Commentary on links that caught my attention around the web.
Climate
[Molly Lempriere and Simon Evans in CarbonBrief] "Remarkably, the UK’s coal power phaseout – as well as the closure of some of the country’s few remaining blast furnaces at Port Talbot in Wales and Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire – will help push overall coal demand in 2024 to its lowest
Technology
[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
Technology
[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."
Technology
[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
Media
[Laura Hazard Owen at NiemanLab] There are some interesting referral statistics embedded in this piece. Facebook referral traffic has fallen more than 40% over the last year; referrals from Reddit have increased by 88%. But the focus is this: "Search traffic, still dominated by Google search, has remained relatively
Media
[Paul Bradley Carr] "I’ve worked at (and founded!) my fair share of billionaire-funded publications and I’ve always had a firm rule: You have to be more critical of the people writing the checks (and their cronies) than you are of anyone else. It’s the only way
Media
[Dan Kennedy at Media Nation] Dan Kennedy picks up on a detail in Brian Stelter's Atlantic article about troubles at the Washington Post: "The Post’s content-management system, Arc, which was supposed to be a money-maker, had instead turned out to be a drag on the bottom
Media
[Casey Newton at Platformer] This fantastic round-up post focuses on Platformer's decision in January to leave Substack in protest of its content policies that permitted full-throated Nazis to earn money on the platform. With a long-term view, it's been a good strategic move: "We’re
AI
[Matthew Hutson at Nature] "Beyond the ability to fine-tune open models for focused applications, Kal’tsit says, another advantage of local models is privacy. Sending personally identifiable data to a commercial service could run foul of data-protection regulations. “If an audit were to happen and you show them you’
AI
[Kyle Orland at ArsTechnica] "Microsoft and Constellation Energy have announced a deal that would re-open Pennsylvania's shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant. The agreement would let Microsoft purchase the entirety of the plant's roughly 835 megawatts of energy generation—enough to power approximately 800,000
Technology
[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
Business
[Chris Metinko at Crunchbase News] "Last year, venture funding to Black-founded U.S. startups cratered — totaling only $699 million and marking the first time since 2016 that the figure failed to even reach $1 billion, Crunchbase data shows." And: "While last year did not see Black founders