2025-01-24 22:49:59
Why are people often anti-AI? Because of things like this. Honestly, please don't use AI to try to break strikes, especially if you're a so-called liberal newspaper.
The market for devices used in medicine is huge, and the prices for devices which, after all, are involved in saving people's lives are high. The Advanced Perfusion System 1 Heart Lung Machine by Terumo Cardiovascular, for example, costs in six figures for every machine and hospitals might have millions of dollars worth at every facility.
Imagine their surprise, then, when they were informed by Terumo that they were no longer allowed to service the machines they owned, and would now need to buy a service plan — at a huge annual cost.
This is prime enshittification territory. The company is using the leverage it has to prevent repair and extort — and I am happy using that word — more money from its customers. Capitalism, eh?
You thought that Mark Zuckerberg's desire to get into the good books of Trump and all the weirdos and Nazis around him would begin and end at his changes in moderation policy and getting rid of a few pro-LGTBQ pieces of marketing? Oh you sweet summer child!
Instagram is now censoring content from abortion providers, and hiding their profiles from search. Let that sink in a little.
Far from Zuckerberg's policies being to “get to our roots” and raising the threshold for removing content, he is determined to curry favour with the administration by censoring things they don't like. Free speech? My ass. This is Trumpworld now.
This is just a wonderful essay on how much Trump and the current tech oligarchs are taking from imperialism. Long, but a highly recommended read.
Hang around in space nerd circles, and you may come across the idea that having a frontier — a place where people can build their own lives away from the choking hand of government — has a positive effect not only on them, but on society more broadly. This is the Turner thesis, based on the work of a 19th century historian called Frederick Jackson Turner.
This article is a GREAT history of Turnerism and its influence on space frontier fanatics like Elon Musk. In short, Turnerism predictably ignored (or worse) the experience of women, black people and Native Americans, and also got a lot wrong about both the experience of pioneers and the degree to which they were supported by (and interacted with) the government.
This is similar to how we see companies like SpaceX and Tesla, both of which have benefited from enormous levels of government support — and will now loot the taxpayers even more.
The Verge has a great look at the era of gangster tech regulation that we are moving into, where, having bought a government, big tech companies will expect their rewards. Expect fat government contracts, no antitrust regulation to them monopolistic behaviour, using the threat of tariffs ensures American companies get what they want, and lots, lots more.
By the way, now is an excellent time to read Karen Dawisha's Putin's Kleptocracy if you haven't already. That is, if you want a vision of how bad things could get in America. In particular:
From the beginning Putin and his circle sought to create an authoritarian regime ruled by a close-knit cabal... who used democracy for decoration rather than direction.
Sound like anyone you know?
There is an old saying that Microsoft software sucks badly until the third version, and I think that this dates back to Windows. Windows 1 was… well, lacking. Windows 2 wasn't much better. But with Windows 3, Microsoft finally got a GUI that was close enough to the Mac to be usable.
Liam Proven has written up a summary of a very, very long piece which looks at the history of Windows 3, and the lessons Microsoft learned along the way. It's a great read for nerds of a certain age (like me, basically).
Most Mac users of a certain age remember Power Computing, the Mac cloner that undercut Apple with better machines back in the mid-90s. Apple ended up buying Power Computing out and putting an end to the clone market. Well, if you can’t compete, use your financial muscle.
It’s often said that Apple bought the company – but it didn’t. Even Wikipedia gets this wrong, claiming that Power was an Apple subsidiary. In fact, what Apple bought was the Mac-related assets of Power, including the licence to make Mac clones. Apple did not acquire the company.
And, in fact, Power had a brief life post-Apple acquisition. It attempted to launch an Intel-based Windows laptop, the PowerTrip. However, it seems to have run out of money before it could launch – at least I can’t find any references to anyone ever getting their hands on the PowerTrip – and it got sued by its suppliers.
By the end of January 1998, Power was gone. Ironically, if the company had survived for longer, the $100m in Apple stock would have been worth a lot, lot more than Power itself ever was or could have been.
I’m sure that somewhere in a box, I still have some of their stickers.
Look, not everything about tech is about oligarchs, right? Apparently Microsoft is going to launch a smaller Surface Pro, and I, who love dinky little computers, am already looking for an excuse to have one.
When I left school in 1984, I knew two things with absolute certainty: I would never have a job, and I would most likely die young in a nuclear war.
It wasn't just me. This was the year of mass unemployment in the UK, as Thatcher broke British manufacturing into pieces suitable to be sold off to “foreign investors” while also breaking the power of the unions. And it was the time of the Cold War, which could — and nearly did — turn hot.
We're now back to grim times, but even in these moments there is hope. Kameron Hurley has written a lovely piece, reminding us of something that is easily forgotten: there have always been times like these. As she puts it:
Each generation has its moment to discover who it really is, and these times will test us to the utmost. We will find out who are friends and colleagues are at their very core, and it will shake us. But, as with every story of war and suffering and hope and despair, we will also discover who the heroes are.
2025-01-19 19:29:18
2025-01-19 01:19:51
I sometimes wonder about writing so much about politics when I am, at heart, a technology journalist. How did I get this way? Certainly, I have been radicalised by 14 years of Tories attempting to dismantle so many of the things which make Britain great. And, of course by Brexit, the biggest act of economic self-immolation in British history.
But there is more at work here because tech itself has become so central to our lives, cultures and economies that it is inevitably political. Tech forms the heart of mass communication and of the means of production in the 21st century, and if you know a little Marx and a little Gramsci, you will inevitably understand what that means.
Anyway, on to the (quite political) links.
There’s an old truism about the right that whatever they accuse others of, that’s what they do. But it’s also true of abuses of power. Whatever they accuse a government of doing, that’s what they plan to do when they have the power to do it.
So it’s not really a surprise that Mark Zuckerberg decided to kill off Meta’s diversity programmes not for a valid business reason, but because he was told by one of Trump’s creatures that the incoming president would “go to war” against DEI. This, of course, after Zuckerberg had publicly complained about “pressure” on his business from previous governments.
And this wasn’t just a small side conversation, or an example of anticipatory obedience: per the NYT report, “Mr. Zuckerberg’s political lieutenants previewed the changes to Mr. Miller in a private briefing” – the president’s representative was directly involved in the business affairs of a private company, approving their plans from a political perspective. Is the next step the “voluntary” sale of companies that don’t comply to people who will? I think you would be very naive to believe that couldn’t happen, based on what already has.
Tech companies bending the knee to Trump has, of course, left many people in the technology world in shock, and the question then becomes what to do about it. Quite a few people I know have, for example, dumped Meta platforms. But the problem with this is that it just doesn’t work when faced with a billionaire class that’s determined to get their way. As Cory Doctorow notes, "’voting with your wallet’" (is) a rigged ballot that's always won by the people with the thickest wallet.” And there’s no doubt that the likes of Zuckerberg, Bezos, and so on – knee-benders all – have the thickest wallets, and power and resources that can barely be imagined.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the New York Post – America’s lamest newspaper – should believe that checking facts is now a violation of free speech. I mean, why would telling the truth – the fundamental mission of all journalism – be anything else?
I think my headline is a better reflection of the situation. According to Bloomberg Trump has already prepared over 100 executive orders, but the one which will have Marc Andreessen fapping like a teenage boy will designate crypto as a national priority. This will “encourage” (in the same way Zuckerberg was encouraged) agencies to prioritise working with the crypto scam artists industry. Of course, this will mean increased costs to taxpayers, but it will mean increased profits to the people who bankrolled and supported Trump’s campaign. So that’s alright then.
You will, no doubt, have heard a lot about electric cars bursting into flames and a lot of it is nonsense. But one thing that isn’t is connected to the chemistry of lithium batteries: when they burn, they are really difficult to put out.
That’s proved to be a problem in the LA fires, where firefighters reported having to use a lot of water to put out fires in Tesla cars and Power Walls. Now, for once, this isn’t Tesla’s fault – even Elon Musk can’t be responsible for basic chemistry – but it does give us some pointers towards changing the way we design home batteries and deal with fires in the future.
Why does the US government want to ban TikTok? Yes, there is of course the general question of whether they want an application that’s on a lot of people’s phones to be controlled by the Chinese government. But the biggest question is around the use of TikTok as a propaganda tool. It’s not that the Chinese government would aimlessly promote pro-China views – that would be obvious, and stupid – but that it can gently move the needle, including suppressing anti-China views.
But here’s a thing: consider how Elon Musk is currently calling for the removal of the democratically elected government of the UK, while also breaking bread with German neo-Nazis. Wouldn’t the same principle that the US is using for TikTok also apply if Europe wanted to ban a propaganda platform which actively works against their interests? Sauce, goose, gander.
Elon Musk is not the world’s smartest man, but there is a strong case he might be the thinnest-skinned. Currently, he is in what the kids call “a beef” with several Twitch streamers who spotted that his claims about being a top-ten player of Path of Exile 2 might not hold water.
Let’s break this down: you are the richest man in the world. You want for nothing, and you will live in absolute luxury for the rest of your life. You have also influenced the election of the president, and have his ear. Power is yours.
So what do you do? You lie about your gaming abilities to impress a bunch of gamers, most of whom now think you’re a jerk because you faked it badly.
Pathetic.
The MacBook Air was so influential that it caused the entire industry to rethink their designs. Despite being underpowered, expensive, and having a spinning hard drive, its design was revolutionary and within a few years, almost every laptop resembled it. Even today, half the laptops on sale owe some of their design DNA to the MacBook Air.
Om Malik has written an eloquent piece about the Air and makes a comparison to the Vision Pro. Like the Air, the Vision Pro was far too expensive for ordinary people, but it’s also a pioneer of a sort. I can see Om’s point, but I’m not convinced that it will be as influential as the Air. There are already competitors around which, while not as advanced, are in the same mould. But either way, I loved my first Air. Maybe I would love a Vision Pro too?
Despite being a technology journalist for over thirty years, I have only ever once gone to CES. I spent a lot of that time covering the Mac, and Apple never really had a CES presence. The one time that I went, I really enjoyed it.
But one thing even a single visit taught me: there is an awful lot of crap at CES. You will see a lot of products, many of them bizarre, and some of them will never come to market. And now there is the worst in show awards, which highlight some of the… well… worst things you’ll see. Love it.
A little bit of a plug: As well as this blog, I also have a little linkblog on the old domain. Think of it as the unfiltered version of what you see here. And if you like, you can subscribe to a weekly summary of all my posts there. No ads, no charge, no tracking (that I know of).
2025-01-12 20:36:21
2025-01-11 01:32:54
Mark Zuckerberg does not give a rats ass about the effects that his platforms have on people, and he never has.
By now, you will have probably heard quite a lot about Mark Zuckerberg’s pivot to Trumpist supporter and enabler, so I’m not going to spend too much time on that. But it’s worth remembering that Facebook has never been a company which was at the forefront of ethical behaviour. Ten years ago, it tampered with the emotional well-being of over 600,000 of its users, without any kind of consent, to see how people reacted to various stimuli.
Is it really surprising that he now wants his platform to become a beacon for free hate speech?
What irks me is that otherwise smart commentators who cannot understand that these are not rational business decisions, or based on principles like the commitment to free speech. They are the decisions of emotionally stunted men – and it’s always men – who want to control the world. This is not about business, it’s about power.
The pink pages of the Financial Times have seen some smart writing over the years. Peter Thiel’s weird little essay is not smart. It’s redolent of nothing more or less than a long-winded Reddit post created by a 14-year-old who has been stewing in a broth of Ayn Rand’s terrible writing for a couple of years. It’s chock-full of the kind of conspiracy theories that anyone has fallen deep into the well of the Twittersphere will have been exposed to, all of which fall into the broad category of “bullshit”. But, in the hands of a billionaire and promoted on the pages of one of the most respected newspapers in the world, that becomes “dangerous bullshit”.
Thankfully, the comments on the piece show that the FT’s subscribers are equally sceptical of Thiel’s membership of the reality-based community. I think my favourite might be the comment which describes the piece as “it’s as if someone trained an AI model purely on Russell Brand’s ‘My Booky Wook’ and the Unabomber manifesto.”
The tech billionaire class that Thiel is a member of are, and should be, figures of ridicule. But it’s important to remember, they have also just seized control of the government of the most powerful nation of the world. Those of us not in the United States are basically trying to keep our heads down and hope that the inevitable chaos (think Liz Truss, but 10x it) doesn’t spread to the rest of the world.
But what is it all about? What’s the end game? What do they want? Anil Dash rightly points out that DOGE – the “Department of Government Efficiency” which is being run by Elon Musk and aims to gut the Federal Government – is really about capturing procurement, making sure that Musk et al. get as many fat government contracts as possible. And Anil is right – billionaires love rigging the game in their favour. As Thiel noted in one of his other “genius mode” essays, “competition is for losers”.
But I think there is a little more to it. I suspect that they really do believe that gutting the federal government, removing protections, ending efforts to increase diversity and all the rest of it is a morally good outcome. They have bought all this, hook, line and sinker. They have, in other words, been radicalised. And because this is America, where protections were already thin and socialised anything is regarded as akin to communism, I think they can inflict far more pain on the US than Truss did on the UK before they get reeled in.
John Battelle is a techno optimist. He has long argued that technology empowers individuals and communities, allowing people to communicate, collaborate, and innovate on a scale never before possible. He believes that the internet has created a more open and connected world that fosters creativity and entrepreneurship.
But he’s also, especially, been more guarded. While Battelle is optimistic, he has voiced serious concerns about privacy and data ownership. He was an early critic of Big Tech's control over user data, particularly Google and Facebook. And he has called for greater transparency and regulation around how companies use personal data.
I think he might now be veering towards something that’s more realistic. As he puts it:
“I grew up and made my career in a tech industry that cast itself as the outsider, as a force for good, as eager to reshape and reform society into something better. We were going to revolutionize education, healthcare, entertainment, and yes, even finance. Our companies had lofty mission statements and big goals to be ‘bicycles for the mind’ and ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.’ But lately, it feels like Tech has become just the latest incarnation of the same old game of influence peddling, plutocracy, and establishmentarianism. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by that, but … damn if it isn’t a bit depressing.”
Bicycles for the mind became Lime bikes you rent by the hour. Making the world’s information universally accessible was done “for a price”. The truth is this is what capitalism does: it turns dirt into gold, and then gold into shit.
As if one attempt to be the uber villain of the planet wasn’t enough, Mark Zuckerberg goes for a second shot. It turns out that Meta’s Llama LLM model was deliberately and knowingly trained on a well-known dataset of pirated books. And Zuck personally gave the OK for this.
Oh, and just to make things more interesting: the company acquired the data via torrent, and shared the pirated content further by seeding it. This is the kind of thing which gets individual users jailed.
What’s the likelihood that Zuck will do time? Well, zero, of course. Because while individuals who achieve this scale of piracy largely do it for either personal use or a sense that information should be freely available to all, this was done for profit – and we all know that profit has the magical property of removing any moral qualms.
Erin Kissane is obviously super smart, and you should be following everything she writes, but this essay on the reasons why large social media platforms are just so bad at governing themselves is a particularly good and insightful read. As she puts it, “Yes, X is currently controlled by a bizarrely gibbering billionaire with obvious symptoms of late-stage Mad King disease. Yes, Facebook and Instagram—which control vastly more territory than X—are controlled by a feckless, Tulip-craze-mainlining billionaire with a long history of grudgingly up-regulating governance efforts when under public or governmental pressure and then immediately axing them when the spotlight moves on.”
But actually, it wouldn’t matter much if sane people were in charge. It is part of the nature of the beast that large social platforms make bad things happen. “A tractor structurally can't spare a thought for the lives of the field-mice; shouting at the tractor when it destroys their nests is a category error.”
Corporations are not governments. Not only aren’t they, they can’t be – and we would not like it if they were. Expecting them to act like anything except rapacious machines designed to extract money from your pocket, avoid competition, and form monopolies to maximise profit, is expecting that tractor to start caring around the field mouse. It ain’t happening, my friends.
Side note: I am incredibly glad Erin also mentions the ludicrous “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” written by John Perry Barlow, one of the silliest documents I have ever read. Were we ever really that naive? Yes, yes we were. Perhaps we should have read a little more Marx.
And there is still a streak of optimistic naivety in the older internet generation. It’s notable that the EFF initial response to Meta’s announcement felt more like a half-cheer than anything else. The concluding sentence -- “We applaud Meta’s efforts to try to fix its over-censorship problem but will watch closely to make sure it is a good-faith effort and rolled out fairly and not merely a political manoeuvre to accommodate the upcoming U.S. administration change” – sounded just incredibly naive to my perhaps-jaded British ears. It didn’t take long for the penny to drop, thankfully, but that penny should have dropped considerably sooner.
We had a whole couple of weeks without any WordPress drama, but that couldn’t last. And now Matt’s back with some news: Automattic (the company) is cutting the number of resources it devotes to WordPress (the product) to just 45 hours per week, the equivalent of one full-time developer.
Matt – and make no mistake, this is Mullenweg’s soapbox – is, of course, claiming this is just playing fair, and making a level playing field with WP Engine. Once the legal “attacks” have stopped, he says, things will return to normal.
This is the equivalent of taking your ball home because no one will acknowledge you as the captain of the team. It’s childish, silly, and makes it obvious that WordPress is not a platform anyone should be devoting large amounts of time or resources to while Matt is at the helm. And that’s leaving aside the fact that Matt’s tantrums have demonstrated that open-source software is not really a defence against dictators, benevolent or otherwise.
Never have I been more glad that I moved to Ghost.
It turns out that the “Trump supporters” who were posing enthusiastically in MAGA hats in Greenland were, in fact, homeless people who had been brought in and promised free food. What made me laugh, though, was Sean Hannity asking “How did they get a MAGA hat in Greenland?” to which the correct answer is, of course, using fabric from China like every other MAGA product.
Every few years, I reread Danny O’Brien’s account of the start of Wired UK because (1) it’s such a good read, and (2) it reminds me quite how good a writer Danny is. You should read it too. And for those of you who know: Haddock omertà still applies.
It seems fit to end by raising a glass to Martin Banks, one of the founding fathers of UK tech journalism, who has passed away. I must, at some point, have at least shared a room with Martin, but as I was mostly in the world of the Mac rather than Windows or enterprise stuff, I don’t think we ever conversed much. However, everyone that I know who worked with him notes how loved he was, and how encouraging to young journalists. He wrote to the end, and what better way to go is there than that?
2025-01-05 20:43:01
