This week's notable links
This is my regular digest of links and media I found notable over the last week. Did I miss something? Let me know!
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Elon?
[ Kate Conger at the New York Times ]
""Time and again, Ms. Yaccarino has faced similar situations, as Mr. Musk is always one whim away from undoing her work. Ms. Yaccarino’s task of repairing and remaking X’s business over the past year has been complicated by Mr. Musk’s seeming disregard for the advertising industry and his constant unraveling of her efforts."
This reads like damage control - she's possibly leaving, although if that happens it's not clear if she's jumping or she's being pushed.
I have little sympathy: she knew what she was getting into. And she'll do just fine. But the project of supporting Elon Musk's work has been one of supporting right-wing ideologies, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and reactionary politics. Nobody who aligns themselves with this gets a pass.
I thought this detail was interesting:
"The internal documents about X’s revenue show that Ms. Yaccarino hopes to net $8 million in political advertising this quarter. If she succeeds, it would represent a marked increase from the company’s political earnings when it was still Twitter — the company earned less than $3 million from political advertisers during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, the last cycle before it banned political advertising."
This is likely what Musk's Trump alignment is about: he wants to encourage that side of the aisle to advertise extensively on X. And likely, they'll bite. Nothing is as deeply-felt or as ideological as it appears; this is, however ham-fistedly, about money.
[ Link ]
Moderate drinking not better for health than abstaining, analysis suggests
[ Ian Sample in The Guardian ]
"England’s former chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, has said there is no safe level of alcohol intake. A major study published in 2018 supported the view. It found that alcohol led to 2.8 million deaths in 2016 and was the leading risk factor for premature death and disability in 15- to 49-year-olds. Among the over 50s, about 27% of global cancer deaths in women and 19% in men were linked to their drinking habits."
This is important: older studies which suggested that there are some health benefits from light drinking are wrong, and the harms of alcohol have been understated. It's bad for you, end of story, and the alcohol industry has used similar techniques and arguments to the tobacco industry in order to cover that fact.
And the outcomes may be really bad:
"Last year, a major study of more than half a million Chinese men linked alcohol to more than 60 diseases, including liver cirrhosis, stroke, several gastrointestinal cancers, gout, cataracts and gastric ulcers."
It's disappointing news for people like me who enjoy a drink from time to time - but it's better to know than not. There's a real trade-off to those glasses of wine.
[ Link ]
Flipboard Brings Local News to the Fediverse
[ Carl Sullivan at Flipboard ]
"Flipboard has worked with local papers and websites since its inception. Now, as part of the gradual federation of our platform, we’re bringing some of those publications to the fediverse."
Flipboard turns the fediverse on for a whopping 64 US-based local and regional publications. This is big news - if you'll pardon the pun - and an enormous step forward for bringing journalism onto the fediverse. I love how easy Flipboard has made it.
I also really like this approach:
"To learn more about what fedi folks actually want when it comes to local outlets, we simply asked them. They told us the specific publications they’d like to see, and voted in a poll on the region they were most interested in. (The Midwest, it turns out!)"
Asking people is always the best approach. And as I've learned, the fediverse is full of highly-engaged, well-informed people who are hungry for great journalism.
[ Link ]
Elon Musk’s transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson, speaks in first interview
"Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, said Thursday in her first interview that he was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child for being queer and feminine."
Her full Threads thread is worth reading . She seems to have her head screwed on correctly and comes across as a far better person than the father she disowned.
On puberty blockers, she says:
“They save lives. Let’s not get that twisted. They definitely allowed me to thrive.”
That's really the kicker with Musk's current nonsense. Lives are at stake, and while his rhetoric might soothe whatever it is inside him that is hurt by his child disowning him for being a bigot, taking it to the national policy stage and endangering vulnerable communities is far from okay.
It's also a wild distraction when the valuations of his companies are at risk. Privately, investors and partners have to be up in arms: this is not what he needs to be concentrating on. In effect, one of the world's richest men is having such a public personality crisis that it's putting the well-being of both a very vulnerable group and his wealthy backers at risk.
[ Link ]
Runway Ripped Off YouTube Creators
[ Samantha Cole at 404 Media ]
"A highly-praised AI video generation tool made by multi-billion dollar company Runway was secretly trained by scraping thousands of videos from popular YouTube creators and brands, as well as pirated films."
404 Media has linked to the spreadsheet itself , which seems to be a pretty clear list of YouTube channels and individual videos.
Google is clear that this violates YouTube's rules. The team at Runway also by necessity downloaded the videos first using a third-party tool, which itself is a violation of the rules.
This is just a video version of the kinds of copyright and terms violations we've already seen copious amounts of in static media. But Google might be a stauncher defender of its rules than most - although not necessarily for principled reasons, because it, too, is in the business of training AI models on web data, and likely on YouTube content.
[ Link ]
The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
[ Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge ]
"Last week, the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz declared their allegiance to Donald Trump in their customary fashion: talking about money on a podcast.
“Sorry, Mom,” Ben Horowitz says in an episode of The Ben & Marc Show. “I know you’re going to be mad at me for this. But, like, we have to do it.”"
No, you don't.
As I've discussed before , investors like Andreessen and Horowitz are putting concerns about crypto regulation and taxation of unrealized gains over a host of social issues that include mass deportations, an increase in death sentences, military police in our cities, and potential ends to contraception and no-fault divorce. It's myopic, selfish, and stupid.
It looks even more so in a world where Trump is reportedly already regretting appointing JD Vance as his Vice Presidential candidate and where Musk has reneged on his $45M a month pledge to a Trump PAC. They come out looking awful.
The progressive thing to do would be to starve their firm: founders who care about those issues should pledge not to let a16z into their rounds, and other VCs should refuse to join rounds where a16z is present. This is likely too much activism for Silicon Valley, but it would send the strong signal that's needed here.
The desire for profit must never trump our duty of care to society's most vulnerable. Agreeing with this statement should be a no-brainer - but we're quickly learning how many would much rather put themselves first.
[ Link ]
Elon Musk says 'woke mind virus' 'killed' estranged trans daughter
[ Anthony Robledo at USA Today ]
"Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his estranged transgender daughter was "killed" by the "woke mind virus" after he was tricked into agreeing to gender-affirming care procedures."
The thing is, his daughter Vivian is perfectly happy with the decision. The thing that's causing Musk pain is not her decision to transition; it's that she's cut him off and no longer speaks to him. Interviews like this illustrate why.
That so many of his decisions are governed by this absolute loser energy says a lot. Just calm down, call your daughter, and reconcile.
As USA Today points out:
"Gender-affirming care is a valid, science-backed method of medicine that saves lives for people who require care while navigating their gender identity. Gender-affirming care can range from talk or hormone therapy to surgical intervention."
It's not done flippantly; a huge amount of care and attention is undertaken, particularly for minors. This backlash is pure conservative hokum: it does not have any scientific or factual basis. It just makes some small-minded, old-fashioned people feel uncomfortable.
[ Link ]
For Good Reason, Apache Foundation Says ‘Goodbye’ to Iconic Feather Logo
[ Christine Hall at FOSS Force ]
"The Apache Software Foundation is making changes in an attempt to right a wrong it unintentionally created when it adopted its name 25-years ago."
This is an unnecessarily awkward article (why describe the existing logo as cool in this context?!) to describe a simple premise: the Apache Software Foundation is slowly, finally, moving away from its appropriation of the Apache name and its racist use of faux Native American imagery.
For a while, it's preferred to refer to itself as ASF, and now it's going to have a much-needed logo change. That's fine, but it needs to go much further. It's past time to just rip off the Band Aid.
Still, this is far better than the obstinate response we've seen in the past to requests for change. A new logo, slight as it is, is hopefully an iteration in the right direction.
[ Link ]
After years of uncertainty, Google says it won't be 'deprecating third-party cookies' in Chrome - Digiday
[ Kayleigh Barber and Seb Joseph at Digiday ]
"After much back and forth, Google has decided to keep third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. Turns out all the fuss over the years wasn’t in vain after all; the ad industry’s cries have finally been heard."
Advertisers are rejoicing. In other words: this is bad.
It's possible that Chrome's "new experience" that lets users make an "informed choice" across their web browsing is really good. Sincerely, though, I doubt it. Moving this to the realm of power user preferences rather than a blanket policy for everyone means that very few people are likely to use it.
The result is going to be a continued trend of tracking users across the web. The people who really, really care will do the work to use the interface; everyone else (including people who care about privacy!) won't have the time.
All this to help save the advertising industry. Which, forgive me, doesn't feel like an important goal to me.
Case in point: Chrome's Privacy Sandbox isn't actually going away, and this is what Digiday has to say about it:
"This could be a blessing in disguise, especially if Google’s plan gets Chrome users to opt out of third-party cookies. Since it’s all about giving people a choice, if a bunch of users decide cookies aren’t for them, the APIs in the sandbox might actually work for targeting them without cookies."
A "blessing in disguise" for advertisers does not read as an actual blessing to me.
[ Link ]
When ChatGPT summarises, it actually does nothing of the kind.
[ Gerben Wierda at R&A IT Strategy & Architecture ]
"ChatGPT doesn’t summarise. When you ask ChatGPT to summarise this text, it instead shortens the text. And there is a fundamental difference between the two."
The distinction is indeed important: it's akin to making an easy reader version, albeit one with the odd error here and there.
This is particularly important for newsrooms and product teams that are looking at AI to generate takeaways from articles. There's a huge chance that it'll miss the main, most pertinent points, and simply shorten the text in the way it sees fit.
[ Link ]