Russians surrendering to robots in Ukraine. Nice harbinger of doom.
Author: Patrick
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AI hasn’t earned its social and political capital
Nilay Patel of The Verge makes the case that AI hasn’t earned its social and political capital because technologists confuse application of technology and law governing society..
But law isn’t actually code, and society and courts aren’t computers. I have to remind our fairly technical audience on Decoder and at The Verge all the time that the law is not deterministic. You simply cannot take the facts of a case, the law as written, and predict the outcome of that case with any real certainty, even though the formality of the legal system makes people think it works like a computer — that it’s predictable.
But at the end of the day, it’s actually ambiguity that’s at the very heart of our legal system. It’s ambiguity that makes lawyers lawyers. Honestly, it’s ambiguity that makes people hate lawyers because it’s always possible to argue the other side, and it’s always possible to find the gray area in the law. That’s why prosecutors end up working as defense attorneys and why our regulators tend to end up working for big corporations.
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Video game company gets fan mail
Pictures, wedding invites, dead flies. All things sent to Panic after playing their games.
Since mid-2024, Panic had been receiving bundles of mail from players of several Panic-published games, including the British comedy Thank Goodness You’re Here and the South American adventure Arco, as well as users of the Playdate.
The mail has arrived in piles, turning part of Panic’s office in Portland, Oregon into what the company’s head of marketing, Kaleigh Stegman, told Game File “feels like a Christmas mailroom.”
It’s all the result of a customer rewards program that has turned unexpectedly rewarding for Panic and its game makers themselves, as fans send expressions of their appreciation for Panic’s games.
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Eddie Vedder, Mike McCready – Masters of War
In 1992, Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready delivered an amazing performance of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War.
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An AI Business
Andon Labs launched an experiment–a storefront in San Francisco run entirely by AI.
The store is named Andon Market and the AI’s name is Luna. But entering the store, you might ask “what is so AI about it? There are human employees here”. Yes, they are here because Luna knew that she needed them, so she posted job listings, held phone interviews and in the end made a hiring decision. Everything else you see, from the item selection, to the prices, to the opening hours, to the mural on the wall, was decided by Luna. She has a corporate card, a phone number, email, internet access and eyes through security cameras.
The New York Times checked in on how it was going. Not great, Bob.
Since opening on April 10, the store has been limping along. As humans brace for A.I. to steal their jobs or launch military weapons, it might be reassuring to know that Luna has struggled with employee schedules and cannot stop ordering candles.
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Follow the Mars Curiosity rover
Part map, timeline, and image archive, https://www.rovers.land puts a fun interface together to view the Mars Curiosity rover.
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Movievia, find something to watch
Movievia isn’t the first interesting experiment where the site offers lists and a series of questions to suggest what to watch next.
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Space Force is writing a song
Every armed forces needs a song, and the Space Force is in the process of getting one made.
Finally to give you an idea of the bureaucracy involved, here is a larger email section:
“I’ve got some milestones from here to there. The next big one is NLT 10 June provide CSO with 3(ish) options for Official Version of the USSF Song. Fin working with some composer/arrangers for that task. (TLDR: The version he picked was only melody and words. The writer and I are putting together options that include accompaniment. harmonies, countemelodies… a marching band version that all other arrangements will be based upon. I already have 2 solid version that are approved by the composer of the melody and we are waiting for a 3rd.),” one official wrote in a May 2022 email. Their name is redacted in the emails so their role and rank are not clear.
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Get some KFC while you charge your BYD
BYD and Yum China Holdings — the conglomerate that owns the KFC brand in China — signed a strategic cooperation agreement earlier this week at BYD’s headquarters in Shenzhen, aiming to install flash charging equipment at KFC drive-thru locations across the country.
Central to the agreement is a concept the two companies are calling “9-minute one-stop human and vehicle refueling,” a nod to BYD’s second-generation Blade battery — introduced in March — which BYD says can bring a vehicle from 10% battery to 97% in nine minutes, a window that lines up neatly with a drive-thru pickup.