“The Perils of ‘Innovator’ Mindset”
Confident idiots who think regulation is for cowards can end up getting themselves killed, and taking innocent people with them.
“2,200 Forgotten Vintage Computers Are Being Liberated From a Barn in Massachusetts”
Amazing story.
“Why I moved on from Figma – No Handoff”
What I do instead is work directly on functional prototypes.
I see that a bunch of ostensibly business-minded people either have immediately forgotten about all the media co tax write-downs or, y’know, don’t understand how it works.
Shock horror. Profits are projected to drop at companies that have been writing down everything in sight.
Just got a weird phone call from somebody pretending to be from the FTC and trying to keep me on the phone. Don’t know what game scammers are playing these days
Kind of concerning how they got my name and number, though. 😬
“AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born - The Verge”
I have mixed feelings about this piece. Yeah, AI spam is going to be very bad for our information ecosystem. But, OTOH most of these platforms were in a very bad way before AI entirely due to their own mismanagement.
“How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)”
“Ecological doom-loops: Why ecosystem collapses may occur much sooner than expected”
There is no way to restore collapsed ecosystems within any reasonable timeframe. There are no ecological bailouts. In the financial vernacular, we will just have to take the hit.
About developer hype culture. Or the pop culture as Alan Kay used to call it.
“Arnold’s Docuseries: A Case Study in Online Content Pollution – On my Om”
The new stuff on streaming is all meh. The old stuff doesn’t pay enough to keep available. Streamers have been turning into second rate VHS rentals from the 90s. Bónusvídeó if you’re Icelandic
“How AI can distort human beliefs. Models can convey biases and false information to users”
“Inside the AI Factory: the humans that make tech seem human - The Verge”
‘Get a clue, says panel about buzzy AI tech: it’s being “deployed as surveillance”‘
“Adobe Stock creators aren’t happy with Firefly, the company’s ‘commercially safe’ gen AI tool”
I think calling Adobe’s Firefly ‘ethical’ (which I might have done in the past) is a stretch. It’s more “legal less problematic than other models”, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue
“Amazon’s allegedly “dangerous and illegal” warehouses spur Senate probe | Ars Technica”
“The Best Time to Regulate A.I. Is Today – Pixel Envy”
Give existing regulators extra funding earmarked for investigations into AI company misbehaviour. A good chunk of the stuff happening is illegal already
“In new AI hype frenzy, tech is applying the label to everything now”
But they also define AI so broadly as to include almost any large-scale, statistically-driven computer program.
“AI Expert Says ChatGPT Is Way Stupider Than People Realize”
“Announcing my new book, You Deserve a Tech Union. — Ethan Marcotte”
“Daring Fireball: DPReview Found a Buyer: Gear Patrol”
There’s something fundamentally wrong with a management team where their first impulse is to shutter a valuable property and only shop it around when there’s outcry.
“Cascade Layers are useless* - Manuel Matuzović”
Layers have only been out for a short while but they’re already fundamental to how I structure my CSS. I’m never going back if I can help it.
“You Can Have It All – Cloud Four”
The web today is an amazingly capable platform let down by dysfunctional managment, outdated practices, and ossified frameworks.
“The Next Phase of Eleventy: Return of the Side Project”
Big fan of Eleventy, used it for a number of sites. It’s great.
I do worry that this will be a trend. That there will be hard times ahead for open-source projects