(date: 2024-07-19 07:54:33)
date: 2024-07-19, from: Om Malik blog
A few days ago I wondered aloud, “What would happen if Google CEO Sundar Pichai decided to sign up for Google Cloud using a secret identity, without getting help from any of his staff?” I added, “Every single CEO should try to use their service as if they were a new customer that the company is going to try and win over. That alone …
https://om.co/2024/07/19/google-is-mind-bogglingly-bad/
date: 2024-07-19, updated: 2024-07-19, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044973-deadpan-comic-icon-bob-ne
date: 2024-07-19, from: Jeff Geerling blog
Where is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite Dev Kit?
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>I signed up to buy a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Dev Kit the second I found out about it. It's <em>supposed to be</em> the <a href="https://www.xda-developers.com/3-reasons-snapdragon-dev-kit-mac-mini-killer/">Mac mini killer for Windows</a>.</p>
They even promoted it with this amazing-looking transparent shell, and I and hundreds of other devs were ready to pony up the $899 Qualcomm was asking.
Their pre-order form said it would be out June 18. Almost exactly one month later, I got an email saying it was available. Great!
So I went to the purchase page on Arrow… and it showed as out of stock. That was about 15 minutes after receiving the email.
There were three possibilities:
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/where-qualcomms-snapdragon-x-elite-dev-kit
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-19, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Now that Elon Musk is giving so generously, dollars and flow, to the fascists, he’s encouraging more of us to use Zuckerberg’s twitter-like system, aka Threads. But Zuck isn’t making it go down easy. There’s a piece in Bloomberg (paywall) that says Trump is badass but isn’t supporting either candidate. What could possibly go wrong?
http://scripting.com/2024/07/19.html#a132857
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-19, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Matt
says some interesting new stuff is coming from Automattic now that
WordPress 6.6
is out. Something for writers? Perhaps something that moves WordPress
into a space adjacent to twitter-like systems? They just added support
for Threads to WordPress, so now you can
crosspost from a blog to a
thread. Haven’t tried it yet. They also have a new
identity
system built around Gravatar, announced in early June. It’ll be
interesting to see what they come out with. I wonder if there is a
developer ecosystem building on this, and if they have an evangelism
program. I have my own vision of how these things should work.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/19.html#a130945
date: 2024-07-19, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
@sarahjamielewis recently announced an IRC server with a self-signed certificate. What if you have an IRC client that keeps complaining about this?
On a system like Debian, you can download the certificate and install it such that all applications trust it.
# Get certificate from the correct port
openssl s_client -showcerts -connect resistant.tech:6697 \
< /dev/null \
2> /dev/null \
| openssl x509 -outform PEM \
> resistant-tech.pem
# Compare fingerprint with
# 63:B1:2E:A7:8A:BD:8A:33:B5:62:21:7C:42:71:75:66:43:BA:D2:78:21:09:8E:80:17:7E:28:D2:58:65:E6:48
openssl x509 -in resistant-tech.pem -noout -sha256 -fingerprint
# Install on Debian (the new extension is important)
sudo mv --interactive resistant-tech.pem /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/resistant-tech.crt
sudo dpkg-reconfigure ca-certificates
# The output above should say "1 added, 0 removed; done" somewhere
# Test it
gnutls-cli resistant.tech:6697
If the output says “PKI verification of server certificate failed…” then the installation didn’t work.
If the output says “Handshake was completed” and seems to hang, that’s because you can now type raw IRC commands.
(I saw comments by myself on related Stack Exchange questions from 2014. 😑)
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-07-19-self-signed
date: 2024-07-19, from: Robert Reich’s blog
BUNK!
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/debunking-myth-8-corporate-tax-cuts
date: 2024-07-19, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Paul Manafort walking onto the floor of the Republican National Convention yesterday illustrated that the Republican Party under Trump has become thoroughly corrupted into an authoritarian party aligned with foreign dictators. Manafort first advised and then managed Trump’s 2016 campaign. A long-time Republican political operative, he came to the job after the Ukrainian people threw his client,Viktor Yanukovych out of Ukraine’s presidency in 2014. Yanukovych was backed by Russian president Vladimir Putin, who was determined to prevent Ukraine from turning toward Europe and to install a puppet government that would extend his power over the neighboring country. Beginning in 2004, Manafort had worked to install and then keep Yanukovych and his party in power. His efforts won him a fortune thanks to his new friends, especially Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. Then in 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power in what is known as the Revolution of Dignity.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-18-2024
date: 2024-07-19, from: mrusme blog
A brief write-up on how I’ve set up my Linux desktop environment to be minimal yet functional, to let me work and use the computer as efficiently as possible. All without using Xorg.
https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/minimalist-and-functional-desktop-environment-without-xorg/
date: 2024-07-18, from: Dave Rupert blog
4:05am
The windows are open, hoping to capture the faint winds and
convert them into a mythical cooling cross-breeze. A gust passes through
vacuuming all the doors shut, cancelling hope for a miracle.
I’m
awake. It’s cool but I’m on top of the covers and not cool enough.
The plastic thump-thump-thump of the oscillating fan reaching the end of
its arc is rhythmic yet not. After three-to-six attempts, it yields to
the resistance and heads the other way. It will be back soon.
Another fan in the room sounds like a far off propeller plane looping
around the property. I await its arrival at each approach.
The
alleyway ebbs and flows throughout the night with the smell of marijuana
smoke, teens cussing, and the clinking of bottles as passers-by rummage
through recycling bins.
There’s a sick child in the other room. My
child. Been sick for days, poor thing. On antibiotics now. Spit the
first dose on the floor because she didn’t like the taste.
I can
hear her labored breath as different subconscious systems battle for
what they deem as comfortable. Warm, yet shivering. Cold, yet burning
up. Asleep, yet aware.
My wife is there next to her. Also sick
with a persistent unspecified cough.
Since arriving at the rental
three days ago, I have only left the house to buy medicine and wine.
7:23am
Scuttling in the alleyway. Two voices. A truck starts. A
woman pleads, “I’m sorry, I fucked up.” The truck drives off.
I
put on a pot of coffee.
9:15am
Left the rental to walk and pick up breakfast. Peeked at
the ocean to remind myself of the magnitude. I’m a block away but hadn’t
seen it in days.
I got a breakfast burrito. The potatoes were a
little al dente, but it had black beans and wasn’t a soupy mess so I
call that a win.
PCR tests came back and it’s not Covid and it’s
not strep, but we don’t have any answer for what sickness(es?) our
family is dealing with.
I’m on vacation but it’s not quite
vacation anymore.
I’m working a bit. Dysfunctional but I
appreciate a place to channel anxiety.
Caretaking is much harder
than computer work.
4:46pm
We made it to the beach. Wife and son thought it was too
windy for my solar shade —and it was— but I persevered. After naysaying
me they had the audacity to want to join me in my solar fortress. Haha.
Nice try.
My congested little one made me pretend food with wet
sand. She’s allowed to join me in my fortress.
We left as the tide
came in and ordered pizza. The pizza was just okay.
9:44pm
A good day. A long day.
Another member of the family
is reporting a sore throat, so that’s less than ideal.
“When this
vacation is over I’m going to need another vacation,” the protagonist
says looking directly through the fourth wall. The canned laughter
erupts.
Do wells of rage fill up faster than waters of peace? Am I
broken or is the underlying system broken?
5:32am
Awakened by two crows squawking at each other.
I went
to bed after midnight. A new day begins.
https://daverupert.com/2024/07/summer-rental/
date: 2024-07-18, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Gehry’s tower For the new Luna Centre in Arles. Quite a building. Quote of the Day “I regard not finding Lord Lucan as my most spectacular success in journalism. Of course, many of my colleagues have also been fairly successful … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/friday-19-july-2024/39650/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-18, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
If the world doesn’t know you did something you might as well not have done it. This is what Doug Engelbart learned, and what we learned in his aftermath. He is known for inventing the mouse, because that’s the one thing he invented everyone knows about. He also developed software that pioneered using a computer to organize your ideas. For the most part people don’t know about that because (I guess) most people don’t organize their work?
http://scripting.com/2024/07/18.html#a210120
date: 2024-07-18, updated: 2024-07-18, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/peregrine-falcon-killing-a-duck-in-mid-air-1
date: 2024-07-18, updated: 2024-07-18, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044969-heartbreaking-this-guy-ha
date: 2024-07-18, from: Robert Reich’s blog
For a watchalong of Trump’s acceptance speech at 10pm ET, 7pm PT
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/tonight-put-on-your-seatbelts-watch
date: 2024-07-18, updated: 2024-07-18, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044972-keanu-reeves-china-mievil
date: 2024-07-18, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-17-2024-e4f
date: 2024-07-18, updated: 2024-07-18, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/moving-posters-for-studio-ghibli-films
date: 2024-07-18, updated: 2024-07-18, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044970-california-has-strengthen
date: 2024-07-18, updated: 2024-07-18, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044968-interactive-map-from-the-
date: 2024-07-18, updated: 2024-07-18, from: Bruce Schneier blog
This is pretty horrific:
…a group of men behind a violent crime spree designed to compel victims to hand over access to their cryptocurrency savings. That announcement and the criminal complaint laying out charges against St. Felix focused largely on a single theft of cryptocurrency from an elderly North Carolina couple, whose home St. Felix and one of his accomplices broke into before physically assaulting the two victims—both in their seventies—and forcing them to transfer more than $150,000 in Bitcoin and Ether to the thieves’ crypto wallets…
date: 2024-07-18, updated: 2024-07-18, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/inside-the-trump-plan-for-2025
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-18, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I’m avoiding the actual RNC, the speakers are just actors. Trump looks like the Queens kid he is. People from Queens don’t feel like we really belong, except with other Queens people. We expect to be thought of as the kid from Queens. I know this so well. So the “boss” slumps around not sure what to do or say. He’s not gregarious. Not in charge of anything.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/18.html#a145522
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-18, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Nancy Wicklund Gonzalez: “I’ve had to switch to watching the BBC. American news is unwatchable. Between the lionization of a sociopath and the denigration of a decent man, I just can’t even.”
http://scripting.com/2024/07/18.html#a144830
date: 2024-07-18, updated: 2024-07-18, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044963-the-reintroduction-of-bea
date: 2024-07-18, from: Robert Reich’s blog
JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr., and Elon Musk
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-future-of-trumpworld
date: 2024-07-18, from: James Fallows, Substack
How should we act, when we can’t know what will happen? Spoiler: we have to keep trying our best.
https://fallows.substack.com/p/election-countdown-110-days-to-go
date: 2024-07-18, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
On July 18, 1863, at dusk, the Black soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry of the U.S. Army charged the walls of Fort Wagner, a fortification on Morris Island off Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. Because Fort Wagner covered the southern entrance to the harbor, it was key to enabling the U.S. government to take the city.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-17-2024
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/an-online-database-of-marimekko-patterns
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Today’s song: It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).
http://scripting.com/2024/07/17.html#a220627
date: 2024-07-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
http://scripting.com/2024/07/17/220302.html?title=nanaKittyPlayedShoreline
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044962-a-guide-to-miyazakis-weir
date: 2024-07-17, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
Without our agreement or desire, we’re forced into dependence on technologies that are expensive and have disastrous consequences for both the living planet and for human social connections. Over time, societies are taught to forget those harms. The forgetting is intentional. I used to be an “assume new tech is good” person, but I’ve learned […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/07/17/tech-is-a-philosophy/
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044960-a-useful-tool-for-student
date: 2024-07-17, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
Donald Trump’s repugnant record is MIA at the RNC
https://steady.substack.com/p/selective-memory-in-milwaukee
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Daring Fireball
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044958-lessons-from-the-recent-f
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Daring Fireball
SMS wasn’t dying, but it was slowly fading away, and should have been left for things like automated “your table is ready” notifications from restaurants. RCS is just going to give carrier-based messaging new legs that it shouldn’t have gotten.
https://daringfireball.net/2024/07/att_data_breach_rcs_ios
date: 2024-07-17, from: Matt Haughey blog
Over the past few years I've written about things I've done around my home, like putting in a five-acre wide WiFi network or tapping a NFC tag to unlock the front door, and I think I've finally figured out a novel setup for home
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/my-long-strange-trip-into-home-automation/
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/project-2025-the-minority-rule-by-extremists
date: 2024-07-17, from: Om Malik blog
“In 2023, intense competition among over 100 LLMs has emerged in China, resulting in a significant waste of resources, particularly computing power. I’ve noticed that many people still primarily focus on foundational models. But I want to ask: How about real-world applications? Who has benefitted from them?” Robin Li Yanhong, the founder and CEO of Baidu …
https://om.co/2024/07/17/field-notes-07-17-2024/
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044956-the-best-prime-day-deal
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044959-immunotherapy-is-changing
date: 2024-07-17, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-16-2024-bf3
date: 2024-07-17, from: Om Malik blog
Interaction bait is killing social media. You know what I’m talking about. Those posts that are designed to get you to comment, like, or share. They’re everywhere, and they’re getting more and more annoying. People are posting things that are clearly designed to get a reaction. And it’s not just the posts themselves that are …
https://om.co/2024/07/17/social-internet-has-ed/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The Repubs can win by throwing the election into the House. They can probably get it by the courts in enough places, just a couple of swing states, and they win even if they lose by normal vote-counting methods. The whole bit about Biden’s age is meant to distract us from the fact it probably doesn’t matter how old the Democratic candidate is.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/17.html#a172051
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/on-politics-and-poetry
date: 2024-07-17, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
I know this article isn’t really about maps, but I have wished Google Maps had a “scenic route” option. (It seems I’m not the only one who wants more options in Google Maps.) I figure you could combine actual scenic routes with old highways that often run alongside the freeways that replaced them for road […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/07/17/delightful-friendly-maps/
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Bruce Schneier blog
6.8%, to be precise.
From ZDNet:
However, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to be cybercriminals’ weapon of choice, making up over 37% of all mitigated traffic. The scale of these attacks is staggering. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, Cloudflare blocked 4.5 million unique DDoS attacks. That total is nearly a third of all the DDoS attacks they mitigated the previous year.
But it’s not just about the sheer volume of DDoS attacks. The sophistication of these attacks is increasing, too. Last August, Cloudflare mitigated a massive HTTP/2 Rapid Reset DDoS attack that peaked at 201 million requests per second (RPS)…
date: 2024-07-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
A podcast about listening to the podcasts from 2004.
This is a short episode about what I learned, and what’s coming up.
Humbling experience.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/17/155053.html?title=helloFrom2024
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Daring Fireball
date: 2024-07-17, updated: 2024-07-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044952-scientists-extracted-dna-
date: 2024-07-17, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Friends, As I said Saturday, I was enormously relieved that the assassination attempt on Trump failed. Besides the human cost would have been a dangerous political one: The violence lurking just under the surface of American politics needs no further provocation.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/office-hours-did-the-assassination
date: 2024-07-17, from: Enlightenment Economics blog
My student Aneesha gave me a book a few weeks ago before she headed off to do her PhD in energy systems at Berkeley, The Grid by Gretchen Bakke. OK, I thought, I’ll give it a try – but how … Continue reading
http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2024/07/diy-electricity/
date: 2024-07-17, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
The Republican National Convention is a moment to reintroduce Trump and MAGA Republicans to voters who have not seen them up close since at least 2021. So far, the convention has proved that the Republican Party is now the MAGA Party. It has not been a smooth unveiling.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-16-2024
date: 2024-07-17, from: Paolo Valdemarin’s blog
I picked up my Vision Pro last Friday, as soon as it became available in the UK. These have been busy days, so I haven’t had much time to play with the new toy, but I want to share my first impressions. It’s an impressive piece of kit. While I’m not sure the steep price … Continue reading “Vision Pro, the first few days”
https://val.demar.in/2024/07/vision-pro-first-few-days/
date: 2024-07-17, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
This page is for you if you are curious about NNCP and you don’t know how to get started. It contains instructions on how to set up your laptop such that it can exchange files with my laptop (melanobombus) via my server (sibirocobombus).
Before testing it, you need to send me an email with some info but we’ll get to that.
First, switch to the root user. Everything will be easier that way.
sudo su
The instructions are going to assume a Debian system.
Begin by installing the nncp package.
apt install nncp
Generate a new /etc/nncp.hjson file and secure it:
nncp-cfgnew > /etc/nncp.hjson
chown nncp:nncp /etc/nncp.hjson
chmod 660 /etc/nncp.hjson
You need to add my server to your /etc/nncp.hjson file, in
the neigh section.
sibirocobombus: {
id: CCAIPFSAZWYICBQ5BIURX4UMEJIXVSZFIING7HRUFTDOFV5XISVQ
exchpub: NGEIDPDVZ2I6CTRKCBT734VV4W2YFVTV6YFBU5UGB6IHBA3QDJUQ
signpub: VXBMWXS74IGAYQCLJY4UPAXXQXPT3K53QI5XCFHOAKL4I2FQNLKQ
noisepub: MGGBAOHRHEWEC6CGT47GA2DOQXQFZUAKJ66PD734Y5WNWP364UXQ
addrs: {
internet: "alexschroeder.ch:5400"
}
calls: [
{
cron: "@daily"
}
]
}
What does it mean?
.addrs.internet
key – you need this, but you can specify campaignwiki.org
instead, if your prefer
calls[0].cron entry – this is not necessary if you don’t
mind using nncp-call every now and then
My laptop can only be reached via my server. You need to add it as well.
As far as the melanobombus.incoming key goes, pick a
suitable directory that your regular account has access to.
melanobombus: {
id: R23WEIHB52TMA4EKGJPKUDBFSYP2HG4HHW2HGJ3RJATCCRLYDUZQ
exchpub: EGP2MMLQJQUKWTHI22JTIRMR2UV3BA2ATE3AYLVOFODMTNRGAMEA
signpub: YO6SZXVEIU77OQQRKMAUFUT4V3NJER4U7LQE5JI7JORJXKXY5FBA
noisepub: 6ECO4WXJNDED6WHJ6SM2HGRQMUO75X65ALT2YRKZ3YGGBDXRNV4A
via: ["sibirocobombus"]
incoming: "/home/alex/incoming/melanobombus"
exec: {
rsmtp: ["/usr/sbin/sendmail", "-bS"]
}
}
What does it mean?
.via[0] key – you need this and the name needs to match the
name you used for my server
.incoming key – you only need this if you want to receive
files (the directory must exist and the nncp group must be
allowed to write to it)
.exec.rsmtp key – this is not necessary if you don’t want
to receive mail
You would create the incoming directory as follows, as your regular user:
mkdir --parents ~/incoming/melanobombus
sudo chgrp nncp ~/incoming/melanobombus
sudo chmod g+w ~/incoming/melanobombus
You need to send me your system’s public keys from the
/etc/nncp.hjson file so that I can set up similar entries
on my laptop and my server.
Once I’ve added your public keys to my server, we can test it.
My server will not call you, since it doesn’t know your Internet address. It waits for you to call it both when you want to send or when you want to receive something. You would do this as follows:
sudo -u nncp nncp-call sibirocobombus
Otherwise, the @daily entry in the
sibirocobombus.cron[0] entry of your
/etc/nncp.hjson file will call my server once a day, at
midnight.
To send me a README file, you’d run:
sudo -u nncp nncp-file README melanobombus:
2024-07-12T18:12:15Z Tx README 486 B/486 B 100% (73 KiB/sec)
2024-07-12T18:12:15Z File README (282 B) is sent to melanobombus:README
At this point, the file is in the queue.
You need to to call my server using sudo -u nncp nncp-call
sibirocobombus to actually send the files or you’ll have to wait
for the cron job. My server will receive the packets encrypted and
addressed to my laptop and enqueue them again. The next time my laptop
calls my server, it’ll get them.
You probably want to let me know about the file via another channel. But soon enough we can set up mail via NNCP. 😁
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-07-16-minimal-nncp-setup
date: 2024-07-16, from: John Naughton’s online diary
A rose by any other name… Quote of the Day “I don’t think I am any good. If I thought I was any good, I wouldn’t be” John Betjeman Lovely man, though logic wasn’t his strong point. I never pass … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-17-july-2024/39641/
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/jimi-hendrix-goes-acoustic
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044954-in-this-interview-errol-m
date: 2024-07-16, from: Om Malik blog
I’ve been a happy Apple One customer. It made perfect sense to sign up for the package considering I was paying for Apple TV+, Apple Music, and iCloud storage. For an extra couple of dollars, I could get Apple News+, so I thought why not. That ended today when I learned that Apple had struck …
https://om.co/2024/07/16/taboola-apple-news-no-thanks/
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044953-important-not-to-forget-w
date: 2024-07-16, from: Om Malik blog
If you’ve been a regular reader, you know I’m a little skeptical of government regulators (including the FTC and DOJ) being able to control and rein in Big Tech, and more importantly, bring about change that is timely, impactful and meaningful in the long run. No matter how well-meaning their intentions might be — and …
https://om.co/2024/07/16/why-ftc-needs-to-rethink-tech-regulation/
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/eb-white-writes-to-a-man-who-has-lost-faith-in-humanity
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044948-if-youre-on-bluesky-you
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044950-after-12-years-pete-wells
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044949-nothing-about-the-attempt
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Highly recommend this Netflix series – esp the last three episodes. I found it enlightening, even though I lived through most of this history, I never saw it all put together in a series of events over decades. I came out of it with a much clearer perspective of where we are in the Cold War. It never was over. “The end of history” was too good to be true. Also glad I read so much about slavery a few years ago. If you put both these together, you get the USA, and the deep and lasting wounds we keep re-opening.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/16.html#a163319
date: 2024-07-16, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-15-2024-633
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/its-random-midsummer-shopping-day-again-aka-prime-day
date: 2024-07-16, from: David Rosenthal’s blog
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But decades of being congratulated and indulged for the relentless pursuit of their own self-interest has turned the heads of too many of our successful rich. They really believe that they are different: that they owe little to the society from which they have sprung and in which they trade, that taxes are for little people. We are lucky to have them, and, if anything, owe them a favour.Below the fold I continue the “Old man yells at cloud” theme of recent posts by trying to clarify an aspect of the current Jensen Huang hagiography.
the famous Dodge vs. Ford Motor Co. case that would define — and ultimately doom — modern capitalism, and in many ways birth the growth-at-all-costs Rot Economy.Zitron goes on to detail how “Neutron” Jack Welch destroyed General Electric while being lionized as a super-star CEO. I can testify to his malign influence because, during my time at Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy was seduced by it.
The Michigan Supreme Court found that “a business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders [and that] the powers of the directors are to be employed for that end,” and intimated that cash surpluses should not be saved to invest in upcoming projects, but distributed to shareholders, because Ford had shown that it was good at making money. Ford was directly forbidden from lowering prices and raising employee salaries, and forced to issue a dividend.
To be clear, the statement around corporations’ duty toward shareholders was made “obiter dicta.” This means it was not actually legally binding, despite over a hundred years of people acting as if it was.
this incredibly prescient profile of co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang back in 2017 by Andrew Nusca (in naming him Fortune’s 2017 ‘Businessperson of the Year’).At the time Siegler tweeted:
“Video games was our killer app — a flywheel to reach large markets funding huge R&D to solve massive computational problems.”Siegler was commenting on Andrew Nusca’s 2017 profile entitled This Man Is Leading an AI Revolution in Silicon Valley—And He’s Just Getting Started. As Huang hagiography goes, it was pretty good. The quote in the tweet is from Jensen Huang talking about the early days:
Genius foresight. Sounds obvious now. Was not then.
“We believed this model of computing could solve problems that general-purpose computing fundamentally couldn’t,” Huang says. “We also observed that video games were simultaneously one of the most computationally challenging problems and would have incredibly high sales volume. Those two conditions don’t happen very often. Video games was our killer app—a flywheel to reach large markets funding huge R&D to solve massive computational problems.”I don’t disagree with what Huang said. Despite the need to focus on gaming, we did have a vague idea that in the future there would be other application areas in which custom accelerators could make an impact. And it is true that Nvidia’s VCs, Sutter Hill and Sequoia, gave us the time to develop a multi-generation architecture rather than rushing out a “minimum viable product”. I do quibble with the idea that this was “genius foresight”.
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90s System Diagram |
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NV1-based Diamond
Edge Swaaye, CC-By-SA 3.0 |
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In September 2023, I published AI’s $200B Question. The goal of the piece was to ask the question: “Where is all the revenue?”Goldman Sachs’ provides furtehr skepticism in Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?:
At that time, I noticed a big gap between the revenue expectations implied by the AI infrastructure build-out, and actual revenue growth in the AI ecosystem, which is also a proxy for end-user value. I described this as a “$125B hole that needs to be filled for each year of CapEx at today’s levels.”
…
The $125B hole is now a $500B hole: In the last analysis, I generously assumed that each of Google, Microsoft, Apple and Meta will be able to generate $10B annually from new AI-related revenue. I also assumed $5B in new AI revenue for each of Oracle, ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, X, and Tesla. Even if this remains true and we add a few more companies to the list, the $125B hole is now going to become a $500B hole.
Tech giants and beyond are set to spend over $1tn on AI capex in coming years, with so far little to show for it. So, will this large spend ever pay off? MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and GS’ Jim Covello are skeptical, with Acemoglu seeing only limited US economic upside from AI over the next decade and Covello arguing that the technology isn’t designed to solve the complex problems that would justify the costs, which may not decline as many expect.Another huge drop in the stock price is sure to be in the offing. How great will the hagiographers think Huang is then?
| Company | Market | Quarterly | Employees | MktCap per | Income per |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cap | Income | Employee | Employee | ||
| NVDA | $3T | $26B | 30K | $100M | $867K |
| GOOG | $2.3T | $25B | 185K | $17M | $140K |
| AAPL | $3.2T | $28B | 160K | $20M | $170K |
| MSFT | $3.3T | $22B | 221K | $15M | $100K |
Mr. Market will do what Mr. Market does, the stock price isn’t
under Huang’s control. The things that are under Huang’s control are the
operating profit margin (53%), revenues ($26B/quarter), and the
company’s incredible efficiency. Nvidia’s peers in the $2-3T market cap
range have between 5 and 7 times as many employees. As Huang says,
Nvidia is the smallest big company.
https://blog.dshr.org/2024/07/accelerated-computing.html
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/15-books-about-appalachia-to-read-instead-of-hillbilly-elegy
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/07/0044945-investigation-finds-secre
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Today’s adventure: “The great and cute Wordle Kitty was surprisingly chosen to be the running mate of the most popular presidential candidate in the history of the United States, who happens to also be very very old so that’s why they nominated the cute little cat to be the vice president because she is so young and so incredibly cute.”
http://scripting.com/2024/07/16.html#a122427
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
And btw, don’t panic. You can’t accomplish anything that way.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/16.html#a122149
date: 2024-07-16, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
I haven’t read The Dark Forest but I read a few blog posts about it. What really got me interested, however, was The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet by Yancey Strickler in 2019:
In response to the ads, the tracking, the trolling, the hype, and other predatory behaviors, we’re retreating to our dark forests of the internet, and away from the mainstream. – Yancey Strickler
I often think of where the world is headed, politically. I’m a doomer at heart.
As part of that, I think about the Internet in a few decades. In the worst case, the public Internet is gone. An alternative that is slightly less bad is that governments will have discovered that blocking at the level of the national Domain Name System (DNS) won’t work because it’s easy to circumvent using alternative name servers. And so, slowly at first but then ever faster, from the top down, people will think that perhaps the Great Firewall is cool: for the children, against porn, against spam, against vandalism, to fight tax evasion, to fight terrorism, you know the deal. And yes, even to fight fascism. So many people are telling me that we should ban Telegram, for example.
I’m honestly not sure what to recommend. Is the free press our problem? I don’t think so. It’s the incentives and the power imbalances that are a problem. Rich people pay other people to create companies, to buy companies, to sponsor some programs and to cancel others, and slowly the landscape changes. Big corporations buy small ones. Rich people buy failing ones. The prime example here in Switzerland is how the Weltwoche was bought by billionaires and handed to somebody who supports a flat tax, who supports the ban on minarets, who supports supports tax evasion abroad, who supports anti-refugee policies… all of it legal, of course, but these laws are nauseating. The same pattern can be seen in how the state tries to support media diversity and still the big publishers manage to profit the most. The same pattern can be seen in how the right wing parties fight against state radio and state TV.
So what I recommend is to not go dark. Have friends. Have social media. But be aware that our time might be short. We might have to build the infrastructure while we can. Those of us who can should build for the rest of us who have other things on their mind. We should build this to be as easy to use as possible. We should build this so that we can detach from the public Internet and it will still work.
The sneaker-net will be back. They will call it the dark net but to me, it will forever be friends meeting in a place, with mass storage in our backpacks (at the time) or in our pockets, exchanging stuff. And even if this future is not great at all, we need that alternative. How else will our future selves and our children organize? And even if it turns out to be unnecessary because we keep riding that wild horse of freedom, forever teetering at the brink of fascism, alternative needs to be there to keep the next level of services in line. I still believe that the availability and ubiquity of bit-torrent is what keeps the prices of streaming services down. It’s the threat of piracy that keeps the official channels honest. Because we can always go back. The infrastructure is still around. The software is still around.
This is why I’m interested in @jgoerzen’s Recovering Our Lost Free Will Online: Tools and Techniques That Are Available Now. In my case, the thing I’m most interested in is NNCP.
NNCP allows us to connect all services that can be made to work with a store and forward architecture. The simplest and oldest protocols in this respect are mail and file copying, and services built on top of that, such as net news. These services grew big with UUCP, the precursor to NNCP. Store-and-forward precludes the kind of interactive applications many of us are used to. Instead, it’s a bit like a library or a book store: you order a book and at some point you get the book. There is a delay. The postal system works the same way: write a letter and send it off, wait for some days, maybe get a reply back. Basically, anything that can be imagined as requesting something and getting back a reply after some time can be implemented using store-and-forward architecture.
If you think of the web as serving static documents, it can be made to work. Imagine reading Wikipedia via email: you send the URL via email to a service, and some time later you get back an email with the response. Soon we would be thinking of extensions to this. What if the response returned an archive of the page requested, all the images it includes, and the same for all the Wikipedia content pages it links to? Fewer visits to the library, so to say! It would be much harder to do the same thing using traditional social media because the web sites are more like web apps. There are a gazillion ways to view things: in a time line (or multiple time lines!), on a profile (so many profiles!), in threads, in search results, and so on. If every click on a button requires a trip that can take many days, it’s doesn’t work. Instead, such social media sites must be restructured to work a bit like net news: new posts satisfying some filters are sent in regular updates and your local client rearranges the, filters them, searches them.
All of this delay-tolerant networking is possible with Unix to Unix Copy (UUCP). What Node to Node Copy (NNCP) adds is end-to-end encryption (in a multi-hop setup the packets remain encrypted so the carrier cannot read them) and onion routing (in a multi-hop setup the carrier doesn’t know where the packet is originally from or where the packet is going to end up). And with that, the sneaker-net is back. You can imagine a low-tech future where most of the last miles are burned, the copper stolen and repurposed, the optical fibre no longer functional, and a service springs up where the post or some other courier is used to send USB sticks and SD cards from community to community in order to exchange letters, reports, movies, pictures, music, and so on. Or if the government is monitoring the airwaves and declaring mesh networks illegal or taking over the mesh networks (like Cuba’s Street Network, SNET), we’ll have to rely on USB sticks and SD cards, too.
This is where we’re getting back to the Dark Forest. I don’t have an answer to that. It’s a bit like members-only bit-torrent sites. Do you trust them? Do they trust you? How are you going to learn about the trustworthy ones?
In order to learn more, to be prepared, to think things through, I want to experiment with the technology. I want to see what can be done, run into the issues, pick the low hanging fruits. Play with the technology before we really need it.
I remember audio cassettes being sent back and forth as a kid when we were living in South-West Africa (back before they finally got their freedom and renamed the country to Namibia) and my grandparents were living in Austria. Phone calls were very expensive. So the family sat around a tape recorder, each of us speaking in turn, saying something, and weeks later, all of us gathering again, listening to the replies.
Using images like these virtual, delay-tolerant family gatherings worked long before I knew anything at all about computers.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-07-16-why-nncp
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The
problem with JD
Vance is that he’s empty inside, he’ll be whatever he needs to be to
get more power, and he’s young. He’s as empty as Trump, and much
younger, so we can’t hope to outwait him. Now we have a real problem,
because Trump has a successor. I imagine Trump’s sons probably aren’t
happy about this. Had he picked
Little Marco, no
one would mistake him as an heir, or
Doug Burgum who
is a bit too old to be an heir (same age as I am). We do have a
problem with Biden, he hasn’t prepared for this moment. Old or not, they
had 3.5 years to get ready, and they didn’t. As I wrote
yesterday,
the biggest most important thing is that we organize ourselves.
That’s the best defense all around. Every attempt to
corral the
insurrection has been either non-existent or overwhelmingly inadequate.
Trump should be out of the picture, and for a while it seemed as if he
was getting there, but now he’s back, and probably a bigger threat than
ever. I don’t think replacing Biden is anywhere near enough. We need
leadership. Not wait to be led. We’ve waited too long. People who appear
ready to step up – AOC, Bernie Sanders. Who else? I wouldn’t put Obama
on that list, he tried to welcome Trump, even let him have his Supreme
Court pick, just to be a nice guy. We are not going to prevail by being
nice, unfortunately. We’re also not going to prevail by each of us
taking care of Number One. We have to work together. Organize and work
together. Those ought to be our mantras until we achieve them.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/16.html#a114643
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Shownotes for the Podcast0 from July 16, 2004.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/16.html#a114218
date: 2024-07-16, from: Enlightenment Economics blog
Yuan Yang’s Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in New China is quietly revelatory. One of the new intake of Labour MPs, the author was born in China, moved to the UK at age 4, and returned to China as an … Continue reading
http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2024/07/private-revolutions/
date: 2024-07-16, from: Robert Reich’s blog
How the anti-union party courts working-class voters
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/opening-night-at-the-rnc-with-the
date: 2024-07-16, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
“We are excited to invite you to the 2024 One Page Dungeon Contest. We are accepting submissions starting now and to the end of July. The contest challenge is to create an intriguing and fun dungeon to play… on only one page. We would love to see you get involved.” – Invitation to the 2024 One Page Dungeon Contest and the Dungeon Contest homepage
I submitted an entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest. Since I would like the dungeons to be close to the prep I do for my own games so that I feel like I belong to a community of referees that spends a similar amount of time for their adventures I took some of my (German) prep notes, cleaned them up and added some text boxes using Inskape and decided against spending time on polishing it up.
At the time, my players had a hard time getting past the gate.
Result:
At the time I had a second 10-headed hydra, too…
The boss orcs had 3, 5 and 7 hit dice.
And later, when the players had killed all the orcs, a bunch of goblins led by one Eye Poker resettled the halls.
These are the stats I would use:
orcs HD 1 AC 6 1d6 F1 MV 12 ML 8 XP 100
Clearly, the pyrohydra is the worst if you fight it without multiple lightning bolts or the like.
As for intelligent monsters, I figured that it would be possible to somehow sneak in and overhear orcs talk about the four bosses. If somebody wanted to, the power dynamic could be exploited. As it turned out, though, my players tried to force the front gate with sleep spells, alerted the guards, which brought on the fire demon and all the hell hounds. The enemies were destroyed but the party had to retreat. Next time, the party found the outlook, sent up a ranger with dark vision and a magic item that could charm humanoids. He killed the four orc guards, climbed down the netting into the cavern, found the way to the shooting gallery, started killing all the orcs and that was the signal the others needed to begin the race down the the long stairs. At the bottom, the orcs had cajoled a ten-headed pyrohydra into the Merchant Hall but it died in the first round after being hit by lightning bolts and other spells.
The treasure map to the Cistern of Sulphur does not contain any new monsters or traps; it’s not a new lair or dungeon. It’s part of the treasure gained here so all it takes is a one day trip up the mountains to that sulphur cavern. The only risk involved is random encounters.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-07-15-1pdc
date: 2024-07-16, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
This morning, after a day of Republicans insisting that it is political polarization to suggest that Trump is a danger to our democracy, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in the last days of his presidency, dismissed the classified documents case against the former president. She wrote that “Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-15-2024
date: 2024-07-16, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4AflonZ6S4
date: 2024-07-15, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
I think I get this sometimes. I very rarely get the can’t-sleep-till-4am kind of insomnia anymore — mostly just when I forget to take melatonin. But there’ll often be times when I’m convinced I was awake, thinking about things in a way that feels like being fully conscious, but my Fitbit says I was sleeping. […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/07/15/subjective-insomnia/
date: 2024-07-15, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
(Archive link) I’ve always bought generic versions, assuming they were basically the same, but didn’t think about the manufacturing process or know that store brands had different standards. Since I heard about the eye drop deaths last year I’ve been sketched out by using eyedrops ☹️
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/07/15/generic-drug-issues-%f0%9f%98%ac/
date: 2024-07-15, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Friends, J.D. Vance — Trump’s choice for vice president — said in a social media post on Saturday that the attempted assassination of Trump was “not some isolated incident” and suggested Biden’s campaign was to blame. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/jd-vance-is-unqualified
date: 2024-07-15, updated: 2024-07-15, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/07/apple-introduces-homepod-mini-in-midnight/
date: 2024-07-15, updated: 2024-07-15, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/07/15/apple-approves-first-retro-pc-emulator-ios/
date: 2024-07-15, updated: 2024-07-15, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Some scholars are inflating their reference counts by sneaking them into metadata:
Citations of scientific work abide by a standardized referencing system: Each reference explicitly mentions at least the title, authors’ names, publication year, journal or conference name, and page numbers of the cited publication. These details are stored as metadata, not visible in the article’s text directly, but assigned to a digital object identifier, or DOI—a unique identifier for each scientific publication.
References in a scientific publication allow authors to justify methodological choices or present the results of past studies, highlighting the iterative and collaborative nature of science…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/07/hacking-scientific-citations.html
date: 2024-07-15, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-14-2024-83f
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
NYT – put one of your readers on the op-ed page, so we can talk to your readers about you. It would be the bravest and smartest thing you ever did.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/15.html#a150038
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Al
Sharpton should write the defining op-ed in the NYT, not
George
Clooney, who is very pretty, and a great choice to cast in movies
like
Up In
The Air or
Michael
Clayton, but we don’t know anything about his political
judgement. He hasn’t done anything to tell us who he is in that
dimension. To the extent that we do know anything about him: 1. He’s a
prankster.
2. He has a brilliant and beautiful
wife. 3. He has
a huge
mansion
in Italy which he keeps very private. 4. He’s
rich.
We have nothing in common. He should run for office and get in the mix.
The fact that the NYT chose him, that says something about them, they
don’t care what people think, or they think we’re really shallow and
will fall for bullshit like George Clooney. He loves Biden. We didn’t
even know he knew Joe Biden! Why should Clooney have more of a say in
this than I do? Tell me what
Nancy Pelosi
thinks, or Al Sharpton. Or give
Michael Moore
a shot. He has a lot more skin in the game than Clooney. I’d love to
read an op-ed by
David Frum.
Liz Cheney.
Elie
Mystal.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/15.html#a130217
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
We. Need. To. Organize. Democrats should roll out new initiatives with the same skill as Apple rolls out new products. Not the same as Steve Jobs, that’s asking too much. But with focus and showmanship, and a livestream, and fanbois and Al Sharpton in place of John Gruber. Focus our attention on each product (ie climate change, social security, Ukraine, etc), so the ideas don’t get missed, and we can network in support of the initiative. This is all part of the idea of having a democratic.party website that we call call home for our political organizing. None of this pissing in the wind we do on twitter-like systems. Form buddy groups of people we organize with, based on locality or common interests. Organize the people as well as the billionaires are organized. This is what political parties should be in 2024 for crying out loud. We’re missing the point of the mess in our politics. It’s all a mess because it needs to be organized and it’s not. Maybe I should take everything else off my blog now so I can use what little attention I have been able to gather here to focus on this idea.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/15.html#a124845
date: 2024-07-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
We should hire an intern at some J-school to keep track of all of my tweets, write them down, then translate each into a rule for what a news organization should do instead of not do. Flip the sense of the rule in other words.
Then we feed those rules to an AI.
Then we flow in the news stories of the day from various sites through the same AI for translation. Yes I know they’d complain vociferously, but which ones you use don’t matter because the AI algorithm will translate whatever they are to Dave Winer tense.
Then of course publish them to another site called The News That Helps Us All Stay Sane.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/15/122832.html?title=staySaneEvenThoughTheNewsIsTryingToMakeUsCrazy
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
In
today’s Kitty Komix
episode:
“The very cute but also very courageous Wordle Kitty is learning how to
be a surgeon. They brought a mysterious leader into the operating room
and asked the Kitty to please operate on the leader and save his life so
Wordle Kitty got out the
textbook
and read up on brain surgery, even though the patient only had a nick on
his ear, which was admittedly very bloody, she operated on the patient’s
brain and unfortunately the patient died. So we are looking at the scene
where the dead body of the patient is on the operating table and Wordle
Kitty is smoking a cigarette, relaxing and reflecting on what she
learned. She’s still very cute of course.”
http://scripting.com/2024/07/15.html#a115144
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
TWiT studio in Petaluma is shutting down. A lot of great stuff came out of this place. Please take a video of the studio before it closes down for good. I’ve learned this over and over, having shut down a few offices where great stuff was created and forgetting to do this.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/15.html#a114900
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
On
this blog 20 years ago: “Our mission when covering the DNC is to
figure out what goes on at a DNC. On the other hand, some portion of the
15,000 reporters at the DNC will be trying to figure out what we, the
bloggers, are doing at the DNC. I suspect most of them will conclude
that we don’t belong there, in the same way most of the early articles
about weblogs concluded we are not going to kill professional
journalism.” This turned out to be true.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/15.html#a114043
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Shownotes for today’s Podcast0 episode.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/15.html#a113507
date: 2024-07-15, from: John Naughton’s online diary
The joys of travel An exhausted young couple trying to catch up on sleep in a crowded departure lounge. Quote of the Day “You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks” Dorothy Parker Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/monday-15-july-2024/39634/
date: 2024-07-15, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
@Sandra recently wrote Usenet had to die, arguing that Usenet was wasteful, everybody carrying a copy of everybody else, including spam and binaries. I agree with all the points made. The idea that there is one global network of groups, with everybody carrying all the groups and everybody being allowed to post led to the downfall of Usenet.
Having recently hooked my laptop and server server to a handful of other servers using UUCP, NNCP and NNTP for file copies, mail and news, I just want to emphasize that the same technology can be used to build a different net.
The spam problem arises when two systems “trust” each other and peer messages but one of the systems doesn’t act on abuse and moderation reports. Perhaps Usenet generated too much of a workload for system administrators so they stopped following up on those reports. Perhaps some servers had become too big to ban.
I think we have the exact same problems with fedi. Some instances seem too big to defederate from.
Unfortunately, individual blocking doesn’t work. If my posts end up on an unmoderated server because somebody I like is following me, the post shows up in the federated feed on that server and all the other users that I don’t like can comment and those comments are sent back to me. I can block them all individually or block the large instance including my small number of friends. That instance has become too big to ban.
To come back to net news: From my point of view, the protocols are not to blame for the downfall of Usenet. It was the lack of moderation that killed Usenet. It was the ease of setting up web forums and being able to moderate them that made Usenet irrelevant. In the end, to all these people federation was not as important as moderation.
Administrators were unwilling to drop the groups that were overrun with people that needed moderation. This is a problem on all platforms with groups, e.g. Reddit.
Administrators were unwilling to ban the instances that didn’t moderate their users. This is a problem on all federated platforms, e.g. Mail.
Administrators were unwilling to create new groups for people in their niches. At least nobody seems to be making that mistake again. IRC, Reddit, Discord – they all demonstrated that ad-hoc group formation and self-moderation was viable.
This is why I think moderation, group forming and selectivity of federation are the most important quality of a platform.
We can have a small network of servers offering mail and news exchange, like in the old days. The problem is unmoderated growth.
2024-07-04. I got a long reply by @Sandra, reproduced in its entirety below.
Ah, that’s not a super new post, it’s from September 2023. I dug it out again since we were talking about Illuminant, which seems awesome. It uses hashtags only as post keywords and instead, if I understand things correctly, relies on FEP-1b12 to provide group support.
I think we have the exact same problems with fedi. Some instances seem too big to defederate from.
It’s not quite the same thing.
Yes, it’s a bad thing that I’ve being hesitant to defederate from m.soc even though I get more spam from it over Fedi than I’ve been getting from email fro the past several years.
But I’m still only getting individual posts from m.soc or any other server. (Which is also why hashtags don’t work the way people think.)
On Usenet, the typical behavior would be to carry the whole thing. Currently, I get dozens of spam messages from m.soc. If I were to mirror the whole thing (which is possible with AP relays, and is what would be necessary for hashtags to work like channels, me mirroring the entirety of all the non-banned servers), I’d have to deal with thousands of messages. My server would croak.
Unfortunately, individual blocking doesn’t work. If my posts end up on an unmoderated server because somebody I like is following me, the post shows up in the federated feed on that server and all the other users that I don’t like can comment and those comments are sent back to me.
A problem. But again something that was way worse with usenet because on there, not only would I mirror or moderate abusive replies to me. I had to mirror abusive replies to everybody.
BTW, I’m, for the most part, glad that the servers-that-can-comment aren’t allowlisted, that it works like email, that I can get comments from anyone. The downside of that is having to ban ban ban like crazy, but if it didn’t work like that I’m not sure it even would be federated.
I can block them all individually or block the large instance including my small number of friends. That instance has become too big to ban.
A problem. But on Usenet, every instance was too big to ban since every instance was expected to carry everything.
Individual blocks is one way around it. That’s why I, a small instance op, while I’ve banned many small mainly-abuse instances, my need to ban the big sloppily moderated silos like m.soc or threads is a li’l lower since I don’t have hundreds of users to protect, which a midsize instance would have. I can absolutely see why midsize “safe space” instances would ban m.soc for example.
Also I “silence” every instance since I don’t have a “whole known network” tab.
Killfiles was a user-level way to mute users on newsgroups. So there was some mitigation, but Fedi additionally has several other moderation tools like instance bans or silencing.
More fundamentally: ActivityPub is about sending individual posts. Usenet was about mirroring entire servers. Those two are not the same.
To come back to net news: From my point of view, the protocols are not to blame for the downfall of Usenet.
The context that I wrote that Usenet post last September was to rant about hashtags. (A topic that I’m gonna return to every now and then until the group/tag situation gets a li’l better, which might require new UX affordances or perhaps only education.)
That problem, summarized:
#tidying posts” or “I wanna go back and
take a look at all of my already-followed-friends
#mosstodon posts” or even for filtering out stuff. I.e.
it’s OK as a tool for subsets and intersection
And that’s absolutely a protocol level problem!
A protocol level problem that Usenet had even without hashtags. (Well, there was one hashtag: Kibo.)
I’ve said a couple of times that servers mirror each other and for the
sticklers in the audience I’ve got to add that not literally
every server carried every group. For example, some
didn’t carry Anarchists Lunatics Terrorists a.k.a. the alt
hierarchy. But that’s the fundamental intended flow. Group mirroring.
So in that way, Usenet is unlike mailing lists, where individual
messages are sent to individual users. FEP-1b12 group servers on Fedi
(like PieFed and MBin) are awesome because they get the best of both
worlds of the “only send the relevant posts” nature of mailing lists,
and the “we’re hosting this post anyway so we only need to store it once
in the SQL” nature of Usenet. As long as one user on a Lemmy server is
subscribed to @garderning@foo.bar, like an email user might be
subscribed to a mailing list, it might-as-well display a copy of that
group since it’s getting those messages anyway. It’s not perfect and
we’re still paying a hefty “decentralization tax”, but it’s more robust
than mail and news.
It was the lack of moderation that killed Usenet. It was the ease of setting up web forums and being able to moderate them that made Usenet irrelevant.
Naw, Usenet kept puttering along after that, for a while, until the cost (and legal danger) of mirroring huge binaries archives which was the nail of nails. And that was a protocol level issue.
Fedi absolutely has a moderation problem. That is being addressed
although it seems to me that there are still unsolved problems.
Usenet had a much bigger moderation problem and much of the reason for
that was on the protocol level. We have instances and instance bans to
help moderate clusters of users where each instance op helps moderate
the users on their instance. Moderation is happening on a user level
which makes much more sense than on a group level. (Someone can be a
saint on alt.suicide.holiday but a jerk on
alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork for example.)
But Usenet also has a scalability problem. Resource use. Better moderation wouldn’t be nearly enough to fix that.
Administrators were unwilling to ban the instances that didn’t moderate their users. This is a problem on all federated platforms, e.g. Mail.
Email can’t moderate their users since email isn’t supposed to be world-readable. (With exceptions like mailing lists; we can ban someone who sends abusive messages to those.) But even so, instance banning is very common on email.
We can have a small network of servers offering mail and news exchange, like in the old days. The problem is unmoderated growth.
Last time I talked about this I got the world’s most stubborn reply guy on my neck who (since he was on a huge instance) could use hashtags to find at least some amount of interesting posts and was resistant to change. Since I mentioned scalability issues and how my server would croak if it were to try to mirror even one of the big instances, he started going on and on about “scalability is only for capitalists”.
Yet another case of Smolnet Wishful Thinking Syndrome. The kind of thinking that hates Eternal September more than anything but keeps designing protocols that lead to more Eternal Septembers since they’re about everyone-seeing-everyone and then they resort to technical gatekeeping or even bullying to keep people out. Not into it.
My criticism of Usenet’s protocol here has nothing to do with capitalist scaling, which is about “throwing computers at it”. Sure, that’d be one solution to the protocol problems inherent to Usenet and relay-laden-ActivityPub.
Real Smolnet scaling is about designing protocols that are about connecting people to people (and to topic groups or other communities), and in a non-wasteful, mottainai way create small overlapping villages instead of one big shout-loud-and-go-viral channel.
There are two kinds of protocols. Those where everyone must see everything (like Antenna and CAPCOM, and Twitter), and those where that’s not the case (like ActivityPub and email).
Here are three network layouts:
First we have a centralized network. One hub server and then every client is a spoke connected to that center core. The most efficient way to organize an “everyone-must-see-everything” protocol, but vulnerable to disasters like meteor strikes, nuclear explosions, billionaire takeovers, or earthquakes.
Then we have a decentralized network. Several hubs connected to each other, mirroring each other. Usenet worked like that. The hubs need to be just as beefy as the ones in a centralized network. This has some advantages like redundancy and robustnesss, and it’s more politically appealing to the anarchists that built the internet. (Not sure why since there’s still two tiers and a mod group that rules everything for everyone.) It can be wasteful. It can handle everyone-must-see-everything protocols. It can also really shine when everyone doesn’t need to see everything, like IRC which is super efficient. IRC is a brilliant protocol design that, like a mailing list, only sends the messages to a server that that server needs.
Finally we have a distributed network. No hubs. It looks more like a mesh where every machine is connected to only a handful of “nearby” machines. This type of network is an absolute disaster for the everyone-must-see-everything scenario! Redundant to the point of wastefulness. That’s a future we must fight tooth and nail! And that’s exactly where the relay-centered version of ActivityPub was headed, and that’s what would be “needed” for hashtags-as-groups-and-discovery to “work”.
Here’s where we the grassroots federalized ancom degrowth community need to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves because even though energy and e-waste is underpriced, a capitalist for-profit silo company would never in a million years set up a system like this because it’s too wasteful ever for them, while we’re liable to do so since each instance op only sees their own costs, not the cost for the network as a whole. The megacorps are OK with centralization because for them, the power consolidation in the first two network types is a positive, while for us it’s a huge negative so we’re drawn to the third type, so we need to be really careful and really responsible here.
But as bad as this layout is for everyone-must-see-everything, it’s really awesome for protocols where everyone doesn’t need to see everything. It’s economical, robust, cozy. ActivityPub (without the relentless mirroring) is a good fit here. I can follow a handful of users and be connected to their instances and only their posts are sent to my instance, I don’t mirror the entire server. It’s actually pretty awesome! It’s good for moderation too because I only need to moderate my “neighborhood”. Yeah, a “neighborhood” is the perfect analogy for this; neighborhoods that can and overlap but are still small and managed. A system set up like that can remain smol and cozy even as it invites everyone on Earth. It’s great. ActivityPub is awesome.
2024-07-08. I got a reply from Adam Sjøgren regarding Sandra’s comment on hashtag use in Illuminant.
ActivityPub hashtags are translated to Keywords: and vice versa in Illuminant. So far I haven’t had the need to use hashtags/keywords for more than showing/writing them in Keywords: - I did have a plan to have groups like fediverse.keyword.music, fediverse.keyword.askfedi etc. etc. but I haven’t implemented it.
I’m sorry to say that I do not know what FEP-1b12 is, so I don’t think Illuminant implements any of the group support defined in that.
Since Illuminant is very much driven by what I personally want and feel like implementing/have the energy to implement, it has a kind of skewed subset of what I guess is expected from a fediverse server/user interface by most…
While it is fun for me to hear somebody call Illuminant awesome, I must say that I’m pretty sure there is only one person in the universe who actually runs it. Being proven wrong would be awesome, though.
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-07-02-moderation
date: 2024-07-15, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Friends, I want to ask you, candidly: How are you doing? The last two weeks — beginning with the Biden-Trump debate when Biden looked and sounded even older than his years and Trump lied even more than usual, followed by the Democrats’ public agonizing over whether Biden should drop out, and then Saturday’s attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania — have been harrowing.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-are-you-coping
date: 2024-07-15, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Shortly after 6:00 yesterday evening at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a shooter on the roof of a building about 400 feet from the stage appears to have shot eight bullets at the former president and into the crowd. Trump appeared to flinch and reach for his right ear as Secret Service agents crouched over the former president. When the agents got word the shooter was “down,” they lifted Trump to move him out. He asked to get his shoes and then to put them on.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-14-2024
date: 2024-07-15, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
I’ve always had a hard time keeping up with flossing, which is embarrassing 😓 even though I know I’m not alone in this struggle. Getting habits to stick takes me a lot of work. But after a couple decades of the “brute force” / “guilt trip” approach, shaming myself clearly wasn’t making me any better […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/07/14/self-care-thats-not-driven-by-shame/
date: 2024-07-15, updated: 2024-07-16, from: Daring Fireball
Make them all say, as Trump himself did after a school shooting massacre in Iowa this year, that we “have to get over it, we have to move forward.”
https://daringfireball.net/2024/07/its_the_guns
date: 2024-07-14, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
The polarizing effects of social media
https://steady.substack.com/p/our-fractured-country
date: 2024-07-14, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/american-conversations-secretary-595
date: 2024-07-14, from: Matt Haughey blog
It's pretty incredible that MetaFilter turns 25 years old today. Barely anything on the internet sticks around for this long.
MetaFilter predates LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. It's older than Wikipedia and Blogger. Other similar sites sprang up after it like Digg, then reddit, then Quora, but
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/happy-birthday-metafilter/
date: 2024-07-14, updated: 2024-07-14, from: Bruce Schneier blog
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/07/upcoming-speaking-engagements-38.html
date: 2024-07-14, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
On the last day, we decided to go for a walk nearby instead of getting on the train immediately. We took the train to Yvonand and turned towards the hills, spending most of our time in the forest. This is route 129.
When leaving the fields around Yvonand and entering the woods, the autobahn arches high above. If only it were a fantastic train and not a triumph for car culture.
This small rivulet must have cut the canyon.
This bridge marks the beginning of the way up, if I remember.
Once you leave the forest, you’re on the plateau above. We ate lunch at the Hotel de Ville in Chavannes-le-Chêne.
Gewöhnliche Wegwarte
Cichorium intybus
And here’s a weird one from the night before: Apparently the square in front of the castle is bathed in blue light at night, as if a train station bathroom trying to keep drug addicts away.
Somewhat creepy.
#Switzerland #Pictures #Plants
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-07-14-yvonand
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The shownotes for today’s Podcast0 episode. The shownotes pages now have a player. Still have a little more work to do on it. I like this because it’s a lightweight project, which is something I need while the world is boiling over.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/14.html#a142259
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-07-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
This blog 20 years ago today.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/14.html#a135152
date: 2024-07-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
BTW, I’m intermittently locked out of my Threads account. They say it has to do with automated stuff they don’t explain. I don’t have any apps that do anything with Instagram or Threads. I tried changing the password. Anyway, I was just starting to like the network, it has its own feel, and have made some friends there, but I have no energy to fight it, at least not right now. If you don’t see me over there, this is why.
How I found out about Trump’s assassination. By accident, I was watching CNN when they switched over to his rally. I listened to the first few minutes, ugly lies, the usual disgusting stuff, so I switched over to season 6 of Line of Duty, which isn’t very great. I couldn’t focus on the show. I got my iPad and checked out Bluesky and saw a message from someone regretting that he hadn’t been killed, and somehow I knew that “he” was Trump, so I switched back to the news, and saw the live events, Trump asking for his shoes, and then doing that disgusting thing with his fist, looking right into the camera. He’s 100 percent television actor. Either the whole thing was staged, or he just thinks that way, it didn’t cross his mind that a bullet aimed at his brain had barely missed killing him. He’s thinking of his business model. Now I must confess my first thought was just like the person on Bluesky. Now Trump who lies about being a victim, really is a victim, and we’ll never hear the end of it. And it didn’t take long before a random Republican asshole was saying this was Biden’s fault for saying Trump would end democracy, which he has said he will, promised to do, and we saw him try to do it on Jan 6. And the CNN reporter went along with it, saying the temperature has to be lowered on both sides. There it was. Both sides. It didn’t take any time for the Republican talking points to dominate. This was Biden’s fault they all agree. Occam’s Razor says this is over. We aren’t going to vote in November. The deal is done because the journos, who really control who is elected, have made their choice. I’ve yet to hear another explanation from them.
If someone from Russia or Ukraine were to read the previous paragraph, they’d nod their heads and say the US is now Russia. That’s how our journalism and politics work. The oligarchs have sold out to the dictator. This is what it’s like after that happened. People inside big companies look the other way all the time, and try to compartmentalize. Now their malaise becomes ours.
BTW, if Biden steps aside don’t expect the Repubs won’t sue saying it’s illegal, so guess what – not only don’t you get Biden, you don’t even get a replacement. The election will be like a Russian election, with just one actual candidate on the ballot and a few total losers for appearances. A great card to hold in your pocket. I bet they have the arguments already written.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/14/133420.html?title=morningCoffeeNotes
date: 2024-07-14, from: Robert Reich’s blog
And last week’s winner
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-caption-contest-opening-night
date: 2024-07-14, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
This is on my bucket list to see performed live, but the closeup shots in this are fun to see how different sounds are produced. I love watching the musicians get into it — the bass player was really going to town. The coordination of dozens of people to play complex music together is one […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/07/13/the-rite-of-spring/
date: 2024-07-14, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
As Maine writer E. B. White famously wrote to a man who said he had lost faith in humanity: “Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.” I’ll see you all then. — Notes: https://thesidingspring.com/2016/07/14/a-letter-from-e-b-white/
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-13-2024
date: 2024-07-14, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-12-2024-c51
date: 2024-07-14, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Friends, My first thought on hearing about the attempted shooting of Donald Trump at a rally today in Pennsylvania was “I hope to god he’s okay.” I thought this for the usual reasons we human beings hope that other humans are safe from harm. But I had another reason in the case of Donald Trump.
