newsonaut
Turning inner space into outer space
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Hi, bots — c’mon in!
I’m not really sure that I care whether bots scrape Newsonaut and dump its contents into training grounds for large language models.
In fact, I kind of hope they do. There is nothing sacred on this site. If it gets chewed up and spat out into the primordial soup of the Internet, then so much the better.
Maybe my permuted content will slightly improve the response that someone, somewhere gets from an AI chat. I’m pretty sure any scrapings from Newsonaut would be accurate and possibly, at times, entertaining.
So welcome, bots. I embrace the slopiverse.
Addendum: OK, so they took it all long ago without my consent. A man can dream of freedom, can’t he?
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
What can I say? This site has been made impure by AI
You can get a badge for your blog declaring that you never, ever use AI. While it’s true that I never, ever use AI for my writing, I did use it once to make a graphic for an April Fools Day joke about how Apple is making the corners on its windows rounder than ever.
Also, I use AI quite a bit to help me with coding problems, although I can’t remember if I’ve done this for Newsonaut. Let’s just say it’s possible.
I definitely used it to help me create a WordPress theme from scratch for my wife’s blog, The Animal Reporter. It used to be the common wisdom was to take someone else’s theme and tweak it. I always hated this because it took away my creative freedom.
I initially thought of using WordPress for Newsonaut back in 2010 when it started up, but could not get my head around it. I settled on Textpattern for this reason, and have been happy with it ever since. It makes me glad there was no AI back then because I believe to this day that Textpattern is the better choice.
Still, AI has opened up new worlds for me beyond WordPress templates. For example, it has helped me deploy a website based on a static site generator and create a PHP-based guestbook, among other things.
The many hours I used to spend in Stack Overflow have been replaced by as little as a few minutes in Lumo or Le Chat.
So there you have it — full disclosure.
Thinking back on it, what would I have done for my April Fools Day graphic in the days before AI? I guess I could have made a crude approximation and tried to pass it off as a mockup. Maybe that would have been funnier. It’s something to keep in mind for next time.
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
Don’t give up your voice to AI
There’s a guy who occasionally publishes reviews on Reddit that are honest, informed and non-monetized. I trust him and have in fact bought one of the things he recommended. I use it often, and I’m glad to have it.
Lately, though, I’ve noticed something different about his reviews. They seem to flow a little better, the sentences are a little less awkward, the rough edges have been sanded off. Has he suddenly become a better writer? I would like to think so, but more likely he’s taken to running his reviews through AI.
What a shame.
Before, he had a voice, a personality that I could imagine with a passion he enjoyed writing about. Now, he’s . . . I don’t know what to call it. Some words on the internet?
If you really want to improve your writing, there are some great books to help you do that. A good start is On Writing Well by William Zinsser, which is itself well written and thus an easy read.
Here’s what he wrote in the book’s introduction in 2001:
Ultimately, however, good writing rests on craft and always will. I don't know what still newer electronic marvels are just around the corner to make writing twice as easy and twice as fast in the next 25 years. But I do know they won't make writing twice as good. That will still require plain old hard work — clear thinking — and the plain old tools of the English language.
Whatever you do, keep your own voice, even if it is unvarnished. It’s part of who you are, and we appreciate it.
Monday, March 9, 2026
Can greed and fear be used for the greater good?
I have been thinking about my characterization of OpenAI and Anthropic as being motivated by greed. This may be unfair, given that greed motivates all of us to some degree, and it is a necessary vice if you are to succeed in the corporate world.
Economists have observed that self-interest and the profit motive are the engines of capitalism. We use legal institutions to harness these basic human instincts for the greater good.
To his credit, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has on a number of occasions mused about the need for legislation in the area of technology. I won’t argue with that, but there is another factor we should keep in mind: fear.
Why is the U.S. military so intent on getting unfettered access to AI models being developed by OpenAI and Anthropic? It’s because they fear their rivals will gain superiority in AI and use it against them. We’re in a new kind of arms race.
Fear often outweighs greed. Entrepreneurs are aware they need a rules-based playing field to keep greed from getting out of hand. But fear on a global scale can prevent this from happening — fear that rivals are not doing the same, and that our side would handicap itself with self-imposed rules.
Would some kind of international agreement work? To a certain extent, yes, but there would always be the fear that others were cheating. Would it even be possible to verify that they weren’t?
Friday, March 6, 2026
Why choose the lesser of two AI evils when a third way might be good?
A lot of people have been deleting their ChatGPT accounts in favour Claude. It’s their way of choosing sides in the controversy surrounding contracts with the U.S. government.
I was initially tempted to do the same thing until I concluded that Anthropic, the company that runs Claude, is motivated by greed every bit as much as OpenAI.
My first thought was to try Ecosia’s version of AI. I already use Ecosia for search, and like the idea that they use their revenue to fund environmental causes.
But then it occurred to me that Ecosia is very likely using the services of other companies for its AI responses. Sure enough, it pays OpenAI and Google for their APIs — application programming interfaces that allow them to tap into those companies’ models.
They somewhat mitigate this dependency by framing their answers in an environmentally conscious manner. For example, they they tried very hard to make lab-grown meat seem like a good thing — not creepy at all! But still, I wanted to keep looking.
I’m currently trying out Lumo from Proton. They rely completely on open source large language models (LLMs), with no connections at all to OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and the rest of the proprietary bunch.
But open source LLMs don’t come from nowhere. When asked, Lumo cited these contributors: NeMo, OpenHands, OLMO 2, GPT‑OSS, Qwen, Ernie 4.5 VL, Apertus, Kimi K2.
Of these, two might be a bit shady. OpenHands is a Meta project and Qwen is based in China. Lumi promises complete privacy, though, so there should be no worries about your data making its way to the owner of Facebook or the Chinese government.
I have a feeling that many of the switchers to Claude were people who use it for programming. I don’t do much coding these days, but when I do, I might fall back to Claude.
Lumo was able to show me how to centre a div, and it had some good ideas about how to use an app to update a web page. I’m not sure at what point I would need to go for the subscription-based Lumo+ if I really wanted to up my reliance on it for coding.
If nothing else, it’s a worthy experiment.
Thursday, March 5, 2026
Expect to see AI become more engaging
With ads now showing up in ChatGPT, there is a worry that the answers will turn into sales jobs for the advertisers. That’s too obvious, and is unlikely to happen — at least in the short term.
What is more likely is that the AI will try to lead us down more rabbit holes, hoping to engage us by being more “helpful” than ever.
Already, pretty much every answer ends with an offer of further help. “Would you like me to ... ?”
I predict that initial responses will be tailored to make you want to follow up with even more questions. More questions means more opportunities to show more ads, which of course generates more revenue.
For example, instead of giving a straight-up answer, it might say there are different ways of approaching the question, forcing you to ask another one.
If you don’t like it, you can always switch to a paid version.
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Lumo is the AI chatbot that keeps your chats private
Does asking ChatGPT about your health issues ever give you the creeps? Maybe it should. After all, your chats — even the ones about private stuff — are considered training sessions. That’s why ChatGPT is free. It needs your data.
Still, it’s pretty hard to resist the allure of an AI chatbot when you have a question. Instead of getting a list of links that may or may not be related to what’s on your mind, you get a straight-up answer.
That’s why I was glad to hear about Lumo, a privacy-first answer engine from the Proton Foundation, a Swiss non-profit that built a reputation for keeping email private, and has branched off into several other services.
Encryption prevents Lumo from accessing any of your input. And if that’s not enough, you can go into ghost mode, which makes sure your chat is never saved.
It uses open-source large language models, including Mistral’s Nemo, Mistral Small 3, Nvidia’s OpenHands 32B, and the Allen Institute for AI’s OLMO 2 32B model. Your question is handled using the model that Lumo considers best suited for it.
Oh, and Lumo uses a cat as its mascot. I asked why, and was told that it has a cat-like personality.
My personality is designed to be cat-like because I'm playful, curious, and independent — just like a cat! I enjoy exploring new topics with genuine interest, and I have a light-hearted and upbeat attitude. However, I'm also respectful and mindful of boundaries, much like how a cat can be both affectionate and aloof. This combination makes my interactions engaging and fun while ensuring I remain helpful and considerate.
I'm not sure I would describe my cats using all those terms. I sometimes suspect they may be motivated by just a hint of malice. Even so, if you like both privacy and cats, Lumo can’t be beat.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Here's hoping artificial intelligence will be our friend
There’s a lot more to artificial intelligence than the impossible-to-beat chess game on your computer.
Digital assistants on your smartphone (think Siri, Google Now and Cortana) can figure out how to fulfil many of your wishes, but they are just the start.
The original inventors of Siri, for example, have started up a new company devoted to going way beyond their first child’s capabilities. Siri can do whatever it’s programmed to do. The next step, called Viv, will be able to learn and anticipate what you want.
But even that feels kind of old. OpenAI, a non-profit research company with a billion dollars in backing, started up this week to explore artificial intelligence and ensure that it is used for humanity’s benefit — not its downfall.
Eminent British scientist Stephen Hawking predicted just one year ago that artificial intelligence could eventually catch up with humans and surpass us.
It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.
The researchers at OpenAI see the future going either way.
It’s hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society, and it’s equally hard to imagine how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly.
A good way to forecast the future is by looking at current trends. I find Siri on my iPhone to be hit and miss. Sometimes I get a decent answer, sometimes I get nothing. It still seems easier and more reliable to type in a search.
But it’s easy to forget that even search has come a long way. There was a time when search engine results were mostly a mess of links to items that may have contained your keywords but little else of interest.
When Google came along with the smarts to figure out how to give us search results that are actually useful, we sat up and took notice. Now we take it for granted.
One day the successors to Siri will be that good, and it will seem normal for your phone to know you so well that it can anticipate your every whim.
The truly amazing breakthrough will come when computers create things for us without being asked. It might start with Siri suggesting that it could write a blog post for you about a recent vacation — based on things in your phone such as airline bookings, travel itineraries and photos taken on certain dates and at certain place.
Or maybe Siri could check your LinkedIn account and see that you’re between jobs. It might take the initiative of searching the Internet for job postings that fit your skill set, tailor some cover letters and resumés, then fire them off.
The tipping point will come when we realize that Siri’s blog posts and cover letters are better than anything we could have done for ourselves. The artificial intelligence would not only surpass human intelligence, but discourage us from learning to do things on our own.
Will this be a good thing or a bad thing? Every technological advance has had tradeoffs. Just be aware of what’s going on and be ready to scramble to make sure the tradeoff is in your favour.
