#technology (171 links)
Via Hacker News.
Decoherence grows relative to the rate of change of a system, and it increases faster the more decoherent a system is, resulting in runaway exponential growth. It is not a new phenomenon, and humans have always countered it through carefully finding ways to do more with less, unifying disparate patterns and models into a cohesive whole. However, the widespread use of AI is currently producing it at a rate that is unsustainable.
- The End of the Internet stratechery.com
Excellent mini-essay walking through early blogging on the open internet, social and the algorithm era, subscriptions and small-group Cosyweb.
When it comes to economics, or social interaction, or now software, the only viable approach is to become smaller; smallness at scale, though, means there is not one global market, but infinite local ones. “Local” might mean geographic, or it might mean a private network; what many markets definitely means is many opportunities, because economies of scale matter less than the ability to meet new needs that only arise at the level of the association.
The core problem is that digital games are licenses, which forces an ongoing relationship between you and the owner of the media. And because there’s an ongoing relationship with you, any ongoing licensing relationships that the media owner has also affect you and your games. If a license for any media that is part of the game expires or is affected, then the developer must take action to remediate the “issue” in the game.
- What Even Is An OS Now? — A Final Ward sockpuppet.org
We’re building a phone that isn’t designed to run fixed-function applications. I doubt anyone will ever get up on a stage and show off a AAA mobile game (that nobody plays) on it. It’s not for TikTok and short-form video, though I guess you can ask it for that. You can ask it for whatever: it’ll build apps for you, on the phone, whenever you want.
- Why do we keep lying about growth? alexmhsmith.substack.com
Great mini-essay on business and market growth.
AI is the best thing that ever happened to a company like ours. Not because it changes what we believe, but because it stops us having to compromise. The reason we couldn't stay small, flat and senior at enterprise scale was that making at that scale needs bodies. Now, it doesn’t.
Via benterrett.
- What AI has in common with dogs economist.com
Back when dog technology was first being developed, it was far from obvious that it was safe for people—who were literally inviting wolves into their caves. They had to train them not to eat babies. Thousands of years later, dogs still sometimes escape and go rogue. But overall, people are happy with how things have worked out. (It did not end so well for the Neanderthals.)
Great analogy.
- ‘It’s absolutely criminal’: US tipping culture has reached the UK – and is causing chaos theguardian.com
Many of those I speak to think tech has pushed this change forward – and rapidly. The shift away from cash towards card and digital payments is usually framed as removing “friction”, says Prof John Vines, the chair of design informatics at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics. “It’s about being more convenient. This is all a trend towards making it easier for us to spend our money.” The software in point-of-sale terminals prompts the customer for a tip. “These systems are presented as a way of making giving a tip easier. We don’t have to think about it too much, we don’t have to fiddle with coins and notes. But, really, it’s about encouraging us to spend more.”
- The Last Technical Interview. Today we will pour one out for the… | by Steve Yegge | Medium steve-yegge.medium.com
Great diagnosis, not great solution.
Gibson imagined cyberspace as a space of corporate dominance from the start; Silicon Valley built the open internet first, then converged on his dystopia anyway. The difference is that, in Neuromancer, that convergence was the disaster to be resisted. They turned his warning into a product roadmap.
- A plan for Europe’s tech fightback economist.com
As American and Chinese technology becomes more deeply embedded, there is much talk in Europe’s capitals about the importance of tech sovereignty. But the truth is no European country, including Britain, is big enough to stand on its own feet across the full range of ai-related technologies. The tech supremacy of America and China is in large part a function of their hemispheric scale. European nations will need to learn to act at hemispheric scale themselves if they want to compete.
- The unraveling of fictions - by Azeem Azhar exponentialview.co
These fictions were functional adaptations to real constraints. The job, the credential, the expert, each solved a genuine problem in a high-friction world. But the constraints changed. And now the adaptations are decaying.
Via leebryant.
- Chris McCausland: Seeing into the Future – an astonishing look at how tech is changing disabled people’s lives | Television | The Guardian theguardian.com
I love having my perspective shaken up. A glass screen with no buttons sounds like the most excluding device imaginable, McCausland acknowledges, yet his phone became the most accessible tool he’s ever used. He’s similarly excited by the Meta Specs – I don’t think that’s what they’re actually called – which are always on and offer live video interpretation, telling you what you’re looking at. Like a phone but, crucially, wearable. “The one thing blind people never have is two hands free,” he observes.
Ah, the memories.
- There Is No AI Revolution wheresyoured.at
Accompanying guide for this most excellent exhibition.
Great article on commercially available assistive tech: AirPods Pro 2, Wandercraft Personal Exoskeleton, Emporia ME.6, Nobi Pendant light and Xigxag X-book.
- Against the dark forest wrecka.ge
Over the last 9 months we’ve deleted close to 80% of the marketing footprint off ibm.com. Tens of thousands of pages. The result is that traffic, conversion and all our experience and NPS metrics are up. It was a gross project but I’ll tell you about it.
Just build a normal website.
Via benterrett.
- The OpenAI Keynote – Stratechery by Ben Thompson stratechery.com
The best UI, though, is no UI at all, or rather, just one UI, by which I mean “Universal Interface”.
- Tech Independence sive.rs
Tech independence is not depending on any particular company or software. The only tools you need are the common open source basics built into any Linux or BSD operating system — free public-domain tools that are not owned by anyone, and can run on any computer.
- Apple TV, now with more Tailscale tailscale.com
Say goodbye to your legacy VPNMake the switch to Tailscale Product Solutions EnterpriseCustomersDocsBlogPricing DownloadLog inGet started Get started Login…
By Amy Castor and David Gerard We need your support for more posts like this. Send us money! Here’s Amy’s Patreon, and here’s David’s. Sign up today! “all this…
- Pluralistic: Autoenshittification (24 July 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow pluralistic.net
Today's links Autoenshittification: How the computer killed capitalism. This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018 Colophon: Recent publications,…
Like many breakthroughs in scientific discovery, the one that spurred an artificial intelligence revolution came from a moment of serendipity. In early 2017,…
- Spatial computing: Why Apple’s headset is not the most important thing it announced this week | The Independent independent.co.uk
The most important thing that Apple announced this week was not actually that Vision Pro, even if it is what has grabbed the headlines and will decide Apple’s future. Instead, it is the software and operating system that underpins it, and which could be around for much longer than the headset itself.
If Apple’s vision wins out, the fear is that we’ll all sink into our cypberpunk home theater goggles, consuming content as the world burns — it’s almost enough to make you wish for the metaverse.
Spicy.
- On Jackpot Technologies, or, what Apple's new headset is actually *for* davekarpf.substack.com
- Apple Vision stratechery.com
What is more striking, though, is the extent to which Apple is leaning into a personal computing experience, whereas Meta, as you would expect, is focused on social. I do think that presence is a real thing, and incredibly compelling, but achieving presence depends on your network also having VR devices, which makes Meta’s goals that much more difficult to achieve. Apple, meanwhile, isn’t even bothering with presence: even its Facetime integration was with an avatar in a window, leaning into the fact you are apart, whereas Meta wants you to feel like you are together.
- Hundreds of lives ruined. Not a single person held to account. And still: silence on the Post Office scandal | Marina Hyde theguardian.com
It might be nice to think it is, but I don’t believe that getting angry on Twitter particularly helps anyone other than Elon Musk, or that sitting in judgment on every passing infraction is anything other than a hiding to nothing. It is not effecting change – it is the illusion of effecting change. It is exactly the sort of looking-the-wrong-way that allowed the Post Office scandal to happen – and if we keep doing it, the people who really run things will keep on getting away with it.
Some astounding (to me at least) stats.
New research from Ofcom has found that a fifth of three- and four-year-olds now have a phone of their own, and are already using them to watch streaming services, use social media and play games online.
A weak take.
- Twiddler doctorow.medium.com
There’s another, simpler explanation for the enshittification of platform economics. Rather than trusting the self-serving narratives of the Prodigal Techbros who claim to have superhuman powers but promise that they have stopped using them for evil, we can adopt a more plausible worldview: that tech barons are ordinary mediocrities, no better and no worse than the monopolists that preceded them, and any differences come down to affordances in technology and regulation, not an especial wicked brilliance.
- The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok | WIRED pluralistic.net
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
- Small tech scattered-thoughts.net
Role models matter. So I made a list of small companies that I admire. Neither giants nor startups - just people making a living writing software on their own terms.
Via Popular.
( This is the text of a keynote talk I just delivered at the IT Futures conference held by the University of Edinburgh Informatics centre today. NB: Some typos…
WASHINGTON D.C.—The world's richest person, Jeff Bezos, unveiled his sweeping vision for humanity on Thursday afternoon in a Washington D.C. ballroom. With the…
- The Software That Shapes Workers’ Lives newyorker.com
By dragging icons on a screen, supply-chain managers schedule factory work down to the second. Illustration by George Wylesol This past December, the…
- What I’m up to: tech leadership - Laughing Meme laughingmeme.org
I told myself at the 6 month mark of fun employment I’d publish my notes about what I’d been up to. I missed that. Did some yak shaving. Having a couple of…
- The best Apple Watch face and complication combos wareable.com
Sadly the Apple Watch doesn't support third-party watch faces, and while that might change, you're stuck with what Apple has to offer right now. But that…
An in-depth history of the most important pop innovation of the last 20 years, from Cher’s “Believe” to Kanye West to Migos Illustrations by Ella Trujillo It…
- Raised by YouTube theatlantic.com
Max Guther ChuChu TV, the company responsible for some of the most widely viewed toddler content on YouTube, has a suitably cute origin story. Vinoth Chandar,…
- Why Are Enterprises So Slow? zwischenzugs.com
tl;dr In this article I want to explain a few things about enterprises and their software, based on my experiences, and also describe what things need to be in…
A new kind of social network There’s a new social network in town. It’s called Mastodon . You might have even heard of it. On the surface, Mastodon feels a lot…