Alex Hern

Alex Hern

@hern.bsky.social

AI correspondent at the Economist. I write about it, that is. I’m still human. One of literally dozens of people online who is not American.

53.4K followers599 following4.4K posts

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

not to pile on £9000 car guy but I wonder if he's more representative than he might seem. "graduate uni, move back in with parents, get first Proper Job and spend 50% of your pay on a Nice Car" seems like it could be a fairly common situation. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.ukWhat do you want from the Budget? 'I'm a single mum on £41,000 and limit my weekly shop to £40'People earning from £380 a month to £150,000 a year tell the BBC what they want to see in this year's Budget.
Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

I do wonder if, in hindsight, the massive shift to leasing cars might turn out to have ruined a fair few people's lives

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

Just to try and pre-emptively stem the tide, a lot of people here are going to be posting the $66bn "loss" which is almost entirely about convertible notes and not the $1bn operating income which is the first cashflow positive quarter ever

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

If someone tells you that the S-1 shows they're about to collapse, you're not being informed, you're being pandered to

Alex Hern reposted

Daniel Knowles
@dlknowles.bsky.social

I am just begging people writing about AI to think *one step ahead* and try to anticipate the actions of other humans. Three out of five of these AI agent "killer tasks" only work because *your* AI agent isn't yet up against *everyone else's AI agent*. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/t...

nytimes.comPut Your A.I. Agents to Work with These 5 Killer TasksWhen you start using Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s dots for these tasks — like applying for jobs and booking hard-to-get restaurant tables — you may never go back.
Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

increasingly think the only way we get a healthy games industry out of the back of all this is if employment practices learn from film and tv production, where strong unions have traded the loss of stable and regular employment for much better pay and conditions on the job

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

you could imagine a version of the TV industry where camera operators are permanent employees of production companies, cycled between different TV dramas as their shooting starts and finishes, working 16 hour days on shoots as unpaid overtime, but I think most camera operators prefer their model

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

there are obviously wildly unpleasant things that happen in the film and tv labour markets, and the centrality of actors changes the fundamentals somewhat, but the raw challenge — productions that have different labour needs over the course of the job — matches

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

you know what I have actually been feeling in my prime, peak of masculinity, a sex symbol reverberating through the ages recently

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

for those only dimly aware of cybersecurity people screaming, "a security certificate which underpins the entire internet used '4' for a private key that is supposed to be 116 digits long" and "a popular web language lets anyone run code on your server" are two different issues from the same day

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

six seasons into my simpsons rewatch and i'm prepared to posit a hypothesis: Moe's is the location with the highest hit rate for bits.

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

this is most starkly illustrated by Bart Sells His Soul, which ties a saccharine and forgettable Church-driven A-plot with a firing-on-all-cyclinders Moe-driven B-plot

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

Now technically 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000004 is a 116-digit key

View full thread
Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

But if someone is brute forcing your key and starts from the top down then it’s actually one of the most secure keys in existence

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

Its so funny, technically this key is no less secure than any other key you could possibly make, it just has the really unfortunate feature that if you ask a human to guess a 116 digit number at random they’re quite likely to pick this one, or write a system that will pick this one

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

Now technically 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000004 is a 116-digit key

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

Sure it happens to be one of the first four keys you try if you’re guessing keys in one particular order. And sure that order is a moderately popular one I suppose

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

a) subhead does the piece dirty; the one mention of trains isn't "awful" it's "expensive" which is fair b) lead case study basically seems shellshocked by NHS maternity care, and same but c) majority of the complaints boil down to "it's not as rich here"

WIRED@wired.com

The internet told them Europe was a social paradise. Turns out the trains are awful, the health care isn’t free, and people can be really mean.

buff.lyThey Fled Trump’s America. Now They Regret itThe internet told them Europe was a social paradise. Turns out the trains are awful, the health care isn’t free, and people can be really mean.

Alex Hern reposted

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

Replying to @robfordmancs.bsky.social

Sure, parking companies have been a source of frustration to drivers, adding an unpredictable financial risk to every journey taken by car, but AIUI there’s downsides to them as well

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

tired: "when did you turn the heating on to work from home" wired: "when did you turn big light on to work from home"

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

Incredible thread

William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social

Making myself angry for no reason at all remembering the American transit planner that went to Amsterdam and was appalled at how little stakeholder engagement they did in favor of actually building shit.

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

worth clicking through to the actual article too, where you get a second dose of bafflement at how she discusses london, where apparently "transit advocates don't discuss affordability"

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

It’s that time when I am again reminded that they took a famous party game, removed the entire game part of it, and that was what made it into a breakout mainstream hit

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

Traitors is like going “poker is fun. What if we made a tv show where people played poker. Oh but poker is complicated and confusing. I know, let’s have people playing poker but no-one can look at their cards. That way you get all the fun of high stakes bluffing but none of the confusing maths”

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

And the worst thing is yeah. Yeah a game show where celebrities just blindly placed bets on hands you can see but they can’t probably would do well. I get it

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

A fun thing about going viral on this site is you post an oblique joke about Christmas getting near and people who didn’t feel like they received due attention under the viral tweet will wish death upon you

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

do think there's a danger of looking at extremely cool shit like a car driving upside down then doing a kickflip before landing, and convincing yourself it's actually lame because the guy funding it is a white supremacist

Yahoo Finance@yahoofinance.com

"Flying cars are real!" 🚀 Elon Musk and Tesla showcase the new Roadster.

Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

Lots of replies for No Children, the only song I have ever sung at wedding reception karaoke

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Alex Hern
@hern.bsky.social

"give racism the red card" day at school moderately difficult to explain to a 3 year old previously unaware of the existence of: races racism red cards football