Werd I/O

This kind of legislation is fundamentally against the public interest and, I believe, should always be opposed:

"These changes radically expand the capability of EU governments to surveil their citizens by ensuring cryptographic keys under government control can be used to intercept encrypted web traffic across the EU. Any EU member state has the ability to designate cryptographic keys for distribution in web browsers and browsers are forbidden from revoking trust in these keys without government permission."

If this passes, the government of any EU member will have the power to silently intercept and read encrypted web traffic. It undermines the right to privacy and creates a chilling effect for activists and other targeted, vulnerable groups. #Democracy

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"In the past few years, causality inverted: Start-ups and entire markets were manufactured from whole cloth to meet the demand of overcapitalized venture funds searching for a home run."

I am certain I'll found another startup, and I'm certain it will be a revenue-based business that will not be designed to raise investment. Perhaps ironically, in doing so, it may be more valuable as a result. #Technology

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This is the kind of AI declaration I prefer.

“As we know from social media, the failure to regulate technological change can lead to harms that range from children’s safety to the erosion of democracy. With AI, the scale and intensity of potential harm is even greater—from racially based ‘risk scoring’ tools that needlessly keep people in prison to deepfake videos that further erode trust in democracy and future harms like economic upheaval and job loss. But if we act now, we can build accountability, promote opportunity, and deliver greater prosperity for all.”

These are all organizations that already do good work; it's good to see them apply pressure on AI companies in the public interest. #AI

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For me, this paragraph was the takeaway:

"We affirm that, whilst safety must be considered across the AI lifecycle, actors developing frontier AI capabilities, in particular those AI systems which are unusually powerful and potentially harmful, have a particularly strong responsibility for ensuring the safety of these AI systems, including through systems for safety testing, through evaluations, and by other appropriate measures. We encourage all relevant actors to provide context-appropriate transparency and accountability on their plans to measure, monitor and mitigate potentially harmful capabilities and the associated effects that may emerge, in particular to prevent misuse and issues of control, and the amplification of other risks."

In other words, the onus will be on AI developers to police themselves. We will see how that works out in practice. #AI

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This is an interesting point of view, but I don't think I fully buy it: while these bodies set technical standards, they have no ability to actually enforce.

Consider the situation with Internet Explorer back when it virtually owned the web (and, to a lesser extent, the situation today with Chrome). Standards could be set, directions could be established, but there was no-one to stop Microsoft from going their own way. #Technology

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I've lived this, and I'd go so far that it's a sure sign of a dysfunctional team: when non-technical leadership pushes for lower estimates based on their own business hopes and doesn't accept the ones given by their in-house experts.

"Pushing for a lower estimate is like negotiating better weather with the meteorologist" covers it nicely. #Technology

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Palestinians in Gaza are, by and large, not fans of Hamas, and are not aligned with eliminating Israel.

"By and large, Gazans do not share Hamas’s goal of eliminating the state of Israel. When presented with three possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as well as an option to choose “other”), the majority of survey respondents (54 percent) favored the two-state solution outlined in the 1993 Oslo accords."

Of course, they likely also don't favor being bombed to oblivion. #Democracy

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"The future is returning to an artisanal web, where you cultivate your niches and small communities, where maybe you don’t become a millionaire and a star, but you do feel a sense of belonging, and maybe make enough to get by. I think that’d be okay, honestly."

I think that's more than okay. I'd say it's optimal. Let's get there quickly, please. #Technology

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"Like so many rich media executives (see: Politico owner and CEO Mathias Döpfner), Finkelstein’s incapable of seeing most of the fatal flaws in modern U.S. journalism, whether it’s the inherent class, race and gender biases in most newsrooms, the steady erosion of trust caused by feckless “both sides” or “view from nowhere” reporting, or the underlying flaws with the ad-engagement models that now prop up — and violently derail — efforts to educate and inform the public."

This is not wrong. And you could see this implosion coming a mile off. It's just impressive to see it happen so quickly. #Media

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I think the conclusions here are the right ones. In particular, ensuring privacy by design is a far better strategy than pushing for informed consent, because the vast majority of people are not informed about the implications of data collection (even without considering Gen-Z's ambient comfort with the idea of being tracked). And DEI in the context of trust and safety is an obvious and hard requirement.

These are not standards the industry will come to voluntarily. Regulation is required in every jurisdiction and eventually as an international agreement. Without international cooperation, it'll be too easy for companies (and governments) to hop jurisdictions and use locales that are convenient for their data collection needs. #Technology

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A really accessible guide to privately using a cellphone.

One thing I think might be missing here: you probably shouldn't use the phone near your home or regular haunts. While not connecting to your home wi-fi is probably smart, cell tower records will still show your most common locations, which can also be used to identify you. #Technology

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This is a complete misunderstanding of the nature and value of unions: they're not just for low-income workers. Unionization can help all workers and make healthier workplaces for everyone.

Even with that aside, this kind of public rhetoric pits a manager directly against his workforce in a way that surely can't be healthy for company culture or morale. A case study in what not to do.

TL;DR: unions are good, actually. #Labor

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Interesting to see this comment from Benedict Evans, who is far from an ideological internet participant: his social commentary very often leans conservative, and he was formerly a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

But enough is enough. Musk's promotion of antisemitic sources and tropes has pushed him off the platform with no plans to return. Others will be watching and will certainly follow. #Technology

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Really fun to see indieweb concepts like POSSE gain attention again.

When I built POSSE into Known, I knew it would be a matter of time before API changes cut off access (and it was). These days, in a world made of open source protocols, these restrictions don't exist: my website is syndicated directly to Mastodon, and soon Threads, and nobody can stop me from doing so.

Syndicating to closed platforms is almost pointless because their owners will close the doors once they feel threatened. But open platforms have no doors. You can share your content there in a hundred different ways.

It's truly a social web. #Technology

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Baldur Bjarnason talks frankly about the cost of writing critically about AI:

"It’s honestly been brutal and it’ll probably take me a few years to recover financially from having published a moderately successful book on “AI” because it doesn’t have any of the opportunity multipliers that other topics have."

I worry about the same thing. I've noticed that AI-critical pieces lead to unsubscribes on my newsletter, and that most lucrative job vacancies relate to AI in some way.

I'm not sure I regret my criticism, though. #AI

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I have no real arguments here: this is a concise, simple list of things an engineering manager should strive for. There's a world of detail not represented here, of course, but these are the headlines. #Technology

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"In addition to being important for protecting the information that journalists are provided by all types of sources, encryption is key to making sure that information and communications within news organizations are kept safe as well."

This is my finding too from my time spent leading technology teams in newsrooms: encryption is an absolutely vital tool that keeps journalists and stories safe.

Backdoors might make life slightly easier for law enforcement, but they have so many negative downstream effects that they should not be considered a real solution in the public interest.

Backdoors are an antipattern; let's keep them out of our software. #Technology

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An in-depth assessment of moderation needs on the fediverse. Findings here include that most instances aren't incorporated and don't have liability insurance.

I'd bet that these numbers are actually better than if they'd done the same study for all community spaces on the web: web forums and so on. Considering the open nature of the fediverse - let's please just call it the social web - this is promising.

Which is not to say that folks don't need help, and that there doesn't need to be support for instance operators as they come online and support different communities. I love that this survey was undertaken, and I'm curious to see how this data is used. #Technology

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Erin Kissane's full series about Meta's conduct in Myanmar and its involvement in the genocide of the Rohingya. This is required reading for anyone in tech, and good for everyone who touches any of Meta's products to know.

"Meta bought and maneuvered its way into the center of Myanmar’s online life and then inhabited that position with a recklessness that was impervious to warnings by western technologists, journalists, and people at every level of Burmese society." And then it utterly failed the community it had placed itself in the center of. #Technology

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"I’ve now been using [Mastodon] for about two months and I am here to tell you that it is, in principle, what we should want the internet to be. If you have been remotely interested in Mastodon but had reservations about joining because you thought it would be difficult, confusing, or otherwise annoying, it is not."

Co-signed. I love Mastodon. That's not to say that there aren't problems to solve - of course there are - but it is exactly the kind of open flourishing of disparate communities that the internet should be.

The fragmentation issue that Jason Koebler dicusses here - you have to post to a million different networks to get the word out - will come out in the wash when social media lands on a "winning" protocol. Which it will - and it will be the ActivityPub standard that underpins Mastodon, WordPress, and (soon) Threads. #Technology

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Encryption has been perennially under attack since (at least) the establishment of the commercial internet. Lawmakers argue that backdoors will make us safer; in reality they will harm journalists, activists, domestic violence victims, and lots of vulnerable communities, and put real chilling effects on free expression.

The bottom line, for me and many others, is that privacy from government and law enforcement is a human right and a fundamental prerequisite for living in a democracy. The alternative is a surveillance state.

So what can we do about it? Like many ongoing debates that have real effects, this seems to be a place where we just have to keep fighting. So let's do that. #Technology

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Reuven Lerner was banned from advertising on Meta products for life because he offers Python and Pandas training - and the company's automated system thought he was dealing in live snakes and bears.

And then he lost the appeal because that, too, was automated.

This is almost Douglas Adams-esque in its boneheadedness, but it's also a look into an auto-bureaucratic future where there is no real recourse, even when the models themselves are at fault. #AI

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Ed Zitron is characteristically on-point and razor sharp on the topic of Marc Andreessen's ludicrous "techno-optimism" manifesto. I agree with him: it's a cynical, disingenuous piece that has nothing to do with optimism.

"In 5000 words, Marc’s only real suggestion is that social justice or government regulation is bad, and that economic growth is good and makes people rich. This unbelievably wealthy man, one that has made rich people even richer and lost regular people billions of dollars, does not have any solutions, or policies, or ideas." Exactly. #Technology

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If tech companies are going to be credible content producers, they need to be able to erect a firewall between business and editorial. Contrast Apple trying to force Jon Stewart’s hand on China and AI here with John Oliver’s obviously free hand on his show over on Max.

I hope Stewart finds a new home for his work, and that other commentators notice what Apple did here. There are clearly better homes for them. #Media

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Anyone that sets themselves up to be a single point of failure like this will be a target. And here we are, with hackers now able to make authentic-looking police requests for data.

Something that caught my eye in these screenshots: they include Authy, Twilio's 2-factor authentication app. #Technology

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