Twenty years on, what has the One Laptop Per Child programme achieved? CC-licensed photo by Steve Rhodes on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Not that cheap. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Don’t give your child any AI companions • After Babel
Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch:
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Large Language Models (LLMs) are not programmed by human beings in the same way that video games or spreadsheet software are. Like the human brain, they develop over time as they are fed vast quantities of training data. They behave in unexpected ways, often will not respond the same way twice to an identical question, and sometimes reveal information or patterns that were hidden in their training data.
Suppose that intelligent aliens landed on earth tomorrow, and that they seemed, at first, here to help us. Would we send our children off to play with them right away? Would we allow our adolescents to develop romantic attachments and sexual relationships with them? Or would we keep our children far away from them until we knew with high degrees of confidence that they were safe for kids?
We must not repeat the mistakes we made with social media. We cannot wait for the scientific community to come to full agreement about harm before we set clear boundaries on children’s digital lives, because consensus on such harms often takes decades to arrive. We should start with the assumption that new technologies that radically alter childhood are harmful until demonstrated to be safe, and we should be alert for early evidence of harm. We’ve already learned the hard way what happens when tech replaces real human connections.
Given the worrisome rate at which AI horror stories and lawsuits involving teens are surfacing, what do we expect to happen as chatbots enter the social lives of children and toddlers? We can be confident that these chatbots will replace — not augment — the human-to-human relationships that children need for their social and emotional development. An AI companion can imitate friendship, but it can’t actually be a friend. It can say “I understand you,” but it doesn’t. It can mirror a kid’s emotions, but that is not the same as empathy. An AI companion bot has no morals, no feelings, no shame. It is built to keep users of all ages “engaged” with it.
As we approach the holidays, my message to parents is simple: DO NOT GIVE YOUR CHILDREN ANY AI COMPANIONS OR TOYS. Give them toys, sporting equipment, and experiences that will strengthen their in-person relationships, rather than replacing them. (We note there have been several major advisories put out by leading health authorities, including Fairplay, the American Psychological Association, UNICEF, and the Children’s Commissioner of England.)
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Too late for the parents who bought AI teddy bears.
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‘It’s hell for us here’: Mumbai families suffer as datacentres keep the city hooked on coal • The Guardian
Luke Barratt, Atika Rehman and Sushmita:
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Two coal plants plant run by the Indian multinationals Tata Group and Adani were due to close last year in a government push to cut emissions. But late in 2023, those decisions were reversed after Tata argued that electricity demand was rising too fast for Mumbai to go without coal.
Neither company responded to requests for comment.
Economic growth and the need for air conditioning in climate change-linked extreme heat have seen India’s electricity demand soar in recent years. But an investigation by SourceMaterial and the Guardian reveals the biggest single factor in the city’s failure to end its dependence on fossil fuels: energy-hungry datacentres.
Leaked records also reveal the scale of the presence of the world’s biggest datacentre operator, Amazon, in Mumbai. In the city’s metropolitan area, Amazon, on its website, records three “availability zones”, which it defines as one or more datacentres. Leaked records from last year seen by SourceMaterial from inside Amazon reveal the company used 16 in the city.
As India transforms its economy into a hub for artificial intelligence, the datacentre boom is creating a conflict between energy demand and climate pledges, said Bhaskar Chakravorti, who researches technology’s impact on society at Tufts University.
“I’m not surprised they’re falling behind their green transition commitments, especially with the demand growing exponentially,” he said of the Indian government.
Kylee Yonas, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said Mumbai’s “emission challenges” were not caused by Amazon. “On the contrary – Amazon is one of the largest corporate investors in renewable energy in India, and we’ve supported 53 solar and wind projects in the country capable of generating over 4m megawatt hours of clean energy annually,” she said. “These investments, which include our 99 megawatt wind project in Maharashtra, are enough to power over 1.3m Indian homes annually once operational.”
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OK, 1.3m homes – or perhaps one data centre, while the 1.3m homes are coal-fired?
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Elon Musk’s worthless, poisoned hall of mirrors • The Atlantic
Charlie Warzel:
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Platforms not only goad users into posting more and more extreme and provocative content by rewarding them with attention; they also help people monetize that attention. Just before the 2016 election, BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman and Lawrence Alexander uncovered a network of Macedonian teens who recognized that America’s deep political divisions were a lucrative vein to exploit and pumped out bogus news articles that were designed to go viral on Facebook, which they then put advertisements on. Today it’s likely that at least some of these bogus MAGA accounts make pennies on the dollar via X’s Creator program, which rewards engaging accounts with a cut of advertising revenue; many of them have the telltale blue check mark.
As Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins noted on Bluesky, X’s architecture turns what should be an information ecosystem into a performative one. “Actors aren’t communicating; they’re staging provocations for yield,” he wrote. “The result is disordered discourse: signals detached from truth, identity shaped by escalation, and a feedback loop where the performance eclipses reality itself.” Beyond the attentional and financial rewards, platforms such as X have gutted their trust-and-safety or moderation teams in service of a bastardized notion of free-speech maximalism—creating the conditions for this informational nightmare.
The second lesson here is that X appears to be inflating the culture wars in ultimately unknowable but certainly important ways. On X this weekend, I watched one (seemingly real) person coming to terms with this fact. “Fascinating to look through every account I’ve disagreed with and find out they’re all fake,” they posted on Saturday. To be certain, X is not the main cause for American political division or arguing online, but it is arguably one of its greatest amplifiers. X is still a place where many journalists and editors in newsrooms across America share and consume political news. Political influencers, media personalities, and even politicians will take posts from supposed ordinary accounts and hold them up as examples of their ideological opponents’ dysfunction, corruption, or depravity.
How many of these accounts, arguments, or news cycles were a product of empty rage bait, proffered by foreign or just fake actors? Recent examples suggest the system is easily gamed: 32% to 37% of the online activity around Cracker Barrel’s controversial logo change this summer was driven by fake accounts, according to consultants hired by the restaurant chain.
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(Gift link.)
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The penicillin myth • Asimov Press
kevin Blake:
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Everyone knows that penicillin destroys bacteria, and [Alexander] Fleming observed staphylococci seemingly being destroyed by a mould that produced penicillin.
However, upon closer reading of Fleming’s 1929 paper, it becomes clear that a great deal of work was either omitted or inadequately described. There is, for example, no description of the type of culture medium used; whether or not the plate had been incubated; how long it had been on the bench; and, most important of all, what species of Staphylococcus was being studied.
When publishing a scientific paper, scientists are expected to include a detailed description of their methods alongside their results. Like a recipe, these methods should clearly and comprehensively describe the materials used and the steps taken so that other scientists can replicate the experiment. And while incomplete or poorly-described methods are a perennial problem, the omission of these key experimental details (even in a report on an accidental discovery) is surprising.
This became a problem when, as interest in penicillin grew, other investigators tried to repeat Fleming’s discovery. In 1944, Margaret Jennings (who later married a long-time colleague and penicillin researcher, Howard Florey) spread purified penicillin onto plates of fully grown staphylococci. This should have had a more potent effect than Fleming’s, which was allegedly produced only with the crude “mould juice” from an accidental contaminant. Jennings, however, observed no visible change.
In 1965, the pathologist W.D. Foster attempted a similar experiment using penicillin crystals dropped directly onto staphylococcus colonies, creating “astronomical” concentrations within their vicinity. But still, the colonies remained unaffected.
Other attempts at replication called into question whether the mould could have even grown on a plate full of staphylococci. Pharmacologist D.B. Colquhoun claimed that, in 1955, he found that Penicillium mould refused to grow on a plate already full of staphylococcus colonies. Or, that, if it did, it produced no visible effect on the colonies.
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Fascinating story about how a widely accepted story is almost surely not literally true, but instead happened by some other scientific process.
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Iranians fear taps running dry as country faces worst drought in 60 years • ABC News
Matthew Doran and Leonie Thorne:
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It was early November when the Iranian president was forced to make a startling admission.
Faced with a perfect storm of weather woes and decades of mismanagement, Masoud Pezeshkian issued a warning to his country that the situation could deteriorate even further. “We’ve run short of water. If it doesn’t rain, we in Tehran … must start rationing,” he said. “Even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all. They [citizens] must evacuate Tehran.”
While it may seem like an exaggeration, it is the shocking reality facing the Iranian population — particularly in its capital, which has in excess of 15 million people across the broader metropolitan area. Taps are already running dry across Iran as the government enforces strict rationing to try to conserve what limited supplies it still has.
…Rainfall across much of the country is about 85% below average, with the worst drought conditions in about 60 years taking hold.
Decades of mismanagement of natural resources, including the construction of too many dams and a lack of enforcement when it came to drilling illegal wells, have combined with inefficient agriculture and adverse weather conditions to lead to the crisis.
“Tehran — the richest city of Iran, the most politically powerful city with more than 15 million in the metropolitan — is facing day zero in a few days or a few weeks,” Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, told the ABC earlier this month.
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More outlets are noticing. But the problem of finding out what is happening remains as difficult as ever.
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Apple’s ‘skinny’ iPhone falls flat with disappointing early sales • Financial Times
Michael Acton:
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[Research group] IDC, which tracks iPhone sales through checks on Apple’s supply chain, found the company slashed production plans in half within weeks of the launch after the Air sold about a third of the tech group’s highest expectations.
Apple is seeking new ways to boost iPhone sales, which have flattened in recent years but accounted for $209bn in revenue in the year to September, roughly half of the group’s total sales.
Other devices in the iPhone 17 line-up, which launched at the same time as the Air, have sold well. Apple has forecast these sales will drive a record holiday quarter, far above Wall Street estimates.
Morgan Stanley analysts estimated the tech group could build 90m units of these new models in the second half of 2025, as many as 6m more than anticipated before the launch. The figures were “partially offset by relative weakness in the iPhone Air”, they added.
Apple declined to comment.
Slower sales of the Air came despite a flood of interest around its launch in September. The Air’s product page pulled in 1m views during the month, according to web intelligence platform Similarweb. It helped boost total online views around this year’s iPhone launch to 7.4m, 28% higher than the previous year’s products.
However, Similarweb found the conversion rate for the Air was about a third lower than other models, meaning the Air’s online audience translated to fewer sales.
“It created interest . . . showing the product innovation was still there,” said Dan Newman, chief executive of research company The Futurum Group. “[But] for a lot of people, the better camera features and battery life features on the Pro just outweighed the appeal of the Air.”
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clone.fyi
I don’t know quite what to make of this: it’s a news aggregation site, but what the criteria for inclusion or being featured are isn’t stated, or clear. It’s linked to farcaster.xyz/clone which calls itself “your favorite founder’s favorite bookmark”, but beyond that?
The links are mostly news-based, but they don’t quite grab my attention.
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Laptops in the long run: evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program in rural Peru • NBER
Santiago Cueto, Diether Beuermann, Julian Cristia, Ofer Malamud and Francisco Pardo:
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This paper examines a large-scale randomized evaluation of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in 531 Peruvian rural primary schools. We use administrative data on academic performance and grade progression over 10 years to estimate the long-run effects of increased computer access on (i) school performance over time and (ii) students’ educational trajectories. Following schools over time, we find no significant effects on academic performance but some evidence of negative effects on grade progression. Following students over time, we find no significant effects on primary and secondary completion, academic performance in secondary school, or university enrollment. Survey data indicate that computer access significantly improved students’ computer skills but not their cognitive skills…
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You can read more background about the OLPC project. The OLPC vision, if you need reminding, was “With access to this type of tool, children are engaged in their own education, and learn, share, and create together. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future. The best preparation for children isn’t test prep. It is ‘to develop the passion for learning and the ability to learn how to learn.'”
Doesn’t seem to have worked out that way.
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The Turkish barbershops hiding a vast criminal network • Daily Telegraph
Danny Shaw on a police operation tackling crime in the surplus barber shops around Britain:
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In April, as part of a three-week crackdown on high-street crime focusing on barbershops, police secured freezing orders over bank accounts totalling more than £1m, arrested 35 people, questioned 55 others about their immigration status and helped to safeguard 97 individuals in relation to potential modern slavery.
Tens of thousands of illegal cigarettes, vapes and packs of tobacco were seized – and two cannabis farms were found. The second, more extensive, phase of Machinize, this autumn, involved visits to 2,734 premises in the UK, 376 of which were barbershops. More than 900 people were arrested and more than £10.7m of suspected criminal proceeds seized.
The NCA operation followed the conviction of an Iranian Kurd who had used his barbershop in London as a base for an overseas criminal network smuggling 10,000 people into the UK in small boats. Hewa Rahimpur, who had claimed asylum after arriving in Britain in 2016, had set up the barber’s with a friend before renting a space for a food kiosk. In reality, he was the leader of a sprawling crime gang that sourced boats, engines and lifejackets for migrant crossings. In October 2024, he was jailed in Belgium for 11 years, with the case, along with the overall proliferation of barbershops, proving to be a “tipping point” for the authorities in the UK.
“From an NCA perspective, really, [it was] at the beginning of this year when we acknowledged that this problem had become too big for any one organisation to tackle in isolation,” says Sal Melki, the NCA’s deputy director of economic crime. “We needed to intervene,” he says.
For criminals, the main attraction of barbershops as fronts for crime is the ease with which they can be established. Countless high street properties lie vacant. All that’s needed to start up are a few chairs, hairbrushes and a pair of scissors. “You don’t need a huge amount in terms of stock, premises are widely available, it’s relatively easy in terms of planning permission and licensing,” says Melki.
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My little market town has six barbershops, two (perhaps three) of them “Turkish”. There are about the same number of hairdressers, none “Turkish”. Peculiar. (Free to read with email registration.)
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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 