The UX Research Reckoning is Here

“It’s not just the economic crisis. The UX Research discipline of the last 15 years is dying. The reckoning is here. The discipline can still survive and thrive, but we’d better adapt, and quick.”  #Technology [Link]

Google "We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI"

“Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable. They are doing things with $100 and 13B params that we struggle with at $10M and 540B. And they are doing so in weeks, not months. This has profound implications for us.”  #AI [Link]

Blue checks for email are a bad idea

Google is adding to Brand Indicators for Message Identification: Building upon that feature, users will now see a checkmark icon for senders that have adopted BIMI. This will help users identify messages from legitimate senders versus impersonators. So in other words, Gmail will show a blue checkmark for email domains

How open content is transforming American journalism

I’m focusing on the intersection of technology, media, and democracy. Subscribe by email to get every update. It’s genuinely refreshing to see how non-profit newsrooms have been embracing the open web and the spirit of collaboration over competition. These are often resource-strapped organizations shedding light on underreported stories,

Grist and the Center for Rural Strategies launch clearinghouse for rural US coverage

“The Rural Newswire was created to help newsrooms that serve rural communities by providing a platform to both find and share stories that can be republished for free. Editors can use the Rural Newswire to source stories to syndicate, and they can also upload links to their own coverage. As

One year after Dobbs leak: Looking back at the summer that changed abortion

“The 19th spoke with people from across the country about those historic days: lawmakers, physicians, organizers on both sides of the abortion fight and pregnant people navigating a new world.” What a newsroom.  #Democracy [Link]

AI in the newsroom

I’m focusing on the intersection of technology, media, and democracy. Subscribe by email to get every update. By now, you’ve been exposed to Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, DALL-E 2, and GPT-4. It seems a lot like magic: a bot that seems

Elon Musk thinks he’s got a “major win-win” for news publishers with…micropayments.

“In a digital universe where every news story is behind a hard paywall — one impenetrable to the non-paying reader — then a micropayments model might make sense. But that’s not the digital universe we live in.”  #Media [Link]

The web's most important decision

“But also, and this is important to mention, they believed in the web and in Berners-Lee. The folks making these decisions understood its potential and wanted the web to flourish. This wasn’t a decision driven by profit. It was a generous and enthusiastic vote of confidence in the global

The Real Difference Between European and American Butter

“Simply put, American regulations for butter production are quite different from those of Europe. The USDA defines butter as having at least 80% fat, while the EU defines butter as having between 82 and 90% butterfat and a maximum of 16% water. The higher butterfat percentage in European butter is

Economists Warn That AI Like ChatGPT Will Increase Inequality

“Most empirical studies find that AI technology will not reduce overall employment. However, it is likely to reduce the relative amount of income going to low-skilled labour, which will increase inequality across society. Moreover, AI-induced productivity growth would cause employment redistribution and trade restructuring, which would tend to further increase

Blue skies over Mastodon

“One of big things I’ve come to believe in my couple of decades working on internet stuff is that great product design is always holistic: Always working in relation to a whole system of interconnected parts, never concerned only with atomic decisions. And this perspective just straight-up cannot emerge