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Software over radio
In the late 1980s, Radio Belgrade 202 was sending software over radio for download.
Back in the 80s, devices such as C64, the ZX Spectrum, and the Yugoslav self-built Galaksija were using cassette tapes for storing data and programs.
In Yugoslavia, there was a radio program that would play such a cassette on air, people would record it at home with a cassette, and then they would have a new game or other program that they could load into their computer.
Erich von Däniken
Erich von Däniken died today at the age of 90 years. I know, I know what most of you are going to say, but in my teenage years, his books had a profound influence on me (amusingly, I encountered it first in their Serbo-Croatian translation, maybe my first "real" book I read in Croatian). More than the ancient alien hypothesis, his books took me to many fascinating corners of the world, be it in the Americas, in India, Sub-Saharan Africa, or the English countryside. I read far too many of his books, joined the Ancient Astronaut Society as a paying member, and saw him around 2000 when he was giving a talk. I was always struggling with regards to believing the stories: each of his stories fell apart once I had access to a library and the Internet, and yet I wanted to believe. His biography was indicating a charlatan. I know. But again, I enjoyed his books, I enjoyed the many pieces of fiction his works inspired, be it the X-Files, be it Battlestar Galactica, be it Marvel's Eternals. I believe that humans created all these ancient achievements, without the help of aliens. But I agree with him that we are (hopefully) not alone in the universe. Thanks for your imagination. Ad Astra!
OpenAI gets into shopping
OpenAI and Perplexity, armed with significant AI capabilities, have targeted the shopping domain. And have run into many problems around data access and semantics.
This raises three thoughts:
- First, companies which are bullish about AI “changing everything”, are stumbling in maybe the most traditional, mundane domain: shopping. This doesn’t inspire confidence in their technology.
- Second, companies which speak of ushering in the singularity in just a few months, are dedicating person-years of engineering to a conventional market. This doesn’t indicate they trust their own predictions.
- Third, the poster child of AI, OpenAI, is wading into crowded markets (shopping, hardware) with predictable volumes, dealing with competitors with decades of experience. This doesn’t support the valuation these companies currently have.
As I argued a decade ago: AI is inevitable, but it will eventually be boring.
AI will enable millions of exciting things, including improvements in shopping. We are currently seeing a mix of inflated expectations and irrational decisions. The problems AI is encountering —in shopping, with self-driving cars, in other domains— prove these powerful technologies are limited, not panaceas.
The current challenge isn't just a technical one; it's a profound lack of understanding. No one —from the person filing forms in an office to the CIO, from individual developers to the highly-paid expert researchers at OpenAI— truly grasps the full capabilities and limitations of these technologies.
That these companies are going for such traditional domains shows that their planning is returning to the normal world, no matter what their narrative otherwise is. They are thinking of market shares and products and profits, just like everyone else. These can be very profitable, assuming a traditional understanding of profitability. They will still disrupt many jobs and rewire parts of the economy. But in the end, it’s just a very powerful new technology.
Nessum Dorma on Aria Code
I was just listening to "Strong Songs", one of my favorite podcasts, but it was re-airing an episode of "Aria Code", a podcast I haven't heard before, about single opera arias.
This half hour episode from 2021 is looking at Nessum Dorma, intersecting it tightly with vignettes by an ICU doctor describing moments from the first year of the pandemic. It's very much worth a listen - uplifting, emotional. Vincero!
Cancelling a car repair appointment
I had made an appointment with the car repair place, but I needed to cancel it. So I called there, and an AI answered. Transcript from memory.
AI: "How can I help you?"
Me: "I need to cancel my appointment on Thursday."
AI: "Sure, what is your name and the exact date of your appointment?"
Me: "Vrandečić. That's V-R-A—"
AI: "Thank you. Your appointment has been cancelled. Can I help you otherwise?"
Me: "Yes. Could you please send me a confirmation via email?"
AI: "I cannot send you a confirmation via email, but I can send you a confirmation via WhatsApp. Would you like that?"
Me: "Yes, please, that's perfect. Thank you!"
And indeed, before the call was over I had a message that the "Your appointment has been cancelled." I would have appreciated some specifics, just to make sure it really understood me, but I was glad about the written confirmation.
I was quite happy with the whole interaction. It felt natural, I was served quickly, where I am otherwise used to call and wait for a long time on the phone. That felt great.
Alas, an hour later, I get an SMS with a link to check in early for my appointment in two days.
Frustrated I click on the check-in link. There's no option to cancel but there's a free text field in which I write that I have already cancelled via phone and to cancel the appointment.
The next day I get a reminder about the appointment the next day via email. No link or anything to cancel the appointment. I answer to the email that I have cancelled the appointment, please confirm, but never get a reply.
Today, one minute before the appointment, I get an SMS that my appointment has been cancelled. My assumption is that the technician was going through the check in data, and saw the free text field, and cancelled the appointment.
I'm quite amazed how fluent the conversation with the AI went. It was incredibly frustrating to then notice that the actual action has not been performed, even though it was confirmed. There are so many ways this could have been caught and fixed in time. To be honest, this showed me again the huge potential and upside of the whole thing, but also that we haven't yet figured out how to actually use it right. It will be an interesting decade ahead.
The new thing about the Semantic Web is not the semantics, it's the Web
In my 2025 ISWC keynote (publication of recording is pending) I was using some text which I considered a quote: “The new thing about the Semantic Web is not the semantics, it's the Web.”
Now I thought the quote was by Chris Welty, and I thought it was in his 2007 ISWC keynote (what a nice recall!), but I didn't have the time to actually check it and I could be wrong.
On arrival in Nara I met Natasha Noy, and asked her if she remembered the quote. She did not, but said it didn't sound like something that Chris would say, and it sounded more like something Jim Hendler would say.
So in the talk itself, I had the quote, but said that I was unsure to whom to attribute it.
Later, Juan Sequeda and I were trying to figure out where the quote is from. Juan just asked Chris via messenger (he wasn't in Nara), but Chris said it's nothing he remembers saying. I think he also thought it sounds more like something Jim would say.
I asked Gemini, and Gemini thought it was Tim Berners-Lee. Gemini Deep Research on the other hand was guessing Jim Hendler, with input from Dean Allemang and maybe Tim Berners-Lee. Juan asked a paid version of ChatGPT, and that actually found the quote (“In the Semantic Web, it is not the Semantic which is new, it is the Web which is new”) in the Semantic Web FAQ by the W3C, attributed to Chris Welty. Finally, I asked ChatGPT (free version), and it attributed the quote to -- well, Denny Vrandečić. Myself. Very funny
So, I finally watched the 2007 keynote, and indeed: he gets very close to the quote, by combining what he said: “The emphasis is on Web, not on Semantic.” (24:20-25:00) and “It wasn't the KR in Semantic Web that was novel, it was the Web that was novel.” (39:40-40:00).
Now I can confidently attribute the quote to Chris Welty.
Update: there has been a twist to the story! Kingsley Udehen found the quote in slides by Tim Berners-Lee wrapping up ISWC 2005, Slide 3, two years before Chris' keynote. But -- attributed to Chris Welty! So the conclusion stands, just with an even older provenance.
Kicking off the naming contest for Abstract Wikipedia
Before we started Abstract Wikipedia, it was always clear that "Abstract Wikipedia" was just a working name for the project, not the name that the Website would eventually get. It was intentionally chosen to be minimally descriptive --it is abstract in the sense that it captures encyclopaedic content abstracted from a concrete natural language-- but also not a very good name, because it is confusing: people confuse it with a Wikipedia of Abstracts (short summaries of articles), or think of math or art.
Thus we are kicking off a naming contest and were inviting all Wikimedians to join! Already, more than a dozen names are there, and you can suggest more, and vote for your favorites.
Let's find the best possible name!
Keynote at ISWC 2025
It is an honor to be invited as a keynote speaker to the ISWC - International Semantic Web Conference this year in Nara, Japan.
This is particularly exciting for me, because during my PhD research, ISWC has been my "home conference" - the prime conference in my research area, where the research community that I felt affiliated with was meeting. It will be 20 years since I attended my first ISWC, in Galway, and every year I attended I enjoyed both the academic program and the opportunity to meet friends again. I am very much looking forward to meet friends again, some which I haven't seen for many years.
The title of the talk will be:
- "Wikipedia and the Semantic Web - Celebrating 20 years of co-development, and the future"
If there's anything I should mention, let me know. The full abstract and how to register for the conference, can be found here: ISWC 2025 Keynotes abstracts and speakers
I would be very excited to see you there, either to see you again, or to meet you there for the first time!
Powerball jackpot at $1.7bn
The Powerball jackpot is around $1.7 billion. Given that a ticket costs $2 and the chance to win the jackpot is about 1:300 million it seems almost rational to buy a ticket. I mean, I'd buy a ticket or two if I would still live in the US.
Or, as a friend suggested, take $600 million and buy 300 million tickets and win for sure.
Would that work?
Yes, it would work in the sense that you would have a guaranteed jackpot win. But does it pay off?
Let's assume you don't have $600 million in cash lying around and instead get a loan (ha, sure!) for that amount (if you're reading this and you *do* have $600 million in cash lying around, the analysis would be quite different, interestingly, but in that case send me a DM and I'll sell you the analysis).
Now, there are a few considerations:
1. You will be paying taxes on the prize money. At least 37% in federal taxes, and then between 0% and 11% in state taxes.
2. The $1.7 billion is the sum that you get over 30 annual payments, where each payment is 5% more than the previous one. That starts at about $13-$16 million after taxes, depending on your state. That will likely not be enough to cover the interest on the $600 million, but that depends on your loan terms.
3. You can opt for a one-time payment instead of the 30 years of annual payments. But in that case it's "only" $770 million you get. Or between $400-$500 million after taxes.
4. The biggest risk is that someone else might win too. In that case you split evenly with every other winner. That means a single other winner reduces your payout by 50%. If there are more, you get even less.
5. On the other side, you will actually get more than just the Jackpot. Because you bought 300 million tickets, several millions of those tickets will win something. Altogether, that's another $90 million roughly. Again, before taxes.
Seems close cut so far, but...
6. Here comes the kicker -- you can actually deduct the cost of the lottery tickets against the taxes on lottery winnings, if you itemize them. So better keep the receipts!
That would reduce the taxes considerably, if you take the one-time payment (with the annual payments, it probably won't last for 30 years). So the total calculation for the one-time payment would be:
Total win $770 million + $90 million = $860 million. $600 million is tax free, on the other $260 million you'll have 37-48% tax, you'll still end up with more than $130 million profit, with which you'll be able to pay off the interest on the short-term loan easily.
But because of consideration nr. 4, and given that there are many other players given that huge jackpot, you'll likely have to split. And if that happens, your losses will be catastrophic:
Assuming a single other winner, your total prize money drops to $385 million + $90 million (that part is fixed) = $475 million. Fortunately it's all tax free (because, well, you didn't actually make any money), unfortunately you're now at least $125 million worse off, plus interest. If more people win, it gets worse.
My recommendation: if you're into this kind of things, buy one ticket (the first ticket increases your chances by a lot, the second ticket merely doubles it), dream about what you'd do with the money for a day or two, but have no expectations to win. Chances are you won't (there's a reason it's called a tax on stupidity).
And definitely don't do the "buy every single ticket" scheme with loaned money. That will end badly.
P.S. (a few days later): the Powerball was won by two tickets, and thus had to be split.
Tech companies and the size of the market
If you think there might be an AI bubble, but don't worry about it, even if it pops, how bad can it be?
Here's one number: seven tech companies (NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta, Tesla and Amazon) are worth about 20 trillion together, representing a third of the value of the total US stock market.
For context: total subprime mortgages in 2008 were 1.3 trillion, total US mortgage debt was 10 trillion.
You have a 401k or have invested in index fonds? Your money is very likely significantly tied with the AI market. If you want that, that's fine. If you're worried it might be a bubble ---
