Incredibly, St Vincent lost out at the Grammys to an AI-enhanced song by a defunct band. CC-licensed photo by Juan Bendana on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. Broken. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Stop worshipping the American tech giants • The New York Times
Lina Khan, the now-past head of the Federal Trade Commission, and author many years ago of the pivotal analysis of Amazon’s monopoly position:
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Although it’s unclear precisely how much more efficient DeepSeek’s models are than, say, ChatGPT, its innovations are real and undermine a core argument that America’s dominant technology firms have been pushing — namely, that they are developing the best artificial intelligence technology the world has to offer, and that technological advances can be achieved only with enormous investment — in computing power, energy generation and cutting-edge chips. For years now, these companies have been arguing that the government must protect them from competition to ensure that America stays ahead.
But let’s not forget that America’s tech giants are awash in cash, computing power and data capacity. They are headquartered in the world’s strongest economy and enjoy the advantages conferred by the rule of law and a free enterprise system. And yet, despite all those advantages — as well as a U.S. government ban on the sales of cutting-edge chips and chip-making equipment to Chinese firms — America’s tech giants have seemingly been challenged on the cheap.
It should be no surprise that our big tech firms are at risk of being surpassed in A.I. innovation by foreign competitors. After companies like Google, Apple and Amazon helped transform the American economy in the 2000s, they maintained their dominance primarily through buying out rivals and building anticompetitive moats around their businesses.
…the government’s decision to enforce antitrust laws against what is now AT&T Inc., IBM and Microsoft in the 1970s through the 1990s helped create the market conditions that gave rise to Silicon Valley’s dynamism and America’s subsequent technological lead. America’s bipartisan commitment to maintaining open and competitive markets from the 1930s to the 1980s — a commitment that many European countries and Japan did not share — was critical for generating the broad-based economic growth and technological edge that catapulted the United States to the top of the world order.
While monopolies may offer periodic advances, breakthrough innovations have historically come from disruptive outsiders, in part because huge behemoths rarely want to advance technologies that could displace or cannibalize their own businesses. Mired in red tape and bureaucratic inertia, those companies usually aren’t set up to deliver the seismic efficiencies that hungry startups can generate.
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The breakups won’t happen (for four years) though Google, at least, faces its Waterloo with a judge ready to pronounce a verdict on antitrust remedies demanded before the election.
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Check out Doom running on Apple’s Lightning to HDMI adapter • MacRumors
Juli Clover:
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Installing Doom on a range of unusual hardware devices has become a fun challenge for programmers, and we’ve seen the game running on everything from the Apple Watch to the MacBook Pro Touch Bar. Over the weekend, another Doom demo was uploaded to YouTube, this time showing the game running on Apple’s $50 Lightning to HDMI Adapter.
The Lightning Digital AV Adapter is more than just a dongle, because it has an SoC [system-on-chip] inside that runs a super simple version of iOS. Lightning does not have the bandwidth for transmitting HDMI, so Apple needed an adapter that would compress video from a connected Apple device, send it over the Lightning connection, and then decompress it into raw HDMI for viewing on a TV screen or display.
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If aliens invade, getting Doom to run on their computers will be our first step toward defeating them.
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Trump wants the US to land astronauts on Mars soon. Could it happen by 2029? • Space
No.
Internet Archive played crucial role in tracking shady CDC data removals • Ars Technica
Ashley Belanger:
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When thousands of pages started disappearing from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website late last week, public health researchers quickly moved to archive deleted public health data.
Soon, researchers discovered that the Internet Archive (IA) offers one of the most effective ways to both preserve online data and track changes on government websites. For decades, IA crawlers have collected snapshots of the public Internet, making it easier to compare current versions of websites to historic versions. And IA also allows users to upload digital materials to further expand the web archive. Both aspects of the archive immediately proved useful to researchers assessing how much data the public risked losing during a rapid purge following a pair of President Trump’s executive orders.
Part of a small group of researchers who managed to download the entire CDC website within days, virologist Angela Rasmussen helped create a public resource that combines CDC website information with deleted CDC datasets. Those datasets, many of which were previously in the public domain for years, were uploaded to IA by an anonymous user, “SheWhoExists,” on January 31. Moving forward, Rasmussen told Ars that IA will likely remain a go-to tool for researchers attempting to closely monitor for any unexpected changes in access to public data.
IA “continually updates their archives,” Rasmussen said, which makes IA “a good mechanism for tracking modifications to these websites that haven’t been made yet.”
The CDC website is being overhauled to comply with two executive orders from January 20, the CDC told Ars. The Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government requires government agencies to remove LGBTQ+ language that Trump claimed denies “the biological reality of sex” and is likely driving most of the CDC changes to public health resources. The other executive order the CDC cited, the Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing, would seemingly largely only impact CDC employment practices.
Additionally, “the Office of Personnel Management has provided initial guidance on both Executive Orders and HHS and divisions are acting accordingly to execute,” the CDC told Ars.
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It’s that last quote from the CDC that shows how corrupted this is. Who would have guessed how useful being able to remember the past would turn out to be.
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That AI-restored Beatles song won Grammy for Best Rock Performance • The Verge
Jess Weatherbed:
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The Beatles have won their eighth competitive Grammy award thanks to a little help from artificial intelligence. The 2023 track “Now and Then” — which Billboard reports is the first song knowingly created with AI assistance to earn a Grammy nomination — was awarded Best Rock Performance on Sunday, beating out competition from Green Day, Pearl Jam, The Black Keys, Idles, and St. Vincent.
The track was pieced together using a demo that John Lennon recorded in the late 1970s, with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison later providing their own contributions in the mid-‘90s, with the aim of including the final song in The Beatles Anthology project. “Now and Then” wasn’t released, however, due to technical limitations at the time preventing Lennon’s vocals and piano from being separated from the original lo-fi demo.
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I find this depressing. First, the song was an utter dirge. Second, half of the band are dead. Third, it wasn’t rock. Fourth, it wasn’t a song that they, the band, wrote. Fifth, it’s absolutely ridiculous that St Vincent’s “Broken Man”, which features Dave Grohl on the drums for god’s sake, didn’t win.
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ODPL: a firsthand account of a brazen crypto scam • America 2.0
David Troy:
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On January 28th, over the course of about two hours, about 17,000 people bought into a “meme-coin” called $ODPL, with about $23m changing hands. The coin was launched by a post on X from the account of Stefaan Verhulst, a professor at New York University who works on open data policy and runs an organization called The Governance Lab. His alleged collaborator on this $ODPL coin? Yours truly, David Troy.
This, of course, was news to me. I woke up in the middle of the night and checked my phone, as happens more often than it should. I was surprised to find people messaging me on multiple platforms (X, email, LinkedIn) asking if I was part of this $ODPL coin, because it was “blowing up.” I sent a flurry of terse messages and replies saying, “This is a total fraud. Nothing to do with me.”
Now to find out what was in fact going on. The bio of an X account called “OpenDataPolicy” which had been created a few days earlier said, “The Open Data Policy Lab, founded by @sverhulst and co-founded by @davetroy advances responsible data use and open sharing for AI innovation.” Nice tagline, but as far as I could remember I hadn’t launched anything new with Mr. Verhulst.
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A tale as old as time (always assuming time only started when crypto became a thing).
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After a bruising year, Sonos readies its next big thing: a streaming box • The Verge
Chris Welch:
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In the coming months, Sonos will release a streaming player that sources tell me could cost between $200 and $400 — a truly staggering price for its category.
I’ve seen images of the upcoming product, which is deep into development, and it’s about as nondescript as streaming hardware gets. Viewed from the top, the device is a flattened black square and slightly thicker than a deck of trading cards.
But the Android TV-powered streamer, codenamed Pinewood, is designed to be more than just another competitor to the Apple TV 4K, Nvidia Shield, or Roku Ultra. Don’t get me wrong: streaming is a huge focus for the product. Sources familiar with Pinewood tell me it has a “beautiful” interface, despite the software being developed in partnership with a digital ads firm.
Sonos plans to combine content from numerous platforms including Netflix, Max, and Disney Plus under a single, unified software experience.
…According to people familiar with its development, Pinewood serves as an HDMI switch and has several HDMI ports with passthrough functionality. You’ll be able to plug external devices like gaming consoles or 4K Blu-ray players into it. Sonos engineers have been frustrated over the years by unpredictable issues between its soundbars and certain TVs.
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I understand why – home theatre has become a huge thing for Sonos through soundbars and side speakers – but this cannot work. Yes, diehard Sonos users would be the obvious audience. But last year’s app update destroyed their trust. Now they’re going to roll everything into their own interface for multiple streaming services? I don’t think so.
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Denial of service • The Value of Nothing
Martin Robbins:
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G.K. Chesterton once wrote that journalism was, “saying ‘Lord Jones Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.” A hundred-and-some years later that sounds rather quaint. Today, it’s asking three different sources with a vested interest in the matter whether Lord Jones is in fact dead, and posting their contradictory answers in real-time as you receive them.
Here’s a similar timeline from Trump’s first term, courtesy of Sam Lowe again (it’s a really great post, read it here). It’s on an obscure subject few of you will have heard of: tariffs against Canada.
To give an illustrative example from Trump 1.0: Steel tariffs and Canada.
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Last time round (thank you, PIIE, for the timeline), Trump started an investigation into the national security threat posed by steel and aluminium (April 2017), announced tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium from Canada and others (1 March 2018), announced a temporary reprieve for NAFTA countries (8 March 2018), extended the reprieve for Canada and some others (30 April 2018), ended the reprieve for Canada, Mexico and the EU (1 June 2018), removed the tariffs on Canada and Mexico (17 May 2019), reimposed some tariffs on Canadian aluminium (6 August 2020), and finally ended the tariffs on Canadian aluminium but demanded quotas instead (15 September 2020).
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Phew.
‘Phew’ indeed, although by 2025 standards this feels adorably sedate. In just the last week or so, Trump has ordered and then cancelled tariffs against Colombia, ordered and then postponed tariffs against Mexico, and ordered tariffs against Canada which
I’m hoping to see the fate of before I hit ‘publish’ and look stupidyep, just got postponed.Following all this chaos is stressful and exhausting and feels largely pointless given that, again, if I had fallen into a blissful slumber nine days ago and been oblivious to the threats against Colombia, Mexico and Canada, I’d be no less informed and a lot less anxious.
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Robbins argues that news now is like a denial-of-service attack on your attention: it’s this! It’s that! And you might as well ignore it. I agree.
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What went wrong at Sonos? • LeadDev
Chris Stokel-Walker:
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Sonos had previously taken the approach of using platform-specific frameworks, developing optimized versions of its app for every mobile and desktop operating system a user was likely to have. While this worked well, it was labor-intensive, and would likely result in large teams and massive overheads for Sonos.
While the decision to move to a JavaScript-based framework for mobile was likely driven by honorable desires to simplify operations and reduce redundancy, it actually led to the service becoming slower and less responsive to users.
Another problem was that Sonos had built a reputation for simple products. Instead of relying on the Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) to enable that plug-and-play functionality anymore, Sonos decided to replace it with multicast DNS (mDNS). While this seemed like a more efficient solution, it turned out to be a problem for those on home networks, resulting in speakers and other connections on the network Sonos relied on dropping out regularly.
Speakers ended up disappearing from home networks under the mDNS rewrite of the app’s operation, according to one technical analysis by Andy Pennell, a principal software engineer at Xbox for Microsoft. Pennell called the whole initiative “a disaster”.
But the actual development of the app was only the beginning of the problem. “Sonos issued a statement that the updated app had been through ‘thorough development and testing’,” says Mark Mishaev, chief architect at Checkmarx, a software engineer and cloud architecture firm. “However, when things go wrong to the extent that they did, it’s likely that there were issues in the beta testing phase, with rushed or inadequate beta testing.”
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Incredible if Sonos didn’t test this on home networks. That’s madness. The number of bad decisions that were made serially here is amazing; Stokel-Walker doesn’t even mention that the first version of the relaunched app didn’t include the ability to set (or change) alarms, which is crucial for a lot of home users. Nor was there a rollback plan – it wasn’t possible because speaker firmware had been updated.
I return to this topic from time to time, but it really is a business lesson: clearly Sonos middle and top management had completely lost sight of their users.
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The race to claim the Moon’s airwaves • Financial Times
Oliver Hawkins and Peggy Hollinger:
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Private companies are staking claims to radio spectrum on the Moon with the aim of exploiting an emerging lunar economy, Financial Times research has found.
More than 50 applications have been filed with the International Telecommunication Union since 2010 to use spectrum, the invisible highway of electromagnetic waves that enable all wireless technology, on or from the Moon.
Last year the number of commercial filings to the global co-ordinating body for lunar spectrum outstripped those from space agencies and governments for the first time, according to FT research. The filings cover satellite systems as well as missions to land on the lunar surface.
“We will look back and see this as an important inflection point,” said Katherine Gizinski, chief executive of spectrum consultancy River Advisers, which has filed for lunar spectrum for three satellite systems on behalf of other companies since 2021.
Although total registrations were lower in 2024 than the previous year, the increased proportion of commercial filings reflects a race to build the infrastructure that will enable the “cislunar economy”, the area between the Earth and Moon.
…Intuitive Machines, which last year became the first private company to land on the Moon, in September won a contract worth up to $4.8bn from Nasa to develop a satellite constellation to relay data between the Moon and Earth. Intuitive Machines filed for lunar spectrum in 2023 and 2024.
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SF authors from the 1950s will be applauding. (If they’re alive.)
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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. |
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The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 