Werd I/O

I hadn't caught that the US's first high-speed railway is going to be built by Network Rail, which runs Britain's railway infrastructure.

The San Francisco to Los Angeles route will take under three hours; right now it takes nine hours and thirty minutes. I've done that journey in the past, including a bus connection in Bakersfield. This will be a huge improvement.

I like the idea that the rail expertise of other nations is being deployed to build infrastructure here. That's probably how it should be. Hopefully in the process, a whole new generation of infrastructure experts will be created domestically.

Fascinating all round. Bring on high speed rail nationwide. #Society

[Link]

"His definition of strength was power, influence, money and his network of important people. [...] I wondered for many years, how all of this could have happened. How people like my grandpa turned into monsters and people around him watched or turned into monsters with him. The last years made this very clear."

Powerful piece. We're at an inflection point, and this is a good reminder that we shouldn't trivialize the very real dangers we face. #Democracy

[Link]

"Despite their idealist manifesto and their Bill of Rights, I don’t believe they could ever truly be in partnership with their community once they were taking large amounts of venture funding."

This is a key challenge with social networks that try and work with a different model: unless they're forced to be open (which, eg, Mastodon is), it's always possible for an acquirer to roll back their good intentions and do something else if it's profitable. It's also often possible for investors to remove the CEO in order to better serve a return to their fund.

The result is that these networks are hard to pay for. Decentralized networks have some advantage because they don't have to pay for infrastructure, but there's still a question about how the development team can be compensated (and therefore how to make development sustainable).

Lots to learn from in this case study. #Technology

[Link]

"We can conclude that higher-ranked pages are on average more optimized, more monetized with affiliate marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality."

SEO as an industry has made search engines much worse to use. People are essentially spamming the web, which undermines the signals search engines are supposed to use to determine relevancy and quality. The result is junk - which, in turn, inspires more junk in order for pages to rank higher than the junk that already exists. And so and so on until you get a junky race to the junky bottom.

And generative AI will make it all even worse. #Technology

[Link]

"Consumer Reports found that a total of 186,892 companies sent data about them to [Facebook]. On average, each participant in the study had their data sent to Facebook by 2,230 companies. That number varied significantly, with some panelists’ data listing over 7,000 companies providing their data."

In other words, there's a whole industry that makes a ton of revenue on providing information to Facebook. It's likely that each of these providers has many other downstream customers. The result is an extensive privately-run surveillance network. #Technology

[Link]

"They just take it. Whatever they want." A poignant and infuriating reflection on generative AI, from the creator of Cat and Girl. #AI

[Link]

The entire podcast industry's numbers were juiced by a quirk of how Apple Podcasts and other podcasting apps work. The actual number of listeners were far lower - as revealed when Apple Podcasts made a big update last September.

"For instance, The Daily and Dateline both publicly touted reaching over a billion total downloads. But representatives for these shows would not say if those numbers or other impressive daily or weekly download stats are still accurate."

Spoiler: they're not, and a lot of media companies are having to rapidly recalibrate how they report their numbers - many of whom could probably have been more openly honest about their popularity to begin with. #Media

[Link]

"Global trade now means that even a pariah government like the Taliban can invest in and operate sophisticated surveillance systems, while imposing regressive policies that keep its population poor, hungry, and isolated. It’s a profound signal of how all governments will approach digital control in our era."

This last point is the most important, and illustrates why privacy and technology independence are vital. Our phones present a trade-off between convenience for us and surveillance opportunities for both networks and governments.

In Aghanistan the trade-off is between providing communications and information for refugees, and handing control over the source of information to the Taliban.

But, of course, there isn't much of an alternative - yet. It's worth considering what a truly independent network that is truly free from centralized control might look like. #Technology

[Link]

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

[...] A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just."

My friend Roxann Stafford introduced me to the importance of this speech by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, a few years ago, and it's very much worth revisiting. #Democracy

[Link]

"My advice to business leaders is this: If your “personal belief” tells you that in-office work is better, approach the question analytically. What actual, measurable problems related to your business objectives will be solved by a return to the office?"

This is the crux for me: there are very few actual problems that are solved by returning to the office. Instead, it's often a feeling - a return to the past. I would argue that looking backwards is never a good way to think; it's better to consider what you need to do in order to truly adapt to the future. #Business

[Link]

A nice investigation into who actually hosts fediverse instances.

I've been in a few situations where I've had to fend off a DDoS originating from Hetzner servers, and it's just now dawning on me: what if those weren't malicious attacks but were actually a post going viral on the fediverse? #Technology

[Link]

"Five dictionaries as well as eight encyclopedias and other reference materials including “The Guinness Book of World Records” and “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” are among over 1,600 books that Escambia County Public Schools removed from its library shelves in December and flagged for review."

Alongside Anne Frank and a biography of Oprah Winfrey. I wish I could say it was baffling, but it's not: the mindset and set of values that lead to this is obvious and abhorrent. #Education

[Link]

"So when we wonder where all the websites have gone, know it’s the curators we’re nostalgic for because the curators showed us the best the web had to offer once upon a time. And the curators— the tenders, aggregators, collectors, and connectors— can bring us back to something better. Because it’s still out there, we just have to find it."

For what it's worth, that's what I'm trying to do to share these links with you: highlighting interesting pieces, often from independent writers publishing on their own sites. I really appreciate the other curators I subscribe to, too.

Let's all connect and learn from each other! #Culture

[Link]

It's feeling more and more like Substack will be toast if they don't significantly walk back their policy on Nazis. (And honestly, at this point, even if they did, who would want to be associated with it?)

"This was never about the fate of a few publications: it was about whether Substack would publicly commit to proactively removing pro-Nazi material. Up to the moment I published on Tuesday, I believed that the company planned to do this. But I no longer do."

Casey Newton discusses why Platformer is leaving Substack, bringing its paid subscribers with it, and why he selected Ghost (which really is an excellent choice).

As with Citation Needed and Garbage Day, I'm delighted to resubscribe at their new homes. #Media

[Link]

An in-depth writeup of Meta's fediverse meetup last year by Tom Coates, who was one of the roughly 20 people in attendance.

Most of these details have been discussed and speculated on at this point, but it's good to read them in one place, and I think Tom's perspective is (as always) very good.

The legal issues Tom discusses here are important: I think a lot of fediverse administrators and service operators tend to hand-wave them away, but they really are big issues. I encountered some of them when I was running Known, too: people were angry their content was showing up on some other service that they hadn't opted into.

Meta does seem to be heading into this endeavor in good faith. There's still a lot to figure out, but I think Threads will be a full, participative fediverse participant. I'm curious to see which other large network operators join them. #Technology

[Link]

I like this argument that generated content is an invasive species in our content ecosystem.

"As generated material rapaciously populates the Internet, human-created artworks will be outcompeted by generated graphics on social media platforms by virtue of volume."

I agree that this is something to be concerned with, and the paragraph about legal rights and obligations is also spot on. #AI

[Link]

"The tools that likely brought down Harvard president Claudine Gay are improperly used on students all the time. [...] The technology of text mining can be used to destroy the career of any scholar at any time."

Tools like Turnitin are rife with false positives, and can be weaponized to target students for any reason. It's bad software. But even more importantly, it's bad educational policy to deploy it, and its design encourages bad grading decisions. The result is an entire generation of students who are badly served. #Education

[Link]

I think Chuck Tingle is awesome and proves love. This was a disappointing decision by the Texas Library Association, which is hopefully a learning moment for every organization like it.

Chuck's description of the intersectional challenges at play here is in-depth and well-stated. And there's this important statement:

"let me be very clear for the 100th time: i am a real person. this is not a joke. i am not playing a character. i am really autistic and bisexual. tinglers are sincere and they are not ‘so bad theyre good’. they are just good. camp damascus is not ‘my first serious book’ because my queer erotica is serious. my art is important and real." #Culture

[Link]

This was why I started Known, and I wonder if I should try again.

"If we want the future web we’re all clamouring for, we need to give people more options for self-hosted independence. If we seriously, truly want the independent, non-enshittified personal web to flourish, we need to make it easier for people to join in."

Everything here. I love the indieweb, but it needs to be accessible to people who are much less technical.

The one flaw here is that there's discussion of hosting as the shared, FTP-centric kind. I think that kind of hosting needs to die; I'd like to see web hosting look much more like installing an app on an iPhone. #Technology

[Link]

The headline here is a little misleading, because it should end: "... but not proactively, and with no changes to our content policy."

Substack seems to want to have its cake and eat it: to offer content deals, promote writers, and shape its writer community, but also be treated as a neutral utility rather than a platform with its own editorial policy, content goals, and community management.

I don't think it should have that ability. Either it's a neutral utility - which is an impossibility because of its obvious community curation, but also because of rules imposed on it at the payment layer - or it's a platform. It can't be both. And because it can't be the former, the company needs to take real responsibility for its actions, rather than pin itself to this clearly cynical policy dressed up as principles. #Media

[Link]

"Every year, the Supreme Court’s nine justices fill out a form that discloses their financial connections to companies and people. Using our new database, you can now search for organizations and people that have paid the justices, reimbursed them for travel, given them gifts and more."

Journalism doesn't need to be an article or a finite piece of content. It can be a searchable database or an interactive application that puts a new spin on public information, set out to be usable in the public interest. #Democracy

[Link]

Not just a retelling but a complete recasting of 1984. It's helpful to consider this as a separate work: a response to 1984, in a way, rather than a layering on top or a direct sequel. It's a criticism, an extension, a modernization, and a deep appreciation for the ideas all in one - and I was hooked. There's so much I want to write about here, but I don't want to spoil it. The ending, in particular, is perfect. #Fiction

[Link]

Every single one of these titles looks beautiful: I'm excited to put them on my want-to-read list. I don't think I read a single graphic novel last year, and I love them.

I'm grateful to Ritesh Babu for putting this list together. It's the kind of thing that makes a genre accessible: someone's subjective deep dive into something they love that other people might not have had the time or exposure to get into as much. Just lovely. #Culture

[Link]

Molly White, who has been one of the most important voices on technology and society, has moved her newsletter from Substack to Ghost because of the Nazi problem.

As she points out:

"To be very clear, we're talking about Substacks that are using swastikas, sonnenrads, and photos of Hitler in their branding, and publishing screeds about "white genocide" and other things I'd frankly rather not reprint. There are certainly conversations that can be had about content moderation and the difficulty of defining exactly where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable content, but the Substacks identified in the open letter and in The Atlantic piece were nowhere close to any reasonable line."

I have resubscribed. #Media

[Link]

Pascal was my first real programming language. I'd learned BASIC first, but I never built a full software application in it. Pascal allowed me to build and release software for the first time. It was magical.

What I didn't know: Niklaus Wirth was from Winterthur, Switzerland, which is right next door to Elgg. #Technology

[Link]