A recurring story over the past four decades of Icelandic budget airlines
Iceland’s entrepreneurs: “If we sell enough tickets at below cost, we will magically turn a profit!”
Iceland’s “sophisticated” investor class: “That makes sense. Here’s a ton of money!”
“I think about AI like I do Plastics. | Apple Annie’s Microblog”
Accurate.
Eruptions are, as always, a little bit distracting. Hard to focus on work when you keep checking the news.
“The web is mostly links and forms | Go Make Things”
And many devs grossly underestimate the power of links and forms.
“Apple broke web apps in iOS 17 beta and hasn’t fixed them • The Register”
What a fucking shit show. With shenanigans like this Apple is punishing both the end users and—if we are to be honest—the Safari team, because it’s their hard work that’s being disabled
“FTC files complaint against Microsoft for recent Xbox layoffs”
The thing about developing a reputation, as an organisation, of dishonesty is that it makes it harder to resolve future issues amicably. And there will be future FTC issues for Microsoft
Eruption! This time in a more convenient location, roughly the same place as the December eruption
‘No, AI user research is not “better than nothing.” It’s much worse. | by Pavel Samsonov’
Looking through threads in the last listserv I’m on and most threads over the past couple of weeks has been some form of infuriatingly shallow AI bubble posturing devoid of critical thought.
These are supposed to be the intellectuals in tech and publishing 😬
Has anybody written about the accessibility of the asciinema player? Not finding anything in the usual places.
“Maybe it’s not us who are broken. Maybe it’s the system.”
The creative industries, like so many others, have individualised risk and privatised profits
“Will the new judicial ruling in the Vizio lawsuit strengthen the GPL?”
That the GPL can be enforced under contract law means that “fair use” might not be an adequate defence for license violations and that foundations with deeper pockets can get involved to defend licenses
“Romance Novels Aren’t Stupid, You Just Hate Women - grain of salt mag”
Agree completely with this. I’m a genre omnivore and, generally speaking, the average level of quality doesn’t vary much across genres. Every genre has both great stories and pablum
My neighbour’s cats are climbers. This, for example, is not a patio but my balcony.
There are many reasons not to be interested in Apple’s Vision thingamadoohickey—closed platform, poor format support, etc—but fundamentally even if all that was fixed, the Zeiss lens inserts for my prescription alone are likely to cost more than I think the device is worth.
Even though I’m not an accessibility person, just accessibility adjacent insomuch as it’s a core part of the job, these two articles are a little bit too relatable, TBH
“It’s the hope that kills you”
The title of the latter is a core universal truth
“Today’s YouTubers are repeating the mistakes of yesterday’s bloggers – A Whole Lotta Nothing”
“A ‘$3,500 Chastity Belt’: Early Apple Vision Pro Adopters Alarmed to Learn VR Porn Doesn’t Work”
That Apple doesn’t support open formats (hence those that inevitably get used for porn.) on their fancy whatsamahickey does not surprise me the slightest.
“Snap is cutting 10 percent of its staff - The Verge”
The difference between Snap on the one hand and Google, Microsoft etc on the other is that Snap has been bleeding money steadily ever since it was founded. They really ARE a dying company anyway. Might as well try this
“Inside the Underground Site Where ‘Neural Networks’ Churn Out Fake IDs”
What was the line again? “AI is different from crypto because it’s not just for fraud and crime!” 😬
“The creator economy can’t rely on Patreon. — Joan Westenberg”
“My Call Screening is Now Using My Recreated Voice as the Automated Voice : r/GooglePixel”
Would like to see some proper reporting on this because WTF?
‘Resisting Dehumanization in the Age of “AI” - Emily M. Bender’
This is a danger zone for ML tech solutionism because we can always construct ML systems that look like they are doing the job, taking Y and giving X. But if we cannot validate system outputs they are useless.