Opening the can of AI-generated worms

What a week! You know what, less ramble, more links. Let’s go!

xx Chinch

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How to survive the loss of Rosetta
eclecticlight.co
I was speaking with a friend the other day about how they might lose access to Steam games that run in Intel emulation mode "soon". The response was "Dammit, Apple!" But it has been six years since the start of the M era and support for the original Rosetta was also only six years, so… 🤷‍♂️. Still, like any major transition, it's time to prepare!
Sick of Microsoft and Google? This new European office suite is a private open-source alternative
zdnet.com
Continuing the next wave of European tech independence, there's a new contender in town. Well, I say "new", it's basically a branded version of Nextcloud, which isn't so new really, but it's certainly explicit.
Chardet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing
theregister.com
Continuing the chardet saga, read this next for more detailed thoughts on the AI side of the story.
License Laundering and the Death of Clean Room
shiftmag.dev
If you're even vaguely attached to open source, the chardet saga has been the topic on many people's lips the past few weeks. It touches on sustainability, licensing, AI-coding, communications, and so much more. Start by reading this piece for a great summary.
Why is WebAssembly a second-class language on the web? Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog
hacks.mozilla.org
Conceptually, I love WebAssembly. But I compare it to passkeys. Somehow, the rollout has not been as smooth as we thought. Or that, like any good technology, it's become invisible to use. Well, that doesn't apply to passkeys, but you get my point. Still, the problem remains. Why is WebAssembly a second-class language?
Grammarly turned me into an AI editor against my will and I hate it
platformer.news
Oh boy, Grammarly, oh, I'm sorry, "Superhuman" (why?) really upset a lot of people this week. To a point where I think they removed the feature, but I never even saw the feature, so I can't confirm. What did they do? Oh, offer writing advice from famous authors thanks to the power of AI. Was it helpful? Not really. Did they ask permission to the authors dead and alive? of course not.
The most-seen UI on the Internet? Redesigning Turnstile and Challenge Pages
blog.cloudflare.com
Love it or hate it, you've seen the Cloudflare "confirm humanity" checkbox, possibly even more recently. How do you design something so deceptively simple and necessarily annoying?
Can AI Kill the Venture Capitalist?
wired.com
If there's one group of people who appear to be benefiting from the AI "boom", it's the venture capitalists. That's not strictly true, but let's save that for another day. However, if reading this article is to be believed, plus some other demos I've seen recently, even they are not safe from being "made more productive" by AI.