How not to find out

Watching Tron: Ares with the kids and we were arguing about how they are able to 3-D print out of light.

Of course this prompted the question: how much does a photon weigh.. if you had enough photons, then you could make something?

Straight to Siri, who helpfully weighed in:

200 pounds

I was pretty sure this was incorrect, but in fact it was the right answer to the wrong question.

What question was Siri answering?

How much does a futon weigh?

A futon tends to be one of the lightest types of couches available, taking up just 30 cubic feet of space. You may find several different frame types and fabric types, each of which can impact the weight of the futon. Most futons will weigh somewhere around 200 pounds.

When you’re trying to find something out, make sure you’re able to recognise the answer, if nothing else, to be able to tell what answer you’re looking at.

Spoilers.

Most futons will weigh somewhere around 200 pounds.

just start

Many years ago, in what I still call “redundancy school”, we learned about how to find out the information that’s needed. One of my goals for 2026 is to try and capture some of those lessons from late 2014, along with what I’ve learned along the way.

I find myself stuck in analysis-paralysis, wanting to make something perfect rather than just starting: I’m even procrastinating by doing more hours at work! It’s time to start.

generations use AI differently

We see more and more ink spilled, computer power devoted to, software feature descriptions incorporating how to make the most of AI. Different generations are using AI for different roles, from life coach or adviser to encyclopaedia or search engine.

The announcement of the teami up between the designer of the iMac and the founder of OpenAI in a video directed by the director of 2001’s Training Day and music from a cinema movie composer marks a change in the way companies talk about themselves and their role in society.

We are only in the early stages of the impact that this technology will have on how we search for information, how we form our understanding of what is important. One of the questions I keep thinking about as I look at how different generations might interact is “what commonalities of experience can be tapped into to help people see the world in compatible ways?”

Watching my creative friends become more and more worried about the tasks their livelihoods depend on be soaked up and replaced by worse AI equivalents (book authors, illustrators, video makers) that make no effort to compensate or license the original creative works still feels like the early days, with announcements of changes to hiring practices even in tech startups indicating that the changes are far from over.

Is there still value in writing blog posts from scratch, rather than using a LLM tool to help with a first draft? I hope so. Even if it’s slower, there is some change being wrought in the mind of the person doing the writing that remains undone when using a LLM. Finding the balance is one of the challenges of modern work, while there is still a choice to attempt the task without a starting draft being offered by your text editor of choice.

Hopefully there are significant upsides along wth all of these changes – enhanced productivity, new insights, perhaps even more leisure and longer health span / life span. Time will tell.

Movie: Treasure (2024)

For some reason I keep being drawn to movies that are seeking to tell stories of loss from WWII.

This humour-flecked story of a divorced 30-something journalist (Lena Dunham) and her Polish holocaust survivor father (Stephen Fry) who has invited himself along to her tour of key sites from their family history.

Fry does an impressive job with this story, and unusually for a cinematic outing, I chat briefly to a lady who was also in the screening, who tells me of how the film connected with her, and her own family story of loss.

A touching story, that leaves you continuing to think about loss and tragedy.