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Wavelength 2.0 for iOS has now been waiting for review at Apple for 6 days... I just have a feeling they are trying to figure out if they can force me to use in-app purchase somehow. Google approved it in a day.
Spent a little time this evening adding another database backup location. My primary database server has been so reliable, but eventually I know my luck will run out.
The video rental store as “third place”. “Decades before recommendation algorithms, video stores served as social hubs where conversation and camaraderie became a form of taste-making.”
Mark Gurman reports on OpenAI's upcoming device:
The product — essentially a smart speaker without a display — will be shaped like a doughnut that’s roughly the size of a hockey puck [...] The battery-powered item will be designed to work in different positions — in a user’s hand, say, or placed on a nightstand or kitchen counter.
Can't wait to see this. 🍩
I've switched Micro.blog's Standard.site content format to the Markpub.at lexicon. It includes just Markdown, not HTML, but should be compatible with other AT Proto apps now.
The End of Google Search. The internet giant is “changing the formula” of its products and media folks are beginning to assume that there will be no search traffic in the future…and fretting about their survival.
Alan Jacobs blogged about the Demis Hassabis quote I wrote about:
The Big Tech companies have been so indifferent, or even hostile, to human well-being for so many years now that their promises are worth absolutely zero.
I feel the same way about much of big tech — especially Meta, TikTok, and to an extent Google, Amazon — but I sort of compartmentalize Demis (and some others) as having their own principles. I do think that a lot of the distrust in AI is because big tech burned all the goodwill, though. See also: Meta glasses, privacy, etc.
Media Matters: “ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 194 segments about the three major heat events” that hit the US this summer and not a single one of them mentioned climate change. Not one!
Fun little review by Marcin Wichary of a 1984 flying video game called Sopwith, which was never supposed to be released to the public (an event that the game’s creator didn’t learn about until years later).
I love this little video of burbling pasta sauces (sound on). Wish there was a 10-hour YT version for work background noise…
I’d Be Lead Harpooner on the Pequod If It Wasn’t for These DEI Hires. “I’m just telling you that it’s getting hard out there for us blue-collar Nantucket lads when all the ships’ owners are catching the Abolitionist Mind Virus.”
This blog post from both Sundar Pichai and Demis Hassabis has the unfortunate title "The next chapter of our AI momentum", but it does contain some interesting perspectives. Demis will be spending more time with Isomorphic:
As you've heard me say many times, I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health. It’s time for AI to prove its unequivocal value to the world, and what better way to demonstrate that than to help finally cure diseases like cancer.
There are, of course, already positive and negative effects from the AI industry. Based on our beliefs about the technology, we'll either amplify or downplay aspects of it. It's pretty easy to find both the good and bad.
Earlier this year I wrote about AI for health. That was a fairly cautious, practical essay. I'm confident it will be proven correct because frankly, it wasn't even very ambitious.
I've heard Demis use the phrase "cure all disease" a few times before. It sounds at the same time outlandish and exactly the right goal. Maybe we don't get there in our lifetimes. Maybe we never get there. But I certainly don't fault anyone for having a dream to make everyone's life better.
Sam Altman posted on X the other day:
i would rather be an optimist and work hard than a pessimist posting about why things won't work.
Many people are cynical about Sam Altman. I get it. But I agree with him here and while his post wasn't about Demis, it fits.
Matt Mullenweg blogs about the division in WordPress between bloggers and site builders:
Many of the OG developers of WordPress, including myself, tend more towards the blogging side. Writers, photographers, podcasters, journalists, the people for whom a reverse chronological stream on the homepage is the most obvious thing in the world.
This is a disconnect I noticed years ago. So much effort was spent on competing with Squarespace and Wix, WordPress felt bloated for regular bloggers. I'm glad Matt is aware of it.
25 things that explain America, including personal injury lawyer advertisements, Crest Whitestrips, Costco rotisserie chicken, and the Pizza Hut lamp. “The T-shirt cannon merges three American obsessions: guns, sports and freebie giveaways.”
Just remembered I can use Micro.blog's batch find-and-replace to update all of my previous x.com links to use xcancel.com instead. Easy.
Whether we like it or not, X seems to be growing again, after the first couple years with Elon Musk overseeing the social network's implosion. I stopped posting in 2013 and will never post again. But I have been linking to posts there. Starting today, I'm switching all future X links to xcancel.com.
This is a completely fantastic look at how the Enigma Machine works. Jared Owen constructed a 3D model of the German cipher device and clearly walks the viewer through how the electricity flows through the machine to scramble and unscramble secret messages.
When electricity travels through one rotor it changes the letter once. But remember, we have three of these rotors and they each have different wirings on the inside. When electricity travels through all three of them it changes the letter three times.
Then at the end, we have the reflector. This also has 26 metal contacts. Inside is more wiring that connects the letters in pairs. So it goes in as one letter and then comes out as another letter.
To the right of here is the input wheel. It has 26 wires that go in and connects to the 26 metal contacts.
Let’s put this all together. Electricity flows through one of the 26 wires, let’s say the wire for the letter Y. Then it gets changed to a different letter at all three rotors. Then it hits the reflector, which again, changes the letter. And then it goes back through the rotors again which changes the letter three more times. And it comes back out on a wire that represents a completely different letter. And if you were counting, this means the letter was changed seven times.
Seriously, this is one of the best explanations I’ve ever seen of anything on YouTube — by the end of it, I was pretty sure I could now build an Enigma Machine if I needed to. (via benn jordan)
Tags: Enigma machine · Jared Owen · video
I read the PDF report from Mastodon about usability problems and feedback from the community. Imani Joy in the intro:
We were beginning to find our way in terms of creating a development roadmap, but beyond major projects and obvious requirements (based in security, compliance, and grant-based deliverables) it was often unclear which feedback to take action on first.
Imani has done great work on this. But Mastodon development has always felt like a slow-moving open source project to me. What they need is the same energy as a startup.
How Wildfire Smoke Is Reshaping Childhood. “Repeated smoke events are changing children’s daily routines, limiting opportunities for outdoor play and social interaction and reshaping how many families experience summer.”
This guy hooked his hamster’s wheel up to Strava — Mollie is logging 5-6 miles per day.
Like a lot of other people, I want to know where Bluesky is headed, and I learned a lot about that in this podcast interview with Bluesky's new CEO, Toni Schneider. We have crossed paths in tech, but this is the first time I've heard him speak at length. They have a business model in mind, sounds something like Substack, which is probably a good idea. Their value is in the many millions of users they have. Highly recommend this podcast if you want to hear the story direct from the CEO.
Trying to parse the significance of Jeff Dean leaving Google after 26 years, and Demis Hassabis stepping into a new role as chairman of DeepMind. Is this a shakeup, or just that everyone is ready for a change? Sounds more amicable than the usual AI executive reshuffling.
Astronomers have measured the size of the largest galaxy: it’s 1.7 million light years across (17x the diameter of the Milky Way) and contains ~3.4 trillion solar masses in stars.
RSS.chat now supports WebSub. This means that posts on RSS.chat will appear instantly in compatible feed reader apps.
Tragic reporting from Bloomberg about how safer TikTok algorithms were withheld from some users so TikTok could A/B test engagement:
Chase’s account was stuck in a so-called filter bubble, an online echo chamber that pumped out repetitive content the algorithm predicted he’d want to watch. There he received an “onslaught” of suicide and self-harm content, according to the document.
If you accidentally create a harmful product, that's one thing. It can be fixed to prevent future harm. But if you have the fix and refuse to deploy it widely, to me that's inexcusable.
Good news that the iPhone announcement will likely be an in-person live event. It’s past time. And it’ll be a more personable way to introduce John Ternus.
“In this video, I’ll take you from farm to factory to show you how chocolate is made, and at the end, we’ll use all the chocolate you’ll see in this video to attempt the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest chocolate bar.”