...and I absolutely hate it. 🙃

Foundation models will never again be trained on the fertile soil of the open web circa 2022. By polluting it with synthetic content, and undermining its supporting technical, social, and legal infrastructure, they are very quickly destroying the raw material on which they were trained.

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Once an internet joke, the revival of the Kalmar Union is now a semi serious topic written about in Swedish mainstream newspapers.

Including the Nordic bomb of course

Commission presents Roadmap for effective and lawful access to data for law enforcement The European Commission presented today a Roadmap setting out the way forward to ensure law enforcement authorities in the EU have effective and lawful access to data.

Well, this horrible idea refuses to die so we should refuse to let it pass and start organizing again.

ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

As a resident spelling n*zi, I must inform you that while the German “Sieg” does resemble the English 'zeeg' (or rather 'zeek' due to the unvoiced 'h' in “heil”), German “zeig” sounds like: en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/zeig#Ge... (ie ~'tzike' [t͡saɪ̯k] or ~'tzigue' [t͡saɪ̯ɡ], again depending on next sound)

Spoken or written? I'd assume spoken Portuguese could be harder to figure out (for a Spanish-speaker) than vice versa—the European variant at least, or maybe both?

😮

It's great that Bluesky offers custom algo feeds. For instance, this one looks interesting. It promises to prioritize posts from rare posters, but not sure how it works in detail:
bsky.app/profile/did:...

Yes. Recently, I noticed X doesn't even notify me about all of them. Only when I blocked the rest I realized my follower count was actually down after the most recent run to Bsky. Now I don't bother to block&report anymore because it's just too much work...

On Building Git for Lawyers Over this past weekend, Twitter discovered the problem that I have dedicated the past four years of my life to solving. Why don't lawyers and other non-coders use git?

If you know how software developers coordinate their work, the kind of “version control” lawyers rely on feels like a cruel joke. So why is there still no git for contracts? TL;DR: You can't just sail around Docx and UX, and going through, THERE BE DRAGONS! jordanbryan.substack.com/p/on-buildin...

Leaked Documents Show What Phones Secretive Tech ‘Graykey’ Can Unlock The documents provide never-been-seen insight into the current cat-and-mouse game between forensics companies and phone manufacturers Apple and Google.

New: One of the first leaks ever about Graykey, the iPhone hacking tool used by cops to break into people's phones. Granular detail about what info it can get and from what phones and which operating systems. A reminder to always always update your OS immediately:

www.404media.co/leaked-docum...

David Brooks in the Atlantic, Ideas section: “How the Ivy League Broke America”. Combined Brooks quote from article and the Atlantic newsletter: “The meritocracy isn’t working ... [It] needs to be transformed from top to bottom.”

Screenshot of original tweet by @phl43 on X. Text: "Trump: I'm assembling a team." Image: a crude Wojak meme with a dozen or so of Wojaks with their head or brains deformed or replaced in various ways, e.g., a hamster wheel instead of a brain.

Idea vs. Execution

Does Ribera oppose nuclear as a matter of principle? How is nuclear not aligned with EU climate targets? Odd. I mean, if Czechs (or anyone else for that matter) think they can build and make it work despite the cost risk...why not?

Open source software community calls projects & maintainers to be alert for social engineering takeover attempts. The recent XZ Utils backdoor operation does not look isolated, and “a similar credible takeover attempt [was] intercepted by the OpenJS Foundation.” openssf.org/blog/2024/04...

Wow. Dead giveaway, no heads up needed. I mean, a lot of casual old jokes and insults, from harmless punch-ups to pretty vile tropes, still pass for humor among European nations, but try looking for an adult who finds that kind of Germans≈Nazis shit as anything but retarded, let alone funny.

I can't recall whether this requires toggling some setting first, but quickly pressing the right-side (lock) button 5 times in a row puts you in the same mode. More presses, but I find this one easy to remember and quite quick too.