Thoughts on AI watermarking

~ Veselin ~ 7 Comments

Claude is now watermarking its text outputs using a statistical token-choice watermark. According to what the AI told me, when generating the next token, it often has a choice between options that have similar meaning. It applies a statistical bias for some words at certain places over other words, which it’s able to identify over a text that’s long enough. Going over a paragraph, it can see if these equal-meaning words match the formula. Even if you change a word or rewrite a sentence, the watermark will persist in all the other words and sentences. It’s not hiding in the em-dashes and single quotes.

I have mixed feelings about this.

One of the ways I use AI for written text is for grammatical improvements. Last thing I want is AI claiming that my text is AI-generated just because it fixed grammar. I also use it to translate my Goodreads reviews, which I usually write and publish in Bulgarian first, and then translate, expand, and share here in English. The act of auto-translation doesn’t make the text AI. So, I very much don’t want AI to claim ownership over texts and experiences that are my own. Not that it matters all that much, but I still would rather not have these watermarks anywhere.

On the other hand, the AI content has expanded so much that it’s very difficult to distinguish a good-quality human text from AI slop. Many of the YouTube videos by popular influencers watched over the last month felt like a real human is reading from a slop script. For reasons I have difficulties specifying, I would like zero percent exposure to AI slop during free time. I don’t want to read AI books (increasingly prevalent), I don’t want to watch AI slop influencers, AI slop animation. I don’t even want CGI anymore.

I’ve mentally accepted that AI belongs to certain spaces, like work automation and coding, but doesn’t belong to others, like personal life. I’m not willing to succumb to the vision that AI should see and hear everything I do, remember it, and then use it. This vision feels like people with Meta glasses in a public bathroom.

And every conversation you’ve ever had in your life, every book you’ve ever read, every email you’ve ever read, everything you’ve ever looked at is in there, plus connected to all your data from other sources. And your life just keeps appending to the context

— Sam Altman, source

And I’m mixing the subjects a bit here but if AI is going to watermark its improvements to my blog posts, there will be no AI improvements here, and you’ll be stuck with bad grammar and other signs of character 🙂

The Trapped Girl by Robert Dugoni

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I seem to have a thing for catching a crime series and going as far as I can with it. This book was part 4 of a series of 6, makes you wish there were at least 5 more. Robert Dugoni needs to learn from Janet Evanovich and Alexandra Marinina. Six books is not enough for a successful Sherlock to fully develop. We need more.

Back to the book.

A crab poacher finds a trap with a dead woman inside, 20-25 meters underwater. Detective Tracy Crosswhite starts digging into the story, one clue at a time. It’s not very clear who the victim was but there was no shortage of people who had the means and motivation to harm her. The case is in good hands. Detective Crosswhite is tall, persistent, and a sharp shooter. Out of these qualities, she’ll most frequently need the first one, because clues are sometimes placed on high shelves.

The story is simple, the characters are believable, and vaguely remind you of someone. Multiple detectives are following the leads. No genius conclusions or superheroism. I wasn’t even close to guessing what really happened and why. Robert Dugoni is building up the protagonists slowly but surely. I won’t be surprised if this series turns into a romance within 3-4 books.

5*/5, and probably the best of the series so far.

Bansko in 2026

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

Bansko is a winter ski resort town that’s rebranding to a summer resort.

Twenty years ago, Bansko was tiny. It had a small old town with historical buildings where people actually lived, a large museum for a person the communists really liked, and some restaurants where you could actually eat without spending a fortune. It was a place you’d visit on your way to the mountain and back, eat tarator, and drink beer.

Over the years, it gained a larger ski zone with a gondola, a million hotels, and became very busy in the winter. However, summers remained mostly empty with most hotels and restaurants closed until next winter. We would roam around between the 4-5 functioning nice restaurants. Even the nicest were still mostly okay price-wise, just a few started turning into tourist traps.

Something started changing over the last 2-3 years. The municipality started rebuilding the central streets and sidewalks. That process is pretty far ahead already, as you can see from the photos. The walking areas now stretch for many kilometers, historical buildings have been restored, the river has been cleaned, street gyms have been installed, and so on. It worked, and Bansko is now so full of people in the summer that it’s the busiest I’ve ever seen it. Restaurants that didn’t even exist last year are open, working and full of customers, with only a few still closed for the season.

Cats are everywhere

Unfortunately, I’m not sure I like this new Bansko as much as I liked the old one.

  • More foreign tourists have driven the prices up, and they are reaching levels that are not okay for locals. Prices are at least 30% up since last year.
  • The hotel we used to visit every year (Lucky Bansko) started charging us €60 extra per night for our big kid. I paid this a few times but it got under my skin and I decided that enough is enough.
  • Food quality at the central restaurants is noticeably lower. I suspect they had to hire some unskilled kitchen workers, which led to both compromises in taste and in hygiene. I can no longer recommend eating there, after decades of being a safe town where the food was generally fine everywhere.

We won’t quit going to Bansko, it’s one of the places we are connected to. But we have to alter how we use it. From 5* hotels to rented apartments, and from trying restaurants to just sticking to the few places where we know the people who run them. After all, it’s the mountain that makes that place nice, not the freshly built 100-year-old tourists traps.

We certainly like the new pedestrian areas and the cat explosion that all these people have caused.

I achieved a great level of carnage with my newest white shoes

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

Back in June, I mentioned that I got a fresh pair of comfortable white shoes. This is how they look today:

Brooks Revel Max

I gave up trying to maintain the white color after about 10 days. I bought another pair (Adidas Terrex) with the intent of keeping these white, while doing the dirty things with the others, which have plastic and easy to clean top. However, the white shoes simply refused to stay white and the original color didn’t come back after washing. So rather than fighting a lost battle, I switched the pairs and did all the walks, hikes, and football with these, and kept the others for cleaner occasions. This above is the result.

The breathable mesh is significantly damaged. The sole shows signs of ungluing. The insides are still fine.

Overall, I had a good summer with these. I used them well outside of their intended purpose (running on asphalt). They were comfortable, the sole had good grip. My feet didn’t hurt, I didn’t slip, I could kick the ball. Two things I didn’t like:

  • Stepping on a fruit, like a plum or a cherry, which are very abundant in Sofia, would result in the fruit sticking to the bottom. I’ve not experienced this level of stuff gluing to the sole in years.
  • They were white. The ideal color for this model is poop-brown. I tried washing and cleaning with foam with no luck. If we ignore how they look and that I managed to destroy them in less than 3 months, pretty good shoes.

I will probably keep using them as football shoes until my toes drill a hole.