Werd I/O

[Dries Buytaert]

"Addressing the Maker-Taker challenge is essential for the long-term sustainability of open source projects. Drupal's approach may provide a constructive solution not just for WordPress, but for other communities facing similar issues."

Dries lays out a constructive approach to crediting open source contributors. There's no stick here: just a series of what amount to promotion and status levels in return for making contributions like "code, documentation, mentorship, marketing, event organization" and so on.

I've certainly had to deal with the maker-taker problem too, although not at the magnitude that either Drupal or WordPress need to consider it. When I worked on Elgg, the open source ecosystem was relatively underdeveloped, and I don't remember it being much of a problem. In contrast, Known plugged into a significantly more advanced ecosystem. The solution Dries lays out makes a ton of sense to me, and I wish we'd done more along these lines in both cases.

#Technology

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[Matt Haughey]

"A couple months ago I was hanging out with my aunt, and she mentioned her cable+internet bill was around $250 per month. I thought that was insane and that I should do something about it. She's a 75 year old retiree that watches baseball and the hallmark channel, and she shouldn't have to pay as much as a car payment every month to do it."

What follows is a very smart way to share media profiles with a family member who doesn't live in your house, using Tailscale as a way to make them seamlessly appear like they're a part of your household.

Tailscale is easy-to-use and is virtually magic. I use it across my devices, and recommend it to others. This is a use case that makes a lot of sense.

#Technology

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[Rest of World]

"Technology has transformed how we spend, study, live, eat — even how we sleep. And for the 6.75 billion people around the world who consider themselves religious, technology is also changing their faith. How people worship, pray, and commune with the divine is transforming from Seoul to Lagos."

These are amazing stories that sometimes sound like provocative satire: PETA is building robot elephants for Hindu temples, for example. Or take this app, which will narrate the Bible in your own voice, perhaps so that you can make it more accessible for your children.

Many of the examples feel a lot like startups spotting new markets without consideration for whether they should. Some are more authentic. All are continuing examples of how the internet is changing religious life all over the world.

#Technology

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[Tracy Durnell]

"Blogs coax out deeper thinking in smaller blocks. A blog gives you the space to explore and nurture ideas over time, perhaps growing so slowly you hardly notice the extent of the evolution of your thoughts till you read something you wrote a few years ago."

Everyone should blog. It's been the single most transformative tool in my career - and a huge part of my life.

Given the latter part, I needed to hear this:

"We know, when we’re reading a blog, that we’re getting a glimpse into the writer’s active psyche, a tour of their studio as it were — not hearing their thesis presentation or reading their pre-print publication; hearing from other people being people is part of the appeal of blogs."

Over the last few years I've downgraded the amount of personal writing in this space in favor of more thoughts about technology. I never quite know where the balance is, but I think there's a lot to be said for turning the dial closer to the personal.

If you haven't started yet: try it and let me know about it. I'd love to read your thoughts.

And if you know you want to start but don't know where, Get Blogging! has your back.

#Technology

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[Robin Rendle]

"Every problem at every company I’ve ever worked at eventually boils down to “please dear god can we just hire people who know how to write HTML and CSS.”"

Yes. Co-signed.

Speaking of which ...

"ProPublica, the nation’s leading nonprofit investigative newsroom, is in search of a full-stack senior product engineer to lead work on our publishing systems and core website."

I'm looking for an exceptional engineer who cares about the open web to join my team. If that's you - or you know someone who fits this description - there are more details at this link. I'm here to answer any questions!

#Technology

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[Tracy Durnell]

"Links — connections between ideas — are the magic system of the Internet. They power the open web, enriching online writing. Generative AI is the parasitic dark magic counterpart to the link."

I love Tracy's observation that "online, we think together", which also calls back to the original definition of the word blog ("weblog" = "we blog").

Links are context, further thought, community. Removing that context removes depth. They're inherent to the web: they're what the web is. When platforms want to strip-mine value from our work - our writing, our thinking - by lifting it away from its community and context, we need to fight back. And fight back we will.

#Technology

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[Eva at kibty.town]

PSA for anyone who switched to Arc as their main browser (hey, that's me!): it had a giant vulnerability that the team, at the time of writing, doesn't seem to have acknowledged publicly, although it has been patched.

Aside from the lack of disclosure, perhaps the biggest ongoing concern for me is in the last few paragraphs:

"while researching, i saw some data being sent over to the server [...] this is against arc's privacy policy which clearly states arc does not know which sites you visit."

Sigh.

#Technology

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[Federal Trade Commission]

"A new Federal Trade Commission staff report that examines the data collection and use practices of major social media and video streaming services shows they engaged in vast surveillance of consumers in order to monetize their personal information while failing to adequately protect users online, especially children and teens."

None of this is particularly surprising, but it's frankly nice to see the FTC see it and recommend taking action. Lina Khan is doing great work actually holding software monopolies to task.

My favorite recommendation is the first one:

"Congress should pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation to limit surveillance, address baseline protections, and grant consumers data rights;"

This should have happened years ago, and even now, getting it done will be a struggle.

This one, on the other hand, falls into the "and pigs should fly" category:

"Companies should not collect sensitive information through privacy-invasive ad tracking technologies;"

Yes, companies should not, but they will until comprehensive privacy legislation is enacted with meaningful penalties. This report is a step in the right direction; that legislation must come next.

#Technology

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[Matt Mullenweg]

"Those of us who are makers, who create the source, need to be wary of those who would take our creations and squeeze out the juice. They’re grifters who will hop onto the next fad, but we’re trying to build something big here, something long term—something that lasts for generations."

Matt Mullenweg takes a strong stand for open source, and against companies that claim to be open but aren't quite.

Of course, not everything Automattic does is open source - its commercial operations were kicked off by the centralized Akismet anti-spam service, after all - but I agree that this clarity is useful.

It ends with a call to action: to support organizations that support ecosystems rather than abuse them. It's hard to disagree with that.

#Technology

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[Matt Burgess at Wired]

"Today, a group of six computer scientists are revealing a new attack against Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset where exposed eye-tracking data allowed them to decipher what people entered on the device’s virtual keyboard. The attack, dubbed GAZEploit and shared exclusively with WIRED, allowed the researchers to successfully reconstruct passwords, PINs, and messages people typed with their eyes."

Fascinating stuff. This attack doesn't work with a normal laptop or device because we tend to look at the screen as we type instead of the keys. But on the Apple Vision Pro, your gaze is your pointer. By tracking what you're paying attention to, attackers can understand exactly what you're typing, including sensitive information.

Apple has patched the problem, presumably by making its virtual avatars just a little bit more dead in the eyes. But as more eye-based interfaces roll out, more exploits will surely be discovered. As we reveal more of ourselves in virtual space, more of our secrets become apparent, too.

#Technology

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[Lucas da Costa at Briefer]

"Some people call our strategy "open-core" and that's technically right. Still, I'd rather say that we have two pieces of software: one that is open-source and another that is not. I think that's more honest because we're not trying to hide the fact that we're selling a non-open-source version of our software."

This is a pretty honest take on open sourcing a product in a VC-funded startup, which needs to maintain a certain level of valuation growth to justify its investment.

Someone in edtech once told me that if I held back any of a product I was building that they would tell their substantial network not to use it. I don't think that's fair: I'm not sure there's much to be gained by making features that are mostly used by wealthy companies free. This is particularly true when owning your licensing means you still retain optionality to provide a lower-cost or zero-cost license for certain organizations.

I also like this reason for open sourcing their core product:

"Finally, by going open-source we commoditize our competitors' core functionality. This means they now have to compete against us in terms of innovative features, performance, and price, all of which are usually not their strong suits, let's be honest."

When executed well, and used against high-priced enterprise software in particular, this approach deflates closed-source business models and can be a real competition lift. I like that Briefer is naming that.

The one piece I don’t agree with is this:

"Open-source helps us manage Briefer's roadmap along with our users because there will be more of them, and because they'll have access to the source code. That way, they can help us figure out where to go, and help us get there by implementing what they need."

My experience in open source is that it doesn't absolve you from needing to keep a tight hand on the product steering wheel. Your open source community can actually muddy the water here, because open source users aren't always the same thing as customers, and may need a different set of features or functionality. Maintaining a coherent product vision is harder in open source, not easier.

Still, this was a lovely post to read, and I appreciate the open thinking. It certainly made me want to check Briefer out.

#Technology

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[iA]

"In a text editor, chapters are files. Organizing your files is work, but in a large text body it’s essential work. Your book or thesis will grow from it and get stronger as you clarify the structure. With iA Writer 7.2, structuring large writing projects has become a lot easier."

In other words, my favorite text editor just got a big upgrade for anyone writing large projects (hey, that's me!).

I've long been an iA Writer superfan: all my blog posts are written in it, and I use it as the starting point for most meaningful documents. This new update brings it into direct competition with Ulysses, another markdown text editor I love. I've been using iA Writer for short-form writing and Ulysses for longer-form writing (I have a very large book draft in there right now). But now, potentially, I can do it all from one app.

What it doesn't seem to do - yet - is the kind of file re-ordering that Ulysses excels at, so I can move scenes and chapters around each other with ease. From this post, it sounds like that will come:

"Tree view is the first step toward a document outline. Tree view is the technical foundation for offering a more detailed view of the document structure. All we can say for now is that it will work very much like tree view, just inside the document."

It's all great work. This level of care and attention in a text editor really matters. I'm grateful that iA exists.

#Technology

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[Nolen Royalty]

"On June 26th 2024, I launched a website called One Million Checkboxes (OMCB). It had one million global checkboxes on it - checking (or unchecking) a box changed it for everyone on the site, instantly."

This story gets deeper from here: how he found a community of teenagers secretly writing to each other in binary using the checkboxes in the site is lovely.

#Technology

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[Ingrid Melander and Guy Faulconbridge at Reuters]

"[Telegram founder] Durov, who has dual French and United Arab Emirates citizenship, was arrested as part of a preliminary police investigation into allegedly allowing a wide range of crimes due to a lack of moderators on Telegram and a lack of cooperation with police."

At face value, this seems like an enormous deal: the idea that a social network operator should be arrested for not moderating and not cooperating with the police seems like a precedent with implications for a great many platforms.

Telegram has been blocked in Russia since 2018. While it's unlikely to be blocked as such in the EU, it's plausible to see a world where it's removed from app stores and made harder to access.

Decentralized platform builders in particular will be watching this carefully: what does this mean for people who are building censorship-resistant and governance-free platforms overall?

Of course, at the same time, we may not have all the information yet. We'll have to watch and see.

#Technology

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[George Hammond at the Financial Times]

"Y Combinator, the San Francisco start-up incubator that launched Airbnb, Reddit, Stripe and Coinbase, is backing a weapons company for the first time, entering a sector it has previously shunned."

Specifically, its a low-cost cruise missile startup, which the Financial Times reports would be suitable for use in a potential war between the US and China. The cruise missiles are 10x smaller and 10x cheaper than today's alternatives, but presumably still murder people.

Also from the article:

"There is “a very interesting situation where geopolitical heat and the end of zero-interest rate policies have made people become more pragmatic,” said the founder of one start-up that was in the same group of YC-funded companies as Ares. [...] “People support builders doing cool, hard stuff.”"

Very interesting indeed. Certainly, you can make money by selling weapons of war. But should you? And in what world is killing people "cool stuff"?

Silicon Valley's origins are in large part military, of course, so this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. But for a while there, in the wake of the this-is-for-everyone radical inclusion of the web (which was not a military creation), it seemed like tech was heading in a different direction. It's disappointing to see that this was ephemeral at best.

#Technology

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[Tara Tarakiyee]

"I want to talk about three examples I see of cracks that are starting to form which signal big challenges in the future of OSS."

I had a knee-jerk initial reaction to this post - what open source bubble?! - but Tara Tarakiyee makes some important points here about our dependence on open source code and how that might change over time.

The through line to all of them is about money. The OSI's new "open source AI" definition is loose because AI vendors likely couldn't make money otherwise (although whether they can make money anyway is still up for debate); source-available licenses have become prevalent because it's easier to sell commercial licenses and therefore make a living building software; much open source software was precariously funded through European Commission Next Generation Internet grants, which are now evaporating.

While we can stand for pure open source values all we like, the people who build open source software need to make a living: food must go on the table and they need a roof over their heads. Ideally their compensation would extend beyond those basic necessities.

This has been the perennial problem for open source: how can it be sustainable for the people who build it? We're not launching into a post-monetary Star Trek future any time soon. In the meantime, people need to be paid for their work, or open source runs the risk of being a hobbyist-only endeavor.

People won't pay for software that they don't need to pay for. I suspect open-core, which opens the core of a software platform while monetizing high-value extensions, is the best answer we can hope for. But even that might not be realistic.

#Technology

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[Alexander Saeedy and Dana Mattioli at The Wall Street Journal]

"The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis."

"[...] The banks haven’t been able to offload the debt without incurring major losses—largely because of X’s weak financial performance—leaving the loans stuck on their balance sheets, or “hung” in industry jargon. The resulting write-downs have hobbled the banks’ loan books and, in one case, was a factor that crimped compensation for a bank’s merger department, according to people involved with the deal."

Let that sink in.

It's not like this was unpredictable: it was obvious that Elon Musk was not going to turn Twitter into a roaring success. While Twitter was, at its heart, a media company, Musk's direction has been a muddle of three sometimes-competing priorities: his long-held desire to create X, an "everything" app; his desire to build his own brand in an effort to boost his own equity and therefore wealth, sometimes in ways that got him in trouble with the SEC; and his desire to influence global politics.

There's no three-dimensional chess being played here; this likely isn't an intentional plan by Musk to write off the debt. It's simply narcissistic mismanagement, and one has to wonder how this will affect his businesses at Tesla and SpaceX in the longer term. There will come a time when shareholders declare that enough is enough - although given that they approved his ludicrous pay deal, perhaps that time isn't coming soon.

#Technology

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[Lauren Feiner at The Verge]

"A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” the court’s ruling, which you can read in full at the bottom of this story, reads. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”"

This is seismic, both for Google and for the web. As The Verge points out, this is so far about liabilities, not about any prescriptive remedy. But as one of the major factors in the decision was the payments that Google makes to browser manufacturers, it seems likely that any remedy will change how this works. In turn, the impact across tech could be significant.

Apple received $20 billion from Google in 2022 to be the default search engine (it shares 36% of ad revenue from Safari users with the company). That's a big number, but nothing compared to its $394bn in total revenue. But for Mozilla, the impact might be more profound: in 2021, these payments represented 83% of its revenue. What happens to it without this underwriting?

It's too early to say exactly what will change, but this is also potentially a gift for the new batch of AI startups that are trying to seize search engine ground. The era of the internet flux that we've found ourselves in - wherein everything is once again up for grabs and seemingly-entrenched incumbents change dramatically at a moment's notice - shows no sign of slowing.

#Technology

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[Jason Snell at Six Colors]

"In the most recent financial quarter, Apple generated $24.4 billion in revenue from Services. The Mac, iPad, and wearables categories together generated just $22.3 billion. Only the iPhone is more important to Apple’s top line than Services."

This is an interesting piece about how Apple's services revenue is set to overtake its hardware business.

Over on his blog Pixel Envy, Nick Heer worries:

"It would be disappointing if Apple sees its hardware products increasingly as vehicles for recurring revenue."

I'd go further. The beauty of Apple's product line is that they're comparatively well-made products that push the boundaries of user experience, bringing technology breakthroughs to a creative audience: as Jobs put it, "bicycles for the mind". Customers (including me) accept higher prices because the products are exceptional, but that depends on a product line that is complete.

If the product offering is a higher-priced hardware device and premium monthly services on top of it, the investment starts to have diminishing returns. It's a loss of focus on what made Apple great, and why people keep coming back to it. It's greed, essentially: continuing to push the Apple user base further and further, assuming the breaking point is very far out.

That puts them at risk from being disrupted by someone else. Windows ain't it, but at some point someone is going to come in with a really great set of hardware on an alternative stack. The question won't be whether it beats Apple as-is, but simply whether it's good enough at a lower price point. And then that company will grow their offerings, until before you know it, Apple has serious competition. It's disruption 101, and the further Apple pushes out its expense and friction, the more susceptible it becomes.

#Technology

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[Shiraz Shaikh on Global Network on Extremism & Technology]

"Video games and their associated platforms are vastly becoming hubs of radicalisation, extremism and recruitment by far-right extremist organisations. The development of bespoke games and modifications, often known as MODs, has given extremist organisations the ability to further spread their digital propaganda."

This is both depressing and inevitable: games are incredibly popular and share social media's ability to let people share with each other at scale. Unlike social media, some of the modes of communication directly have violent modes of expression.

Valve's apparent under-investment in trust and safety, and protections against extremism, are also partially inevitable. How do you police voice communication across disparate games? But there's more to it than that:

"In terms of the material and content available on these gaming platforms, there is evidence of far-right propaganda available in huge amounts. The materials include books, videos, documents, manifestos, memes and more. Even on other platforms apart from Steam, interviews of far-right leaders, such as Andrew Anglin, are available for users."

This seems easier to police, and should be. That this material is available says a lot about Valve's priorities.

#Technology

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[Kate Conger at the New York Times]

""Time and again, Ms. Yaccarino has faced similar situations, as Mr. Musk is always one whim away from undoing her work. Ms. Yaccarino’s task of repairing and remaking X’s business over the past year has been complicated by Mr. Musk’s seeming disregard for the advertising industry and his constant unraveling of her efforts."

This reads like damage control - she's possibly leaving, although if that happens it's not clear if she's jumping or she's being pushed.

I have little sympathy: she knew what she was getting into. And she'll do just fine. But the project of supporting Elon Musk's work has been one of supporting right-wing ideologies, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and reactionary politics. Nobody who aligns themselves with this gets a pass.

I thought this detail was interesting:

"The internal documents about X’s revenue show that Ms. Yaccarino hopes to net $8 million in political advertising this quarter. If she succeeds, it would represent a marked increase from the company’s political earnings when it was still Twitter — the company earned less than $3 million from political advertisers during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, the last cycle before it banned political advertising."

This is likely what Musk's Trump alignment is about: he wants to encourage that side of the aisle to advertise extensively on X. And likely, they'll bite. Nothing is as deeply-felt or as ideological as it appears; this is, however ham-fistedly, about money.

#Technology

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[Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge]

"Last week, the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz declared their allegiance to Donald Trump in their customary fashion: talking about money on a podcast.

“Sorry, Mom,” Ben Horowitz says in an episode of The Ben & Marc Show. “I know you’re going to be mad at me for this. But, like, we have to do it.”"

No, you don't.

As I've discussed before, investors like Andreessen and Horowitz are putting concerns about crypto regulation and taxation of unrealized gains over a host of social issues that include mass deportations, an increase in death sentences, military police in our cities, and potential ends to contraception and no-fault divorce. It's myopic, selfish, and stupid.

It looks even more so in a world where Trump is reportedly already regretting appointing JD Vance as his Vice Presidential candidate and where Musk has reneged on his $45M a month pledge to a Trump PAC. They come out looking awful.

The progressive thing to do would be to starve their firm: founders who care about those issues should pledge not to let a16z into their rounds, and other VCs should refuse to join rounds where a16z is present. This is likely too much activism for Silicon Valley, but it would send the strong signal that's needed here.

The desire for profit must never trump our duty of care to society's most vulnerable. Agreeing with this statement should be a no-brainer - but we're quickly learning how many would much rather put themselves first.

#Technology

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[Christine Hall at FOSS Force]

"The Apache Software Foundation is making changes in an attempt to right a wrong it unintentionally created when it adopted its name 25-years ago."

This is an unnecessarily awkward article (why describe the existing logo as cool in this context?!) to describe a simple premise: the Apache Software Foundation is slowly, finally, moving away from its appropriation of the Apache name and its racist use of faux Native American imagery.

For a while, it's preferred to refer to itself as ASF, and now it's going to have a much-needed logo change. That's fine, but it needs to go much further. It's past time to just rip off the Band Aid.

Still, this is far better than the obstinate response we've seen in the past to requests for change. A new logo, slight as it is, is hopefully an iteration in the right direction.

#Technology

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[Kayleigh Barber and Seb Joseph at Digiday]

"After much back and forth, Google has decided to keep third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. Turns out all the fuss over the years wasn’t in vain after all; the ad industry’s cries have finally been heard."

Advertisers are rejoicing. In other words: this is bad.

It's possible that Chrome's "new experience" that lets users make an "informed choice" across their web browsing is really good. Sincerely, though, I doubt it. Moving this to the realm of power user preferences rather than a blanket policy for everyone means that very few people are likely to use it.

The result is going to be a continued trend of tracking users across the web. The people who really, really care will do the work to use the interface; everyone else (including people who care about privacy!) won't have the time.

All this to help save the advertising industry. Which, forgive me, doesn't feel like an important goal to me.

Case in point: Chrome's Privacy Sandbox isn't actually going away, and this is what Digiday has to say about it:

"This could be a blessing in disguise, especially if Google’s plan gets Chrome users to opt out of third-party cookies. Since it’s all about giving people a choice, if a bunch of users decide cookies aren’t for them, the APIs in the sandbox might actually work for targeting them without cookies."

A "blessing in disguise" for advertisers does not read as an actual blessing to me.

#Technology

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[Om Malik]

"Apple’s decision to strike a deal with Taboola is shocking and off-brand — so much so that I have started to question the company’s long-term commitment to good customer experience, including its commitment to privacy."

This move says a lot about modern Apple, but more than that, it likely says a lot about the performance of Apple News.

For many news publishers Apple News pageviews are a multiple of the reads on their own websites: it's a serious source of traffic and impact. The fact that Apple is finding itself having to make changes to how it makes revenue on the platform means that the mechanism itself may be under threat.

It's never a good idea to put your trust in a third party: every publisher needs to own their relationships with their communities. The pull of Apple News has been irresistible, and Apple has seemed more trustworthy than most. This may have been a false promise, and publishers should take note.

#Technology

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