How has your life changed since the emergence of AI? Life before AI You couldn’t draw. You couldn’t write. You couldn’t code. But you were happy with your life; you laughed and joked, and you got by. Life after AI You still can’t draw You still can’t write. And, guess what, you still can’t code. Now you’re not so...

From 404Media: We discovered that VGT3 was used to destructively scan books for AI training data by placing a tracking device in a shipment of rare books that a bookseller suspected was being acquired by an anonymous AI company. We saw the shipment travel across the country before finally landing at VGT3. Online,...

IA Writer on being Trapped in MS Office: Psychologically, Office is an obvious target because hardly anyone really enjoys working in it. Some may disagree, but in spite of its gigantic market share and iconic stand, it absorbs significant time and cognitive energy. Much of it is spent on formatting rather than...

ThatShubham: The user must perform visual triage, identify the close icons (which are deliberately given low contrast) and execute side quests just to access the 5KB of text they came for. Ridiculous. At first I felt like screaming ‘What!?!’. But then I realised that that is exactly what I have to do every day...

There are a number of ‘office suites’, so called after the ubiquity of MS Office. The ones listed below are all independent or open-source packages. There are a number of alternatives to using MS Word, such as markdown. It’s a keyboard-driven plain text language that will wean you off reaching for your mouse every...

Nick Heer on Instagram Direct Messages losing its privacy opt-in: Of course not many people opted into end-to-end encryption – that is the whole point of the power of defaults, and something users should not have to think about. He adds: [Meta] is now an artificial intelligence company. Do not ask what “Meta” means....

What do you expect of an email service? It’s probably not at the top of most people’s lists, but it should be: privacy and security. You don’t expect anyone to be spying on your messages, whether it is about a crucial business contract or a quick message to a loved one. No one but you and the addressee should be...

That’s me, that is, riding the European championship-winning Funny Bike, FB1. Not very well, as it turns out. Photo: Chippy Wood Confessions of a motorcycle journalist: I have never owned a single bike before or since working for Bike magazine in the latter half of the 1990s going into the Oh-Ohs. The closest I’d...

There are many alternatives to Google Analytics. The fact that the use of Google Analytics is illegal in some countries should give you pause for thought. In Europe alone you will find more than 30 organisations tooled and ready. They include those that start with a small monthly fee or charge nothing at all....

Prices correct at the time of posting 5aaps Deploy your HTML5 app from anywhere using Git. Push your code, then 5apps mix-and-match deployment strategies will prepare and optimise it for distribution and delivery. It supports all major web app installation formats, including Mozilla Open Web Apps, Chrome Apps,...

The old guard have had their day, it seems New browsers seem to be cropping up like mushrooms these days – they are everywhere. One thing they all have in common, though, is that they claim to protect your privacy. One app, Ladybird, has been included in this list because it promises to be built from the ground up,...

Those I use are starred. They are not recommendations as it is too soon, but that may change over time. Note that some suggestions are not necessarily Europe based, but let’s hope they are better at handling your data than Microsoft, for instance. Browsers For more details, see the article on European and...