Werd I/O

[The Browser Company]

Arc is my primary browser, and I'm feeling like that's a choice I should never have made:

"The part that was hard to admit, is that Arc — and even Arc Search — were too incremental. They were meaningful, yes. But ultimately not at the scale of improvements that we aspired to. Or that could breakout as a mass-market product. If we were serious about our original mission, we needed a technological unlock to build something truly new."

So many of its features feel completely made for me - the way it gets out of the way, its very easy keystroke-bound profile switching, the split panes, and the fact that it cleans up my tabs every day. (Some people keep their tabs forever. That's not how I roll.) It's brilliant and I truly love using it - but, as it turns out, it's also a dead end.

I'm going to retrain myself to head back to Firefox, but I do so reluctantly. My hope is that someone really studies why this UX was amazing and backports it to the Firefox ecosystem - Zen Browser is sort of there but also not really, and I'd love for something to get closer or even surpass it. Open source products don't often prioritize user experience to the degree they should, so I'm not holding my breath. But maybe if I wish hard enough ...

Sigh.

#Technology

[Link]

[Andrew Losowsky]

Running an open source community platform for a decade is no small feat - particularly one as storied and supported as Coral. Andrew Losowsky's reflections on its first decade are inspiring.

"Among so many conversations, we brought commenters into newsrooms to speak with journalists, moderators to conferences to talk to academics, we consumed and conducted research, we talked at the United Nations about online abuse, we invited college students to conduct hackathons, we co-hosted a conference called Beyond Comments at MIT... and so much more.

What we learned early on was that the core problems with online comments aren’t technical – they’re cultural. This means that technology alone cannot solve the issue. And so we worked with industry experts to publish guides and training materials to address this, and then designed our software around ways to turn strategy into action."

This is so important: most of these problems are human, not technical. The technology should be there to support these communities, but a lot of the work itself needs to be done on the community and relationship level. That's an important ingredient for success.

One sad note: while I've seen a few of these reflective posts from projects lately, it's not obvious to me that comparable new open source projects are being created that will be hosting their own reflections a decade from now. I think there needs to be significantly more investment into open source from institutions, foundations, and enterprises. Not every project will succeed, but for the ones that will, the investment will pay dividends.

#Technology

[Link]

[John O' Nolan at Ghost]

This is a lovely reflection on 12 years of Ghost, the non-profit, open source publishing platform that powers independent publishers and allows them to make a living on their own terms.

"Over the years, we've focused consistently on building the best tools for publishing on the web. In the past 5 years, in particular, we've also focused heavily on building ways for creators, journalists, and publishers to run a sustainable business on the web."

As John notes, this has been very successful: outlets like 404Media and Platformer use it as their platform, and they've generated over $100 million for small publishers. It's the right product, and particularly now, it fills a need at the right time.

#Technology

[Link]

[Kate Knibbs at WIRED]

This is an insightful interview with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber. The headline here overreaches quite a bit, and needlessly describes what Bluesky is doing in monopolistic terms; I left excited about what's next for the open social web, which I've believed for some time is the most exciting thing happening on the internet.

A pluralistic social web based on open protocols rather than monopolistic ownership is obviously beneficial for democracy and user experience. There are serious benefits for developers, too:

"There was recently the Atmosphere Conference, and we met a lot of folks there building apps we didn’t know about. There are private messengers, new moderation tools. The benefit to developers of an open ecosystem is that you don’t have to start from zero each time. You have 34.6 million users to tap into."

And that number, by the way, is growing incredibly quickly. Make no mistake: across protocols and platforms, this mindset is the way all future social applications, and one day all web applications, will be written and distributed.

#Technology

[Link]

[Tom Warren at The Verge]

File under: beware proprietary APIs.

"Microsoft is shutting off access to its Bing Search results for third-party developers. The software maker quietly announced the change earlier this week, noting that Bing Search APIs will be retired on August 11th and that “any existing instances of Bing Search APIs will be decommissioned completely, and the product will no longer be available for usage or new customer signup.”

[...] Microsoft is now recommending that developers use “grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents” as a replacement, which lets chatbots interact with web data from Bing."

There are carveouts - DuckDuckGo will still function - but for most developers who want to use this search engine data, it's game over. While Bing was never a number one search engine, its APIs have been quite widely used.

#Technology

[Link]

[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 this context, incarcerated people become the unwilling consumers of a billion-dollar industry. Shakeil Price, one such user at New Jersey State Prison, explores another aspect of package deals: What happens when a state switches providers?"

Well, specifically, here's what:

"My little 7-inch JP6 tablet with its meager 32-gigabytes of memory may not mean much to the state, but it holds a decade’s worth of sentimental e-messages, pictures and video messages from my family and friends. By changing vendors, I will lose access to photographs from my son’s high school graduation and videos of my grandchild saying his first word, taking his first step and riding his first bike. These items are priceless to me; a dollar amount can't measure their worth."

Not to mention other downloads that the author has paid for, on a $5 a day salary, that are locked to this device and will go away when the vendor changes. It's nothing less than an abusive system - which, of course, just makes it part and parcel of the American justice system as a whole.

#Technology

[Link]

[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 seats two yet has a bed big enough to hold a sheet of plywood. It only does 150 miles on a charge, only comes in gray, and the only way to listen to music while driving is if you bring along your phone and a Bluetooth speaker. It is the bare minimum of what a modern car can be, and yet it’s taken three years of development to get to this point."

So far, so bland, but it's designed to be customized. So while it doesn't itself come with a screen, or, you know, paint, you can add one yourself, wrap it in whatever color you want, and pick from a bunch of aftermarket devices to soup it up. It's the IBM PC approach to electric vehicles instead of the highly-curated Apple approach. I'm into it, with one caveat: I want to hear more about how safe it is.

It sounds like that might be okay:

"Slate’s head of engineering, Eric Keipper, says they’re targeting a 5-Star Safety Rating from the federal government’s New Car Assessment Program. Slate is also aiming for a Top Safety Pick from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety."

I want more of this. EVs are often twice the price or more, keeping them out of reach of regular people. I've driven one for several years, and they're genuinely better cars: more performant, easier to maintain, with a smaller environmental footprint. Bringing the price down while increasing the number of options feels like an exciting way to shake up the market, and exactly the kind of thing I'd want to buy into.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating - so let's see what happens when it hits the road next year.

#Technology

[Link]

[Tony Stubblebine on The Medium Blog]

In the midst of some challenging cultural times, Tony Stubblebine and Medium are doing the right thing:

"Over the past several months, I’ve gotten questions from the Medium community asking if we’re planning to change our policies in reaction to recent political pressure against diversity, equity, and inclusion. As some companies dismantle their programs and walk back their commitments, we would like to state our stance clearly: Medium stands firm in our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion."

As he points out, this mission is inherent to the site's mission, as well as the values of the team that produces it. Any site for writing and thought that turns its back on diversity becomes less useful; less interesting; less intellectually honest.

Because this is true too:

"Medium is a home for the intellectually curious — people that are driven to expand your understanding of the world. And for curious people, diversity isn’t a threat, it’s a strength."

He goes on to describe it as not just the right thing to do but also a core differentiator for Medium's business. It's a strong argument that should resonate not just for Medium's community but for other media companies who are wondering how to navigate this moment.

#Technology

[Link]

[Eve Upton-Clark at Fast Company]

I love this. Tumblr is so back:

"Thanks to Gen Z, the site has found new life. As of 2025, Gen Z makes up 50% of Tumblr’s active monthly users and accounts for 60% of new sign-ups, according to data shared with Business Insider’s Amanda Hoover, who recently reported on the platform’s resurgence.

[...] Perhaps Tumblr’s greatest strength is that it isn’t TikTok or Facebook. Currently the 10th most popular social platform in the U.S., according to analytics firm Similarweb, Tumblr is dwarfed by giants like Instagram and X. For its users, though, that’s part of the appeal."

This is worth paying attention to: small communities are a huge part of the selling point. That's something that Mastodon also already has built-in, and Bluesky would do well to learn from. (Signs point to them being aware of this; more of this in a later post.) Sometimes not being the public square makes for a far better community culture and safer, more creative dynamics.

#Technology

[Link]

[Sabhanaz Rashid Diya at Rest of World]

Like the author, I read Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams' account of her time as a director for global public policy at Facebook during a period when the company transitioned from a largely-domestic social network to a worldwide powerhouse that ultimately enabled a genocide. It's written with a kind of ironic detachment that seeks to minimize the Wynn-Williams' own culpability, and while it's an engaging, jaw-dropping read, there are clear omissions:

"In recounting events, the author glosses over her own indifference to repeated warnings from policymakers, civil society, and internal teams outside the U.S. that ultimately led to serious harm to communities.

[...] Her delayed reckoning underscores how Facebook’s leadership remains largely detached from real-world consequences of their decisions until they become impossible to ignore. Perhaps because everyone wants to be a hero of their own story, Wynn-Williams frames her opposition to leadership decisions as isolated; in reality, powerful resistance had long existed within what Wynn-Williams describes as Facebook’s “lower-level employees.”"

The author has personal experience working for Facebook as part of the global teams Wynn-Williams presided over, cleaning up the messes that she and her colleagues created.

As such, the author sees the gaps clearly, and her review cuts to the core of the problem with the book. That doesn't mean it's valueless, and in some ways it's strongest when detailing the personalities of people like Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, and contrasting the public face of Lean In with her experiences of being a mother while working alongside them.

The fact that Facebook is attempting to suppress the book inherently makes it worth reading, in my view, and I think it should be read by everyone in the tech industry. Not only because it’s a cautionary tale in itself, but because the personalities described here are rife in the industry.

I’ve never spoken to Mark or Sheryl or Joel or most of the rest of them, but I’ve met people like them, with those same sensibilities, and they are every bit as shallow and driven by power as is laid out here. These are the people to avoid. These are the people who will lead us into hell. These are the people who, in very real ways, through genocides, swung elections, and the violence of indifference to real human suffering, already are.

The thing is, Sarah Wynn-Williams was one of them.

#Technology

[Link]

[Brandon Vigliarolo at The Register]

In the wake of the French and German governments joining forces to build an alternative to Notion and Google Docs, the Dutch government has passed eight motions to avoid US software and move to a home-grown stack.

""With each IT service our government moves to American tech giants, we become dumber and weaker," Dutch MP Barbara Kathmann, author of four of the motions, told The Register. "If we continue outsourcing all of our digital infrastructure to billionaires that would rather escape Earth by building space rockets, there will be no Dutch expertise left."

Kathmann's measures specifically call on the government to stop the migration of Dutch information and communications technology to American cloud services, the creation of a Dutch national cloud, the repatriation of the .nl top-level domain to systems operating within the Netherlands, and for the preparation of risk analyses and exit strategies for all government systems hosted by US tech giants."

Inevitably, these will be open source solutions that offer stronger privacy (with GDPR compliance from the beginning rather than as an afterthought) and fewer dependencies on third party centralized services. I see this as a very strongly good thing: everyone will see the benefit of such tools, and if you have values like "software shouldn't spy on you" and "you should have full control over your data", there will be more options for you to choose from.

The context is important:

"The motions passed by the Dutch parliament come as the Trump administration ratchets up tensions with a number of US allies – the EU among them. Nearly 100 EU-based tech companies and lobbyists sent an open letter to the European Commission this week asking it to find a way to divest the bloc from systems managed by US companies due to "the stark geopolitical reality Europe is now facing.""

It's sensible. I agree. This is what Europe should be doing.

#Technology

[Link]

[Meredith Whittaker in the Financial Times]

A great op-ed from Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal on the ludicrous demands by the British government for Apple to backdoor its encryption:

"Imagine a government telling a car company to secretly weaken the effectiveness of the brakes on all the cars it sells, recklessly endangering the safety of millions. It would be an unthinkable undermining of public safety. 

Sadly, this is what’s happening in the UK in cyber security, where Apple was forced to strip the vital privacy and security protection of end-to-end encryption from its backups storage service — exposing people and infrastructure to significant vulnerabilities."

Meredith is (as usual) right. She points out that not only is this a wildly dangerous thing to do in general, but it undermines the technology industry that the British government sometimes says it wants to support.

Americans shouldn't be complacent. This may be a battle that's heading our way next - and one that was already fought in the nineties. We can't let these erosions of civil liberties take place here; they should not happen anywhere.

#Technology

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[Scharon Harding at Ars Technica]

Don't keep an Amazon Echo (or any smart speaker) in a room where you'll be having sensitive conversations, either with your family or on a work call. Particularly if you're a journalist or activist - but privacy is something everybody should be guarded about.

"Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally and, therefore, avoid sending voice recordings to Amazon’s cloud."

As the author points out, even if you trust Amazon (and, to be clear, you shouldn't trust any vendor with your private conversations), there's reason to worry:

"In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million in civil penalties over the revelation that it stored recordings of children’s interactions with Alexa forever. Adults also didn’t feel properly informed of Amazon’s inclination to keep Alexa recordings unless prompted not to until 2019—five years after the first Echo came out."

It was a nice idea, but it's time to give them a rest. There are plenty of use cases for smart agents, but they don't need to be listening to you all the time like you live in some kind of science fiction movie. You don't know who else is listening with them.

#Technology

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[Benedict Collins at TechRadar]

This was always inevitable, but in the current environment it makes sense that it's accelerating:

"Several major European tech companies are pushing for greater action from the European Union to reduce the bloc’s reliance on foreign-owned infrastructure by buying and building locally.

[...] Essentially, the European Union has become overly reliant on foreign-owned infrastructure - especially US Big Tech - and if nothing is done soon, EU countries will become subservient to foreign tech companies. The solution therefore is to foster growth at home."

The implication is that there's already a market here. Hosting in the US puts you at risk of certain kinds of subpoenas and other actions by the state, and the current political environment makes that even less desirable. (I've certainly personally had plenty of advice from security experts this year to not host in the US.) But if the only really great cloud hosting providers are US-based, that's a problem (even if they offer non-US hosting zones).

To be competitive here, the EU needs to consider privacy and freedom from surveillance as paramount values. That's not always been the case for it: there have always been voices who have pushed for things like backdoors in encryption and greater monitoring from police and security services. Those things will kill any EU effort to provide alternatives. The EU's great strengths in comparison to the US are greater openness and stronger protections of human rights; it should lean into those.

#Technology

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[A.C. Thompson, ProPublica and FRONTLINE, James Bandler, ProPublica, and Lukáš Diko, Investigative Center of Jan Kuciak]

A tragic story of a teenager recruited by a network of extremists, who ultimately murdered multiple people before taking his own life. It's also an example of why moderation and safety processes on social platforms are so important.

"And so in August 2019, Juraj Krajčík, then a soft-faced 16-year-old with a dense pile of brown hair, immersed himself in a loose collection of extremist chat groups and channels on the massive social media and messaging platform Telegram. This online community, which was dubbed Terrorgram, had a singular focus: inciting acts of white supremacist terrorism."

This is particularly relevant in a world where companies like X and Meta are cutting back on their safety teams and policies. It's not as easy as waving your hands and saying that it should be a matter for the courts; real lives are at stake. And at the same time, there is, of course, a real danger of falling into the trap of building a surveillance network.

The police at the time thought this was the work of a lone gunman rather than the international community of extremists it actually was. Uncovering this is also the kind of story that only investigative newsrooms can do really well:

"ProPublica and the PBS series FRONTLINE, along with the Slovakian newsroom Investigative Center of Jan Kuciak, pieced together the story behind Krajčík’s evolution from a troubled teenager to mass shooter. We identified his user name on Telegram, which allowed us to sift through tens of thousands of now-deleted Telegram posts that had not previously been linked to him."

Hopefully this work can help prevent this and similar networks from operating in the future. Likely a more holistic approach is needed, and if law enforcement, educators, and social workers are more aware of the potential risks and playbooks, hopefully they can be more sophisticated about prevention.

#Technology

[Link]

[Davis Erin Anderson and Dr. Martin Shelton at the Freedom of the Press Foundation]

These security tips are designed for journalists but are good ideas for everyone (and particularly activists or anyone working in a sensitive field):

"In tumultuous times, we believe in being prepared, not scared. Sound digital security practice often involves forming and relying on good habits. Building these reflexes now will help keep you better protected. This is why we’ve distilled advice our trainers have shared with thousands of journalists over the years into the actionable, concrete steps below."

The Freedom of the Press Foundation does great work, and this guide is no exception.

#Technology

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[Joe Woods]

This is good, actionable advice:

"As an engineering leader, you should be constantly working to reduce the amount of time it takes to complete one cycle of a feedback loop.

What do I mean by feedback loop? This is anything where you do work, and then you need to await a result in order to be able to do more work."

Some of these will be easier than others to obtain: for example, any engineering team can tune up their test suite without the permission of an outside party. What they might have more trouble with is getting an outside stakeholder to commit to just-in-time availability; I imagine that a weekly touch-base meeting might be the norm in many non-engineering-centric organizations. But they're all important, and all very concrete ways to both improve performance on an engineering team and improve the experience of working on one.

#Technology

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[Kunal Khullar at Tom's Hardware]

Straight into my nightmares:

"Australian biotech company Cortical Labs has introduced what it claims to be "the world’s first code deployable biological computer," which combines human brain cells with traditional silicon-based computing. The system, known as CL1, was presented at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and is being explored for its potential applications in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning."

Oddly, while it theoretically is suited for certain kinds of novel computing tasks, it just screams and screams.

#Technology

[Link]

[Bill Fitzgerald]

What a missed opportunity. As Bill Fitzgerald points out:

"Mozilla has given a masterclass, yet again, in how to erode trust among people who have loved your work."

Mozilla rolled out a new terms of service and privacy policy that rolled back a key promise never to sell user data. And then complained that people were making a big deal of it.

As Bill points out:

"Data brokers and adtech companies are weeds choking the internet. The data theft required to train large language models is a new, more noxious species of the same weed. Mozilla is going deep into AI and adtech, which means they are buying fertilizer for the weeds – and these changes to their terms, which provide Mozilla more rights to the data defining our online interactions and experience, should be understood in this context: Mozilla is building advertising and AI tools, and they need data to do this. Our web browser is right up there with our phone, car, and router with devices that provide a clear view on how we live."

Mozilla always had the potential to demonstrate what a tech company could be, and what the web could be, and it's always found new and interesting ways to fall short of that ideal. This is yet another one.

#Technology

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[Edwin Wong and Andrew Melnizek at The Verge]

This is much-needed research:

"The Verge partnered with Vox Media’s Insights and Research team, along with Two Cents Insights, to better understand how American consumers are embracing this shift. The goal of the work was to redefine what online communities will be in a post-social media era of emerging AI and Google Zero. And as brands look to hold onto the internet of the past, the term “community” will become a loaded word, with brands and platforms trying to use it more often to reach their ideal consumer."

And the findings are both obvious and highly actionable:

"Our research makes one thing clear: power is shifting back to the consumer (the fediverse signals this). Consumers crave community, but on their own terms — seeking deeper, more meaningful connections with those who truly matter (something we identified in 2014). Authenticity is at the heart of it all, supported by a foundation of safety and security. The future of community is personal, intentional, and built on trust."

Something that's maybe less obvious but still important: social media has often been the domain of editorial teams rather than product teams. There needs to be a strategic shift here: while actual messaging is editorial, the strategy of outreach and adoption for community platforms is a core part of product and needs to be treated that way. Community is a core part of any publication's product offering, and placing it on the editorial side disincentivizes innovation and real change.

Take this finding in particular:

"The desire for smaller, more intimate communities is undeniable. People are abandoning massive platforms in favor of tight-knit groups where trust and shared values flourish and content is at the core. The future of community building is in going back to the basics. Brands and platforms that can foster these personal, human-scale interactions are going to be the winners."

That's not something that an editorial team can provide on its own. It requires taking a step back and completely rethinking how you approach "audience" (that's the wrong word, for a start - community is two-way, whereas audience is one-way). That's not something I see many publishers grappling with.

#Technology

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[Craig Silverman at ProPublica]

Let the attention dollars flow:

"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said in January that the company was removing or dialing back automated systems that reduce the spread of false information. At the same time, Meta is revamping a program that has paid bonuses to creators for content based on views and engagement, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts it once policed. The new Facebook Content Monetization program is currently invite-only, but Meta plans to make it widely available this year."

This combination very obviously incentivizes bad actors to make the most viral content possible, whether it's truthful or not.

For example:

"“BREAKING — ICE is allegedly offering $750 per illegal immigrant that you turn in through their tip form,” read a post on a page called NO Filter Seeking Truth, adding, “Cash in folks.”"

That post is a hoax, and Facebook's existing fact checking had meant it had been demonetized. The page owner is quoted as being delighted that fact checking is ending. Thousands others like it doubtless agree.

#Technology

[Link]

[Bert Hubert]

A European point of view:

"We now have the bizarre situation that anyone with any sense can see that America is no longer a reliable partner, and that the entire US business world bows to Trump’s dictatorial will, but we STILL are doing everything we can to transfer entire governments and most of our own businesses to their clouds.

Not only is it scary to have all your data available to US spying, it is also a huge risk for your business/government continuity. From now on, all our business processes can be brought to a halt with the push of a button in the US. And not only will everything then stop, will we ever get our data back? Or are we being held hostage? This is not a theoretical scenario, something like this has already happened."

I can understand the risks. What's interesting is that many US companies also feel that way about European cloud services, in an effort to avoid having to adhere to the GDPR. Should every business adhere to strong privacy standards? Absolutely. I'm not defending it or suggesting it's equally justifiable. Regardless, the impulse exists.

These trends ultimately culminate in stratified national internets: technically connected internationally but in effect separated through different legal requirements and jurisdictions. (Some national internets are also separated by firewall or content filters - think China, for example.)

It would be nice to reverse this trend: one of the real benefits of the internet is that everyone is connected to everyone else. But I can also fully understand why Europeans (and particularly European governments) are worried about US policies and want to remain independent from them. There is a security and business continuity issue here, and they're right to de-risk their operations.

#Technology

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[Allison Hantschel in DAME]

Hand-wringing over people leaving overtly unsafe spaces like X to find communities that are actually enjoyable to hang out in (like Mastodon and BlueSky) is absolute nonsense.

"With that user growth, mostly from liberals disgusted with Musk’s nonstop promotion of conservative disinformation, came criticism that people were merely seeking out an ideological “echo chamber” to reinforce their views.

They’re complaining that Americans are underexposed to fresh new ideas like “non-white races are inferior” and “trans people shouldn’t exist” and “we should hunt the poor for sport” and without algorithmic pressure will suffer without such content. They’re upset that they’re not allowed to promote their toxic work into the eyeballs of people who aren’t looking for it."

Let's put it like this. If you're at a party and it's full of assholes, it's quite reasonable to leave and go to another party. There's no law that says X is the social networking platform for everybody (at least, not yet). There's nothing that says you have to be on Facebook or Instagram. Everyone gets to use the law of two feet to find a community that's comfortable for them.

Hantschel puts it like this:

"There’s no obligation to stay where you find nothing useful or interesting, and there’s no homework assignment that requires you to allow people to ruin your experience. You’re not required to spend a certain number of hours a day engaging with hateful people, or even people you just dislike, in order to accumulate Intellectual Diversity Points."

What these commentators are really complaining about: they spent well over a decade building up followings on these platforms and now people are looking elsewhere, rendering their investment moot. That's just too bad.

#Technology

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[Matt Binder at disruptionist]

Just in case you thought he was still all about free speech:

"Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, is currently banning links to “Signal.me,” a URL used by the encrypted messaging service Signal. The “Signal.me” domain is specifically used by the service so that users can send out a quick link to directly contact them through the messaging app."

Signal, of course, is the encrypted chat app that is used by anyone who wants to have conversations with freedom from surveillance - including activists, journalists, and, as it happens, public servants who have either been fired or are under threat of it. As the article points out:

"Signal has been an important tool for journalists over the years as really one of the few services that are truly private. All messages are end-to-end encrypted, everything is stored on device, and no content is kept on any Signal servers in the cloud. If a source wants to reach out to a reporter and be sure their communication would be as confidential as possible, Signal is usually one of the primary methods of choice."

This includes public servants blowing the whistle on DOGE. So it's weird that X is blocking it. But given Musk's activities in the current moment, maybe not surprising.

#Technology

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[Joe Wilkins in Futurism]

The job market in the tech industry has been brutal for a little while now, and doesn't show signs of getting easier.

"Of all the workers devastated by the carnage, former tech workers in Silicon Valley are having a particularly rough go of it.

The region's former software engineers and developers — whose jobs were previously thought to be ironclad — are now having to contend with a fiercely competitive job market in one of the most expensive housing markets in the world."

Silicon Valley - which, here as in a lot of places, is incorrectly used to mean the San Francisco Bay Area - is in a bit of a pickle. Mass layoffs have driven down salaries, so many tech companies are quietly firing swathes of workers and re-hiring those seats in order to lower their costs. That's before you get to the actual downsizing, which has sometimes been significant.

And at the same time, living costs are sky-high, and house prices are all but unobtainable. When so many peoples' wealth is tied to the equity in their home, there are two possible outcomes: a significant drop in wealth as prices decline (particularly as fired employees flee for more affordable climes), or a significant increase in inequality as prices continue to climb. Either way, that doesn't look good.

That's a societal problem, but it's also a problem for the tech industry. Who can afford to found a startup when base prices are so high? The demographics of founders are narrowing to the already well off, forcing other founders to look elsewhere.

The solution will have to involve more help (potentially including more startup funding for a wider set of founders) or better jobs in the area. Otherwise Silicon Valley will continue to lose talent to other parts of the country and the world. Tech companies are trying to get their employees to return to the office to counteract this effect, but it simply won't be enough; no RTO policy is compelling enough when you can't afford to buy a house and bring up a family.

That's an opportunity for other ecosystems, but it's one that they will need to intentionally pick up. To date, smart tech ecosystem strategies in other parts of the world have been few and far between - not least because they aim for a similar level of talent density as Silicon Valley rather than embracing a remote, distributed culture.

I openly miss living in the Bay Area and may return in the future, so I have skin in the game. I'm curious to see what happens here.

#Technology

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