Kickers in American football have discovered the benefits of physical training – and are now making field goals almost from the halfway line. CC-licensed photo by Ed Schipul 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.
It’s Friday, so there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time.
A selection of 10 links for you. Flying. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
The future of live news online sucks • Read Max
Max Read:
»
On Wednesday evening, where did you go to find up-to-the-minute news about Hurricane Milton? If you checked X.com at around 8 p.m., as the storm made landfall in Tampa and Sarasota, and clicked on the prominent “Hurricane Milton” link in the “Happening now” sidebar, you were taken to a landing page with a few videos from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and an exhortation to “check back later” because there was “nothing to see now.” Three hours later, at 11 p.m., nothing new had been added:
There was, of course, plenty to see on Wednesday night; it was just that it was basically impossible to find any of it on Twitter. The landing page was empty; the FYP feed worse than useless; the machine-curated hashtag pages a mix of days-old posts and influencers I’d never heard of sharing the same handful of images and videos. This was not a problem of “misinformation,” to be clear, so much as one of “no information”: Twitter seemed effectively incapable of serving me even relevant, up-to-the-minute fake stuff, let alone any actual news. Unless you’d already searched out and made a list of local journalists, meteorologists, and storm chasers, it was impossible to tell from Twitter alone where the storm was, how hard it was hitting, what its effects looked like, or how people were responding.
Instead–in place of the professional and citizen journalists, the eager experts, and the volunteer aggregators–what I found was clipped videos from a bunch of fucking freaks.
…It–really!–wasn’t always this way. For most of the Obama-Trump Era–the Long 2010s–Twitter was the website to go to for up-to-the-minute updates about Things That Were Happening–hurricanes, invasions, elections–from journalists, experts, and people on the ground. It was far from perfect; it was relatively easy for hoaxes to spread and morons to gain attention. But it more or less worked: Twitter’s search and sorting mechanisms, helped along by the many users who treated “posting about news” as an uncompensated part-time job, tended to surface interesting and relevant information in a timely fashion.
But “News,” even breaking news, is not really a priority for Twitter anymore, nor is it for any social-media platform.
«
This is a good point. I too was trying to find information about the hurricane; Twitter was basically a waste of time. Nowhere is good. In the comments, people suggested that YouTube is now the place to go for live info.
unique link to this extract
Hacked ‘AI Girlfriend’ data shows prompts describing child sexual abuse • 404 Media
Joseph Cox:
»
A hacker has targeted a website that lets users create their own “uncensored” AI-powered sexual partners and stolen a massive database of users’ interactions with their chatbots.
The data, taken from a site called Muah.ai and viewed by 404 Media, includes chatbot prompts that reveal users’ sexual fantasies. In many instances, users are trying to create chatbots that roleplay child sexual abuse scenarios. These prompts are in turn linked to email addresses, many of which appear to be personal accounts with users’ real names.
“I went to the site to jerk off (to an *adult* scenario, to be clear) and noticed that it looked like it [the Muah.ai website] was put together pretty poorly,” the hacker told 404 Media. “It’s basically a handful of open-source projects duct-taped together. I started poking around and found some vulnerabilities relatively quickly. At the start it was mostly just curiosity but I decided to contact you once I saw what was in the database.”
The administrator of Muah.ai, who used the name Harvard Han, told 404 Media in an email that “the data breach was financed by our competitors in the uncensored AI industry who are profit driven, whereas Muah AI becomes a target for being a community driven project.” The site’s operators detected that it was hacked last week.
Han didn’t provide 404 Media with any evidence for their claim, and the hacker said they do work in the tech industry but not on AI.
“We have a team of moderation staff that suspend and delete ALL child related chatbots on our card gallery, discord, reddit, etc,” Han added
«
Suuuure they have a team that does that. Sure they do. Of course they do. Open source projects running websites always have loads of administrators doing that sort of thing.
unique link to this extract
How to hire a dark net hitman • How to Survive the Internet
Jamie Bartlett:
»
Besa Mafia was a dark net site offering hitmen for hire. It worked something like this: a user could connect to the site using the Tor browser and request a hit. They’d send over some bitcoin (prices started from $5,000 USD for ‘death by shotgun’). Then they’d upload the name, address, photographs, of who they wanted killed. Plus any extra requests: make it look like a bungled robbery; need it done next week, etc. The website owner, a mysterious Romanian called ‘Yura’ would then connect them with a specialist hitman to carry out the commission.
I know all about the dark net. I wrote a book about it and still jump on often to see what the latest trends are. Yes: you can buy all manner of illicit goods there. Stolen credit cards, identity documents, drugs (of course). You can purchase ransomware-as-a-service and chat with hackers to hire. You can download child sexual abuse images. But there has always been one area shrouded in mystery, even for me. Can you really order a hitman with a few clicks? There have always been hitman sites, I saw one while researching my book. But do they work? Are they real?
Finally [the podcast] Kill List provides an answer. As he poked around, IT-guy Chris stumbled across a vulnerability on the site, and was able to access the ‘back end’. From there he could see what Yura could see: hundreds of names. Each one, a person someone else wanted dead. And next to each name: photographs, addresses, commute routes, phone numbers. Victims were from all over the world. Switzerland, Spain, the Czech Republic, the US, the UK. And alongside each, gruesome requests:
Make it look like a road accident
I would just like his person to be shot and killed. Where, how and what week does not bother me
This person needs to go away, but disposed of without a trace
Need target killed, make it look like an accident
And in 175 cases there was also evidence of a successful bitcoin payment. In other words: people had paid real money to have them killed.
«
It’s now a big BBC podcast, which is a remarkable achievement. Hacking for good.
unique link to this extract
They’re better, longer and more valuable than ever: the NFL’s newest superstars are kickers • WSJ
Andrew Beaton and Rosie Ettenheim:
»
This season, teams are making more field goals per game than ever— even as they’re also hitting them from more far-flung distances. Some 29% of this year’s attempts have been from 50-plus yards, far and away the most in NFL history. At the same time, 76% of those long-distance kicks have gone in, which is easily the highest percentage ever.
Somehow kickers are becoming more accurate and more powerful at the same time. Last week alone, there were 15 tries from at least 50 yards—and 12 of them went in.
The shift has completely transformed some of football’s most basic dynamics. Now, offenses are often just a couple first downs away from a spot on the field where they can plausibly try a field goal instead of punting. It’s why field goals are at an all-time high, even though this is also an era when coaches are more inclined to leave kickers on the sideline and go for it on fourth downs.
Those inside the game say there are a number of forces at work, from the precision of long-snappers to the technology used in training and a ball that flies better through the air. But they also say it boils down to something simple: kickers have gotten both far stronger and more technically sound than prior generations.
The widespread proliferation of kicking camps has allowed kids to hone their crafts beginning at a young age. And kickers, who weren’t historically known as gym rats, now rigorously approach strength training. That’s why former NFL kicker Jay Feely says it’s “similar to Tiger Woods” and how he changed golf by adding power—forcing his competitors to do the same to keep up.
“It’s unbelievable,” Feely says. “Now coaches expect to make these kicks, and so they’re more willing to attempt these kicks.”
«
The maths needs a little explanation (for non-gridiron fans): the end zone is 10 yards long, and the goalposts are at the end. So a 50-yard kick is made from the opponents’ 40-yard line, which is 10 yards inside their half. The way that physicality is changing sports shows up in all sorts of subtle ways.
unique link to this extract
How everyone got lost in Netflix’s endless library • The New York Times
Willy Staley:
»
For a company like Apple, where the streaming business is practically an afterthought, the shows it produces are stashed away in the app and hardly spoken of, no matter how big their budget and how impressive the talent involved. In some instances, streamers have shelved finished movies entirely so they could write down the losses on their taxes. These are the incentives of the streaming marketplace pushed to their logical extremes: mass entertainment completely severed from market signal — paradoxically by entities that know more about our viewing habits than ever before.
Which isn’t to say that the streamers don’t make hits and that people don’t watch and enjoy a lot of streaming television, as Netflix’s 183 billion viewer hours in 2023 can attest. But it can certainly account for the rise of so-called Mid TV: shows that look expensive, are reasonably smart and packed with talent and somehow manage to be, in the Times TV critic James Poniewozik’s words, “. . . fine?” There’s no denying that, in the long journey prestige TV has taken from “The Wire” to “The Bear,” a certain slackness has crept in: comedies without many jokes, dramas without any stakes, a pronounced preference for backward-looking plotting that fixates on characters’ traumas, a plague of visibly Canadian filming locations, “Barry.”
The first generation of prestige shows was created by veterans of linear TV who longed for creative freedom but knew the rudiments of the business, the things that kept you watching through the commercial breaks: pacing, structure, believable dialogue. But the leash has been off for a decade now, and eventually you face the same problem [original Netflix series] Richie Rich did: when you’re drowning in cash, it’s always tempting to say yes.
Maybe the most disorienting outcome of this information poverty has been the significant disconnects that can — and do — arise between what people watch and what we think we’re watching. This has been a persistent element of TV criticism since at least “Mad Men,” but it’s hard not to sense that things have gotten worse since then.
«
A thoughtful essay: it’s notable how Netflix is getting absolutely roasted for cancelling “Kaos”, a clever series based on the Greek myths, after one season. Meanwhile Apple keeps turning up with Slow Horses, which will next year hit Season 5. There’s entirely too much Mid TV.
unique link to this extract
Forums are still alive, active, and a treasure trove of information • Aftermath
Chris Person:
»
When I want information, like the real stuff, I go to forums. Over the years, forums did not really get smaller, so much as the rest of the internet just got bigger. Reddit, Discord and Facebook groups have filled a lot of that space, but there is just certain information that requires the dedication of adults who have specifically signed up to be in one kind of community. This blog is a salute to those forums that are either worth participating in or at least looking at in bewilderment.
What follows is a list of forums that range from at least interesting to good. I will attempt to contextualize the ones I know well. This post is by no means supposed to be complete and will be updated whenever I find more good forums.
«
Forums tend to have the problem, for me, that you need to do a ton of digging through to find the useful stuff. Though it’s not that different on social media! Perhaps one forgets the pain.
Anyhow, if you’re in need of a forum about something or other (which probably doesn’t show up in search results), this is for you.
unique link to this extract
Have we reached peak human life span? • The New York Times
Dana Smith:
»
The oldest human on record, Jeanne Calment of France, lived to the age of 122. What are the odds that the rest of us get there, too?
Not high, barring a transformative medical breakthrough, according to research published Monday in the journal Nature Aging.
The study looked at data on life expectancy at birth collected between 1990 and 2019 from some of the places where people typically live the longest: Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Data from the United States was also included, though the country’s life expectancy is lower.
The researchers found that while average life expectancies increased during that time in all of the locations, the rates at which they rose slowed down. The one exception was Hong Kong, where life expectancy did not decelerate.
The data suggests that after decades of life expectancy marching upward thanks to medical and technological advancements, humans could be closing in on the limits of what’s possible for average life span.
“We’re basically suggesting that as long as we live now is about as long as we’re going to live,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago, who led the study. He predicted maximum life expectancy will end up around 87 years — approximately 84 for men, and 90 for women — an average age that several countries are already close to achieving.
«
Without some amazing bit of genetic wizardry (telomeres get hyped up every ten years or so as a new group of people rediscover them), it seems like only 15% of women could ever be centenarians, and 5% of men. The question always is, are those extra years the ones you want to live?
unique link to this extract
How North Korea infiltrated the crypto industry • Coindesk
Sam Kessler:
»
• CoinDesk identified more than a dozen crypto companies that unknowingly hired IT workers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), including such well-established blockchain projects as Injective, ZeroLend, Fantom, Sushi, Yearn Finance and Cosmos Hub.
• The workers used fake IDs, successfully navigated interviews, passed reference checks and presented genuine work histories.
• Hiring DPRK workers is against the law in the U.S. and other countries that sanction North Korea. It also presents a security risk: CoinDesk encountered multiple examples of companies hiring DPRK IT workers and subsequently getting hacked.
• “Everyone is struggling to filter out these people,” said Zaki Manian, a prominent blockchain developer who says he inadvertently hired two DPRK IT workers to help develop the Cosmos Hub blockchain in 2021.
«
I think this is the same story, in essence, as the Mandiant story a week ago, but showing that it was concentrated in the crypto industry – of course: slack hiring, desperate for workers, and easy access to lots of untraceable money. If you’re a country which is a pariah state then what’s not to like about the crypto industry?
unique link to this extract
The fight that nearly destroyed the Letterboxd community • WIRED
Adam Bumas:
»
THINGS LIKE THIS don’t happen on Letterboxd. It’s supposed to be a place where movie nerds share their love of cinema, a throwback to the internet’s pre-Facebook halcyon days. But lately, it’s been reeling from a disagreement between the site’s users and staff that got so big, major directors started weighing in. To make matters worse, it wasn’t some argument about Marvel movies or Martin Scorsese. It was about anime.
The trouble started on September 9, when Letterboxd’s curators updated the platform’s official list of top-rated movies. Usually, the list changes only when a new movie gets rated highly enough to remove another from the top 250, but Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion had gone from No. 23 overall to off the list entirely. In a comment on the list, curator Dave Vis called the removal “an effort to align our eligibility rules,” made after “careful consideration.”
Letterboxd’s users, by and large, didn’t agree that the effort had been very careful. The comment section of the “official top 100 animation” list, which also removed End of Evangelion, became a pressure chamber of fury, disagreement, and confusion, filled with the kind of negativity and argument the site has made a point of avoiding.
Letterboxd has grown steadily since its 2011 launch, and now boasts more than 15 million users. Until now, it has largely steered clear of growing pains, even as the platform took off during people’s Covid-19-lockdown-induced movie marathons. If anything, it has become a source for memes on other platforms like TikTok and X. But the drawback of creating a community modeled after the 2000s internet is re-creating the same tensions between moderators and users that plagued early social media platforms, which is pretty much what happened when End of Evangelion fell off the top lists.
«
You’re telling me that social patterns repeat again and again on the internet? Amazing.
unique link to this extract
PC shipments stuck in neutral despite AI buzz • The Register
Dan Robinson:
»
The PC market is not showing many signs of a rebound, despite the hype around AI PCs, with market watchers split over whether unit shipments are up or down slightly.
Those magical AI PC boxes were supposed to fire up buyer enthusiasm and spur the somewhat listless market for desktop and laptop systems into significant growth territory, but that doesn’t appear to be happening.
According to the latest figures from Gartner, global PC shipments totaled 62.9m units during Q3 of this year, representing a 1.3% decline compared with the same period last year. However, this does follow three consecutive quarters of modest growth.
“Even with a full line-up of Windows-based AI PCs for both Arm and x86 in the third quarter of 2024, AI PCs did not boost the demand for PCs since buyers have yet to see their clear benefits or business value,” commented Gartner Director Analyst Mikako Kitagawa.
This is perhaps understandable when AI PCs are largely just a marketing concept, and vendors can’t agree on exactly what the the definition of an AI PC should be. Even worse, some buyers of Arm-based Copilot+ machines discovered that their performance isn’t actually very good with some applications.
«
The hope that sprinkling some AI fairy dust on PCs would suddenly turn them into must-replace boxes was always overblown. I feel we’re past the point where they’re a commodity, and nothing exciting will ever happen in PCs again.
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 