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Gmail is killing independent email
Email is an open system, right? Anyone can send a message to anyone... unless they are on Gmail! School Interviews uses two email servers t...
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AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law
Marc Andreessen famously said that software is eating the world. But the latest and greatest software trend–generative AI–is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law. Like a cruise ship hea…
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Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem
Worldcoin doesn't seem to know what problem it's trying to solve, but they want to scan your eyeballs anyway.
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Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236
How a series of errors on the ground and in the air caused a fully loaded passenger jet to run out of fuel in the mid-Atlantic.
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EU parliament agreement to remove chat control and safeguard secure encryption
This week, the European Parliament's negotiators reached a broad majority agreement on a common position concerning the controversial EU chat control bill. The Commission’s bill proposes bulk scanning and reporting of private messages for allegedly suspicious content by using error-prone algorithms,
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Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
An unhinged polemic
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The least impactful way to spend $300M?
Buying status is as close to bad as a good act can be.
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When did SVB insiders begin to realize they were in trouble?
When did Silicon Valley Bank insiders begin to realize they were potentially in trouble?
249
Beware the Man of Many Studies
Low-quality literatures mean meta-analyses are frequently worse than single studies
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If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
There’s now an open letter arguing that the world should impose a six-month moratorium on the further scaling of AI models such as GPT, by government fiat if necessary, to give AI safety and …
251
The Decline of Usability: Revisited
Three years ago, I wrote a rant about the problems of our current UI paradigm. The complaints I voiced were hardly new or unique, neither was the text what I'd consider my best writing. It was, honestly, mostly a way to blow off steam. It seems I struck a nerve, though, because it's proven to be one of the most…
252
Without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements—A Review
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Tech companies are irrational pop cultures
How to make better software with systems-thinking
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Own-goal football (2022)
In a 1994 qualifying match for the Caribbean Cup, both Barbados and Grenada attempted to score deliberate own goals – because it was the best strategy available.
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The Market for Lemons
New web services are being built to a self-defeatingly low UX and performance standard, and existing experiences are now pervasively re-developed on unspeakably slow, JS-taxed stacks. At a business level, this is a disaster, raising the question: why are new teams buying into stacks that have failed so often before?
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Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)
The struggle for distinction
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Memex is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed (2020)
How to keep an external brain using ideas from 1945 and technology from 2023.
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Homo sapiens declared extinct (1999)
First published in Nature magazine, November 1999.
259
Time to subsidize e-bikes?
We offer tax credits for electric cars — but ebikes are arguably even more transformative
260
Time to end the speed limit in US airspace?
It's time to end the speed limit in US airspace
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Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries
This is not an easy post for me to write, being a bit of a criticism / “you can do better” note for organisers of conferences that cater to a global community.
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Are we doing this again? Yes, we're doing this again
Y esterday I was rudely summoned away from a beautiful autumn day of wild foraging by The King.
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When tech says ‘no’
The tech industry always has a reason why any new laws or regulations are bad - indeed, so does any industry. They always say that! The trouble is, sometimes it’s true, and some laws are (or would be) disasters. So which is it? Well, there are three ways that people say ‘NO!’
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Bye, Gemini
The Gemini protocol was a big part of my COVID-19 lockdown experience. Discovering this underground, small protocol, having long discussions on the mailing list, and most importantly for me, developing software. My terminal Gemini browser, Amfora, was my first public FOSS project, something actually intended for a…
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Facebook confirms it will drop news sharing in Canada under bill C-18
Google has been in the spotlight for the past few weeks with reports that it has been testing removal news links from search results. The move sparked outrage from MPs, who grilled executives earlier today at Canadian Heritage committee. But now it appears Google has company: the Globe and Mail reports that Facebook…
267
Private spies hired by FBI and corporations infiltrate Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp
Leading “threat intelligence” firms are creating fake online personas to gain access to every corner of the web.
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Five Kinds of Friends (2022)
The word “friends” has at least five different meanings: Allies Backstage intimates Fun friends Mutual interests friends Soc...
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Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)
“The seeing, spiritual being, whose manifestation we commonly call conscience, always points with one end towards right and with the other towards wrong, and we do not notice it while we foll…
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Bruce Lee and Me
A reflection on the 50th anniversary of my friend's death.