People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
Jack Smith knows what he’s doing. January 6th indictment reworked to accommodate the Supreme Court’s ruling:
Prosecutors have not dropped any of the four charges that they initially brought against the former president. However, the newly retooled indictment has carved out some of Trump’s alleged conduct, including allegations about the attempts to use the Justice Department to promote his false claims of election fraud.
Submitted on app update to Apple and now feel kind of in limbo, like I can’t do anything else until they approve it. Checking email… reload, reload. It’s not even a major update.
Claude’s Artifacts feature is really well done. I asked it to create a web page with various info, and it previews the page right next to the chat, with a toggle to go from HTML to rendered. ChatGPT is still my go-to AI helper but this is impressive.
Very insightful Greg Sargent interview with James Carville. Two take-aways for Democrats. 1. Avoid NPR politics. 2. Appeal to college-educated white men. Most of them vote Republican, but with Walz on the ticket, they have a special ambassador, he represents that straight-talking country folk are part of the Democratic coalition. It's still true that white voters are the majority. Get a small number to vote Democratic could be enough to win the election. It never is about policy. It's about whether you are like them. That's what it means to avoid NPR politics. And btw, imho -- getting the press to like you might not be good. I wonder if the Dems would ever have the courage to sever itself from the journos. Imagine Harris saying "If the press says we're bad you know that means we're good." She could say that in her big interview. 😀
Good news from The Verge, the Biden administration is providing $521 million to states to expand EV charging. Houston’s getting a bunch of cash. Also interesting: grants for tribes in Washington and Florida to install charging stations on reservations. But not New Mexico? I-40 could use something.
Doug Jones has a roundup of several XOXO blog posts.
Rainy morning at Lazarus on Airport. The sun is starting to come out now and I want the rain back. ☕️
Craig Hockenberry’s slop is good pairs well with John Gruber’s post I linked to yesterday about trusting sources in a web filled with AI-generated content. Craig:
Search engines you can’t trust because they are cesspools of slop is hard to imagine. But that end feels inevitable at this point. We will need a new web.
We’re going to see more and more Google alternatives, maybe some paid like Kagi. And some will even need to use AI just to get rid of all the AI-generated content. 🤪
A small, probably unfair, book rant… When I start a fantasy book and discover it’s written in first person, I groan a little. It takes a unique story or very good author to pull it off. (Thinking of Robin Hobb.) Even great books would be a little better in third person, with multiple perspectives. 📚
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
The reason I asked if NYT reporters sign NDAs with the NYT, then when a reporter leaves the NYT they can write a book about WTF happened at the NYT, and it would be an instant best seller imho.
Do NYT reporters sign NDAs with their employer, the NYT?
Molly White after speaking at XOXO:
I mentioned that I’ve been feeling this a lot over the last few years, even as I too am witnessing what many of us think about as “the web” rotting right in front of our eyes. Working outside of that rot pile, and perhaps motivated by it, there are so many people who are excited about the potential for a better web.
New AI-based Alexa set to launch in October, possibly as a $10 subscription:
The revamp of the voice assistant, which documents say will include a daily AI-generated news summary, would come just weeks before the U.S. presidential election.
I think this price will be a tough sell, but running AI does cost money. It’s just that Alexa is not a productivity tool in the way ChatGPT Plus can be.
We’re starting to know more about Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest:
Durov was being temporarily detained on suspicion of involvement with distributing child sex abuse material and drugs, money laundering and working with organized crime, according to a press statement released by French prosecutor Laure Beccuau.
When news broke yesterday, I noticed several bloggers write that we didn’t know enough yet to really judge, a restrained take that I appreciate. I figured this might come down to refusal to honor search warrants, but could be deeper too.
John Gruber blogging about the AI-enhanced photos in Google Pixel 9:
Everyone alive today has grown up in a world where you can’t believe everything you read. Now we need to adapt to a world where that applies just as equally to photos and videos. Trusting the sources of what we believe is becoming more important than ever.
This is it. If we want authenticity, we have to be intentional in what we read and watch. “For you” is a trap.
Saying bye bye to the beach house to head back to Brighton.
