The first David Bowie websites – recently restored – were odd even by the standards of the mid-1990s. CC-licensed photo by Lutz Teutloff on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Buffering. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Online suicide forum investigated under new UK digital safety laws • The Guardian
Dan Milmo:
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The UK communications regulator has announced its first investigation under the new digital safety laws with an inquiry into an online suicide forum.
Ofcom is investigating whether the site breached the Online Safety Act by failing to put in place adequate measures to shield its users from illegal content.
The law requires tech platforms to tackle illegal material – such as encouraging suicide – or face the threat of fines of up to £18m or 10% of global revenue. In extreme cases, Ofcom also has the power to block access to a site or app in the UK.
Ofcom, which is not naming the forum under investigation, said it was focusing on whether the site had put appropriate measures in place to protect UK users, whether it had failed to complete an assessment of the harms the site could cause, as required under the legislation, and whether it had responded adequately to a request for information.
“This is the first investigation opened into an individual online service provider under these new laws,” said Ofcom.
The BBC reported in 2023 that the forum, easily accessible to anyone on the open web, had been connected to at least 50 deaths in the UK and had tens of thousands of members with discussions including methods of suicide.
Last month, obligations came into force under the act requiring the 100,000 services under its scope – from small sites to big platforms such as X, Facebook and Google – to implement safeguards that take action against illegal harms. The legislation lists 130 “priority offences”, or illegal content, that tech companies must tackle as a priority by ensuring their moderation systems are set up to deal with such material.
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Seems like a very literal case of a lack of online safety. Notable that it’s not been put on a blacklist to make it inaccessible. Given the lack of information about it, you have to wonder if it’s actually hosted in the UK (chances are.. not?) and how any fine would be extracted. Maybe that’s where the blacklisting would come in.
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OpenAI helps spammers plaster 80,000 sites with messages that bypassed filters • Ars Technica
Dan Goodin:
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Spammers used OpenAI to generate messages that were unique to each recipient, allowing them to bypass spam-detection filters and blast unwanted messages to more than 80,000 websites in four months, researchers said Wednesday.
The finding, documented in a post published by security firm SentinelOne’s SentinelLabs, underscores the double-edged sword wielded by large language models. The same thing that makes them useful for benign tasks—the breadth of data available to them and their ability to use it to generate content at scale—can often be used in malicious activities just as easily. OpenAI revoked the spammers’ account after receiving SentinelLabs’ disclosure, but the four months the activity went unnoticed shows how enforcement is often reactive rather than proactive.
The spam blast is the work of AkiraBot—a framework that automates the sending of messages in large quantities to promote shady search optimization services to small- and medium-size websites. AkiraBot used python-based scripts to rotate the domain names advertised in the messages. It also used OpenAI’s chat API tied to the model gpt-4o-mini to generate unique messages customized to each site it spammed, a technique that likely helped it bypass filters that look for and block identical content sent to large numbers of sites. The messages are delivered through contact forms and live chat widgets embedded into the targeted websites.
“AkiraBot’s use of LLM-generated spam message content demonstrates the emerging challenges that AI poses to defending websites against spam attacks,” SentinelLabs researchers Alex Delamotte and Jim Walter wrote.
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But in the age of AI.. isn’t SEO dead?
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Crypto attorney sues US authorities to reveal Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity • Cryptoslate
Oluwapelumi Adejumo:
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James Murphy, a prominent crypto attorney widely recognized as MetaLawMan, has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The April 7 legal action aims to uncover what the government may know about the identity of Bitcoin’s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Murphy said the lawsuit was prompted by statements made during a financial intelligence conference in 2019.
At that event, a DHS official reportedly claimed the agency had discovered Nakamoto’s identity and interviewed him face-to-face in California. Three other individuals were present during that meeting, each of whom played a role in the development of Bitcoin.
The crypto attorney now wants access to internal DHS documents, emails, and notes that could confirm whether such an interview ever took place. He argued that if the encounter were real, it would almost certainly have left behind a paper trail. His legal action aims to bring those records to the public’s attention.
Meanwhile, Murphy called on DHS Secretary Christy Noem to release the information voluntarily.
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Well, it would be an FOI discovery better than the JFK assassination or UFOs if it happens. What sort of probability do we give it – 1%? Less?
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David Bowie’s early websites, 1995–1997: Outside to Earthling • Cybercultural
Richard MacManus:
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As the internet became more interactive over 1995, it became a more attractive place for musicians to set up a web presence. David Bowie was one of the first to do this.
On August 6, 1995, the domain http://www.davidbowie.com was registered on the World Wide Web. In September — most likely coinciding with the release of his new album, Outside, on 25 September 1995 — Bowie’s first website went live. Up till recently, this version had been lost to time (the first Wayback Machine copy isn’t until October 1996). But last November, a Reddit user with the handle JustMyselfAndI announced a restored version of the original 1995 site.
…One of the designers of the website, Michael Endres, added more context on the restoration on LinkedIn. He noted that his company at the time, The New Media Group, had started work on the website in July 1995, “just a few weeks after Netscape 1.1 was released.” The intention was to “create an image heavy website that would bring your 1400 baud modem to a crawl.” He added that the site “was intentionally obscure and ‘experiential’.”
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Nowadays they’d just stick on a pile of Javascript and an offer to subscribe to their newsletter and a request to send notifications. That certainly was the time of designers who didn’t give a damn about usability.
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Trump: Apple building in China is “unsustainable”, could exempt some companies from tariffs • MacRumors
Juli Clover:
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When asked whether he would consider exempting some U.S. companies from the tariffs in the future, Trump said that he would. “As time goes by, we’re going to take a look at it,” he said. “There are some that by the nature of the company get hit a little bit harder, and we’ll take a look at that,” he added, claiming that he will “show a little flexibility.”
During Trump’s first term, Apple CEO Tim Cook was able to persuade Trump to exempt Apple devices from the tariffs that Trump put in place, but Cook has not been successful this time around. Trump has not yet agreed to grant any companies a reprieve from the tariffs yet.
Trump announced the unexpectedly high tariffs last Wednesday, sending the stock market spiraling downward and causing Apple shares to drop close to 20%. Losses continued until today when the temporary pause was announced, and the market closed with Apple stock back at almost $200 a share after opening at $172.
Trump announced a 90-day pause on all of the special “reciprocal” tariffs that were in place, such as the 46% tariff on Vietnam and the 32% tariff on Taiwan. The 90-day pause does not apply to goods from China, and there is a 10% base tariff in place while the higher tariffs are on hold. Trump raised tariffs on China to 125%, effective immediately, and said that he put the other tariffs on hold because “people were getting a little queasy.”
When speaking to the press, Trump reiterated his aim of bringing manufacturing to the United States, and he claimed that Apple “building” in China is unsustainable.
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The hypothesis that the world tariffs were a fake, and that Trump’s real target (or objective) is to move manufacturing of imports for the US out of China, gets stronger. Pretty difficult with the iPhone, though, even given the parts that are made outside China and then sent there for assembly.
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Bluesky’s quest to build nontoxic social media • The New Yorker
Kyle Chayka:
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Bluesky’s head of trust and safety, Aaron Rodericks, previously worked at Twitter, until Musk dismantled its content-moderation team and eventually forced him out. Rodericks told me that Bluesky performs “a foundational layer” of moderation, with more than a hundred contractors working to remove such things as child-sexual-abuse material and threats of violence. But more fine-grained filtering decisions are made at the individual level.
In Settings, users can choose from among hundreds of homespun labelling tools that flag or block certain posts in their feeds. The labels range from the straightforwardly functional (a red check mark for authenticated power users, akin to Twitter’s old blue checks) to the idiosyncratically satirical (a label that identifies landlords, private-school graduates, and associates of Jeffrey Epstein).
One of the platform’s most prominent feeds, Blacksky, which draws more than three hundred thousand users a month, offers a tool to identify and block racism and misogynoir. Bluesky as a company can afford to enable free speech because the platform’s smaller, optional communities have the power to police speech however they choose. Blacksky’s founder, Rudy Fraser, told me, “If anyone uses a slur anywhere—in a username, bio, in a post—we can get automatically alerted and take action.” He added, of moderation decisions, “If you’re making everyone happy, you’re maybe not serving a community.”
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This is a long profile, mostly of Jay Graber who is Bluesky’s CEO. But there are also little insights like this into the vagueness that pervades Bluesky. The idea of a non-toxic social media platform is an impossible dream. There’s also vagueness around how it’s going to wash its face financially. If it’s not going to be adverts, and not licensing content for AI, it will have to be subscriptions – and that’s a tough row to hoe.
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Study reveals new findings on longevity of legacy magnetic audio tape • Council on Library and Information Resources
Kathlin Smith on a study of magnetic tape storage, in 2022:
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The key findings were as follows:
• Test tapes in playable condition before accelerated ageing continued to be easily and cleanly windable after accelerated aging across a range of temperature and relative humidity values
• Physical and magnetic properties remained effectively un changed after one year of accelerated ageing, even at tempera tures above common remedial baking temperatures. This magnetic stability suggests that briefly applied baking treat ments likely have little detrimental effect on recorded content
• Certain chemical properties decreased after aging, consistent with hydrolysis and lubricant loss, but these changes occurred only at the most extreme aging conditions and not sufficiently to cause playback problems
• The observations indicated that under standard room tem perature conditions (20-25 °C), approximately 100 years would be needed for the tested playable tapes to reach the properties measured in unplayable tapes
• Estimates for magnetic tape longevity provided confidence that tapes currently in good condition are unlikely to rapidly turn unplayable under standard room temperature conditions of 20-25 °C
• Manufacturing variations appeared more indicative of risk than environmental factors. Environmental controls still benefit magnetic tape preservation, but understanding of collection tapes’ individual histories might be even more beneficial.“Based on recommendations published 10 to 30 years prior to the time of this writing, the life expectancy for magnetic tapes was predicted to be 10 to 30 years if institutions adhered to published storage guidelines,” note the authors.
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Certainly seems like Doge made a false economy getting rid of the mag tapes. (Thanks Mark C for the link.)
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The composer still making music four years after his death – thanks to an artificial brain • The Guardian
Rosamund Brennan:
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In a darkened room, a fractured symphony of rattles, hums and warbles bounces off the walls – like an orchestra tuning up in some parallel universe. But there’s not a musician in sight.
If you look closely there is a small fragment of a performer. Albeit one without a pulse.
In the centre of the room, visitors hover around a raised plinth, craning to glimpse the brains behind the operation. Under a magnifying lens sit two white blobs, like a tiny pair of jellyfish. Together, they form the lab-grown “mini-brain” of the late US musician Alvin Lucier – composing a posthumous score in real time.
Lucier was a pioneer of experimental music who died in 2021. But here in the Art Gallery of Western Australia he has been resurrected with cutting-edge neuroscience.
“When you look down into that central plinth, you’re crossing a threshold,” says Nathan Thompson, an artist and a creator of the project, titled Revivification. “You’re peering down into the abyss and you’re looking at something that’s alive – just not in the same way as you.”
Revivification is the work of a self-described “four-headed monster”, a tight-knit team of scientists and artists who have spent decades pushing the boundaries of biological art – namely Thompson and his fellow artists Guy Ben-Ary and Matt Gingold, alongside a neuroscientist, Stuart Hodgetts.
Lucier was the perfect collaborator. In 1965 the composer became the first artist to use brainwaves to generate live sound in his seminal work Music for Solo Performer. Longtime fans of his work, the Revivification team started brainstorming ideas with him back in 2018. But it wasn’t until 2020, then aged 89 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, that the composer agreed to donate his blood to Revivification.
First, his white blood cells were reprogrammed into stem cells. Then, led by Hodgetts, the team transformed the cells into cerebral organoids – clusters of neurons that mimic the human brain.
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This is the weirdest story I’ve read in ages.
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After leaving Substack, writers are making more money elsewhere • Digiday
Alexander Lee:
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A year after leaving Substack in early 2024, newsletter writers are making more money peddling their words on other platforms.
Across the board, writers such as Marisa Kabas, Luke O’Neil, Jonathan M. Katz and Ryan Broderick — all of whom exited Substack in early 2024 following the publication of an open letter in December 2023 decrying the presence of politically extreme voices on the platform — told Digiday that they are receiving a higher share of subscription revenue after making the switch from Substack to rival newsletter services such as Ghost and Beehiiv.
Broderick, for example, estimated that revenue for his newsletter Garbage Day had increased by roughly 20% to 25% year over year since he left Substack in January 2024, though he didn’t provide exact figures.
“The amount I was making at Substack was not enough to hire a full-time employee,” Broderick said. “Last month, I just hired Adam Bumas, my head of research, full time.”
Since leaving Substack, some writers’ subscriber counts have plateaued over the past year, while others have risen — but in both cases, creators said that their share of revenue has increased because Ghost and Beehiiv charge creators flat monthly rates that scale based on their subscriber counts, rather than Substack’s 10% cut of all transaction fees.
Both Beehiiv and Ghost offer a multitude of different pricing tiers based on both a newsletter’s size and the specific features desired by its creator.
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That’s fine, but these tend to be people who had a substantial audience already, and took them along on their exit. The bigger question is how those with much smaller audiences can build a presence, and whether it’s easier or harder than on Substack.
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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 