Fediverse Governance Drop
[Erin Kissane]"Back in the fall, I wrote about a research project I was diving into with Darius Kazemi. Now, after a few months of prepping and conducting interviews with people who run Mastodon and...
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Using AI to feed my toddler on a road trip
This past week I embarked upon two long car drives — from Philadelphia to Cape Cod and back again — with an almost-two year-old. He’s a remarkably good traveler who takes everything in his stride (as...
View ArticleThe FTC’s noncompete agreements ban has been struck down
[Jess Weatherbed at The Verge]"A federal judge has blocked the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements that make it difficult for workers to join their employers’ rivals or launch...
View ArticleWhat We Learned In Our First Year of 404 Media
[The 404 Media team]"In the last year, we learned that the technical infrastructure exists now for even non-technical journalists to build a sustainable site that can receive money from subscribers....
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More Unoffice Hours
Back in May, I announced Unoffice Hours, inspired by something Matt Webb had established with his community. Anyone could book a 30 minute meeting with me, for any reason, on a Friday. No money, no...
View ArticleAndy Jassy on using generative AI in software development at Amazon
[Andy Jassy on LinkedIn]Andy Jassy on using Amazon Q, the company's generative AI assistant for software development, internally:"The average time to upgrade an application to Java 17 plummeted from...
View ArticleIs the Open Source Bubble about to Burst?
[Tara Tarakiyee]"I want to talk about three examples I see of cracks that are starting to form which signal big challenges in the future of OSS."I had a knee-jerk initial reaction to this post - what...
View ArticleThoughts on a new image for the fediverse
This proposed image for the fediverse is good; I like it a lot.But I don't know that the combative language on this site is helpful. The Meta iconography isn't right, I agree, but there's something...
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I love Reeder despite this persistent niggle
I love hanging out in Reeder. I subscribe to thousands of feeds, and it handles them well for me. But it does make it hard for me to prune them once I’m subscribed.I found myself looking at this...
View ArticleStart-up incubator Y Combinator backs its first weapons firm
[George Hammond at the Financial Times]"Y Combinator, the San Francisco start-up incubator that launched Airbnb, Reddit, Stripe and Coinbase, is backing a weapons company for the first time, entering...
View ArticleA Developer's Guide to ActivityPub and the Fediverse
[Martin SFP Bryant at The New Stack]"How do you get started if you want to integrate your own software with ActivityPub? [Evan] Prodromou has written a new book on this very topic, and we caught up...
View ArticleTelegram messaging app CEO Durov arrested in France
[Ingrid Melander and Guy Faulconbridge at Reuters]"[Telegram founder] Durov, who has dual French and United Arab Emirates citizenship, was arrested as part of a preliminary police investigation into...
View ArticleThe toll of America's anti-trans war
[The 19th]"To understand how the anti-trans agenda could reshape all of our lives, The 19th set out to examine how the laws and rhetoric behind it are impacting Americans."My friends at The 19th dive...
View ArticleProductivity gains in Software Development through AI
[tante]Tante responds to Amazon's claim that using its internal AI for coding saved 4500 person years of work:"Amazon wants to present themselves as AI company and platform. So of course their...
View Article*Online Participation Disclaimer
[Heather Bryant]Arguing that it's harder to just be a human online, Heather Bryant has published an online participation disclaimer:"The following disclaimer applies to participation in discourse as...
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What I've learned about writing a book (so far)
Some things I’ve learned about me and writing recently:I’m impossibly distractible. It’s a learned behavior: I check all my social networks, take a look at my email, fall down Wikipedia rabbit holes....
View ArticleLabor union disapproval hits 57 year low, per Gallup survey
[Emily Peck at Axios]"70% of Americans said they approved of unions, per Gallup's most recent poll, conducted in August."This represents a giant change in American society: labor unions haven't been...
View ArticleSilicon Valley’s Very Online Ideologues are in Model Collapse
[Aaron Ross Powell]""First, there’s what I’ve referred to in the past as the “Quillette Effect.” Because we believe our own ideas are correct (or else we wouldn’t believe them), we tend to think that...
View ArticleThe secret inside One Million Checkboxes
[Nolen Royalty]"On June 26th 2024, I launched a website called One Million Checkboxes (OMCB). It had one million global checkboxes on it - checking (or unchecking) a box changed it for everyone on the...
View Article'This Is What the US Military Was Doing in Iraq': Photos of 2005 Haditha...
[Brett Wilkins at Common Dreams]"After years of working with Iraqis whose relatives were killed by U.S. Marines in the 2005 Haditha massacre, American journalists finally obtained and released photos...
View ArticleNo one’s ready for this
[Robin Rendle]Robin Rendle on Sarah Jeong's article about the implications of the Pixel 9's magic photo editor in The Verge:"But this stuff right here—adding things that never happened to a...
View ArticleBeing quietly radicalised by being on holiday
[Matt Webb]"The EU may (or may not) be making technology policy missteps, but they are gently and patiently promoting a certain way of life which feels globally very, very special, and fundamentally...
View ArticleI like the way you like it like that
[Ghost]"It's a simple thing, but it's kind of a big deal. With this milestone, Ghost is for the first time exceeding the functionality of a basic RSS reader. This is 2-way interaction. You publish,...
View ArticleFounder Mode
[Paul Graham]"In effect there are two different ways to run a company: founder mode and manager mode. Till now most people even in Silicon Valley have implicitly assumed that scaling a startup meant...
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Threads is trading trust for growth
Yesterday the Internet Archive lost its appeal in the digital lending case it’s been fighting for the last few years.In March 2020, the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, launched a...
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