Here are the stories I cared about this week.
Gemini Spark is the most impressive and terrifying AI experience I’ve had yet
Published 2 June 2026
Thoughts
The author of this article is shocked that AI can analyze data. I’m not sure what else to say! If you open up the channels of your primary communications, like email and instant messages, then of course it is going to pick up on trends.
Data is quite different from information, but they are tightly related. Information is substance. The substance of information transforms into data—form—once it gets translated into language. This is language in the very broadest sense, in the way that numbers or motions can be a language.
Data is quantifiable and a little bit quantum, being at once large and small depending on its context—information, on the other hand, is much harder to quantify. How large in the sea? Well, we have some numerical values… but they don’t account for the actual substance the ocean, which is so enormous that it evades language entirely.
Accordingly, data is meant to be strung together to provide insight and clarity for the substance of the information from which it originated. So yes: if you provided some of the most richly textured data to an AI model, it will produce “shockingly scary magical outputs”. That is sort of the point of data.
Furthermore, the article’s end frustrated me. “That’s what we’re being asked, even compelled, to do”. Then: “Some of [these AI products] might be incredible; all of them will require [a trade off of privacy and security].” This is far too broad and individualistic to organize around, because “incredible” is highly dependent. I like struggle. I like exploration. AI, in the way described in this article, takes that away. “Incredible” to me is the work I’ve done with Claude for my website.
My use of AI would not necessitate a model’s access to information like correspondences with my family and friends. So obviously, my response to this article is”stop giving corporations access to this information because it isn’t necessary”—but that’s “necessary” to me, clearly it’s necessary to others.
In all, I’m pretty sick of this tone of article. It is representative of the issue with AI hype as its evolved (recently): the reduction of people into trends and wide declarative statements built on really skewed data. Though I suppose that’s sort of the way everything has gone… Something something The Taming of Chance by Ian Hacking, grumble grumble The Control Revolution by James Beniger…
California judges are testing a new AI clerk, and you won’t know if it’s looking at your case
Published 26 May 2026
Thoughts
First, a company has provided a product by stringing together Claude and Gemini. Literally a fake job. A tiny bit stunned at this.
Second, I haven’t had a chance to discuss the role of AI within the legal space. From my own experience, I could see how an agent can improve the capacity, quality, and assurance of work. For example, I could envision throwing a completed legal analysis at a model for a sanity check/strengthening exercise. Obviously, this would require a completed legal product. This is how I interpret “give every single judge and staff attorney their own AI clerk.”
With the above, though, I don’t understand how this translates into “hire less people”. I have been a little bit stupefied at this trend, because if AI is supposed to increase efficiency and productivity. Reducing headcount effectively equals out any gains to efficiency and productivity…
I do not think I am very smart for seeing the true motivation for artificial intelligence. Capitalism demands that its executors retain as much capital as possible. Maintaining efficiency while reducing headcount is the golden circumstance. Et nous voila.
N.L. is eyeing a social media ban for youths and experts have questions
Published 1 June 2026
Thoughts
I view social media bans as I view porn bans. I am both anti-porn and anti-social media. In light of my views, I still disagree with any sort of ban.
A ban is quite an authoritarian action. Flowing from that, it’s also quite fascist—the use of force to shape people, obviously into more appropriate units of production. The quoted 12th grader says they’d have better attention span without social media—but why a low attention span is so bad? Perhaps it’s simply that you know what you’re interested in, and your current system fails you. In that case, it’s actually quite a wonderful thing that your mind pulls you away from what does not matter to you, even if it’s something that matters to your society.
At the heart, though, is the problem of the individual. I am shocked by how people consume content on social media, as I find it almost just as fascist as a ban. Content is forced onto the screen and it shapes people into appropriate units of consumption. This underpins advertising—something Simone Weil also speaks to in The Need for Roots… in 1949. So really, there’s no good answer to this issue, and it’s been a question for longer than people may recognize.
Paris Marx brings the perspective I’ve thought for a while. It’s important to cull back on theoretics and hypotheticals to get as close to the truth as possible. So while I viciously agree with Weil in 1949—ban all advertisement—this makes no sense. So while I emotionally agree with a ban of social media for youth, this makes no sense. You need to find the root of the problem—which affects everyone, as if once someone hits 18 they are magically impervious to the objective of social media as a concept…!
What a solution to social media looks like is completely mystified to me. It is made to beat people’s attention into submission to corporate interests. We would need radical changes to a couple of industries (advertising, data, marketing…) for any effective change. So, as I led with: I’m tired of these discussions.
VoidZero is joining Cloudflare
Published 4 June 2026
Thoughts
VoidZero is a company that produces a variety of JS tools, including Vite, a build tool. I use vite for Gumgumizer, where it bundles the tool’s react and webgl code. It also acts as my dev space too.
I’m left wondering what this actually means in the long-run, since now what was an open source project is under a tech company. While VoidZero is a company, I wasn’t able to see any for-profit products. How was the company making money? Consultancy? Freelance? Is this a common configuration?
In the related hacker news discussion, people are mentioning “aqui-hires”. I hadn’t been tuned into the tech industry from a resource perspective, so this concept reveals some of its infrastructure. I wonder if open source is effectively like working for exposure.