Commentary on links that caught my attention around the web.
Technology
[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
Technology
[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.
Health
[Ian Sample in The Guardian] "England’s former chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, has said there is no safe level of alcohol intake. A major study published in 2018 supported the view. It found that alcohol led to 2.8 million deaths in 2016 and was the leading
Fediverse
[Carl Sullivan at Flipboard] "Flipboard has worked with local papers and websites since its inception. Now, as part of the gradual federation of our platform, we’re bringing some of those publications to the fediverse." Flipboard turns the fediverse on for a whopping 64 US-based local and
Equality
[David Ingram at NBC News] "Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, said Thursday in her first interview that he was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child for being queer and feminine." Her full Threads thread is worth reading. She seems
AI
[Samantha Cole at 404 Media] "A highly-praised AI video generation tool made by multi-billion dollar company Runway was secretly trained by scraping thousands of videos from popular YouTube creators and brands, as well as pirated films." 404 Media has linked to the spreadsheet itself, which seems
Technology
[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
Notable links
[Anthony Robledo at USA Today] "Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his estranged transgender daughter was "killed" by the "woke mind virus" after he was tricked into agreeing to gender-affirming care procedures." The thing is, his daughter Vivian is perfectly happy with the decision.
Technology
[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
Technology
[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
AI
[Gerben Wierda at R&A IT Strategy & Architecture] "ChatGPT doesn’t summarise. When you ask ChatGPT to summarise this text, it instead shortens the text. And there is a fundamental difference between the two." The distinction is indeed important: it's akin to making an
Notable links
[Matt Stoller] "So what does Vance think? He is in agreement with the views of a rising set of younger conservatives, populists like Sohrab Ahmari and Oren Cass, who assert that libertarianism is a cover for private rule, most explicitly in Ahmari’s book Tyranny, Inc. It is flourishing