games, trains and automobiles
A lot of people liked last week's newsletter on HS2, which was nice. One consistent response, though, was to cite figures from the DfT which suggest that it...
HS5G2
5G is back in the news, now that the new iPhones are hitting shelves. They're not the first devices to have the tech – not by a long shot – but Apple being...
GANksy
This week, I became a patron of the arts. Matt Round, who feels like one of the last people left doing fun stuff on the internet for its own sake, runs...
trump censored
Like going bankrupt, there are two ways to lose an election: gradually and then suddenly. For Donald Trump, the suddenly part won't happen until November,...
bikes
Six months after the pandemic started, I have finally acquired a bike, just in time for the weather to break and autumn to set in. (Autumn, for American...
crumple zones
In 2018, Rafaela Vasquez was working as a "safety driver" for Uber in Arizona. Employed to sit in a "self-driving car", and seize control if something went...
xbox
This week, Microsoft made one of the most daring bets in technology, and I can't wait to see how it pays off. The company announced – in a bit of a rush, due...
how reels undercuts facebook's standoff with australia
Facebook vs Australia Facebook is in a standoff with the Australian state. I know, what's new, they've been in some sort of row for years now, ever since...
[bad scots joke]
By now, you have probably seen the increasingly viral reddit thread about the American teen who has written almost half of the entire Scots Wikipedia despite...
free the app store
I think this was the week I finally stopped defending Apple. I grew up with a Mac in the house, in the darkest days of Apple's history, though at the time,...
apps
I was struck by this call, in a New York Times opinion piece by Brian X. Chen, to "have some patience and empathy for the indie developers" as a form of...
this email discusses pregnancy loss
We were supposed to have a baby on Monday. We didn't, and won't. We found out we were expecting last year. Late November, I think. My partner had terrible...
500 words about jam because I can't think about anything else right now
I made jam yesterday. The whole process was sort of magical, in a very childlike way. We went blackberry picking on Sunday, and managed to gather 800g of...
GPT-3, redux
I received some pushback on last week's email, about GPT-3, from people who think that what we're seeing isn't anywhere near as impressive as it looks. The...
gpt-3
Last year, a machine learning research company called OpenAI published the results of work, a text-based AI dubbed, uninspiringly, GPT-2. I covered it for...
banned 4 truth
Do you ever stop and think about the fact that there's four or five companies who could just completely fuck up your life with a ban? There's a lot of focus...
buy my book and read my newsletter
Some personal news: my book is out! In case you don't remember, or are new here, I've written a fifth of a book of essays about ways the coronavirus response...
apple events
Covering Apple's media events is increasingly strange. The company's role in global affairs is vastly different to where it was in 2013, when I first started...
the ai will break you
I've spent the last few days obsessed with this story of a man live-streaming his own psychotic break, as he leads the police on a 110mph chase with his five...
local history
We're all talking about statues now. I live in Bromley-by-Bow, a quiet neighbourhood in East London. My immediate local area doesn't have a huge amount of...