Let’s imagine we ban TikTok. And Facebook. And Instagram. And Threads. And all the other huge platforms. There would still be one global town square left. It’s called the web. The web itself IS the global town square.
Captured for posterity, before I recycle them: photo wallets and negative holders from 1980s photo labs.
The first update from the Ghost team building out ActivityPub support.
Wondering how many readers will get the joke that I called @ianbetteridge “lawfully chaotic” in my latest newsletter/post…
Don’t get sloppy with AI — make sure whatever you do is intentional, and audience-focused.
When a Guardian journalist asked climate experts what they expect to happen. The results are terrifying:
“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south,” said a South African scientist, who chose not to be named. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”
Why are so many journalists still wary — or even ashamed — of the word “blog” after 25 years?
Lovely tribute to CJ Sansom and his quiet faith in the ability of humans who can walk the middle path to improve the world.
Flip. I knew the electricity cost of AI was high, but the water cost is awful, too:
For inference (i.e., conversation with ChatGPT), our estimate shows that ChatGPT needs a 500-ml bottle of water for a short conversation of roughly 20 to 50 questions and answers, depending on when and where the model is deployed. Given ChatGPT’s huge user base, the total water footprint for inference can be enormous.
John Naughton in The Observer:
The creative commons of the internet has been gradually and inexorably enclosed, much as agricultural land was by parliamentary acts from 1600 onwards in England.
The nice thing about EV tech developing so fast is the realisation that my current EV - good though it is — is probably the absolute worst EV I will ever own.
Things will only get better from here.
Beware! The link controllers don’t want you soiling their pristine websites with your dirty open web linking behaviour.
(People are really still trying to control who links to them in 2024… Mind-boggling. 🤯)
If AI search takes hold, and upends the business model of web publishing and Google itself, the search giant will have been the architect of its own downfall.
By letting search quality decay to maximise profits, it created the perfect conditions for its own disruption.
The US really went and did it. Bytedance faces an ultimatum: sell TikTok - or see it banned in the US.
Now we’ll find out how important the app is to China’s influence operations.
🍿🍿🍿