Getting driving directions in India is challenging because many roads lack names – a challenge Google Maps has had to face. CC-licensed photo by Kalyan on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Driven. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Amazon plans to unveil next-generation Alexa AI later this month • MacRumors
Juli Clover:
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Amazon today sent out invites for an AI-focused event that will be held on February 26, and according to Reuters, the company plans to introduce its next-generation Alexa generative AI service.
Since Amazon introduced Alexa in 2014, it has become one of the most widely available voice assistants, but it has been falling behind with the proliferation of generative AI products like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Revamping Alexa into a generative AI service will mark the biggest change Amazon has made to the product since its launch. Alexa will be able to hold complex, context-aware conversations with users, and will be able to handle multi-faceted requests.
Amazon is using AI models from Anthropic’s Claude rather than relying solely on its in-house AI technology, as early versions of Amazon AI had trouble responding in a timely manner. Amazon initially planned to roll out the updated version of Alexa last year, but ended up pushing the debut back.
It is important for Amazon to get changes to Alexa right, because there are more than 100 million active Alexa users and over 500 million Alexa-enabled devices have been sold. Amazon is aiming to convert some of those Alexa users into paying customers, with plans to eventually charge a subscription fee for the new Alexa. At launch, Amazon will test the new Alexa with a small number of users and won’t charge for it.
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Alexa has fallen behind? Don’t tell Siri, it’s so far back it can’t hear you. What Amazon does with this should be interesting.
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White House says it will cancel $8m in Politico subscriptions after a false right-wing conspiracy theory spreads • CNN Business
Liam Reilly:
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, responding Wednesday to a question about a right-wing conspiracy theory, announced that the federal government would cancel $8m worth of Politico subscriptions.
Leavitt elevated a bogus claim spreading on social media that Politico and the Associated Press for years received millions of dollars from the US Agency for International Development, which President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have targeted by placing staff on leave. In reality, the payments represented the whole of the federal government’s subscriptions to the news outlets’ services. All federal agencies combined spent $8.2m last year on Politico Pro, according to USASpending.gov.
At a White House press briefing, Leavitt told reporters that she had been made aware of USAID funding to media outlets, including Politico, and noted that taxpayer dollars that have been allocated toward “essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers’ dime will no longer be happening.”
“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,” Leavitt said.
But as reporters quickly pointed out in response to false statements on social media, the payments are not exclusively USAID funds.
“I looked at these contracts and I have my own fun fact,” Byron Tau, an investigative reporter at the Associated Press, said via X. “This is occurring because agencies (not just USAID) are buying subscriptions to Politico’s Pro editorial product, not because Politico is getting grants or other federal funding.”
The Trump administration’s focus on the false narrative that Politico received USAID funds follows an erroneous claim by Kyle Becker, a conservative political commentator, on Wednesday.
…Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency, also chimed in on Becker’s post, calling the alleged payments “a huge waste of taxpayer money!”
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Politico’s annual revenue is $200m, so this is probably not going to destroy it. But equally, these are the stupidest people possible who will believe anything as long as it fits into their worldview. The next question is, what sort of things can you sneak into their belief system which actually undermines it?
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The ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ of the United States government • The Atlantic
Charlie Warzel:
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Two days before the 2024 election, I wrote that Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter was going to be the blueprint for his potential tenure at DOGE. Unfortunately, I was right—he’s running the exact same playbook. But it’s worth keeping in mind that there are two ways of measuring success for Musk’s projects: first, whether the organizations themselves benefit under his leadership, and second, whether Musk himself gets something out of the arrangement.
Musk’s stewardship of X has been a financial nightmare. He has alienated advertisers, tanked revenue and user growth, and saddled investment banks with debt from the purchase that they’ll need to sell off. Yet Musk’s own influence and net worth have grown considerably during this time. His fanboys and the MAGA faithful don’t care that X is a flailing business, because Musk did deliver on giving liberals their supposed comeuppance by de-verifying accounts and reinstating banned trolls. He turned the platform into a conspiratorial superfund site, has boosted right-wing accounts and talking points, and helped elect Donald Trump as president. Musk’s purchase is a success in their eyes because he succeeded in turning X into a political weapon.
The same thing is happening right now with DOGE. Musk and his Silicon Valley acolytes are acting on a long-held fantasy of approaching the federal government like a software company and running it like a venture-backed tech start-up during the days of zero-percent interest rates. Here’s the problem: The federal government is not a software company.
“The stakes are wildly different,” a former senior Twitter executive told me recently. This person, who requested anonymity because they worked closely with Musk during his takeover and fear retribution, argued that Musk seems incapable of recognizing the limits of his own knowledge. When I asked them to describe Musk’s managerial strategy, they borrowed a term of art from SpaceX’s own rocket mishaps: “This is a rapid unscheduled disassembly of government services.”
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The great British SF writer John Brunner wrote a book called “The Sheep Look Up”, which seems relevant at this moment. (The title comes from this poem, and seems apposite for the moment.)
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Sonos lays off 200 employees as its struggles continue • The Verge
Chris Welch:
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Things at Sonos are getting worse before they get better — if they’re going to get better. Today the company laid off approximately 200 employees, The Verge has learned. The news was announced at around 4PM ET, and a letter to employees from interim CEO Tom Conrad was posted on Sonos’ website shortly thereafter. “One thing I’ve observed first hand is that we’ve become mired in too many layers that have made collaboration and decision-making harder than it needs to be,” Conrad wrote. “So across the company today we are reorganizing into flatter, smaller, and more focused teams.”
Conrad clearly sees a need to rethink the way Sonos operates as part of the company’s turnaround effort. Sonos is scheduled to report its latest quarterly earnings on Thursday afternoon. And if this is the precursor to that, the near-term outlook probably isn’t very good.
It’s an even more substantial wave of job cuts than Sonos made back in August, when it let 100 people go.
…Sonos will now divide its product organization into groups for hardware, software, design, quality and operations “and away from dedicated business units devoted to individual product categories,” Conrad wrote. “Being smaller and more focused will require us to do a much better job of prioritizing our work — lately we’ve let too many projects run under a cloud of half-commitment. We’re going to fix this too,” he added.
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They had business groups for product categories? That’s crazy. It’s a recipe for war which has to be adjudicated by those higher up, who may say, for example, that new headphones need to be pushed through so the app developers (might be a product category?) have to sort it out.
Although the new organisation might not be so immune to similar problems. Conrad has a fight on his hands.
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As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders • Ars Technica
Ars Technica staff:
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Two years ago, a Canadian writer named Cory Doctorow coined the phrase “enshittification” to describe the decay of online platforms. The word immediately set the Internet ablaze, as it captured the growing malaise regarding how almost everything about the web seemed to be getting worse.
“It’s my theory explaining how the Internet was colonized by platforms, why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, why it matters, and what we can do about it,” Doctorow explained in a follow-up article. “We’re all living through a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. It’s even terrifying.”
Doctorow believes there are four basic forces that might constrain companies from getting worse: competition, regulation, self-help, and tech workers. One by one, he says, these constraints have been eroded as large corporations squeeze the Internet and its denizens for dollars.
…we at Ars have covered a lot of things that have been enshittified. Here are some of the worst examples we’ve come across. Hopefully, you’ll share some of your own experiences in the comments. We might even do a follow-up story based on those.
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The list is pretty comprehensive: smart TVs, Google Assistant, Google search (er), PDFs, televised sports, and plenty more. A good if gradually demoralising read.
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Google’s new AI policy removes promises not work on weapons or surveillance • The Washington Post
Nitasha Tiku and Gerrit De Vynck:
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Google on Tuesday updated its ethical guidelines around artificial intelligence, removing commitments not to apply the technology to weapons or surveillance.
The company’s AI principles previously included a section listing four “Applications we will not pursue.” As recently as Thursday, that included weapons, surveillance, technologies that “cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” and use cases contravening principles of international law and human rights, according to a copy hosted by the Internet Archive.
A spokesperson for Google declined to answer specific questions about its policies on weapons and surveillance but referred to a blog post published Tuesday by the company’s head of AI, Demis Hassabis, and its senior vice president for technology and society, James Manyika.
The executives wrote that Google was updating its AI principles because the technology had become much more widespread and there was a need for companies based in democratic countries to serve government and national security clients.
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I read the blogpost and didn’t find the bit where Hassabis says “eh, an AI drone, why not?” But of course this is, as the article points out, one of those “permission by omission” things. I’m so ancient I remember when Google bought DeepMind in 2014 and promised to set up an ethics board, which was most visible by its absence for years.
In 2018 Google withdrew from US government contracts following protests by staff. Seems that AI speaks a lot louder now than it did then.
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Clarion Housing Group partners with Octopus Energy and The Hill Group to deliver UK’s biggest ‘Zero Bills’ development • Clarion Housing Group
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Hill and Octopus Energy are developing the nation’s most extensive ‘Zero Bills’ housing development, comprising 89 meticulously designed homes at Hollymead Square in Newport, Essex. Residents will pay no energy bills for a minimum of five years, guaranteed.
Of the 89 total, 64 will be sold on the open market. The remaining 25 will be made available for affordable rent and shared ownership by Clarion Housing Group, the UK’s largest social housing provider. These will be the first completed ‘Zero Bills’ homes under affordable rent.
‘Zero Bills’ is a world-first smart proposition that allows customers to move into homes which are fully kitted out with green energy technology and with no energy bills.
Following the success of a ‘Zero Bills’ pilot in Essex, Octopus Energy has now accredited close to 1,000 homes through contracts with other prominent developers. Accredited plots span affordable, social, and private rent, as well as private and shared ownership.
Situated in an idyllic village location, this groundbreaking project at Hollymead Square encompasses an attractive collection of two to five-bedroom houses and two-bedroom bungalows.
Each property at Hollymead Square will be equipped with cutting-edge low-carbon technology, including solar panels, high-quality insulation, heat pumps, and home storage batteries. Designed to exceed the energy requirements for each property, this high level of home energy technology is seamlessly integrated and optimised by Octopus’ advanced tech platform, Kraken, to result in zero bills for homeowners.
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This is a press release from December 2023. The houses are just down the road from me, and are starting to come into commission. What makes them interesting – and the reason why people can get free* electricity – is that Octopus will control the flow of energy in and out so that it can balance the grid generally. That’s why there are batteries and solar panels and heat pumps. The idea that the house, and its storage, becomes a part of the grid rather than just an endpoint is part of what the Net Zero shift requires.
* up to a certain amount. If they’re putting on five-bar electric fires all the time, there will be a cost.
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Google Maps in India has been blamed for fatal accidents. Is that fair? • Rest of World
Ananya Bhattacharya:
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When Google Maps launched in India in 2008, it initially struggled due to the lack of street names, which were the foundation of its technology globally. In an X post from October 2023, Elizabeth Laraki, who led the global design team for Google Maps from 2007 to 2009, wrote that this rendered the app’s directions “pretty much useless.” The company subsequently used parks, monuments, shopping centers, landmark buildings, and gas stations to confirm directions instead.
Over the years, Google has launched several new features to improve Maps in India, including voice navigation and transliterated directions in about nine and 10 languages, respectively, to increase accessibility. Most recently, in 2024, the company introduced a simplified interface for reporting road incidents, two new weather-related alerts for streets obscured by flooding or fog, an artificial-intelligence model that estimates road widths, and a feature that alerts users to approaching overpasses in 40 cities.
Google has mapped 300 million buildings, 35 million businesses and places, and streets stretching across 7 million kilometres (over 4 million miles) in India, Ramani told Rest of World.
India has been “an innovation hub for Google Maps,” since many features saw “their genesis in the country,” Ramani said. She cited examples such as landmark-based navigation, offline maps, and two-wheeler mode, which debuted in India.
…Within India, Google Maps contends with the homegrown MapmyIndia and Ola Maps. MapmyIndia, which has mapped nearly as many roads as Google Maps, is reportedly the market leader in providing navigation services to car manufacturers.
In July 2024, Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal announced that his ride-hailing company had transitioned away from Google Maps to its in-house navigation platform — a move that he said would save $1bn. On X, he encouraged developers to “#ExitGoogleMaps” for Ola Maps, promising a year’s worth of free access.
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That $1bn saving is annual, which is astonishing. A later paragraph notes that you can’t rely on crowdsourced maps in India “because of illegal driving such as vehicles not following one-way signs”. It sounds like GTA out there.
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AI is killing the traditional SEO… but it’s not over! • Indie Hackers
“Arno”:
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📉 Traditional SEO is losing effectiveness as AI-generated content floods the internet, complicating the landscape for businesses trying to stand out.
🧐 AI’s disruption means that unique content is harder to find, and securing backlinks has become a significant challenge.
🤖 AI-generated content often lacks the originality and depth needed to engage users effectively, leading to decreased user interaction and lower search engine rankings.
Instead of relying solely on Google, we should pivot towards YouTube, the second-largest search engine, which offers a unique blend of marketing and sales opportunities. Some of the beneficial aspects of this trend:
💼 Prospects sourced from YouTube tend to be more pre-sold, resulting in improved sales calls and higher conversion rates.
🌐 Video content is evergreen, continually attracting new customers over time without the constant need for updates.
📊 YouTube SEO is simpler than traditional methods, allowing us to focus on creating high-quality content rather than getting lost in complex metadata.
❤️ Video content adds a human touch that fosters trust and connection with audiences, enhancing engagement and credibility to your brand.
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It’s so touching to see people convinced that this time, they’ve found space in the digital world won’t be disrupted by AI. OK, the previous one was, but now they’ve found a space that’s immune!
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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 