This sounds like the news that no one wanted you to hear: The congressionally ordered probe took investigators back to the 1980s, when an Air Force colonel visited a bar near Area 51, a top-secret site in the Nevada desert. He gave the owner photos of what might be flying saucers … | Continue reading
The ministry will swap the likes of Microsoft Word and Excel for LibreOffice applications instead, says Caroline Stage, Denmark’s Digitisation Minister. It is anticipated all Ministry staff will be using LibreOffice by the end of the year. The switch to open source software is pa … | Continue reading
Aevisia writing at the Sovereign Web: The truth is, I’ve had some difficult experiences with parts of those communities. At times, I’ve felt excluded or harshly judged simply for choosing a different path or expressing my creativity in ways that some consider unconventional or ev … | Continue reading
AI assistant Claude must have had one of the shortest blogging stints ever seen in the blogosphere. Just days after announcing Claude’s debut as a blogger — albeit with “human oversight” — Anthropic, Claude’s creator, almost immediately shuttered the publication. The URL for the … | Continue reading
Dave Phillips, an Australian blogging contemporary, writing at Cafe Dave: Is there still value in writing blog posts from scratch, rather than using a LLM tool to help with a first draft? I hope so. Even if it’s slower, there is some change being wrought in the mind of the person … | Continue reading
Hailing from Melbourne, Australian author Tony Birch has been writing books since 2006. Pictures of You, being published on Tuesday 30 September 2025, is a retrospective of his best short stories written over the last twenty years. I should think that will be quite a few. Cherryp … | Continue reading
Mark Sullivan, writing for Fast Company: Separately, the independent research firm Apollo Research observed an instance of Claude Opus 4 “writing self-propagating worms, fabricating legal documentation, and leaving hidden notes to future instances of itself” with the goal of sull … | Continue reading
Talking of the erstwhile Australian Film Festival, as I was earlier this week, word has reached me that Brisbane based Australian actor David Wenham was admitted to the Australian Film Walk of Fame in February 2025. The induction coincided with a screening of Spit, Wenham’s then … | Continue reading
Some recently revised calculations, based on some more recent data, have shown our galaxy, the Milky Way, may not collide, or if you prefer merge, with Andromeda, a large galaxy presently about two and a half million light years away. Astronomers have long believed a merger/colli … | Continue reading
Posted the other day by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): As winter begins, a new study has found that getting a COVID-19 booster at the same time as the flu vaccination could reduce the rate of hospital admissions for coronavirus. In a study published in the Medical … | Continue reading
All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane is the sequel to rom-com All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane, made in 2007, also directed by Australian filmmaker Louise Alston. The story to Leaving Brisbane, which was also Alston’s debut feature, goes something like this: Anthea is 25, singl … | Continue reading
Two years after the announcement of a ten series TV adaptation of the (original) Harry Potter books, members of the primary cast have been announced. This includes Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton, and Alastair Stout in the roles of Harry, Hermione, and Ron, respectively. Oth … | Continue reading
Richard MacManus, writes about three of the best known web designers of the late 1990’s. All three were influential (yet were not influencers), though by way of their individual approaches to web design, were sometimes at odds with each other: With the rise of Flash and CSS in 19 … | Continue reading
At first glance, it seems reasonable that disused and empty commercial buildings be converted to residential dwellings to help reduce homelessness. But, commercial buildings are designed to be commercial buildings, and converting them into private dwellings can be far from straig … | Continue reading
A scene from Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, trailer, is the debut feature of Paris based French filmmaker Laura Piani. A desperately single bookseller, lost in a fantasy world, finds herself forced to fulfill her dreams of becoming a writer in order to … | Continue reading
Good Internet launched this week. Good Internet is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit print and digital quarterly magazine for personal website owners and those interested in using the internet as a means of self-expression, art, and recreation. The name Good Internet comes from Kat … | Continue reading
Bronwyn Herbert, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): Australians have been working record-long hours, which contributed to the productivity slump, the Productivity Commission report found. Those additional hours performed by workers have not been matched by … | Continue reading
swissmiss went live on 27 May 2005. Twenty years is a long time. Congratulations. That was Tina v1.0; No kids, single, hadn’t started any businesses yet. This blog opened doors. Forever grateful. Blogs open doors, still, even today. disassociated was opening doors for me way back … | Continue reading
Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at Hong Kong based TF International Securities, spills the tea, perhaps, about the upcoming “futuristic AI device” being designed collaboratively by former Apple CDO Jony Ive, and OpenAI. According to Kuo (X/Twitter link), the device is intended to be wor … | Continue reading
A speculative essay on the (perhaps) faster than anticipated rise of a superhuman, superintelligent AI, by Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean. It’s a long, possibly unsettling read, but well worth it. The CEOs of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, … | Continue reading
If literary scandals of the plagiarism variety intrigue you, then I Want Everything, by Dominic Amerena, an Australian author who lives between Melbourne and Athens, Greece, might be a novel worth adding to your TBR list. The legendary career of reclusive cult author Brenda Shale … | Continue reading
Is AI going to take work away from people? It’s a question on the minds of many. Dror Poleg argues AI bots will only be interested in certain “high level” tasks, leaving plenty of work for us: One might argue that even if we have superhuman software, older software or weaker AI m … | Continue reading
British actor Sally Hawkins stars in Bring Her Back, trailer, the new horror feature by twin sibling Australian filmmakers Michael and Danny Philippou (Instagram page). The synopsis is short and sweet, but tells us enough: A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the s … | Continue reading
Matthew Gault, writing for 404 Media: In the middle of steamy scene between the book’s heroine and the dragon prince Ash there’s this: “I’ve rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree’s style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath … | Continue reading
Sydney based author Michelle de Kretser has been named winner of the 2025 Stellar Prize, for her 2024 novel, Theory & Practice, a novel Stella judges say does not read like a novel: In her refusal to write a novel that reads like a novel, de Kretser instead gifts her reader a sha … | Continue reading
Jony Ive, former Chief Design Officer at Apple, founded LoveFrom in 2019, when he left Apple, with Australian designer Marc Newson. In 2024, Ive established io, as a vehicle to move into the AI space. A few days ago we learned Ive is joining forces with OpenAI founder Sam Altman, … | Continue reading
Activity at question and answer website Stack Overflow is at an all-time low, according to a recent article in The Pragmatic Engineer. Question levels are presently similar to what they were in 2008, the year Stack Overflow launched. Although the decline in use could be attribute … | Continue reading
Malcolm Knox, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, regarding accusations of plagiarism made by Sydney based Australian cook Nagi Maehashi against Brisbane counterpart Brooke Bellamy: Nagi and Brooke will be out of their jobs when Microsoft, Google, Meta and the rest of big tech … | Continue reading
Some coffee shops in the United States have begun cracking down on people who use their place for hours, maybe even all day, as an office. Some store owners are imposing time limits on remote workers, switching off WIFI, or blocking access to powerpoints. Fair enough too. Austral … | Continue reading
The cosmos may not last quite as long was previously envisaged. New calculations have shown that the final stellar remnants in the universe will cease to be in 1078 years time, rather than the originally thought 101100 years. That’s a significant shift in the timeline, however yo … | Continue reading
Vietnamese Australian lawyer turned writer Nam Le has won the Book of the Year Award prize, with 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, a collection of poetry, in the 2025 NSW Literary Awards. Earlier, Le was named recipient of the Multicultural NSW Award. Winners of the NSW Liter … | Continue reading
United States based book discovery service BookBub recently asked twelve hundred writers about their thoughts on generative AI. Unsurprisingly, opinion was sharply divided, with an almost exactly half of respondents either against the technology, or in favour of it. Overall, opin … | Continue reading
disassociated has been included in the inaugural edition of the Internet Phone Book, a directory of over seven-hundred personal websites and blogs, compiled by Kristoffer Tjalve, and Elliott Cost. An annual publication for exploring the vast poetic web, featuring essays, musings … | Continue reading
Winnie Dunn, Jumaana Abdu, and Katerina Gibson, have been named the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists for 2025. Gibson also won the prize in 2023. Meanwhile Adbu’s novel Translations, has been shortlisted in this year’s Stella Prize, while Dunn’s novel Dirt … | Continue reading
The findings come as part of a global study into the use of, and attitudes to artificial intelligence (AI), carried out by multinational professional services network KPMG, in conjunction with Professor Nicole Gillespie and Dr Steve Lockey, of the University of Melbourne. “The pu … | Continue reading
Ten novels have been included on the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist, which was published on Thursday 15 May 2025. Chinese Postman, by Brian Castro The Burrow, by Melanie Cheng Theory & Practice, by Michelle de Kretser Dirt Poor Islanders, by Winnie Dunn Compassion, b … | Continue reading
Lismore, a city located in northern NSW, Australia, suffered catastrophic flooding in 2017, and again in 2022. During the latter event, flood waters reached unprecedented levels, almost completely submerging some buildings in the process. Floodlands, trailer, a documentary direct … | Continue reading
Mark Sullivan, writing for Fast Company: Google DeepMind research scientist Nikolay Savinov said in a recent interview that AI coding tools will soon support 10 million-token context windows — and eventually, 100 million. With that kind of memory, an AI tool could absorb vast amo … | Continue reading
Serbia based SEO consultant Nenad offers a grim assessment of the industry: The number of available jobs is dwindling. Companies are tightening their budgets and relying more on AI to handle basic tasks. Why hire a freelancer for graphic design when you can get an AI to whip up s … | Continue reading
A long time ago, that is. But the motherf***ing website (hopefully them asterisks slip this post through them filters wherever they may be) is lightweight, responsive, and works. Websites aren’t broken by default, they are functional, high-performing, and accessible. You break th … | Continue reading
The birthday effect is a thing it seems. Russell Samora, writing for The Pudding crunches the numbers. It looks like quite a few people expire on their “special day”. Why is there a birthday effect at all? One popular idea centers on the psychological impact of death postponement … | Continue reading
Way back in 1979, a British new wave band called Tubeway Army asked the question: Are ‘Friends’ Electric. Note the band’s use of scare quotes around the word friend. Are they suggesting friends that are electric are not real friends? Listen to the song and see what you think. For … | Continue reading
Brisbane based Australian artist Julie Fragar has won the 2025 Archibald Prize for her portrait of fellow Brisbane based artist Justene Williams (Instagram link), a work as intriguing as its title, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene). Sydney based Jude Rae was named winner of th … | Continue reading
Vortex, by Queensland based Australian author Rodney Hall, has won the fiction prize in The Age Book of the Year award for 2025. The two times winner of the Miles Franklin literary award, says the basis for his latest novel were some pages for a book he started writing, but later … | Continue reading
Benj Edwards writing for Ars Technica: A new study analyzing the Danish labor market in 2023 and 2024 suggests that generative AI models like ChatGPT have had almost no significant impact on overall wages or employment yet, despite rapid adoption in some workplaces. It’s early da … | Continue reading
Melbourne based sci-fi and speculative fiction author J M Voss was named winner of the 2024 Aurealis Best Science Fiction novel award, on Sunday 4 May 2025, with her novel Temporal Boom. The novel’s premise is intriguing to say the least: Thirty years ago, the world ended. Not ev … | Continue reading
A fantastic visualisation from Information is Beautiful. Selma, made in 2014 by Ava DuVernay, achieves a score of one-hundred percent. In other words, the plot is based on, so far as the researchers can tell, events that actually transpired. The Social Network, made in 2010 by Da … | Continue reading
Australian youth news outlet The Daily Aus (TDA), asked former Australian Liberal Party, and Opposition leader, Peter Dutton several times for a one-on-one interview, but he refused every time. The same, apparently, went for former Liberal Party leader, and Australian Prime Minis … | Continue reading