The COP28 summit on Monday offered a milquetoast text with no mention of phasing out fossil fuels. CC-licensed photo by Palácio do Planalto on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Cop28: Australia, US and UK say they won’t sign agreement that would be ‘death certificate’ for small islands • The Guardian
Adam Morton:
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A group of countries including Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and Japan have said they will “not be a co-signatory” to “death certificates” for small island states, and have demanded a stronger agreement at the Cop28 summit to deal with fossil fuels and address the climate crisis.
A statement delivered by the Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, on behalf of what’s known as the umbrella group of countries, came as tensions flared at the United Arab Emirates over the text of a draft deal proposed by the summit presidency.
Released early on Monday evening local time, the draft avoided highly contentious calls for a “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels in an attempt to find consensus from nearly 200 countries that have been meeting in Dubai for nearly a fortnight.
Some observers welcomed elements of the draft, including the first mention in a Cop text of reducing fossil fuel production, but others were scathing, describing it as “grossly insufficient” and “incoherent”.
Cedric Schuster of Samoa, the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: “We will not sign our death certificate. We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.”
Bowen referred to Schuster’s statement in his intervention in a later meeting between government representatives and the UAE summit president, Sultan Al Jaber. He was speaking on behalf of the umbrella group of countries, which also includes New Zealand, Norway, Israel, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
“My friend Cedric Schuster, the Samoan minister, said tonight of this draft that we will not sign our death certificates,” Bowen said. “That’s what’s at stake for many countries who are represented here tonight and many people who do not have a voice. We will not be a co-signatory to those death certificates.”
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Israel v Hamas is awful: people dying unnecessarily, playing out over the course of weeks. The climate indifference has the same effect, but much, much more slowly, without obvious bombs or guns.
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Podcasts aren’t as doomed as they look. But some of the best ones are • Slate
Scott Nover:
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By just about every metric, podcasts are still gaining popularity with listeners: 130 million Americans will have listened to a podcast each month of this year, according to Insider Intelligence, which expects that figure to jump to 150 million by 2027. Meanwhile, in the decade since podcasting’s Serial moment, casuals have become die-hards: In 2015, weekly podcast listeners spent about 4.5 hours listening to podcasts, according to Edison Research. Now that figure is north of 9 hours a week.
Melissa Kiesche, senior vice president of research at Edison, continues to see growth both in the share of Americans listening to podcasts and how much time they’re dedicating to podcasts. “Both monthly and weekly listenership reached their highest levels this year,” she says.
Ad revenue is growing too. In 2022, podcasts generated $1.8bn in ad revenue in the US, up 26% from the year prior, says the industry body Interactive Advertising Bureau. That’s drastically outpacing the 11% growth for the rest of the online ad sector. Furthermore, the IAB expects that revenue to double to about $4bn by 2025.
Advertisers have reduced spending this year amid rising prices, rising interest rates, and still-unrealized fears of an economic recession, but it seems to be more of a pullback from runaway COVID-era spending rather than a full stoppage.
Rachael King, the founder and CEO of Pod People, which makes branded podcasts for companies like Netflix and Intuit, says the sales pitch for podcasts is as strong as ever. “It’s the most desirable demographic in the world,” she says. Podcast listeners “are curious, intellectual, and more likely to take action” based on what they hear.
But perhaps there was too much hype, too many unrealistic expectations—and, dare we say, too many podcasts? Or at least too many podcasts that couldn’t turn a profit based on high talent or production costs?
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Ad revenue might be growing, but the number of podcasts is probably growing faster, and Spotify isn’t pumping money in as it previously did. Result, less money on average.
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Mail Online looks set to adopt partial ‘freemium’ paywall in 2024 • Press Gazette
Charlotte Tobitt:
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Mail Online users could soon be asked to pay to access a small amount of content each day under a new paywall model as advertising revenues plunge across the digital news market.
Most of the up to 1,500 stories published daily on the Mail Online website would remain free to access but a “freemium” paywall model could ask people to pay to read around ten to 15 stories per day, Press Gazette understands.
The new model would only apply to Mail Online users in the UK and would likely begin to be implemented in January.
The plan is understood to be based on German tabloid Bild’s model. Bild began charging for access to premium content in 2013 and has now reached more than 675,000 subscribers.
It is also a similar model to the The Independent, which puts certain in-depth stories and analyses behind a paywall under the Independent Premium branding, while also in the UK GB News began charging users for “exclusive analysis and opinion” last month.
…Although the online ad market is growing, the share of revenue going to publishers has plunged this year as all the growth has instead gone to tech platforms.
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This is a quietly significant development: the implication is that free-to-read ad-supported just doesn’t cut it, even for the most-read news site in the world. The phrase “difficult advertising market”, which also appears in the story, is typical publishers’ understatement. It means apocalyptically bad.
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Apple foldable is coming soon, new Samsung Display rumor says • BGR
José Adorno:
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It’s been a few years since we first heard rumors about Apple’s foldable strategy. While Samsung, Motorola, and other brands already sell foldable devices, Cupertino decided to take the long route and wait until this technology matures.
This foldable Apple product could be an iPhone or an iPad/MacBook hybrid. But, so far, we only know that this release is at least a couple of years ahead of us, so nothing is concrete at the moment.
That said, while a foldable Apple product might not be nearing its release, it doesn’t mean Apple and its manufacturers aren’t doing everything they can to ship this product as soon as possible. In the latest report by the Korean publication The Elec, Samsung is reorganizing its teams to focus on the capabilities to respond to Apple’s foldable initiatives.
According to the publication, the South Korean manufacturer wants a new source of income. Despite the leadership with OLED panels, Samsung aims to secure Apple orders for future foldable products since both Samsung and LG are working on projects for Apple foldable products, including 20.25in panels.
Several DSCC, Bloomberg, and Omdia reports have corroborated this future device. They believe Apple is working on a hybrid foldable iPad/MacBook with a 20in display. The latter stated that this device could be released by 2026.
In 2022, DSCC Ross Young shared that suppliers were in talks with Apple to create a 20in foldable of some kind. The idea would be to bring together the usefulness of a notebook with a singular display like you might see on the iPad. Young even went so far as to say that the foldable MacBook Hybrid could serve as a true dual-use product.
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This is not really “soon” except in the perspective of the heat death of the universe. Also, while I can just about believe Apple could make such a product, I don’t really know why it would. Plus, and this is the most important question, would it fold from top to bottom, or from side to side? Those create very different use cases.
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Beeper Mini is back • Beeper Blog
Beeper:
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The security and privacy of Beeper Mini is unchanged. It is still local, end-to-end encrypted on your device, as we described in our post.
Phone number registration is not working yet. All users must now sign in with an AppleID. Messages will be sent and received via your email address rather than phone number. We’re currently working on a fix for this.
We’ve made Beeper free to use. Things have been a bit chaotic, and we’re not comfortable subjecting paying users to this. As soon as things stabilize (we hope they will), we’ll look at turning on subscriptions again. If you want to keep supporting us, feel free to leave the subscription on 🙂.
Our Play Store ranking dropped precipitously on Friday. Leaving us a nice review there would help tremendously.
It’s been an extremely busy, tiring, exciting, and eventful week.
…What happened: on Friday, we started getting reports that Beeper Cloud and Beeper Mini users could not send or receive messages. We investigated the issue [“the issue” being that Apple had determined this was a form of hacking – Overspill Ed] and started working on a fix.
Within 24 hours, we fixed the issue for Beeper Cloud and published an update. Beeper Cloud users can now send and receive messages. It’s working exactly as it did before Friday.
(Note: Beeper Cloud’s new Oct 2023 iMessage bridge never used Mac relay servers and still does not today. It uses a similar method to Beeper Mini, but runs on a cloud server.)
At the same time, we took steps to deregister all phone numbers associated with Beeper Mini, and we sent push notifications to all users updating them on the situation. In hindsight, our timing was a mistake: we should have communicated to our users sooner. We’re extremely sorry for the inconvenience caused by the outage.
Today, less than three days later, we are publishing an update to fix Beeper Mini. Users can now sign in, send and receive messages. Beeper Mini is back.
Despite reaching out, we still have not heard anything directly from Apple.
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So Beeper now works, if you use an Apple ID to sign in. That’s rather different from the previous system which did work on phone numbers and didn’t seem to need an Apple ID. Now we wait to see if Apple will swat this too. Macworld’s editor Michael Simon thinks it will.
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The weird world of celebrity training: how Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Madonna get in shape for their shows • The Guardian
Elle Hunt:
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Being a pop star used to mean having a nice face and a good voice, and learning a few dance routines. That no longer cuts it at the top, as Taylor Swift reminded us last week, when she revealed how she had prepared for her Eras tour. “Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she told Time magazine. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs. Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones.”
If you have seen Eras live, or watched it at the cinema, you will know why she had to put in the work. Part pop extravaganza, part endurance feat, it involves almost three hours of costume changes, vigorous dancing and sprints from one end of the stage to the other – all while belting out songs. As the colour rises in Swift’s face and the sweat gathers at her hairline, you start to feel tired yourself. Swift is not unique. Beyoncé’s film Renaissance also documents the physical labour required for a tour, while 65-year-old Madonna’s current Celebration tour, which is due to conclude next April after 78 shows, makes clear how long that commitment can last.
“We treat them as athletes: what stress is going to be put on the body?” says Dan Roberts. A personal trainer based in London, he is one of a handful of fitness professionals engaged in what he calls the “weird world of celebrity training”. Most often, it involves getting actors in shape for superhero roles (or shirtless scenes); some of his clients are on Broadway, on stage for two hours a night for six months at a time. But he also works with royalty and famous musicians. Nondisclosure agreements mean he can’t name names – but he can speak generally.
Sometimes, Roberts is flown out to support an artist mid-tour, but more often he liaises with other A-list trainers around the world to look after his regular clients. And he trains those who are passing through London. His first step is to assess the needs of the individual and their goals. “Someone like Beyoncé, for example, has got very energetic dance routines, whereas Liam Gallagher can just stand there.”
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Trying to imagine what Liam Gallagher’s fitness routine would look like.
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Continued treatment with Tirzepatide for maintenance of weight reduction in adults with obesity: the SURMOUNT-4 randomized clinical trial • JAMA Network
Louis Aronne et al from multiple academic centres:
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Key Points:
Question: Does once-weekly subcutaneous tirzepatide with diet and physical activity affect maintenance of body weight reduction in individuals with obesity or overweight?Findings: After 36 weeks of open-label maximum tolerated dose of tirzepatide (10 or 15 mg), adults (n = 670) with obesity or overweight (without diabetes) experienced a mean weight reduction of 20.9%. From randomization (at week 36), those switched to placebo experienced a 14% weight regain and those continuing tirzepatide experienced an additional 5.5% weight reduction during the 52-week double-blind period.
Meaning: In participants with obesity/overweight, withdrawing tirzepatide led to substantial regain of lost weight, whereas continued treatment maintained and augmented initial weight reduction.
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Further meaning: the pharma companies making GLP-1 agonists (semaglutide etc) are going to be able to persuade people to keep taking them for years and years.
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Apple, Google, and Comcast’s plans for L4S could fix internet lag • The Verge
Mitchell Clark:
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The L4S standard [which was only published in January] adds an indicator to packets, which says whether they experienced congestion on their journey from one device to another. If they sail right on through, there’s no problem, and nothing happens. But if they have to wait in a queue for more than a specified amount of time, they get marked as having experienced congestion. That way, the devices can start making adjustments immediately to keep the congestion from getting worse and to potentially eliminate it altogether. That keeps the data flowing as fast as it possibly can and gets rid of the disruptions and mitigations that can add latency with other systems.
In terms of reducing latency on the internet, L4S or something like it is “a pretty necessary thing,” according to Greg White, a technologist at research and development firm CableLabs who helped work on the standard. “This buffering delay typically has been hundreds of milliseconds to even thousands of milliseconds in some cases. Some of the earlier fixes to buffer bloat brought that down into the tens of milliseconds, but L4S brings that down to single-digit milliseconds.”
That could obviously help make the everyday experience of using the internet nicer. “Web browsing is more limited by the roundtrip time than the capacity of the connection these days for most people. Beyond about six to 10 megabits per second, latency has a bigger role in determining how quickly a web page load feels.”
However, ultra-low latency could be vital for potential future use cases. We’ve touched on game streaming, which can turn into a mess if there’s too much latency, but imagine what would happen if you were trying to stream a VR game. In that case, too much lag may go beyond just making a game less fun to play and could even make you throw up.
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A good article which is also an excellent backgrounder on why your “fast” internet connection might feel snail-slow, and how large amounts of data really get sent.
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Google’s Gemini AI model looks remarkable, but it’s still behind OpenAI’s GPT-4 • Bloomberg Opinion
Parmy Olson:
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Then there’s the video demo that technologists described as “jaw-dropping” on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
On first viewing, this is impressive stuff. The model’s ability to track a ball of paper from under a plastic cup, or to infer that a dot-to-dot picture was a crab before it is even drawn, show glimmers of the reasoning abilities that Google’s DeepMind AI lab have cultivated over the years. That’s missing from other AI models. But many of the other capabilities on display are not unique and can be replicated by ChatGPT Plus, as Wharton professor Ethan Mollick has demonstrated here and here.
Google also admits that the video is edited. “For the purposes of this demo, latency has been reduced and Gemini outputs have been shortened for brevity,” it states in its YouTube description. This means the time it took for each response was actually longer than in the video.
In reality, the demo also wasn’t carried out in real time or in voice. When asked about the video by Bloomberg Opinion, a Google spokesperson said it was made by “using still image frames from the footage, and prompting via text,” and they pointed to a site showing how others could interact with Gemini with photos of their hands, or of drawings or other objects. In other words, the voice in the demo was reading out human-made prompts they’d made to Gemini, and showing them still images. That’s quite different from what Google seemed to be suggesting: that a person could have a smooth voice conversation with Gemini as it watched and responded in real time to the world around it.
The video also doesn’t specify that this demo is (probably) with Gemini Ultra, the model that’s not here yet. Fudging such details points to the broader marketing effort here: Google wants us remember that it’s got one of the largest teams of AI researchers in the world and access to more data than anyone else. It wants to remind us, as it did on Wednesday, how vast its deployment network is by bringing less-capable versions of Gemini to Chrome, Android and Pixel phones.
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It is worth discussing this tendency of Google’s to overstate what its technologies can do right now. The first was probably Google Glass, where the 2012 intro concept video wildly overstated its capabilities. (Though consider how much the initial view is like Apple’s Vision Pro.) More recently there was the 2018 “Duplex assistant can book your haircut”, which wasn’t real then either. Now this. Is it a culture thing, Google?
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 