Commentary on links that caught my attention around the web.
Startups
[Paul Graham] "In effect there are two different ways to run a company: founder mode and manager mode. Till now most people even in Silicon Valley have implicitly assumed that scaling a startup meant switching to manager mode. But we can infer the existence of another mode from the
Fediverse
[Ghost] "It's a simple thing, but it's kind of a big deal. With this milestone, Ghost is for the first time exceeding the functionality of a basic RSS reader. This is 2-way interaction. You publish, and your readers can respond." This is a
Notable links
[Matt Webb] "The EU may (or may not) be making technology policy missteps, but they are gently and patiently promoting a certain way of life which feels globally very, very special, and fundamentally counter to the hypercapitalism found elsewhere." I love Europe, and this is a large part
AI
[Robin Rendle] Robin Rendle on Sarah Jeong's article about the implications of the Pixel 9's magic photo editor in The Verge: "But this stuff right here—adding things that never happened to a picture—that’s immoral because confusion and deception is the point of
Notable links
[Brett Wilkins at Common Dreams] "After years of working with Iraqis whose relatives were killed by U.S. Marines in the 2005 Haditha massacre, American journalists finally obtained and released photos showing the grisly aftermath of the bloody rampage—whose perpetrators never spent a day behind bars." These
Technology
[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
Notable links
[Aaron Ross Powell] ""First, there’s what I’ve referred to in the past as the “Quillette Effect.” Because we believe our own ideas are correct (or else we wouldn’t believe them), we tend to think that people who share our ideas are correct, as well."
Labor
[Emily Peck at Axios] "70% of Americans said they approved of unions, per Gallup's most recent poll, conducted in August." This represents a giant change in American society: labor unions haven't been this popular since 1967. But at the same time, union membership is
Media
[Heather Bryant] Arguing that it's harder to just be a human online, Heather Bryant has published an online participation disclaimer: "The following disclaimer applies to participation in discourse as it relates to my individual experience as a human being in a global online community and the collective
AI
[tante] Tante responds to Amazon's claim that using its internal AI for coding saved 4500 person years of work: "Amazon wants to present themselves as AI company and platform. So of course their promises of gains are always advertising for their platform and tools. Advertising might have
Notable links
[The 19th] "To understand how the anti-trans agenda could reshape all of our lives, The 19th set out to examine how the laws and rhetoric behind it are impacting Americans." My friends at The 19th dive into how the wave of anti-trans legislation and rhetoric is
Technology
[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