Olivier Usher

“The HTTPS private key is… 4” youtu.be/a6iW-8xPw3k?...

If he wrote the same number of pages per day in office, Tony Blair's memoirs would be over 7,000 pages long.

In hindsight maybe this was a hint? youtu.be/1G-zvfegoQo?...

Today’s productivity greatly enhanced by this music video. youtu.be/l6umPyHxQio?...

I am fascinated that people who are evangelical about rapid AI adoption, suddenly get very keen to talk about its inaccuracy, the ethics of using it, and the need to be cautious, when the AI in question you’re talking about adopting is AI detectors.

Thanks Excel, this is definitely what I was aiming for

This looks like the AI slop photos on one of those scam adverts you get on Reach newspaper websites. "Pensioners in SE1 astonished at low cost funeral plans" type thing.

I think I’d have a bit more respect for AI if it just said “oh shit oh fuck”, rather than this pathetic snivelling

Let’s have an annual flagship science and technology prize for the UK - @nestauk.bsky.social ‘s event at the Labour conference in Liverpool

I agree with this, and I think AI is going to make it a million times worse. ojusher.medium.com/theory-of-mi...

Not gonna lie, I am not tempted to eat one of these AI oysters

What happens in a world in which all text is reprocessed for us by LLMs? ojusher.medium.com/theory-of-mi...

I do not need to be jumped scared into not buying a disposable BBQ. Fucks sake.

I was never quite able to take the BBC series seriously after my dad said he thought the triffids looked like celery

Delighted to be targeted for ads for, uh, whatever these are. I wouldn't dream of penny-pinching and going for the £4,600 option.

My vibes-based but strongly-held opinion: 🪖 The Soviets, Pinochet, Mobutu and Mussolini would have loved AI. 🎖️ The Khmer Rouge, English Puritans, Nazis and Falangists would have hated it. ojusher.medium.com/chatkgb-what...

This excellent question from @zachweinersmith.bsky.social has been playing on my mind, so I've had a go at thinking through what various horrible dictatorships would have made of AI. ojusher.medium.com/chatkgb-what...

Everyone in science and technology policy world today

The thing with these freaks like Dominic Cummings and all his imitators is that they've never had a real job, so you could stick a Salesforce or Looker Studio dashboard on a big screen and tell them all about the "PhD physicists" who had developed it and they would be impressed.

This posts your Trophies directly to your National Record of Achievement

Reviewing dozens of job slopplications today. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

This is ridiculous, but there’s also a ridiculous loophole. Fly to Dublin on your EU passport. You’re then in the common travel area and can continue on to the UK without checks. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

"As far as the government is concerned, they’ve washed their hands of us. Would they do that to a white person?" For a @prospectmagazine.co.uk feature on Britain's citizenship-stripping boom, I spoke to families of people who have had citizenship revoked www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/uk/...

This is art.

Weird hypothetical: how do you think the USSR would've responded to the development of LLMs?

every hometown’s got the ominous megastructure, what’s yours?

My controversial take is that Euston Station really doesn't deserve the hate. With more sympathetic shop frontages inside, the mezzanine removed and some clutter cleaned up, it could actually be a pretty classy space.

Idea: companies should only be allowed to present AI-generated text to customers if they use a font that clearly indicates you’re talking to a robot

Is drug dealers advertising on Google Maps a new thing?

If they could bring it forward to 12 July then it would make it 7 PMs in 10 years.

@gwr.com If your service is running an hour late and the previous two were cancelled, how about you open the ticket barriers rather than wasting even more of everybody’s time, eh? You’re going to have to delay-repay everyone anyway.

The best time to stop Brexit was 10 years ago today. The second best time is today.

Wild. Just saw a LinkedIn post tagging someone and saying that they had been fired.

I can certainly think of one big role Starmer could offer Burnham that would avoid the need for a contest

Reflections on skill and automation, arising from a very stressful day in hospital last year. I've been wanting to get this off my chest for quite a while. ojusher.medium.com/gut-feels-7e...

I don't really agree with the consultancy hate - consultants absolutely serve a purpose beyond just repeating back to managers what they want to hear. But what's the point in spending money on consultants if they just serve up the same slop you could get from Gemini yourself? archive.is/T39aS

Is there anything more pathetic than an LLM's grovelling after repeatedly bullshitting you? (Having a go at updating my website using Gemini... it did an OK job in the end, after several false starts including, on one occasion, extracting about 2/3 of my real website and hallucinating the rest.)

Three suggestions, each with a caveat. 1. Nuclear War (Annie Jacobsen). But is this just A House of Dynamite? 2. Light Perpetual (Francis Spufford). But would the domesticity make it dull? 3. The Affirmation (Christopher Priest). Would the Dream Archipelago narrative work though?

I take an extremely dim view of chatbots’ use of the word “I”. There is no “I” there. LLMs are a useful technology but the chat interface is a disaster. ojusher.medium.com/chatbots-are...