My Pixel 9 Pro keeps giving me tips on using it when I bring it up, as I'm trying to read an important message, or change something at a red light. I'm always distracted when I use the phone, and by adding more distractions to sell me on something, that's not their right. I paid $1300 for this new phone. And also I can't figure out how to get the phone to ring when I get a call. I keep missing important calls.
People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
Just posted Core Intuition 613 with our discussion of the iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia releases, changes that might affect our apps, and the new limitations on control key shortcuts.
Afternoon session
Afternoon session
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Long live hypertext!
"Links — connections between ideas — are the magic system of the Internet. They power the open web, enriching online writing. Generative AI is the parasitic dark magic counterpart to the link."
I love Tracy's observation that "online, we think together", which also calls back to the original definition of the word blog ("weblog" = "we blog").
Links are context, further thought, community. Removing that context removes depth. They're inherent to the web: they're what the web is. When platforms want to strip-mine value from our work - our writing, our thinking - by lifting it away from its community and context, we need to fight back. And fight back we will.
[Link]
Dear Creative Commons (@creativecommons.org @creativecommons@mastodon.social @creativecommons@x.com), Can we have CC-NT licenses for no-training (ML/LLM, GenAI in general), just like we have CC-NC for non-commercial?My previous post¹ reminded me that I’ve been creating, writi...
I keep discovering uses for ChatGPT. I think you could use it very effectively to learn a language, for example. I know how to say this in English, could you explain to me, in English, how to say it in French. I bet it's very good at that. I am using it to learn to write SQL code that takes advantage of all the arcane features they've added over the years to handle cases that come up in real database work. It's anything but a new language, and efficiency is everything -- so I think they pretty much have all the cases covered. I remember how frustrating it was to learn Algol when all I knew before that was Fortran and Basic. It would have been great to have ChatGPT to coach me on it.
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Venture Funding To Black-Founded Startups Remains Stagnant
[Chris Metinko at Crunchbase News]
"Last year, venture funding to Black-founded U.S. startups cratered — totaling only $699 million and marking the first time since 2016 that the figure failed to even reach $1 billion, Crunchbase data shows."
And:
"While las...
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
gaining access to anyones browser without them even visiting a website
PSA for anyone who switched to Arc as their main browser (hey, that's me!): it had a giant vulnerability that the team, at the time of writing, doesn't seem to have acknowledged publicly, although it has been patched.
Aside from the lack of disclosure, perhaps the biggest ongoing concern for me is in the last few paragraphs:
"while researching, i saw some data being sent over to the server [...] this is against arc's privacy policy which clearly states arc does not know which sites you visit."
Sigh.
[Link]
Matt Mullenweg
• Matt
Are Investors Bad?
Some people have been interpreting my comments around private equity and investors as saying they’re all bad and you should never accept investment or trust a company that does… I don’t agree with that at all. Investors are amazing, they’re the fuel of entrepreneurship and capitalism and responsible for most of what we enjoy today. … Continue reading Are Investors Bad? →
Long live hypertext!
Earlier this year I took a photo of the demolition of the Frank Erwin Center. Today I took another photo. It’s just a huge field of dirt and grass, no sign that anything was ever here.
20 years and two weeks ago, I came up with undohtml.css and unknowingly invented the mechanism of CSS Resets (AKA reboot or reset style sheets¹) which spawned numerous variants, many still in broad use on the web today.https://tantek.com/log/2004/09.html#d06t2354A one sentenc...
Here’s the video for my demo at FediForum. It shows Micro.blog posting, cross-posting services, and an experiment with Ice Cubes. Still not sure if the Mastodon API support will ship or in what form.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders forced us to think of her as a mom. I don't think that works out very well in her favor, probably best not to go there.
Session in the square
Session in the square
Dan Moren writing at Macworld:
Look, I’m not ungrateful. But the truth remains that nothing stokes the imagination of what Apple could do with its products more than the release of its latest hardware and software. As iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and all the other latest OSes arrive, we not only end up picking through all of the new features and capabilities to see what’s new but also coming to grips with what’s not there and the limitations of what is.
This is so true. Software developers know that when you release feature A, people will ask why not feature B too. 🙂
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
FTC Staff Report Finds Large Social Media and Video Streaming Companies Have Engaged in Vast Surveillance of Users with Lax Privacy Controls and Inadequate Safeguards for Kids and Teens
[Federal Trade Commission]
"A new Federal Trade Commission staff report that examines the data collection and use practices of major social media and video streaming services shows they engaged in vast surveillance of consumers in order to monetize their per...
Letting the Republicans say “well, Democrats make up facts too” is an unforced error. We do not make things up. We do not knowingly spread misinformation. Policy is rooted in what’s really happening and a desire to make people’s lives better. 🇺🇸
I blogged when the JD Vance couch joke started making the rounds that we should avoid disinformation even when it’s funny. So perhaps there’s a bit of karma with the fake Springfield, OH story. Trump would make up racist things about immigrants no matter what, of course! Our standard is higher. 🇺🇸
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
Project Analyzing Human Language Usage Shuts Down Because ‘Generative AI Has Polluted the Data’
[Jason Koebler at 404 Media]
"The creator of an open source project that scraped the internet to determine the ever-changing popularity of different words in human language usage says that they are sunsetting the project because generative AI spam has poison...