Nick Barreto

Given how there are already people scamming others selling AI art, how long until there are effectively AI software scams? Did that vendor actually build this thing you bought properly? Having a trusted person who can read and understand a new codebase is only going to become _more_ important

thebookseller.comDecline in reading ‘main’ threat to EU book trade as turnover down 30%, FEP warnsThe "main issue” facing the book trade is the declining number of readers, the Federation of European Publishers (FEP) warned in its annual Frankfurter Buchmesse presentation on the main data and tren...

“Books are not too expensive,” Turrin said. “At least, that’s not the reason people don’t read. On the other hand, 50% of people say they’re not interested in reading. So we don’t have to make books cheaper, we have to make them sexier.” www.thebookseller.com/news/decline...

Nick Barreto reposted

Patricia Aas 🐢🏳️‍🌈

@patigallardo.bsky.social

LLMs produce statistically plausible text given a particular context. «Agents» run that in a loop, «given everything we’ve said so far and this new text, what is the most plausible next piece of text?» There is nothing there. It’s all in people’s heads.

Go to your camera roll and search “boat” and then post a photograph of a boat you like. Even before searching I knew the one I wanted. Baia de Guanabara, late 2016

George Walkley@georgewalkley.com

Go to your camera roll and search “boat” and then post a photograph of a boat you like. Looe, 2018—feels like a century ago.

I've seen no fewer than 5 different posts of people saying The Last Jedi is their favourite of the sequel films now the bot farms are down. Which it is. But I'm left thinking way more of the online nonsense was actually always bots than I realised. Not sure if that's reassuring

@mpe.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy

Actually it looks like all of Threads is people posting their "bot tests"

Nick Barreto reposted

Martin Paul Eve

The people holding up the internet https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet

sheets.worksThe people holding up the internetFour billion phones ask one text file what time it is. One lecturer keeps it in his spare time. We counted the rest.

reddit.comFrom the technology community on Reddit: Russian disinformation bot traffic nearly eliminated overnight after Ukraine drone strikes cripple multiple of 'Russia's Google' data centersExplore this post and more from the technology community

Será que vamos ver menos atividade de um certo candidato pro segundo turno nas redes sociais também? www.reddit.com/r/technology...

Recent shower thought on AI derangement were seeing is that it's a lot like how Yoda describes the dark side of the Force. Not stronger or better, but easier and faster, seductive. And once you start down that path it consumes you completely

Nick Barreto reposted

bryan newbold

@bnewbold.net

ah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

Nick Barreto reposted

canelo.coTwisted Pike by David Barnett | CaneloPaperback and Ebook

In case you missed it - though I'm not sure how you would, as I was an absolute bore about it - my fourth folk horror novel TWISTED PIKE was released yesterday: www.canelo.co/books/twiste...

There's a thread over on Mastodon where someone so very easily talked Muse into hacking itself so they could look at the innards and it is absolutely exactly as bad as you'd expect, if not worse how poorly put together this thing is

My favourite bit is how they vibe coded it so badly that solved problems like HTML validation are handled by using regex. It's almost too perfect and example and I'm curiously digging in more to try and verify it

Nick Barreto reposted

It's never "AI agent breaks containment, cures cancer, does a bit of tidying up and puts the kettle on", is it?

In big personal news, I’ve resigned and will be leaving Canelo at the end of this year.

View full thread

I have some exciting things brewing, but in the immediate term exactly the ways in which I gave Canelo a unique advantage are all the more important now than they were a decade ago.

nick-barreto.comNick Barreto

So come January I’ll be offering consultancy on technology strategy and am eager to help the industry more widely in this area. And if you’d like to know more; talk about technology and/or publishing, I’d love to hear from you. www.nick-barreto.com/contact

In big personal news, I’ve resigned and will be leaving Canelo at the end of this year.

Over 10 years ago Iain and Michael and I started a new publisher to prove that digital publishing shouldn’t just be an afterthought, and it always had technology at its core and as its competitive advantage. I’m immensely proud of everything we built, published and everyone we’ve worked with.

terriblesoftware.orgYou Got Faster. Your Company Didn’t.AI made you faster. But you’re not more productive; you’re outsourcing the slow part to everyone else

Now, as a part of DK and Penguin Random House, Canelo is set up well for the future, and in the best hands it could be. For me, it is time to move beyond into new challenges.

Nick Barreto reposted

Matheus Lima

@terriblesoftware.org

17 June

AI made everyone on your team faster. So why are companies slower? Because "faster" usually means offloading the real work to whoever comes next. terriblesoftware.org/2026/06/17/y...

twitter.nowTwitter - The Square Is BackThe public square is back and better. Visit twitter.now. Not affiliated with X Corp.

27 Aug

twitter.now is a new social network claiming X abandoned the trademarks when they changed their name. I'm finding this very amusing.

22 Aug

That Bun rewrite that was looking questionable just the other day is out now. From the responses I'm seeing Anthropic actually did deliver a lot of what they were promising

22 Aug

It's interesting though that actually it took longer than expected and needed a bigger team of engineers more properly overseeing it

22 Aug

Which is a win for them for sure, but it's certainly still worth underlining quite how important it continues to be to have experts in the know handling anything. As competent as Claude models are, they still can't be left alone to make decisions

A lot of important context to that last repost. Anthropic bought Bun in 2025. So this is probably the most high profile case of a big project being entirely rewritten in a new language, but they're letting Claude Code go at it with few guardrails.

You'd think they'd try very hard to avoid any perception of that happening. Which they probably are. But it's still not looking good. Which is not a good sign at all

All of which is to say what anyone with any critical thinking already knows. AI tools can have their uses. But don't let them do the thinking for you or make any decisions. Because they absolutely can not do that well

If it worked it would be a huge deal. A massive calling card for what AI can do for software development.

Instead it looks like Bun is turning into a vibe coded mess at scale

Nick Barreto reposted

David Bushell 🪿

@dbushell.com

tipiirai.comBun 1.4 Rust rewrite is not looking good • Tero Piirainen

lol i mean, this is a lot software nowadays and it's massively concerning when you think about it... but also lol tipiirai.com/writing/bun-...

notesfromthecircus.comLLMs Are Universal Translators, Not Universal ThinkersOr: Why the AGI Skeptics Are Right But Missing the Deeper Point

18 Aug

I find myself reaching for this metaphor often lately. These tools have a use but don't confuse them for something they aren't. www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/llms-are-u...

Nick Barreto reposted

canelo.coDavid Barnett | CaneloAbout the author David Barnett

18 Aug

Folk horror, sir? Yes, got it on tap. What's your poison? Let's see, we've classic remote, sinister village, that's our Withered Hill, very popular. Seaside is it, sir? You'll want the Scuttler's Cove. Gritty northern post-industrial horror? How about a Scratch Moss? www.canelo.co/authors/davi...

Home for the week

Nick Barreto reposted

Baldur Bjarnason

@baldurbjarnason.com

10 Aug

Some more context on this fuckup: https://mastodon.social/@colincornaby/117069185435215102 > BOTH projects were generated using Claude. So you have two people - both generating the same app from the same training data - having a public throw down over who copied who. Kind of embarrassing.

Baldur Bjarnason@baldurbjarnason.com

“Mea Culpa - Dark Hours — Terry Godier” https://blog.terrygodier.com/2026/08/09/mea-culpa-dark-hours.html > it became clear to me that the web app I had launched using Claude was strikingly similar to his open source project, even reproducing a bug he had later fixed

blog.terrygodier.comMea Culpa - Dark HoursLast week I launched a project called Dark Hours, which was a website utility to give you an idea of what could be seen in the sky that night. A developer who …

Nick Barreto reposted

10 Aug

With seven weeks to go to the publication of TWISTED PIKE you've just got time to comfortably read the first three books in my folk horror series. www.canelo.co/authors/davi...

uncovered.inkUncovered.ink · Judge a book by its writingRead first pages blind. No cover, no name, no hype. Find out what you actually fall for.

8 Aug

uncovered.ink is 'tinder for books'. I'm so happy this exists. I've built a prototype for this about 3 times over the years but never had enough time to get it properly off the ground. Finding something new to read online is hard. And I think this could really help

Nick Barreto reposted

Damian Barr

@damianbarr.bsky.social

7 Aug

Just donated. Please give what you can to protect this unique collection.

Louie Stowell@louiestowell.bsky.social

I just saw a piece in @thebookseller.com about this fundraiser - to protect and share a collection of over one million Black books in the UK, a labour of love by one collector, Baba Pepukayi, but a vital resource for the nation. www.gofundme.com/f/save-1-mil... Please share, and donate if you can.

gofundme.comDonate to Save 1 Million Black Books, organized by Black British Book FestivalSave 1 Million Black Books One of Britain's Largest Collections of Black Books… Black British Book Festival needs your support for Save 1 Million Black Books