Blog Posts

  • What is Copilot trying to Hide?

    What is Copilot trying to Hide?

    The Atlantic has a tool that allows authors to check if their books appear on LibGen; the pirated-books database that Meta used to train AI.…

  • Stevie Wonder

    Stevie Wonder

    Last weekend I saw Stevie Wonder at the Co-op live arena in Manchester. A fantastic gig at no doubt the worst venue I’ve ever been…

  • AI Made me Redundant

    AI Made me Redundant

    Yesterday, a student asked me to help him with a program he was writing in his own time. It was an impressive project, but it…

  • Great Man Theory

    Great Man Theory

    Thomas Carlyle stated that “The History of the world is but the Biography of great men.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory Most 19th Century composers said that Beethoven was…

  • Under Siege

    Under Siege

    There are a lot of reports floating around on Social Media about Microsoft using customer data from Word and Excel to train its AI models.…

  • Why You Should Write Down Everything: The Power of GTD

    Why You Should Write Down Everything: The Power of GTD

    “Have you really included walk the dog on your list?” he asked.

  • All Change!

    You might notice that my websites are changing. There are a number of reasons for this, but the big one is I’ve been forced into…

  • A Stream of Leaves

    A Stream of Leaves

    A Stream of Leaves appears in the September/October 2024 Issue of Analog The story continues the Fair Exchange series that has been appearing in Analog…

  • Where’s TonyBallantyne.com?

    Briefly, the company hosting the site has been sold to another larger company and they’re making a mess of the transfer. I was thinking of…

  • To the Stars and Back

    To the Stars and Back

    Eric was a very good friend of mine. I’m proud to be part of this collection Eric Brown was one of the UK’s finest SF authors.…

  • Future Proofing my Notes

    Future Proofing my Notes

    As I mention last week, I’ve moved my notes to Obsidian. I’m going to talk about Obsidian another time, for the moment I want to…

  • I am not an influencer

    I am not an influencer

    As the school holidays approach and I embark on my annual sorting of my notes and resources ready for the new school year, I’m going…