While my app gently memory leaks

Finally, I am back with a new newsletter. A lot has happened since the last one. More of that soon. But for now, delight in a heady mix of tech, music, and a dash of the “other”.

xx Chinch

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D&D rival Chaosium removes AI errors added to new game "without our knowledge"

wargamer.com

AI in tabletop games has been a hot topic for the past few months, essentially because it's one of the places where people want things to remain as human as possible. Companies and communities are drawing battle lines and stances pro and con, and the discussion has been heated. But several companies have been inadvertently drawn into the fray because long-standing tools suddenly enabled AI features by default with no clear mention, meaning that companies that don't want AI in their products have inadvertently found it included.

Daring Fireball: Claudes Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job

daringfireball.net

I am pleased to see growing vitriol towards Electron apps, and while some are finally heading in the right direction (thank you, Notion!), others are getting worse (looking at you, ChatGPT). But John Gruber's vitriol is even greater, and it seems well-placed, as one of the key figures behind Claude's desktop app has been an Electron flag-waver for quite some time.

Sort order collation and the Finder

eclecticlight.co

Sorting of items in file listings is surely a solved and consistent problem, isn't it? It turns out, well, no.

Thomann Sues Fender: Music Retailer Goes on the Offensive in Stratocaster Dispute

gearnews.com

I almost couldn't believe the headline. Thomann has made a good business out of creating "close enough" copies of famous products, significantly denting the original manufacturers' business. And now, they are suing one of those classic companies, Fender. What now? It turns out to be quite a clever, if strange, move. Fender has itself been on a tour of suing dozens of manufacturers who have been making guitars inspired by their designs, which companies have been doing for decades. So Thomann is "standing up for the little guy" by suing Fender.

I tested Cursors top alternatives after Elon Musks SpaceX agreed to buy it and one clearly stood out

xda-developers.com

I'll be honest, I never really liked Cursor. I didn't like how it turned a business out of forking open-source software. But now, I have reasons to like it even less.

Fraunhofer the creator of the MP3 and MPEG-H shows me the innovations coming to audio | MusicTech

musictech.com

I was lucky enough to see one of the key team members behind MP3 present a few years ago, and they quietly mentioned that the patent had made Fraunhofer "billions". Recently, they announced some of their next innovations.

A treasury of book dedications, part III

mollyyoung.substack.com

Ahhh, take a breath from technology to marvel in the delights of something so wonderfully human.

Is It Already Too Late to Control AI? (Anthropic Co-Founder, Jack Clark)

podcasts.apple.com

This podcast was recorded long before Anthropic's recent on-again, off-again Fable fable. It was an interesting precursor to what came later, and a surprise that one of the founders of one of the hottest companies is English, and that slightly less grandiose perspective that brings.

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