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.

🍿🍿🍿

The last post for Post News: a potential Twitter successor that tried to cosy up to the news industry is shutting down.

The field is thinning… I suspect it’ll come down to X, Threads & Mastodon, and Bluesky.

But can Bluesky find its audience in that context, or is the future all ActivityPub?

The one cost of AI we don’t talk about nearly enough: it’s seriously energy hungry at a time when we’re both trying together to decarbonise and increase our energy security.

New solutions needed…

The new CEO of Vimeo gets ready to sell your content to the AI companies:

Over the next few weeks, we will be gathering input via a survey and community outreach to understand the types of controls our creative community wants with respect to AI. We will be asking your opinions about your use of AI, the training you’re comfortable with, the opt-in and opt-out models you prefer, and how you want us to treat your public, private, and freely distributed videos.

So much “nope”.

Piper Haywood:

spewing mediocrity is a pretty strong sweet spot for AI

📷 #mbApr Day 21

The Cairngorms in early 1989.

For day 21 of the April Photoblogging Challenge: mountain, suggested by David, aka @dejus.

A dirt trail meanders through a snowy mountain landscape with scattered vegetation under an overcast sky.

Littlehampton harbour, with gulls.

A view of Littlehampton harbour with gulls flying above.

I have a courtesy car while my own car is in the coach works. But, oh sweet happiness, much to my surprise, it has CarPlay. Once you’ve had CarPlay, there’s no going back.

This is awesome.

A couple of months ago, researchers found a huge area of ancient seaweed off the Cornish coast. What’s the significance of 900 rugby pitches of maerl? It could be a valuable blue carbon store:

Blue carbon is carbon that is captured and stored in marine habitats, and is considered by some scientists to be vital in helping balance climate change.

Day 17: transcendence, suggested by Drew, aka @drewbelf. #mbapr

A misty sunrise over Shoreham Beach.

A rare image of my long-gone fencing days. I’m the one on the right.

Two fencers fencing foil in the grounds of Dollar Academy, Scotland, in the late 1980s.

The political problems around TikTok will only get worse if it keeps behaving like this.

Don’t think about this!

Advice to make sure you never create anything.

I feel very seen by this post from @havn.

AI is speedrunning the financial boom and bust cycle says John Naughton, in The Observer.

📷 #mbApr Day 15: small, suggested by James, aka @jmanes.

A makeshift bird figurine with stick legs and a rock body, resting on a wooden surface.

Micro adventures at one of our local nature reserves: an afternoon at RSPB Pulborough Brooks.

Birds and trees and bluebells.

A dunnock at RSPB Pulborough Brooks.

A sobering find in my Mum’s negatives. This is the original Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, taken in 1989. The bridge was destroyed in the Croat-Bosniak war four years later. The bridge there now is a recreation.

The original Old Bridge in Mostar, taken in 1989.

Just found and followed @duncanhart and @ton, thanks to this conversation about micro.blog over at Euan Semple’s blog.

Started reading: The Best British Travel Writing of the 21st Century by Jessica Vincent 📚