Werd I/O

Technology news tends to center on the global north, but the implications of technology are global. Rest of World does a wonderful, necessary job shining a light on those stories.

What I particularly appreciate about its coverage is that it's not just critical (although there certainly are critical stories - don't skip learning about nickel mining or the economic effects of digital nomads). There are stories of technology-driven empowerment here too, often in surprising ways. #Technology

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If the Markup is jealous of another newsroom's coverage, you know the stories are good: the Markup has consistently been the most important outlet for investigative technology journalism.

There's a special mention here for 404 Media, which has also been a fantastic addition to the tech ecosystem. I'm grateful that both exist. Both outlets need our support. #Technology

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I enjoyed Get Back and They Shall Not Grow Old, but what's obvious to me after reading this piece is that these upscaled films will look as outdated in 20 years as CGI from 2003 does today. They'll look like cartoons. Not without value, but nothing close to the intended naturalism.

While I think there's still some value in pieces like those two - anything that makes the past more real so we can learn from it more closely works for me, even if it's not going to be as effective a few decades from now - I'm less excited by upscaled True Lies. Give me the imperfect film grain I remember from my childhood. #Media

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It took me several attempts to get into Bridge, but finally, this week, I picked it up again and was sucked in. There are plenty of other novels about traveling multiple universes to see the other yous, and Beukes knowingly stops to play with those expectations. The real story here is about loss, and the memory of a person vs the person they really were. But there's a lot of good science fiction fun to be had along the way. #Fiction

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That an AI model trained on Google Street View photos can look at a picture and figure out where it is isn't much of a surprise, but it's still jarring to see that it's here.

I think the real lesson is that AI undermines security through obscurity, which any security professional will tell you is not a sound approach. It's not enough to assume that information is hidden enough to not be usable; if you want to remain private, you need to actually secure your information.

This has obvious implications for pictures of vulnerable people (children, for example) on social media. But, of course, you can extrapolate: public social media posts could probably be analyzed for identifying details too, regardless of the medium. All of it could be used for identity theft or to cause other harm.

A human probably isn't going to painstakingly go through your posts to figure out information about you. But if it can be done in one click with a software agent, suddenly we're playing a whole other ball game. #AI

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A sober breakdown of what it may mean for Meta's new social network to finally join the open social web (aka the fediverse).

For many people, this has been a hard pill to swallow: while it's clear that Meta has been a human rights disaster, its embrace of open social web protocols is a vindication and (if you'll pardon the double meaning of the term) a platforming of that movement that may lead to the accelerated growth of the open social web itself.

I would like to see more social networks - both new and established - join the open social web. The biggest thing that worries me is having a single whale in the room that can, in effect, dictate the evolution of the protocols in its favor. A multi-polar social web would be a much more user-centric place (just as the web is at its best when there are multiple major browsers). #Technology

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I have so much respect for what everyone at The 19th does. It has one of the best work cultures I've ever encountered, and Amanda is a huge part of that. I'm deeply glad to have worked their and to have worked with her.

The things she talks about here are lessons that can and should be learned by newsrooms, but also by organizations across industries.

And I hope they are. Everyone deserves to work in an inclusive, responsible, transparent, empathetic workplace with a strong culture of care. It shouldn't be down to one non-profit newsroom to do this; it should be everywhere. #Media

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"An investigation by ProPublica and Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism shows how false claims based on out-of-context, outdated or manipulated media have proliferated on X during the first month of the Israel-Hamas conflict."

"[...] We also found that the Community Notes system, which has been touted by Musk as a way to improve information accuracy on the platform, hasn’t scaled sufficiently. About 80% of the 2,000 debunked posts we reviewed had no Community Note. Of the 200 debunked claims, more than 80 were never clarified with a note."

So here's the problem. The question is, on a massive online service, what exactly can be done about it. #Technology

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I think this is right: AI companies, and particularly OpenAI, have a crisis of trust with the public. We simply don't believe a word they say when it comes to privacy and respecting our rights.

It's well-earned. The way LLMs work is through training on vast amounts of scraped data, some of which would ordinarily be commercially licensed. And the stories AI vendors have been peddling about the dangers of an AI future - while great marketing - have hardly endeared them to us. Not to mention the whole Sam Altman board kerfuffle.

I think Simon's conclusion is also right: local models are the way to overcome this, at least in part. Running an AI engine on your own hardware is far more trustworthy than someone else's service. The issues with training data and bias remain, but at least you don't have to worry about whether your interactions with it are being leaked. #AI

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Interesting study. Although I think there are enormous incentives for people to report this way, I'm sure there's a lot of truth to it.

It sounds like the big issue is the kind of informal ideation and conversation that happens really easily when you're in a room with someone but is rarely raised in a remote environment. It's not that ideas, reflections, and back-and-forth can't happen - it's that there's no really great medium for them to happen on. Slack doesn't capture it; emails and documents are too formal. And a brainstorm is an event rather than a whim.

I don't think people stop thinking creatively when they're at home. But there isn't a great forum for them to raise those creative ideas. That's both frustrating for the person and counter-productive for the organization.

So what does a better medium for this look like? I have some thoughts. #Business

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Flipboard is making its entire platform fediverse-compatible, allowing anyone on any fediverse platform (eg Mastodon, Pixelfed, and eventually Threads) to follow content shared there.

"By March Flipboard says it plans to allow anyone on the platform to open their account to the fediverse and allow any Flipboard user to follow any fediverse account from within the Flipboard app. At that point, Flipboard will essentially be an ActivityPub-based platform like Mastodon or Pixelfed but with an interface designed for reading articles instead of bite-sized posts. It’ll be the biggest thing in the fediverse — at least until Threads shows up for real."

Extremely cool. And this is still only the beginning. #Technology

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"Immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country" is something a real Presidential candidate said in 2023. You know which one. Here's a clue: he's by far the frontrunner for Republican candidate, and has a fair chance of being elected for a second term next year.

Nice people made the best Nazis. The people who want to stay out of it, who don't want to offend people by taking a stand, who just want to follow the rules and get by for themselves, even as great harms are being committed upon other people. I think it's up to all of us to let our friends, family, and neighbors know that this kind of rhetoric is wildly unacceptable. It's not possible to support Donald Trump and not be a racist. It's not possible to support Donald Trump and not be, at some level, a fascist. And I think it's important to be loud about it. #Democracy

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This story seems a little suspect, but still worrying:

"A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads."

The official website almost reads like a Yes Men parody of online advertising - and could well be. It could also be a "fake door" test by CMG. I would be surprised if this was legal or permitted by device vendors like Amazon or Google (which is not to say that I trust either of them).

It's hard to imagine that something this egregious could actually be real. Of course, if it was real, it should have been shut down yesterday. #Technology

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Police body cams have turned out to be a sort of trust whitewashing: a way to demonstrate openness without the accompanying requirement to be open at all. In practice, they're a sham.

"Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have been spent on what was sold as a revolution in transparency and accountability. Instead, police departments routinely refuse to release footage — even when officers kill."

This is a characteristically deeply-reported piece from ProPublica which is both disappointing and unsurprising to hear. We need real police reform - we've always needed real police reform. Cameras were never going to cut it alone. #Democracy

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Big news for people who can get pregnant and the people who care about them (which should be everyone):

"New research published by the journal Nature points to the discovery that a single hormone causes nausea and vomiting in pregnancy: GDF15. Researchers found that the amount of this hormone in a pregnant person’s bloodstream before and during pregnancy determines the severity of the nausea and vomiting. GDF15 is released by the body in response to stress, with the receptors of this hormone rooted in the part of the brain responsible for triggering vomiting."

Trials are already underway - with really good hope for effective treatment and prevention. #Health

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Threads is starting its initial real fediverse integration (as it launches into the EU). Exciting times. #Technology

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I've been thinking a lot about leveling engineers lately, and I like this system that Sarah Milstein implemented at Daily very much indeed.

Sarah's just started a coaching practice for engineering leaders, which sounds wonderful to me. #Technology

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This hits the nail on the head:

"No one chasing money in media ever chased Twitter. But anyone chasing power found themselves irresistibly drawn to the platform. And eventually, the platform started to actually deliver that power in ways that continue to reverberate around the world."

I do bristle at the use of Trump and Bernie Sanders as equivalent extremes presented here: one is a fascist demagogue who threatens to undermine American (and perhaps global) democracy, and the other would like people to have healthcare and not die from poverty.

Still, this is why Twitter was important, why it's being missed, and why it was important that it eventually died (albeit not in the way that it actually did). It was about power and influence, wrapped in a dangerous context collapse.

I believe conversation should be democratized: anyone should be able to message the President, or the CEO of Apple, or whichever person is normally behind layers of security and PR and plexiglass. But perhaps not for the benefit of someone else's company, and not in a way that is so fundamentally against the public interest. #Media

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It's reassuring to see Benedict Evans have a lot of the same business questions as everybody else about AI - What actually is this? What will it look like? Will OpenAI be a gatekeeper? Albeit no mention of the ethical issues that are also a hugely important part of understanding the space.

I also found it helpful to see AI hype measured against crypto hype, which reveals how different they actually are.

And, finally, the "everything else" portion is also fascinating, not least because it reveals (through an e-commerce) that most peoples' lives have returned to normal after the covid lockdowns. #Technology

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Really good to hear about this meeting at Meta about joining the fediverse. It sounds like development is continuing apace; I really appreciate the transparency.

I have to admit that I feel a pang of FOMO. This is such an important movement and moment in time for the web. #Technology

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An interesting breakdown not just for people interested in Mastodon - but for anyone who cares about safety on any community platform.

These kinds of prompts turn out to be really useful, with measurable impacts, if they're done right. It's great that an open source project is doing this in the open; we can all learn from what happens next. #Technology

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"The United States has long lagged when it comes to pregnancy-related health. There is a unique danger to pregnancy for Black Americans, who face higher mortality and morbidity rates because of entrenched, systemic racism."

An important series of articles examining what pregnancy looks like in modern-day America - particularly in places where reproductive health rights have been removed, and where outcomes and care are not what they should be.

The American healthcare system is fucked, and it's worse for women, people of color, and LGBT Americans. It's important to throw a spotlight onto the lived experiences of the people who experience the brunt of this. #Health

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No surprise that Black consumers favor local papers that are more reflective of their communities (vs national outlets, which still skew white and male).

"Black news organizations — and also Black reporters at mainstream outlets — understand the local issues better and are less likely to engage in tired tropes and racist stereotypes than national journalists."

One of the most important things we can do to foster trust in media is to hire diverse newsrooms that are more representative of the communities we serve. Surely that's obvious? And yet, journalism as a whole still suffers from the same old diversity issues. #Media

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This is something, but it would be nice to see real ActivityPub support in a way that would allow Spoutible profiles to be first-class profiles on the fediverse.

Still, the nice thing about building in support for Mastodon and BlueSky is that - unlike when I built support for Twitter et al into Known years ago - the networks physically can't shut off or charge for the APIs.

Open networks allow for integration like this without incurring deep supplier risk, as well as much deeper integrations that plug users directly into the networks. All for free.

I'm looking forward to Threads joining the party, too. #Technology

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"The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint Tuesday alleging Mozilla refused to hire Scarlett because of her past labor activism. The agency’s prosecutors called on Mozilla to offer Scarlett the position she applied for in 2021 or a similar role, and to otherwise make her whole for damages as a result of not being hired."

Whatever the outcome of this complaint, there is effective blacklisting in tech. I sincerely hope that people continue to speak out and organize. #Labor

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