A collection of 1216 posts
Ben Werdmuller: Leaving the Nazi Bar If I find that the owner of the living room allows people who make me or my friends feel unsafe â or, as is true in this case, pays them to hang out there, and makes money from their presence â I can use the law
David Pierce for The Verge, 2023 in Social Media: The Case for the Fediverse It doesnât make sense that we have a dozen usernames, a dozen profiles, a dozen sets of fans and friends. All that stuff should belong to me, and I should be able to access it
Chris McLeod, Blogging is where it's at, again Maybe Iâm reading too much into it, but stumbling into such a trove of active blogs has enthused me about blogging as a medium again. Itâs sparked a thought that through a combination of increased blogging activity, declining
Steven Asarch for Kotaku, Xboxâs Biggest Flop Was a Decade Ahead of Its Time Microsoftâs follow-up was the Xbox One, the always-online console bundled with the much-maligned motion control accessory known as the Kinect. To be blunt, the consoleâs introduction was a bit of a clusterfuck. It
I wrote a little about this already, but I also wanted to link to Ken Whiteâs Substack Has a Nazi Opportunity because it makes a few points very well and is worth a read. I dislike McKenzieâs apologia for Substackâs policy and for Richard Hanania because it
Hamish McKenzie in a note on Substack: We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power. We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts. Hereâs what
Tim Bradshaw for the Financial Times: Apple Wants AI to Run Directly on Its Hardware Instead of in the Cloud While Microsoft and Google have largely focused on delivering chatbots and other generative AI services over the Internet from their vast cloud computing platforms, Appleâs research suggests that it
Emily Badger, Ben Blatt, Josh Katz for the New York Times: Why Are So Many American Pedestrians Dying at Night? Whatâs even more perplexing: Nothing resembling this pattern has occurred in other comparably wealthy countries. In places like Canada and Australia, a much lower share of pedestrian fatalities occurs
Beeper: Beeper Mini Is Back In the first 48 hours, it was downloaded by more than 100,000 people. The reason for its success is clear: Android and iPhone customers desperately want to be able to chat together with high quality images/video, encryption, emojis, typing status, read receipts, and
Ash Parrish writing for The Verge: Geoff Keighley failed to recognize a terrible year for game developers - The Verge At this point, you cannot talk about how amazing 2023 has been for the quality of games released this year without also mentioning how itâs been utterly disastrous for
Devon Coldeway writing for TechCrunch: Anthropicâs latest tactic to stop racist AI: Asking it âreally really really reallyâ nicely The problem of alignment is an important one when youâre setting AI models up to make decisions in matters of finance and health. But how can you reduce biases
Todd Vaziri: FXRant: The Most Egregious Example of "We Didn't Use CGI" Mythology (So Far) In 2023, I can't believe we're still dealing with these ridiculous, bold-faced lies. "Gran Turismo" had over 1,100 digital visual effects - digital effects
Case Marshall writing for Polygon: Hbomberguyâs 4-hour YouTube plagiarism video set social media abuzz Brewis systematically goes through Somertonâs content, calling out multiple instances in which he plagiarizes â or heavily lifts from, without proper crediting â authors from other outlets, academics, and documentaries. I know itâs a lot
Casey Newton reporting on Googleâs update to their AI backend, Gemini In accordance with Googleâs preference for chaotic branding, Gemini will be available in three âsizesâ: Nano, which is small enough to fit in a smartphone and will power features in the Pixel 8 Pro smartphone starting today;
Charles Pulliam-Moore for The Verge: Pixarâs Turning Red, Soul, and Luca are getting theatrical releases Today, Disney and Pixar announced that Pete Docterâs Soul, Domee Shiâs Turning Red, and Enrico Casarosaâs Lucaâ all of which ended up premiering on Disney Plus due to the covid-19 pandemic