The Academy Awards on Monday night were a triumph for… semaglutide, the weight control drug. CC-licensed photo by Thank You (24 Millions ) views on Flickr.
You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.
A selection of 10 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.
Apple reverses ban on Fortnite-maker in EU, a sign of softening approach to crackdown • WSJ
Aaron Tilley:
»
Apple has reversed course on its decision to prevent Fortnite-maker Epic Games from building its own app store in Europe, softening what appeared to be a hard line stance as it faces an array of regulations.
The tech giant earlier banned Epic’s developer account in Sweden after Chief Executive Tim Sweeney sharply criticized Apple’s response to new EU regulations that took effect this week. Sweeney accused Apple of retaliating and the company drew a public rebuke from an EU official.
Sweeney said in a post on X that Apple’s reversal was a big win “for the freedom of developers worldwide to speak up” and further suggested that Europe’s new law, called the Digital Markets Act, had its first major victory in securing Apple’s compliance.
The back-and-forth between the two companies, which have been sparring for years over Apple’s control over third-party software on its devices, comes as European regulators are evaluating how the iPhone-maker has opened up its App Store in response to the new law.
“Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies,” said an Apple spokeswoman. “As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”
Apple has stridently defended its App Store and software ecosystem in the face of a barrage of criticism from developers such as Sweeney. The Justice Department is expected to file an antitrust lawsuit in the coming weeks accusing Apple of monopolistic practices related to its interactions with outside companies, according to people familiar with the matter.
«
This isn’t “a softening approach” at all. As Ben Thompson pointed out on the Dithering podcast, Apple faces this equation: the EU can impose a fine of 10% of worldwide revenue. Meanwhile, the EU is only 7% of Apple’s worldwide revenue. (Seems low, but OK.) Pissing off the EU is therefore a terrible idea, and Apple rapidly came to realise this when the EU made angry noises over the revocation of Epic’s Swedish developer account.
But notice how Apple’s dictatorial approach is now getting it into increasingly hot water. Worked OK when it just applied to hardware and some software. Gets a lot more problematic once you’re offering services and app stores and so on to significant chunks of the world. Can Apple change its culture to give developers more flexibility? (The saying is that Apple’s priorities are: 1) Apple 2) its users 3) third-party developers 5000000000000000000) everyone else. Pushing developers up the stack won’t come easy.)
unique link to this extract
How Ozempic ate awards season • The Ankler
Allen Salkin:
»
Forget Chanel, Dior or Prada: this year, the most prominent designers on the red carpet are Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, whose injectable weight-loss drugs are the new couture. As awards season peaks this weekend with the 96th Academy Awards, those in every cranny of the celebrity-industrial complex, from restaurateurs to marketing mavens, have found themselves dealing with profound changes wrought on entertainment industry bodies and minds by this new kid in town. In the old days — five years ago (and five decades ago) — you’d get someone into rehab or to Two Bunch Palms to dry out and get in shape for a big role or a red carpet. Now a star can quickly lose up to 15 pounds (or more) in plain sight.
Only a handful of celebrities — Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk and Tracy Morgan are the most prominent — have publicly acknowledged using this new class of drugs, known as semaglutides, GLP-1s or by their brand names Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. A few other famous people, such as Amy Schumer, Chelsea Handler and Sharon Osbourne, have admitted to using these drugs in the past, and an even smaller subset is using them for their original purpose of helping type 2 diabetics (Anthony Anderson). Indeed, a whole separate cottage industry has popped up of people denying or condemning the use of them.
Julia Fox told Entertainment Tonight, “People are saying that I’m taking Ozempic. I’m not, and I never have. I would never do that. There are diabetics that need it.” Jessica Simpson denied to Bustle that her weight loss was injection based, saying “Oh Lord . . . it is not.” Most judgy of all was Vanderpump Rules’ Lala Kent, who may be thin in the old-fashioned way, possibly so hungry that she recently bit the hand that feeds her. “Stop taking it for weight loss,” she told People. “Enough already. I think that Hollywood is all sorts of f—ed up.”
So in honor of the Oscars, let’s look at the impact on restaurants, plastic surgeons, trainers and makeup artists around town of a drug turning Hollywood into wannabe Barbies and Kens.
«
Salkin goes on to talk to a fair number of people. Restaurants are feeling it. But of course it would be LA where these drugs get most used.
unique link to this extract
Death threats and disinformation: what it’s like being viciously targeted by conspiracy theory activists • British Vogue
Marianna Spring:
»
I try to protect my friends and family as much as I can. Both from the hate itself, but also from worrying about my safety. I don’t ever publicly share their names, because they could be fresh meat for the trolls. My family love my reporting almost as much as I love doing it. But I don’t want them to pay any price for it.
I’m far from any frontline, unlike my extraordinary colleagues at the BBC, many of whom have put themselves at risk to report what’s happening on the ground from war zones all across the world. That includes operating in autocracies, where they’re at risk of persecution for attempting to tell the truth. I’m not subjected to racist hate, or other forms of discrimination.
Still, it seems sinister when a young female investigative reporter working in a democracy is specifically targeted with abuse at her office. If you care about protecting freedom of expression – as many of those embedded in these conspiracy theory movements claim to – why would you condone or refuse to condemn that?
We seem to have accepted online hate as part of the fabric of our society – that it’s something to be expected now social media exists. As a consequence, the onus falls on the individuals to call out and battle these trolls. The trolls as a collective, though, are more than random people expressing their anger in an unacceptable way online. Trolling is a tool used to silence and intimidate. If we do not highlight the issue of violent rhetoric and abuse online, those who can do something about it are let off the hook.
You’re probably thinking: why not just pack it in, Marianna? After all, it’d be easier. The answer? Well, then they win. All of this shows how investigating the harm caused by what’s unfolding on social media, giving a voice to those who’ve been targeted, and holding those responsible to account is more important than ever. I am grateful to everyone who allows me to investigate their stories. The more I experience the very thing they’re living through, the more I want to tell their stories – without fear.
«
Sounds like she’s experiencing the outcomes of s_c__l w_rm_ng doesn’t it.
unique link to this extract
Energy transitions: the decline of whale oil and the rise of petroleum • JKempEnergy.com
John Kemp:
»
Before Edwin Drake drilled his first successful well in Pennsylvania in 1859, however, spermaceti was already becoming increasingly scarce and prices were climbing sharply as a result of overfishing, escalating costs and crew shortages. Sperm oil imports into the United States (the amount declared to customs on landing) had halved to 2.6 million gallons in 1858 down from 5.3 million gallons in 1843. The landed price of sperm oil had doubled to $1.21 per gallon from 63 cents.
Spermaceti availability was declining primarily because of overfishing, which forced whaling ships further offshore and on longer voyages, and even then they increasingly came back with less than a full load. The industry’s cost base was also rising as ships were fitted out to higher and more modern standards.
Once the California gold rush was underway, crewing became a major problem. Sailors would contract for a lengthy voyage from the U.S. east coast to go whaling in the Pacific, collect their sign on bonus, enjoy free passage to the Pacific, then jump ship when they reached California to try their luck in the gold fields, delaying voyages and requiring costly extra hires.
Spermaceti as a source of illumination was already in trouble before Drake’s well. It could never have satisfied the growing demand for lighting. The sudden competition from a plentiful source of cheap lighting in the form of petroleum-derived kerosene accelerated the industry’s decline. By the late 1870s the whale fishery had become a shadow of its former self.
«
There must be an alternative history to be written about a world where people didn’t figure out how to use oil, or where for some reason it wasn’t accessible (at the bottom of the ocean?). Would there be whale farming? What would we have done?
unique link to this extract
‘Unexploded bombs’: call for action after 11 deaths in UK due to e-bike fires • The Guardian
Jon Ungoed-Thomas:
»
Eleven people were killed in fires caused by e-bikes in the UK last year and now ministers face calls for urgent action over the sale of dangerous products.
E-bike fires can be particularly deadly because they can rapidly ignite in a fireball, and because the bikes are routinely left to charge overnight in hallways, they can block what may be the only exit. Campaigners compare the most dangerous products to “unexploded bombs”.
New figures produced by the Office for Product and Safety Standards (OPSS), drawn from data from UK fire and rescue services, reveal what is believed to be the highest number of deaths recorded from e-bike fires in the UK last year.
Yvonne Fovargue, a Labour MP and chair of the all party parliamentary group on online and home electrical safety, said: “These e-bikes can reach a phenomenally high temperature in seconds. They are so dangerous. It is almost like having an unexploded bomb in your house.”
MPs and safety groups are calling for third-party certification to ensure e-bikes, e-scooters and their batteries are approved by an independent body before being available for sale. This is already the case for other high-risk products such as fireworks.
Fire safety officers say consumers should buy from a reputable retailer and warn e-bikes fitted with conversion kits or fitted with batteries bought online may pose a greater risk.
An inquest heard last month how Sofia Duarte, 21, died on New Year’s Day 2023 after a fire broke out in the hallway of a property she was staying in at Bermondsey, south-east London. The fire is believed to have been caused by an unbranded battery pack fitted to a converted bike.
Other residents escaped by jumping out of windows, but Duarte, unaware of the ferocity of the fire, tried to leave by the staircase. She died of burns and smoke inhalation.
«
The Rossminster affair: how Led Zeppelin tried to use a Shakespearean theatre charity to avoid paying tax • Led Zeppelin News
»
Led Zeppelin’s record sales skyrocketed during the 1970s, leaving the band with a difficult problem to solve by 1978: How could the members of the band receive £3.668m in royalty payments without giving a significant portion of the money to British tax authorities?
The band’s tax advisers had an inventive solution: The members of Led Zeppelin would hand control of their companies to a Shakespearean theatre charity based in a former church in London that was run by an actor known for playing mysterious foreign villains. That would enable the band’s royalties to be classed as profits received by the charity, keeping it out of the reach of the tax authorities.
In 1978, the members of Led Zeppelin and their manager Peter Grant sold their businesses to the charity in the hope of solving their tax problem. But the transaction, despite its inventiveness, failed to solve Led Zeppelin’s financial woes and saw the band caught up in one of the UK’s most infamous corporate scandals.
[Led Zep’s accountants] Rossminsters knew that any income or capital gains generated by [actor George] Murcell’s theatre charity were completely exempt from taxes in the UK.
Furthermore, a business could choose to pay its profits as a dividend to a parent company. This meant that a business generating profits could essentially hand up that money to its owner and avoid paying tax itself.
Another quirk of British tax law meant that if the parent company of that business was a charity like St George’s Elizabethan Theatre, those profits were passed on not as a dividend but instead as a donation. This meant that the business didn’t need to plan to pay corporation tax on the profits.
Rossminster managed to combine the theatre’s charity status with these facets of UK law to develop a scheme that meant any businesses owned by the charity could essentially move their profits through the corporate structure without paying any taxes on it.
«
And you thought it was about music. Then again, the top marginal personal tax rate was 83% (and 98% on investment income). That was down from when the Beatles wrote “Taxman“: “it’s one for you, 19 for me” – referring to the 95% top personal tax rate. (There are SO many stories of those giant bands and their tax avoidance frolics.)
unique link to this extract
OpenAI GPT sorts resume names with racial bias, test shows • Bloomberg
Leon Yin, Davey Alba and Leonardo Nicoletti :
»
In the race to embrace artificial intelligence, some businesses are using a new crop of generative AI products that can help screen and rank candidates for jobs — and some think these tools can even evaluate candidates more fairly than humans. But a Bloomberg analysis found that the best-known generative AI tool systematically produces biases that disadvantage groups based on their names.
OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot that can churn out passable song lyrics and school essays, also sells the AI technology behind it to businesses that want to use it for specific tasks, including in HR and recruiting. (The company says it prohibits GPT from being used to make an automated hiring decision.) Becker, who has tested some of these AI-powered hiring tools, said that she’s skeptical of their accuracy. OpenAI’s underlying AI model, which is developed using a vast number of articles, books, online comments and social media posts, can also mirror and amplify the biases in that data.
In order to understand the implications of companies using generative AI tools to assist with hiring, Bloomberg News spoke to 33 AI researchers, recruiters, computer scientists and employment lawyers. Bloomberg also carried out an experiment inspired by landmark studies that used fictitious names and resumes to measure algorithmic bias and hiring discrimination. Borrowing methods from these studies, reporters used voter and census data to derive names that are demographically distinct — meaning they are associated with Americans of a particular race or ethnicity at least 90% of the time — and randomly assigned them to equally-qualified resumes.
When asked to rank those resumes 1,000 times, GPT 3.5 — the most broadly-used version of the model — favored names from some demographics more often than others, to an extent that would fail benchmarks used to assess job discrimination against protected groups. While this test is a simplified version of a typical HR workflow, it isolated names as a source of bias in GPT that could affect hiring decisions. The interviews and experiment show that using generative AI for recruiting and hiring poses a serious risk for automated discrimination at scale.
«
Rishi Sunak’s report finds low-traffic neighbourhoods work and are popular • The Guardian
Peter Walker:
»
An official study of low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) ordered by Rishi Sunak amid efforts to stop them being built has instead concluded they are generally popular and effective and the report was initially buried, the Guardian has learned.
The long-delayed review by Department for Transport (DfT) officials was commissioned by the prime minister last July, as Sunak sought to capitalise on controversy about the schemes by promising drivers he was “on their side”.
Downing Street had hoped that the study would bolster their arguments against LTNs, which are mainly installed by Labour-run councils, but it largely points the other way.
The report, which applies only to England as transport is devolved, had been scheduled for publication in January. However, after its findings emerged, government advisers asked that it be permanently shelved, the Guardian was told.
One government source disputed this, saying the report would be published soon, and it was “categorically not the case” that it had been suppressed.
A copy of the report seen by the Guardian said that polling carried out inside four sample LTNs for the DfT found that overall, twice as many local people supported them as opposed them.
A review of evidence of their effectiveness said that although formal studies were limited, they did not support the contention of opponents that LTNs simply displaced traffic to other streets rather than easing overall congestion.
“The available evidence from the UK indicates that LTNs are effective in achieving outcomes of reducing traffic volumes within their zones while adverse impacts on boundary roads appear to be limited,” it read.
«
This administration has never been hot on evidence-based policy, and this is just more, well, evidence of that.
unique link to this extract
Here’s how much shorter the US ski season might be in 25 years • SKI
Samantha Berman:
»
A new report detailing climate change’s effect on the ski industry takes a look at both the past and future. The study, which was published in the trade publication Current Issues in Tourism, examines global warming’s effect on different aspects of the ski industry, including season length, average winter temperatures in different US regions, and projected economic losses if climate issues go unchecked.
One of the most unique aspects of the report is that it presents an alternate reality of what our ski seasons would have looked like over the last 20 years without any climate-change impacts. Using data from ski resorts gathered between 1960-1979, before the effects of global warming started to impact our winters, the researchers concluded that our ski seasons would have been extended by 5.5 to 7.1 days. Those days equaled around $252m in lost revenue
.
Using similar extrapolated data, the researchers also projected how our future ski seasons will be impacted by global warming. Instead of only gloom and doom, however, they offer a glimpse of what it might look like if we successfully lower our fossil fuel emissions—as well as if we don’t.We’ll give you the bad news first. If we continue on our current trajectory, our seasons risk losing up to 60 days in the high-emissions scenario. That’s two months. And if we do manage to reduce our carbon emissions, we’ll only lose an estimated 14 to 33 days. Those estimates take into account not only reduced snowfall, but also higher temperatures that will make it more difficult or impossible to make snow.
It’s not a great scenario, but it’s also not surprising given the way global warming has left its mark in every corner of the globe. Yet despite evidence of climate change touching our everyday lives, we can’t seem to move the needle.
«
Despite the SUV being the best-selling car in the US, and vehicle emissions being a major source of greenhouse gases, you can’t seem to move the needle? Surprising.
unique link to this extract
NYTimes files copyright takedown against hundreds of Wordle clones • 404 Media
Jason Koebler:
»
The New York Times has filed a series of copyright takedown requests against Wordle clones and variations in which it asserts not just ownership over the Wordle name but over the broad concepts and mechanics of the word game, which includes its “5×6 grid” and “green tiles to indicate correct guesses.”
The Times filed at least three DMCA takedown requests with coders who have made clones of Wordle on GitHub. These include two in January and, crucially, a new DMCA filed this week against Chase Wackerfuss, the coder of a repository called “Reactle,” which cloned Wordle in React JS (JavaScript). (The full takedown is embedded at the bottom of this article.)
The most recent takedown request is critical because it not only goes after Reactle but anyone who has forked Reactle to create a different spinoff game; an archive of the Reactle code repository shows that it was forked 1,900 times to create a diverse set of games and spinoffs. These include Wordle clones in dozens of languages, crossword versions of Wordle, emoji and bird versions of world, poker and AI spinoffs, etc.
«
So the NYT thinks it has the One True Wordle? You could agree that the 5×6 grid and the use of green tiles for correct letters does mark it out. But not that much more. (What about lower-case letters?)
unique link to this extract
| • 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 