Technology
[Shakeil Price at The Marshall Project] The technology situation for incarcerated people in the United States is beyond bad: "Because prison telecom vendors tend to bundle their services, corrections systems often contract with a single provider, regardless of quality. And dozens of states make “commissions” from user fees. Within
AI
[Mike Caulfield in The Atlantic] A smart analysis and suggestion about the current state of AI by Mike Caulfield: "I would propose a simple rule: no answers from nowhere. This rule is less convenient, and that’s the point. The chatbot should be a conduit for the information of
What would I do if I was building an open social web platform from scratch?
AI
[Cy Neff in The Guardian] This is straight out of Black Mirror: "Chris Pelkey was killed in a road rage shooting in Chandler, Arizona, in 2021. Three-and-a-half years later, Pelkey appeared in an Arizona court to address his killer. Sort of. [...] Pelkey’s appearance from beyond the grave was
Fediverse
[Andy Piper at Mastodon] It’s really exciting to see these new movements from Mastodon - not least because they’re very intentionally marching to their own rhythm. Mastodon wouldn’t be a good fit for being a standard tech company, and it won’t be one. “Mastodon has taken
AI
[Adam Wierman and Shaolei Ren in IEEE Spectrum] An interesting finding on the energy use implicit in training and offering AI services. I do think some of these principles could apply to all of cloud computing - it’s out of sight and out of mind, but certainly uses a
Science
[By Sarah Gilbert, Michael Zimmer, and Nathan Matias at the Coalition for Independent Technology Research] A strong statement from the Coalition for Independent Technology Research: "On April 26, moderators of r/ChangeMyView, a community on Reddit dedicated to understanding the perspectives of others, revealed that academic researchers from the
Notable links
[Joint Subreddit statement posted on r/AskHistorians] 30 or so Reddit communities have joined together to make a joint statement in defense of US research. This comes from people with real expertise: in addition to the depth of research talent involved in these communities, Dan Howlett has signed the statement,
Technology
[Tim Stevens at The Verge] It's rare these days that I see a new product and think, this is really cool, but seriously, this is really cool: "Meet the Slate Truck, a sub-$20,000 (after federal incentives) electric vehicle that enters production next year. It only
Notable links
[Toby Buckle at LiberalCurrents] This resonates for me too. About the Tea Party, the direction the Republican Party took during the Obama administration, and then of Trump first riding down the escalator to announce his candidacy: "If you saw in any of this a threat to liberal democracy writ
I earn 5-10X what I did when I lived in the UK, but my quality of life is markedly worse. My whole thing boils down to: how can America have the same standard of living I grew up with? For a lot of people, the idea of prosperity boils down
Media
[Henry Blodget] Henry Blodget, former co-founder of Business Insider, has started a new, "AI-native" newsroom. It's not, in my opinion, a positive use of AI, but it does indicate how some people are thinking about using the technology. This apparently includes harassing your newly-created virtual employees: