A catalog of startup disasters, vibe-coded humiliations, and "slop"-ey executive decisions that blew up in production. Let the ghosts that haunt the Vibe Graveyard be a reminder of why real developers are worth more than your entire token budget combined.

Much of the software that we encounter on a daily basis, including the bulk of the infrastructure on which the internet runs, is grounded in a decades-old paradigm called “Free and Open Source Software.” FOSS developers distribute their work under permissive licenses that allow others to use, share, modify and redistribute the resulting code for free. LLM use threatens that paradigm, in part by unleashing a deluge of difficult-to-evaluate, vibe-coded contributions, but perhaps more critically, by eroding FOSS’s social component.

One of the fundamental deceptions of AI is that it reduces work. It looks that way only because you receive the output through a very narrow aperture, creating the illusion of ease.

We've been a little bit too romantic about the idea that we should have employees and give people long-term job security. I think that got us into a place where, reaching the heights of Monument Valley 3 [production], contractors were always a relatively low percentage of our employee base. I think that's something we're looking to change going forward.

I think going forward, we'll see that we've got a core team and any growth will come through contractors, which is something I hate about the industry. I've been in the industry for 20 years, and those of us who joined in the early 2000s, we had it very good. You want to be able to give that kind of stability [...] but I think that's a shift in how we want to work with people going forward.

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The Voidspace presents Strange Play, a week of playable oddities as part of London Games Week (thank you, Games London!)

We are taking over a whole floor of Theatre Deli, an office block turned creative powerhouse in the very heart of London, to present an exhibition of experimental games, a series of playful shows and even an interactive cabaret.

Embrace the Strange with us, and get ready to play like you’ve never played before.

And perhaps that’s where this connects back to the bigger issue. When we start to believe that humans can be replaced, it becomes easier to accept systems that already treat people as data points, whether it’s in research, hiring, policing, health care, welfare or warfare. The same logic that reduces people to inputs also makes them disposable. So pushing back against this narrative is about holding on to the idea that human lives, empathy, experiences, realities and relationships cannot be reduced to something a machine can simulate and optimise.

Even the idea of “conscious” AI, which keeps resurfacing in tech conversations, is often just a rebranding of more complex prediction systems.

If we are serious about even imagining a human rights approach to AI, we first have to let go of this idea that technology can replace us, or can be prioritised over us, or can define what it means to be human. It can’t, and it shouldn’t. Because everything this technology draws from – land, environment, resources, time, energy, entire ecosystems – comes from a world that exists for the living beings – humans, flora, fauna – that have inhabited it since long before any of these systems were even conceptualised. Reframing that relationship means recognising that AI should never come at the cost of life or dignity, or the conditions that make life possible in the first place.

The post also takes a moment to denounce the “postwar neutering of Germany and Japan,” adding that the “defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price” and that “a similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism” could “threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.”

The post ends by criticizing “the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism.” In Palantir’s argument, a blind devotion to pluralism and inclusivity “glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.”

This Position Paper outlines the fundamental values at ZHdK in relation to Artificial Intelligence. Specific rules for the use of AI technologies at the university are set out in a designated Information Sheet (with ZHdK-Login). Professional Development and Lifelong Learning opportunities in the field of AI are being offered and advertised in the respective departments and organisational units. This Position Paper was drawn up as a living document by the Digital Council on behalf of the University Board, and will be updated as required.

Alors que la « fear of becoming obsolete » (à savoir, la crainte d’être remplacé par l’IA) gagne les rangs, la Gen Z semble avoir adopté une solution tout à fait old school : le sabotage. C’est en tout cas ce que nous raconte un (énième !) nouveau rapport sur l’IA au travail paru cette semaine : concrètement, 29% des employés tenteraient activement de saboter le déploiement de l'IA au sein de leur entreprise, et plus précisément 44% des employés Gen Z. Parmi les tactiques de sabotage, on compte : falsifier les évaluations de performance des outils d’IA, produire intentionnellement un travail médiocre afin de faire passer l'IA pour moins efficace qu’elle ne l’est, ou tout simplement refuser de l’utiliser sérieusement (jusqu’à 80% des cols blancs). Ce que nous apprend également le rapport, c’est que 30% des saboteurs ont invoqué le FOBO comme motif principal de leurs actions. Et en même temps, quand Dario Amodei crie à tue-tête que l'IA pourrait faire disparaître un job de bureau débutant sur deux (comprenez : ceux des Gen Z) ou que Mustafa Suleyman (boss de l’IA chez Microsoft) prédit l’automatisation TOTALE des cols blancs d'ici 18 mois, autant dire demain… Est-ce qu’il ne s’agirait pas de légitime défense, en fait ?

Our tales of AI developing the will to survive, commandeer resources, and manipulate people say more about us than they do about language models.

VSeeFace is a free, highly configurable face and hand tracking VRM and VSFAvatar avatar puppeteering program for virtual youtubers with a focus on robust tracking and high image quality.

Its a place to make music, ascii art and shader visuals. Its really young and quickly evolving. Nobody knows where its going. This help page is probably already outdated by the time you are reading this.

Ravioli resets every 25h. Everything will become inaccessible at the end of the ravioli day and there will be a fresh start. Let code die.

The recentish popularity of TouchDesigner has certainly brought with it a lot of interest in node-based editors for graphics. Here's a few open source cross-platform tools that I've used:

Cables.gl @cables_gl https://cables.gl/ ( what I used to make the animation)
Coollab @Coollab https://coollab-art.com/
Material Maker @rodzilla https://www.materialmaker.org/
Pixieditor https://pixieditor.net/
Plugdata/PureData + GEM https://plugdata.org/
Graphite https://www.graphite.art/

Each serves different purposes and does things in different ways. For example, all of the above software can render animations but Graphite and Pixieditor aren't really for live visuals.

Build procedural images with RasterFlow’s node-based editor, real-time previews, and non-destructive workflow. Combine over 250 operations into flexible visual graphs. Generate textures and patterns procedurally, and export results instantly. The same open foundation trusted by the GEGL ecosystem — designed for creators, developers, and technical artists.

kinda like touch designer

A unique online museum of physical media formats showcasing developments in audio, video, film and data storage.

The Museum preserves the memory of those objects that held our memories, and every format listed in the Museum is represented by at least one example in the collection.

In Teaching as a Conserving Activity, Neil Postman argues that schools should be conservatories of culture: places that keep alive language, stories, and standards of judgment. Rather than chasing every new device or educational fad, schooling should conserve what helps humans think clearly and live responsibly.

Postman contrasts a culture of novelty with a culture of memory. He proposes curricula that foreground semantics, history, and moral reasoning—so students can evaluate claims, not just process information. Teachers, in this view, are custodians of shared meanings who help students see why some questions matter more than others.

Education conserves the words and stories that let a culture remember what is worth loving, questioning, and defending. 

Key Ideas from the Book

School as Conservatory: Preserve linguistic clarity, historical memory, and standards of evidence.
Against Fads: Beware technocentric reforms that confuse efficiency with purpose.
Semantics First: Define terms; separate description from evaluation; test metaphors.
Curriculum of Memory: Canon and common knowledge are tools for judgment, not mere tradition.
Teacher’s Role: Model restraint, context, and care for language in a media-saturated world. 

“People are saying, ‘I refuse to work on this software. You have to find something else for me to do’,” said one senior NHS official who manages data analysts. “They’re calling it a workplace adjustment. It would be like, you know, if you were disabled and needed a different desk, they’re literally treating it like that.”

They added: “It’s a significant number of people but there is also a silent majority that feel uncomfortable but wouldn’t want to put their head above a parapet.”

Another senior health official, who has worked in analytics for the NHS for almost two decades, said they would not use the FDP as it was run by an “ethically bankrupt” organisation.

“I will continue to refuse to engage with any work involving this company,” they said. “I know that there are staff who are already working as slowly as they can when pressured to work with Palantir.”

One health data official said their team was “not interested in using [the FDP] as it doesn’t do anything new for us” and “their method is to just not use it”.

Code editor, fork of ZED

Given how it had literally been less than two weeks since the official Dead Can Dance page ostensibly rallied against AI being used to exploit the music streaming system at the expense of real artists, I can’t help but think it’s rather hypocritical of Perry to suddenly turn around now, and say: “Oh, that type of AI is bad, but the type of AI that I’m using is totally fine, actually!”

Much of the art produced with and about machine learning is too dazzled by its apparent capacities for human-like behavior to concern itself with the humans that it conceals and abuses. The best intentions cannot overcome the material reality of exploitation and the spectacular disappearance of labor required to maintain the participation of well-intentioned people. Generative AI, no matter how sophisticated, cannot function without this human labor and, crucially, it never will. It cannot sustain the fascinating illusion of its intelligence without concealing all of the human work and social relationships that brought something like Being into being.

Wax is a browser-based audio synthesis environment inspired by Max and other data-flow programming systems.

L’IA en perspective est un outil destiné en première intention aux travailleurs·euses sociaux, aux enseignants·es, aux formateurs·rices, aux animateurs·rices, qui souhaitent aborder la question de l’Intelligence Artificielle avec leurs publics.

En multipliant les entrées thématiques, la plateforme permet à un grand nombre de professionnels·les ou de simples citoyens·nes d'aborder l’I.A. selon leurs centres d’intérêts, avant de faire leur chemin dans notre architecture, d’y puiser des informations, des questionnements et de disposer d'une banque de ressources.

Un outil pédagogique conçu, produit et réalisé par le GSARA asbl.

On the automated bureaucratic machinery that killed 175 children

After the fall of the Roman Empire, elephants virtually disappeared from Western Europe.
Since there was no real knowledge of how this animal actually looked, illustrators had to rely on oral and written transmissions to morphologically reconstruct the elephant, thus reinventing an actual existing creature. This tree diagram traces the evolution of the elephant depiction throughout the middle ages up to the age of enlightenment.

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