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    • Feed Confusion

      I’ve gotten myself in a confused state with regard to my RSS and social media feeds.

      1. I’m using Reeder, which allows you to follow RSS, Mastodon, Bluesky and Micro.blog feeds. I’m following all four of those in a jumble.
      2. I’m also using Indigo, which can follow Bluesky and Mastodon feeds.
      3. I like the native experience, so I’m using the Bluesky app and site. I also use the Micro.blog app and site.

      All this means I see posts multiple times. Since I’m only really using one RSS reader (Reeder), disentangling from this mess will mostly mean being more deliberate about my social media following. I’ll have to unwind where I’m following what people, which could take a while.

    • I just read Dario Amodei’s convincing “We Must Pace the Frontier.” Much has to go right in his plans to create measurable effect, and with our current administration against policing AI companies for fear of giving China an advantage, I’m less than optimistic.

      Good thing I read this piece by Cal Newport to dampen the effect of the rhetoric and balance things out.

    • I’m Coming Out

      Bill Gates is coming out of a period of semi-seclusion to raise the alarm bells about generative A.I. Karen Weise covers the story for The NYT. One of the main concerns that Gates has is the potential for massive job losses.

      He proposed a new tax on A.I. use, known as a “token tax,” to make it more expensive to replace people and provide money to help those who do lose work. A token is a basic unit of A.I. computing. The idea of taxing it has gained some traction, including on Wall Street, as a way to increase the cost of using machines instead of human labor.

      Gates wrote a personal essay on his site about how dangerous the situation could be if not taken seriously.

      AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice.

      The man is not downplaying the stakes here. He believes that the reason his peers are not coming forward is that there is too much money to be gained.

    • Down With Podcasts

      At this point, I tend to average 1–2 podcasts a week. I’m in hybrid work mode, which means I drive to an office on a local college campus two days out of the week and work remotely from my home office the other three days. That gives me time for about 90 minutes of podcasts on my commute. My number one selection currently is Not Dead Yet (Apple Podcasts) hosted by Ben Sasse and Chris Stirewalt. As Ben Sasse undergoes treatment for his pancreatic cancer (and faces his own mortality), he’s been interested in discussing what comprises the good life.

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    • The X Return

      It seems more people and organizations that were principally opposed to the X (ex-Twitter) network a few short years ago are now returning. Sometimes, they are doing so with apologies, as if they know it’s a bad look. The latest is the Apple-centric publication Macstories. The move was accompanied by the requisite explanation that they do not support the politics of Elon Musk or the direction he has taken the platform.

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    • Jokes From Truth

      Bluesky CEO, Toni Schneider, was interviewed by Nilay Patel on a recent episode of The Decoder podcast. I like Patel’s interview style and thought he brought a good selection of questions to the discussion.

      After much business strategy and technical discussion, Patel asked Schneider about the common perception that the network is full of left-leaning users. Schneider acknowledged that as an issue and mentioned several times that he wanted to expand the user base. It’s certainly true that the social network is home to many emotionally dysregulated political progressives. I know several people who don’t use it primarily for that reason.

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    • I’ve been getting car sick when trying to read in a moving car since I was a kid. Little did I know, my favorite computer manufacturer has a solution for that, which was brought to my attention by this piece in The Verge. The technology is called Vehicle Motion Cues.

      According to big-S Science, this type of vehicle motion sickness is caused by the eyes staring at a static display while the inner ear feels the car turning, braking, and accelerating. Motion Cues solve this by placing dots around the periphery of the display that move in harmony with the motion of the car. When the car turns right, the dots sweep across the screen to the left; when the car brakes the dots slide forward.

      I can’t wait to try this out, especially on a long trip.

    • Datatapes

      Louie Mantia offers some new drive icons based on the datatapes from Star Wars, and they’re pretty fun.

      The Imperial data vault on Scarif contained thousands of datatapes, one of them being the plans for the Death Star. After the plans were broadcast to the Rebel fleet, they were transferred to a small datacard.

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    • Black Butterflies

      Kupajo warns us to beware of black butterflies.

      Male grayling butterflies prefer to mate with darker female graylings. When caged with a female grayling and a cardboard cutout of a grayling painted black, the male will choose the cardboard cutout over the female. Beyond being an example of bro falling for an unrealistic standard of beauty, such a preference reveals that even in matters fundamental to survival and reproduction, these creatures can be seduced by artificial models they’d never encounter in nature.

      The analogy holds up when you read about people falling in love with LLMs and being rewired by impossible standards of beauty. Basic humanity is now subordinate to machine slick simulacrums.