bob's getting sued by one of his ghost artists. I said, 'How is that possible? Shelly Moldoff's suing Bob? But they had a clear deal. Shelly knew he wasn't going to get credit or anything..? Eddie said, 'No, not Shelly.' Bob was being sued by the person who'd painted the clowns for him..." Arnold Drake (via arecomicsevengood)
January 24, 2026 at 12:58 AM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
jcoglan.com
I have named my productivity tool after a location from the famous utopian story "mad max"
January 23, 2026 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
uglyreykjavik.bsky.social
I think that's an old oil tank.

#Iceland #Reykjavik #photography #landscape #nature #naturephotography #abandoned #decay #rust
The remnants of an abandoned farm.
January 21, 2026 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
uglyreykjavik.bsky.social
I guess abandoned farms are like playgrounds for cats.

#Iceland #Reykjavik #video #abandoned #decay #cat #cats #catsofbluesky #catsky
January 21, 2026 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
jackjenkins.me
Have a larger story on this coming, but I’ve been embedded with this group, and this story from yesterday is part of what they’ve been doing in the city: religionnews.com/2026/01/22/h...
January 23, 2026 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
blambot.bsky.social
Ace in your face Friday
January 23, 2026 at 4:03 PM
baldurbjarnason.com
How is the web version of Apple Music so bad? It just straight up stops working on random songs.
January 23, 2026 at 1:32 PM
baldurbjarnason.com
The quality of Apple's software is really something these days?
A screenshot of a login form telling you to enter your password, except the form input says "email" and is not a password input.
January 23, 2026 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
jasongorman.bsky.social
"AI is just another layer of abstraction"

An abstraction in programming preserves semantics. You can replace an abstraction with its details and the program will do exactly what it did before.

An LLM will rarely generate the same details, with the same semantics, from the same prompt twice.
January 23, 2026 at 11:22 AM
baldurbjarnason.com
I kept seeing UK media pretend that the Nordic deployment to Greenland was to shore up defences against Russia and China.

Meanwhile the Danish soldiers were given live ammunition and told to expect the US to try to take Greenland by force
January 23, 2026 at 12:01 PM
baldurbjarnason.com
“Danmark var klar til kamp: Her er ordren til de danske soldater i Grønland | Indland | DR”

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/danmark-var-klar-til-kamp-her-er-ordren-til-de-danske-soldater-i-groenland
Danmark var klar til kamp: Her er ordren til de danske soldater i Grønland
Ordren blev udstedt så sent som i sidste uge. Hvis Grønland mod forventning blev angrebet, stod danske soldater klar med skarp ammunition.
www.dr.dk
January 23, 2026 at 12:01 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
pookleblinky.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/reck...

Not kidding, this guy has been cooking his brain in that slop for *months* already.

If anyone is on the fast track to murder suicide, it's this dipshit.
reckless.bsky.social nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · May 16
If you thought social media had scrambled America’s CEOs just wait until they’re fully cooked by AI apple.news/AJ_ht7MMyT9G...
Copilot consumes Nadella’s life outside the office as well. He likes podcasts, but instead of listening to them, he loads transcripts into the Copilot app on his iPhone so he can chat with the voice assistant about the content of an episode in the car on his commute to Redmond. At the office, he relies on Copilot to deliver summaries of messages he receives in Outlook and Teams and toggles among at least 10 custom agents from Copilot Studio. He views them as his AI chiefs of staff, delegating meeting prep, research and other tasks to the bots. “I’m an email typist,” Nadella jokes of his job, noting that Copilot is thankfully very good at triaging his messages.
January 3, 2026 at 2:28 AM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
jeffvandermeer.bsky.social
some black and white shots from today...
self portrait in tinted glass showing windows wirh sea outside doorway in a destroyer leading out, showing the sea and inside the reflection of the door on black wall oval window framed by curtains marsh grasses forming a pattern at low tide
January 23, 2026 at 3:07 AM
baldurbjarnason.com
“What Trump really wants with AI”

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/what-trump-really-wants-with-ai

> Trump is in fact overseeing an enormous state project, directly and indirectly shepherding national resources towards an industry that’s in turn led by a handful of tech giants
What Trump really wants with AI
Trump's AI agenda is often described as a push for deregulation; an effort to cut red tape so AI companies can innovate. In truth, it's a big government project with designs toward domination.
www.bloodinthemachine.com
January 23, 2026 at 10:17 AM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
inquirer.com
January 22, 2026 at 9:46 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
kateconger.com
In our conservative estimate, 41 percent of Grok’s images — or 1.8 million — were sexualized depictions of women. Separately, CCDH analyzed how many were sexualized images across genders and ages. Their findings: an estimated 3 million images, including more than 23,000 of children.
January 22, 2026 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
slowpokedj.bsky.social
Europeans after managing to prevent the collapse of NATO for another 1-2 weeks…

#Europe #Rutte
January 22, 2026 at 7:46 AM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
rajandelman.bsky.social
She should win just for this production photo where she looks cool as shit
Sinners cinematographer autumn arkapaw is the first filipino woman ans first woman of color nominated for best cinematography Oscar
January 23, 2026 at 2:31 AM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
dramaddict.bsky.social
Quality performance art. Easy to parse, thematically relevant, kinda gross. Love it.
CW: Do you have any qualms about the fact that Al art is made by scraping other artists? GG: Yeah, I mean, that's part of why I spat it out, because Al chews up and spits out art made by other people.
January 22, 2026 at 7:06 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
drakovin.bsky.social
And it's important to mention when its NOT generating those things, even when its being used to "play around" its being powered by data centres spewing pollution often into low income neighbourhoods. There is no "playing around" with AI, its harmful. Full stop. www.bbc.com/news/article...
'I can't drink the water' - life next to a US data centre
Residents in rural Georgia say the data centre next door has disrupted their water supply.
www.bbc.com
January 22, 2026 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Baldur Bjarnason
davidgerard.co.uk
Steve Yegge’s Gas Town: Vibe coding goes crypto scam

Stop it. Get some help.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0_8... - video
pivottoai.libsyn.com/20260122-ste... - podcast

time: 9 min 49 sec

pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/22/s... - blog post
Man with facehugger virtual reality headset and enraptured expression on his face
January 23, 2026 at 12:31 AM