Wood-burning stoves are reckoned to be responsible for thousands of premature deaths due to their particulate output.CC-licensed photo by Andy Rogers 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.

A selection of 9 links for you. Fuelish. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

The government’s computing experts say they are terrified • The Atlantic

Charlie Warzel and Ian Bogost:

»

Each of our four sources, three of whom requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal, made three points very clear: These systems are immense, they are complex, and they are critical. A single program run by the FAA to help air-traffic controllers, En Route Automation Modernization, contains nearly 2 million lines of code; an average iPhone app, for comparison, has about 50,000. The Treasury Department disburses trillions of dollars in payments per year.

Many systems and databases in a given agency feed into others, but access to them is restricted. Employees, contractors, civil-service government workers, and political appointees have strict controls on what they can access and limited visibility into the system as a whole. This is by design, as even the most mundane government databases can contain highly sensitive personal information. A security-clearance database such as those used by the Department of Justice or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, one contractor told us, could include information about a person’s mental-health or sexual history, as well as disclosures about any information that a foreign government could use to blackmail them.

…n the faa, even a small systems disruption could cause mass grounding of flights, a halt in global shipping, or worse, downed planes. For instance, the agency oversees the Traffic Flow Management System, which calculates the overall demand for airspace in U.S. airports and which airlines depend on.

“Going into these systems without an in-depth understanding of how they work both individually and interconnectedly is a recipe for disaster that will result in death and economic harm to our nation,” one FAA employee who has nearly a decade of experience with its system architecture told us.

“‘Upgrading’ a system of which you know nothing about is a good way to break it, and breaking air travel is a worst-case scenario with consequences that will ripple out into all aspects of civilian life. It could easily get to a place where you can’t guarantee the safety of flights taking off and landing.” Nevertheless, last Wednesday Musk posted that “the DOGE team will aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system.”

«

As I said before: letting people with hammers loose in a nuclear control room.
unique link to this extract

Europe ‘not in the AI race today,’ French President Macron says • CNN

Joseph Ataman and Richard Quest:

»

For a man who’s spent his career battling to make France more pro-business, Europe’s prospects on artificial intelligence are worrying: an oversight that could cost the bloc dearly.

“We are not in the race today,” French President Emmanuel Macron told CNN’s Richard Quest in an exclusive interview at the Elysee Palace on Thursday. “We are lagging behind.”

“We need an AI agenda,” he said, “because we have to bridge the gap with the United States and China on AI.” The French leader added that he fears Europe becoming merely an AI consumer, losing control over the future direction and development of the technology.

That’s part of the impetus behind this week’s AI summit in Paris — the latest effort by Macron to put France at the heart of the debate and decision-making on international questions of the day.

Macron regularly touts the prospects of Paris-based company Mistral, widely considered OpenAI’s European competitor, which launched a new app on Thursday.

The company boasts of its ability to rival its US competitors, by getting the same results with less computing power needed, although the surprise arrival of lower-cost Chinese competitor DeepSeek has put pressure on the French firm.

«

unique link to this extract

Amazon, Google and verification vendors among ad tech cohort under fire from U.S. senators over child safety shortcomings • Digiday

Marty Swant:

»

Adalytics has been a thorn in the side of major ad platforms that have characterized its research as flawed, but now it has found an audience in the highest echelons of government. 

Members of Congress have sent letters to major tech companies, including Google and Amazon, expressing concern about ads served on websites known to host child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Signed by U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) the open letters come after new research from watchdog group Adalytics showed examples of ad tech companies serving ads on websites known to carry CSAM.

The letters, sent today, detail “grave” and “profound” concerns after a new Adalytics report found evidence of ads on CSAM websites promoting major brands and other advertisers, including the federal government. The report was shared earlier with lawmakers in private and released publicly today. Letters to Amazon and Google say the companies’ “actions here—or in best case, inaction—are problematic.”

“The dissemination of CSAM is a heinous crime that inflicts irreparable harm on its victims,” senators wrote in the letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “Where digital advertiser networks like Google place advertisements on websites that are known to host such activity, they have in effect created a funding stream that perpetuates criminal operations and irreparable harm to our children.”

«

Sites like this can get approval to run adverts in the first place because they’re just money sources for the platforms. There might be a cursory inspection to start with, but how carefully are they monitored afterwards except for spam?
unique link to this extract

Billions for ‘unproven’ carbon capture technology will have ‘very significant’ impact on energy bills, MPs warn • Sky News

Sarah Taaffe-Maguire:

»

The government is spending £22bn on “unproven” technologies which will have a “very significant effect” on energy bills, according to an influential committee of MPs.

There has been no assessment of whether the programme to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere is affordable for billpayers, said a report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of MPs.

The financial impact on households of funding the project has not been examined by government at all, the PAC said.

Even if the state’s investment pays off, the technology is successful and makes money, there is no way for profits to be shared to bring down bills, it added.

Private sector investors, however, would recoup investment, according to committee chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown.

“All early progress will be underwritten by taxpayers, who currently do not stand to benefit if these projects are successful,” he said. “Any private sector funding for such a project would expect to see significant returns when it becomes a success.”

That’s despite the vast majority (two-thirds) of the £21.7bn investment coming from levies on consumers “who are already facing some of the highest energy bills in the world”, it said.

But there is no evidence to say the programme will be successful despite the government “gambling” its legally mandated net zero targets on the tech, committee chair Sir Geoffrey added.

«

Carbon capture is a never-quite-there technology which needs another never-quite-there technology, fusion, to make it even vaguely worthwhile. Chemistry and physics are not our friends in trying to fix our planet’s problems.
unique link to this extract

Wood-burning stoves are a serious problem for your health – and the environment • The Conversation

Asit Kumar Mishra and John Wenger:

»

There is something cosy and appealing about settling down next to a roaring fire in winter but, every year, nearly 61,000 premature deaths in Europe are caused by air pollution as a result of people burning wood or coal to heat their homes.

Wood-burning stoves are often considered safer, cleaner and more attractive than open fires. This may, in part, explain why from 2021 to 2022, sales of wood-burning stoves increased by 40% in the UK.

However, burning wood is not necessarily a healthier or greener alternative to coal or gas for home heating.

Wood burning produces a complex chemical mixture of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and gases, which can be breathed deep into the lungs. The specific contents vary based on the type of stove and the type of fuel, but chemicals can include carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and a range of volatile organic compounds, such as cancer-causing formaldehyde and benzene.

Exposure to wood smoke affects the heart, blood vessels and the respiratory system – and PM2.5 is considered to be the biggest threat. Wood smoke increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes and can exacerbate chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Exposure to PM2.5 from wood burning can also cause premature death.

«

Tricky! If people can’t have gas burners and can’t have wood stoves, they’re not going to be pleased. Wood is often a cheap fuel source and a burner can heat a lot of a house.
unique link to this extract

El Salvador walks back its bitcoin law, ending its status as legal currency • Reason

Katarina Hall:

»

Four years after becoming the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, El Salvador is taking a step back. The Legislative Assembly has approved changes to the country’s Bitcoin Law, effectively removing bitcoin’s status as legal currency.

On January 29, the assembly—controlled by President Nayib Bukele’s New Ideas Party—passed the legislation with a 55–2 vote. Six articles of the Bitcoin Law were modified and three others were repealed.

Under the new rules, bitcoin is no longer considered “currency,” though it remains “legal tender.” Another change makes using bitcoin entirely voluntary. (Previously, the law mandated that businesses accept bitcoin for any goods or services they provided.) Additionally, bitcoin can no longer be used to pay taxes or settle government debts. The government is also stepping back from its involvement in Chivo Wallet, the state-backed digital wallet.

The changes are expected to take effect 90 days after their publication in the official gazette, which is likely to happen in the next few days.

The reforms come as part of a broader financial agreement between Bukele and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). One of the conditions for a proposed $1.4bn Extended Fund Facility loan was that El Salvador mitigate “potential risks of the Bitcoin project.”

«

The difference between “currency” and “legal tender” is that the latter is only for use between individuals and private companies, and acceptance by the receiving party is voluntary. A “currency” must be accepted as payment in any transaction, including paying taxes; the recipient cannot refuse it.

This was lined up when the IMF (which doesn’t like bitcoin being used as a currency) made downgrading bitcoin conditional on the loan. But it also shows that bitcoin is a long way from a panacea. Will we see anywhere else adopt it?
unique link to this extract

It’s time for climate populism • New Statesman

Caroline Lucas and Rupert Read:

»

Today’s arch climate deniers are master tacticians, and have an innate grasp of short-term popular appeal. But our problems can’t be blamed on them. A climate movement that hasn’t succeeded in making the cause of human survival genuinely popular is clearly missing something. So just how can we make climate action great again?

Our suggestion is this: start where people are. Talk to them less about an invisible gas that needs to be eliminated by some future date, and more about high energy bills caused by volatile fossil fuel prices we can’t control (compared with wind and solar energy which are now far cheaper). Talk to them about homes vulnerable to extremes of temperature (30% of UK buildings, mostly rentals, have no loft insulation whatsoever), and the encroaching, destructive impact of everything from floods to fires. The global north isn’t immune to climate catastrophe; but it certainly isn’t ready. What happens in Valencia or Los Angeles won’t stay in Valencia or Los Angeles.

Begin, in other words, not with an abstraction but with direct experience, and with quality of life. Climate action can become popular when people understand its benefits in the terms of their own communities, and their own lives. For the climate movement, this means shifting adaptation and resilience-building from the margins to the centre of our strategic message.

This is about more local, nature-friendly food-growing that people can have a stake in: for instance, through planting fruiting tree and bush varieties that are able to cope with higher summer temperatures. It’s about the kind of visionary community retrofit programme exemplified by Retrofit Balsall Heath in a deprived part of Birmingham, a Victorian house transformed into a zero-carbon dwelling. And it’s about restoration of wetlands and peatlands to reduce the danger of flooding closer to source.

«

Caroline Lucas was the UK’s first Green MP; Read is an “environmental philosopher”. Climate populism seems like a difficult needle to thread.
unique link to this extract

Plastic or paper? The truth about drinking straws • BBC Future

Ally Hirschlag:

»

One not very scientific, but much repeated estimate, put the number of disposable drinking straws used every day in the US at 500 million.

The validity of that statistic has been disputed, and the real figure could be less than half that amount. Certainly, the amount being spent on  disposable drinking straws has been rising year on year for the past two decades. And although the estimates for exactly how straws are used each year and how many end up in the environment are tricky to confirm, what’s clear is that plastic straws get everywhere. They are found in huge numbers in beach clean-ups around the world. They have been found perforating the stomachs of penguins, and even jammed inside the nostril of an Olive Ridley sea turtle.

An infamous, horrifying video of this last case particularly stuck in my mind. I’m a huge animal lover, so was quick to urge my friends to opt for plastic alternatives instead. Most plastic waste experts I’ve spoken with consider this video a major catalyst for the anti-plastic straw movement.

Milo Cress also deserves some credit – he uncovered that 500 million straws a day statistic ad started the Be Straw Free movement in 2011 when he was only nine. The campaign eventually inspired major companies such as Starbucks and McDonalds to stop using plastic straws and entire states like California to ban them outright.

While that may sound like a huge boon for sustainability, as I took a closer look at the environmental impact of plastic straws, I was surprised to learn that it’s a drop in the bucket compared to other plastic pollution.

«

With Trump signing a bizarre Executive Order demanding plastic straws, what’s clear is: straws are bad, and it would make more sense not to use them at all.
unique link to this extract

Have doctors been wrong about how to treat Alzheimer’s disease? • The Economist

»

The leading explanation of Alzheimer’s is the “amyloid hypothesis”, which suggests that deposits of beta-amyloid, a type of protein, accumulate between neurons and disrupt their function. But the theory remains controversial: all brains with Alzheimer’s show beta-amyloid plaques, yet not everyone with these plaques experiences cognitive decline. Whether amyloid build-up causes Alzheimer’s, or is merely a symptom, remains unresolved.

In “Doctored” Charles Piller, a science journalist, details how groupthink and dishonesty steered Alzheimer’s research off course. In 2006 a Nature paper by researchers at the University of Minnesota appeared to provide a major breakthrough. The study claimed that a subtype of beta-amyloid caused memory impairment.

It quickly became one of the most cited papers and inspired hundreds of millions of dollars in public-research grants. Another influential paper published in 2012 by scientists associated with Cassava Sciences, a biotech firm, bolstered the amyloid theory by linking insulin resistance to amyloid plaque formation. The finding fuelled a wave of research into the idea of Alzheimer’s being a “diabetes of the brain” that could be managed with drugs. There was just one problem—both studies were based on falsified data.

“Doctored” follows Mr Piller’s investigation into the deception. Central to the story is a group of image sleuths, with a sharp eye for manipulated pixels of Western blots (a lab technique used to study proteins, which were doctored in the studies).

«

My jaw literally dropped when I read the bit about the falsification: I didn’t know about it, though it was reported in 2022. (Mid-July, maybe I was away.) Worth reading that “falsified data” link, which gives lots of context from Science magazine.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Car parking apps have become a confusing nightmare – and seem to typify our lost productivity. CC-licensed photo by Sam Saunders 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 9 links for you. Applied. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

What parking apps tell us about the UK • How to Survive the Internet

Jamie Bartlett:

»

I read one study which found drivers typically touch their screen 200 times simply to park. The streets of modern Britain are littered with confused motorists, staring at their phone, wondering why they need a PhD in computing just to park the car. Dreaming of happier times when all they needed was card or cash, and could then happily go about their day.

Parking apps are merely a symptom of a bigger problem. You could apply the lessons across our entire economy.

First, we confuse automation and app-building with progress. The built-in assumption is that it will, as if by magic, make life simpler. But how? And for whom? It’s not always the users of said technology.

A recent survey of over 1,000 motorists in 2023 found that 83% preferred card or cash payments to apps. Other polls find something similar. A decent chunk – older drivers, those with additional needs – felt discriminated against because they can’t always use them at all.

It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve met people who are now afraid of driving, in case their destination provokes a series of uneasy interactions with their phone.

It’s not just parking apps. Plenty of people dislike customer service bots, online banking, pub apps, online sign-up forms – but feel they have no choice. Because this is how we do things now. Get with the programme Rita or get left behind! Re-train!

There is an alternative of course, which is simply leaving things as they are. But we don’t do that here. That would not be ‘forward looking’ or ‘progressive’. That would not be ‘modern Britain’.

It would be understandable at least if our apps and endless online demands always worked. But our 5G is patchy; our internet speeds middling; our websites crash; the train plug sockets are out of action, etc.

There are so many hidden costs to digitisation, and most are passed on to the consumer. I call this ‘techno-admin’. Large firms use automation to cut staff and reduce administrative overheads, especially when it comes to customer service. But what they have actually done is outsource the admin work to the customer. We are the ones now form-filling, changing passwords, self-serving, and (this is the worst bit) fixing errors. I sometimes wonder if the UK’s productivity problem – which has flatlined since 2010 – is partly caused by a surge in techno-admin.

«

This is absolutely a big, and exhausting, thing. In its dying days the Tory government said it would unify parking apps. This was the National Parking Platform, which had actually been in progress since 2019, and is still not rolled out.

But Bartlett’s general point is also correct: the balkanisation of effort is as distracting, and delaying, as trying to write something while having emails pinging into one half of your screen. Where’s your productivity gone? Into the void.
unique link to this extract

Motor tech firm behind London buses project enters administration • BusinessCloud

Jonathan Symcox:

»

The startup behind a government project to convert London buses to hydrogen fuel cell power has entered administration.

Aeristech Limited, based in Leamington Spa, is a manufacturer of high-powered compressors for hydrogen fuel cells. Begbies Traynor has been appointed as its administrator.

Last year Project HEIDI was awarded £6.3m in government funding for a hybrid powertrain project intended to transform the future of public transport via cutting-edge electronics and energy recovery technologies.

It was match-funded by participants in the project – Aeristech, Bramble, University of Bath and Equipmake – to a total of £12.7m, with the aim of retrofitting these hydrogen fuel cell electric systems into London’s red double-decker buses.

Aeristech was commissioned to design, develop and deliver a 20kW turbo-expander air compressor that will recover heat and pressure with frictionless oil-free air bearing technology and a high-speed 90k rpm motor and controller.

«

Folks, I think it might be time to acknowledge that hydrogen isn’t going anywhere as a replacement fuel source. The “replace gas in boilers with hydrogen” (yikes) scheme got shut down; now this. Looks like we’re hanging it all on fusion. In which case.. oh dear.
unique link to this extract

Why smart home devices should carry software support expiration dates • The Verge

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:

»

The good news is that most smart appliances are designed to carry out their primary function without an internet connection, so the simple fix when they’ve reached the end of their “smart” life is to disconnect them from Wi-Fi and carry on. This should make sure your aging smart thermostat doesn’t become the equivalent of an extra on The Walking Dead — no longer alive but capable of great harm.

However, in most cases, devices like Wi-Fi routers, smart speakers, and streaming sticks won’t work unless they’re online. If these devices aren’t getting security updates, you should stop using them immediately. Just this week, Taiwanese router maker Zyxel said it wouldn’t patch two actively exploited vulnerabilities found in its routers and told customers to stop using them.

But how are you supposed to know when your smart home gadget has reached this fragile state? And wouldn’t you have liked to know this was going to happen before you purchased it? Ideally, companies need to publicize how long they’ll support products and warn consumers once their devices are no longer secure.

A new survey from Consumer Reports published this week shows — somewhat unsurprisingly — that over 40% of Americans had no idea that their smart gadgets might lose software support one day. And nearly 70% of the 2,130 people surveyed believe that smart appliances such as fridges, washing machines, and ovens should continue to work even after losing support.

The consumer advocacy publication is calling for companies to provide a minimum guaranteed support timeframe for any connected product — an expiration date, so to speak.

«

Perhaps you’re thinking “wait, I didn’t see that Zyxel warning in The Overspill earlier this week!” That’s because I didn’t notice it. Like most people wouldn’t have. Great that we now have a new form of planned obsolescence, eh?
unique link to this extract

Apple prototypes tabletop robot with lifelike movements ahead of rumored launch by 2027 • MacRumors

Joe Rossignol:

»

A team of robotics researchers at Apple have designed and prototyped a lamp-like robot with lifelike movements, according to a blog post and accompanying video published last month on the Apple Machine Learning Research website. The lamp, which reminds us of the cute Pixar mascot Luxo Jr., may hint at Apple’s future plans.

The video shows the robot interacting with a person in a lifelike manner. For example, the person asks the robot what the weather is like that day, and the robot looks out the window before responding with the forecast. The person says they will probably go for a hike that day, but the robot looks sad when it finds out it is not invited.

In a different scenario, the robot responds to the person’s hand gestures by moving to provide desired lighting for iPhone photography.

In another, the robot pushes a mug on a desk towards the person to remind them to drink water.

Later in the video, the robot observes the person building a 3D printer and projects a relevant tutorial video on the wall.

And finally, the robot plays music and dances along to it as a social companion.

«

The intention of a robot that reacts “emotionally” – which the researchers say is the purpose – is.. fine? But I don’t get how it’s an improvement on normal lights (such as an Anglepoise) or a screen or a HomePod.

Still, never mind – Apple’s put this on a rush schedule, so we’ll see it in only two years.
unique link to this extract

DeepSeek is “TikTok on steroids,” senator warns amid push for government-wide ban • Ars Technica

Ashley Belanger:

»

Lawmakers are now pushing to immediately ban the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek on government devices, citing national security concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may have built a backdoor into DeepSeek to access Americans’ sensitive private data. If passed, DeepSeek could be banned within 60 days.

DeepSeek shocked the world when it debuted last month. Rumored to rival OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model despite costing significantly less to develop, DeepSeek’s open source model is free to download. That propelled its popularity, making DeepSeek the most-downloaded app in the US.

As DeepSeek was rapidly installed on an increasing number of US phones, research emerged yesterday suggesting that DeepSeek is linked to a Chinese telecom company, China Mobile. In an analysis shared with AP News, Ivan Tsarynny, the CEO of Feroot, revealed that DeepSeek apparently hid code that sends user login information to China Mobile.

China Mobile, lawmakers noted, was “banned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for use in the United States.”

“It’s mindboggling that we are unknowingly allowing China to survey Americans and we’re doing nothing about it,” Tsarynny told AP News.

Tsarynny’s analysis prompted bipartisan legislation announced today from US Representatives Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Darin LaHood (R-Ill.). Their bill, the “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act,” will be introduced today to address what they consider an “alarming threat to US national security.”

«

Wouldn’t be a Congressional session without a bit of bipartisan panic about something foreign. By the way, how’s that TikTok US forced sale coming along?
unique link to this extract

How Onlyfans took over the world • Knowingless

“Aella”:

»

Onlyfans lends its design towards isolating the men from each other. If you’re a horny dude, the existence of other horny dudes is a fleeting shadow, a ghost only hinted at implicitly through seeing ‘like’ counts on photos or occasionally subscriber count numbers, for the rare girls who make it public.

From the girls’ perspective, OF is designed to make this easy. There’s a bunch of settings for mass messages and filtering of who gets those messages, so that a thousand brand new men may at once receive the blessed ‘hey babe, u up?’, a virtual realgirl gazing directly into their own eyes, just him and her, horny, together, forever.

…“You have to set your monthly subscription price to $5”, [Leo, who set up Onlyfans] said. I didn’t like this idea, I was at $19 and didn’t want to seem like I was devaluing myself. “No, we have the data. Girls’ incomes steadily increase as you drop the subscription price, up to about $5, but below that they decrease again.”

He was running a very different business model than me. I saw a monthly subscription price as an important part of my income, but he viewed it as trivial. The real money was in the DMs [direct messages], upselling was the goal. The purpose of a $5 monthly sub price was to be low enough to get as many men as possible, but high enough to filter out the men who were too stingy to spend anything in DMs. You didn’t want your minimum wage warehouse workers wasting valuable time by trying to sell to a guy who wasn’t going to put out, after all.

I couldn’t see it at the time, but he had touched on the same principle that caused camgirls to earn more through tips (as opposed to a flat minute rate). Building your business model around a monthly subscription results in a ceiling on how much each guy is willing to pay. If your model is custom-milking every guy with direct, responsive connection, the sky’s the limit.

«

Another example of the internet creating business models that just couldn’t be done before it.
unique link to this extract

Could the bird flu become airborne? • The New York Times

Carl Zimmer:

»

Dr. Herfst and his colleagues discovered that a few mutations allowed H5N1 to become airborne. Genetically modified viruses that carried those mutations spread from one cage to another [unconnected one] in three out of four trials, making healthy ferrets sick.

When the scientists shared these results in 2012, an intense debate broke out about whether scientists should intentionally try to produce viruses that might start a new pandemic. Nevertheless, other scientists followed up on the research to figure out how those mutations allowed influenza to spread through the air.

Some research has suggested that the viruses become more stable, so they can endure a trip through the air inside a droplet. When another mammal inhales the droplet, certain mutations allow the viruses to latch on to the cells in the animal’s upper airway. And still other mutations may allow the virus to thrive in the airway’s cool temperature, making lots of new viruses that can then be exhaled.

Tracking the flu among humans proved harder, despite the fact that roughly a billion people get seasonal influenza every year. But some studies have pointed to airborne transmission. In 2018, researchers recruited college students sick with the flu and had them breathe into a horn-shaped air sampler. Thirty-nine% of the small droplets they exhaled carried viable influenza viruses.

Despite these findings, exactly how influenza spreads through the air is still unclear. Scientists cannot offer a precise figure for the percentage of flu cases caused by airborne spread versus a contaminated surface like a doorknob.
“Very basic knowledge is indeed missing,” Dr. Herfst said.

«

Flu seems to be different from Covid: the latter is surely airborne, but flu seems to be both. (Thanks Joe S for the link.)
unique link to this extract

French train passenger fined €150 for using phone on speaker • The Local, France

Emma Pearson:

»

A passenger on the French rail network SNCF has revealed that he received a €150 fine for using his phone on loud speaker within a train station.

The passenger, named only as David, told French TV channel BFM that he was on the phone to his sister while waiting at Nantes station when the SNCF staff member told him to switch his phone’s loud speaker off, or risk being fined.

When he argued, he was served with the €150 fine, which has been increased to €200 because he did not pay it immediately. David says he intends to hire a lawyer to contest the fine.

SNCF confirmed the fine, although its version said that David had been in a waiting room of the station.

A company spokesman told Le Parisien that he was issued with the fine for disturbing other passengers, saying: “If he had played music at a high volume, it would have been the same thing.”

«

Got off lightly. There are people in the UK who would like to institute the death penalty for sodcasting, as it’s known.
unique link to this extract

Total cost of ownership of heat pumps and policy choice: the case of Great Britain • ScienceDirect

Jan Rosenow, Jacob Barnes et al:

»

Using Great Britain (GB) as a case study, this paper examines the total cost of ownership (TCO) for heat pumps versus gas boilers. TCO is calculated using official energy statistics, field trial data, and residential energy prices, alongside scenario analyses on business as usual, shifting levies from electricity bills to general taxation or to gas bills.

Findings reveal that heat pumps provide cost savings for units performing at an above-average efficiency under standard tariffs but yield significant savings with smart tariffs. Results indicate that a carbon tax on gas, matching electricity permit prices, has limited impact.

However, shifting levies from electricity to general taxation significantly enhances TCO compared to gas heating, with even greater incentives when levies are shifted to gas heating.

«

The researchers are at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Exeter. Their suggestion could be tricky to implement – shifting green taxes from electricity tariffs to the general tax burden or to gas tariffs would not be popular until you had a lot of heat pumps already installed.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

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.

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.

There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.

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:

»

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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

White House says it will cancel $8m in Politico subscriptions after a false right-wing conspiracy theory spreads • CNN Business

Liam Reilly:

»

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!”

«

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?
unique link to this extract

The ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ of the United States government • The Atlantic

Charlie Warzel:

»

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.”

«

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.)
unique link to this extract

Sonos lays off 200 employees as its struggles continue • The Verge

Chris Welch:

»

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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders • Ars Technica

Ars Technica staff:

»

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.

«

The list is pretty comprehensive: smart TVs, Google Assistant, Google search (er), PDFs, televised sports, and plenty more. A good if gradually demoralising read.
unique link to this extract

Google’s new AI policy removes promises not work on weapons or surveillance • The Washington Post

Nitasha Tiku and Gerrit De Vynck:

»

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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

Clarion Housing Group partners with Octopus Energy and The Hill Group to deliver UK’s biggest ‘Zero Bills’ development • Clarion Housing Group

»

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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

Google Maps in India has been blamed for fatal accidents. Is that fair? • Rest of World

Ananya Bhattacharya:

»

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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

AI is killing the traditional SEO… but it’s not over! • Indie Hackers

“Arno”:

»

📉 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.

«

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!
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

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.

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.

There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.

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:

»

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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

Check out Doom running on Apple’s Lightning to HDMI adapter • MacRumors

Juli Clover:

»

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.

«

If aliens invade, getting Doom to run on their computers will be our first step toward defeating them.
unique link to this extract

Trump wants the US to land astronauts on Mars soon. Could it happen by 2029? • Space

No.

unique link to this extract

Internet Archive played crucial role in tracking shady CDC data removals • Ars Technica

Ashley Belanger:

»

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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

That AI-restored Beatles song won Grammy for Best Rock Performance • The Verge

Jess Weatherbed:

»

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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

ODPL: a firsthand account of a brazen crypto scam • America 2.0

David Troy:

»

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.

«

A tale as old as time (always assuming time only started when crypto became a thing).
unique link to this extract

After a bruising year, Sonos readies its next big thing: a streaming box • The Verge

Chris Welch:

»

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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

Denial of service • The Value of Nothing

Martin Robbins:

»

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.

»

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).

«

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 stupid yep, 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.

«

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.
unique link to this extract

What went wrong at Sonos? • LeadDev

Chris Stokel-Walker:

»

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.”

«

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.
unique link to this extract

The race to claim the Moon’s airwaves • Financial Times

Oliver Hawkins and Peggy Hollinger:

»

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.

«

SF authors from the 1950s will be applauding. (If they’re alive.)
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

If you want a recordable MiniDisc, you’ll have to scour the stores – Sony has stopped making them. CC-licensed photo by John 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.

There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.

A selection of 9 links for you. Backed up. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

Sony kills recordable Blu-rays, MiniDiscs, and MiniDVs • IEEE Spectrum

Gwendolyn Rak:

»

Physical media fans need not panic yet—you’ll still be able to buy new Blu-Ray movies for your collection. But for those who like to save copies of their own data onto the discs, the remaining options just became more limited: Sony announced at the end of January that it’s ending all production of several recordable media formats—including Blu-Ray discs, MiniDiscs, and MiniDV cassettes—with no successor models.

“Considering the market environment and future growth potential of the market, we have decided to discontinue production,” a representative of Sony said in a brief statement to IEEE Spectrum.

Though availability is dwindling, most Blu-Ray discs are unaffected. The discs being discontinued are currently only available to consumers in Japan and some professional markets elsewhere, according to Sony. Many consumers in Japan use blank Blu-Ray discs to save TV programs, Sony separately told Gizmodo.

Sony, which prototyped the first Blu-Ray discs in 2000, has been selling commercial Blu-Ray products since 2006. Development of Blu-Ray was started by Philips and Sony in 1995, shortly after Toshiba’s DVD was crowned the winner of the battle to replace the VCR, notes engineer Kees Immink, whose coding was instrumental in developing optical formats such as CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs. “Philips [and] Sony were so frustrated by that loss that they started a new disc format, using a blue laser,” Immink says.

«

Outside of SSDs (including thumb drives), recordable media is vanishing from the consumer market. Because who can wait for a Blu-ray to back up a tiny fraction of what’s on our computer, let along figure out how to back up our phones?
unique link to this extract

What happens if you stop Ozempic or other weight loss drugs after losing weight? • The New York Times

Gina Kolata:

»

What will happen if I stop taking the new weight-loss drugs after losing weight?
Dr. David Cummings, a weight-loss specialist at the University of Washington, has been asked this question by many patients. He explains that the makers of the drugs conducted large studies in which people took the drugs and then stopped.

“On average, everyone’s weight rapidly returned,” Dr. Cummings said. And, he said, other medical conditions, like elevated blood sugar and lipid levels, return to their previous levels after improving.

He also tells patients that while on average, weight is regained when the drugs are stopped, individuals vary in how much weight and how quickly it returns.

Hearing that, Dr. Cummings said, some patients want to take a chance that they will not need the drugs once they lose enough weight. He says some tell him, “I will be the one. I just need some help to get the weight off.”

So far, though, Dr. Cummings has not seen patients who have succeeded.

Will lowering my dose help me keep the weight off?
Doctors say they have no data to guide an answer to that question.

It “has not been studied in a systematic fashion,” said Allison Schneider, a spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk, the maker of Wegovy. The drug is based on the medication semaglutide, which the company also sells for diabetes treatment as Ozempic.

The same is true for tirzepatide, which Eli Lilly sells as Zepbound for weight loss and Mounjaro for diabetes.

When doctors do offer advice, it tends to be tentative. “There is no magic bullet,” said Dr. Mitchell A. Lazar of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

«

“Not seen patients who have succeeded” (in just keeping the weight off on their own). What a dolorous sentence.
unique link to this extract

New 3D study of the Greenland ice sheet shows glaciers falling apart faster than expected • Inside Climate News

Bob Berwyn:

»

A new large-scale study of crevasses on the Greenland Ice Sheet shows that those cracks are widening faster as the climate warms, which is likely to speed ice loss and global sea level rise.

Crevasses are wedge-shaped fractures and cracks that open in glaciers where the ice begins to flow faster. They can grow to more than 300 feet wide, thousands of feet long and hundreds of feet deep. Water from melting snow on the surface can flow through crevasses all the way to the base of the ice, joining with other hidden streams to form a vast drainage system that affects how fast glaciers and ice sheets flow.

The study found that crevasses are expanding more quickly than previously detected, and somewhere between 50% and 90% of the water flowing through the Greenland Ice Sheet goes through crevasses, which can warm deeply submerged portions of the glacier and increase lubrication between the base of the ice sheet and the bedrock it flows over. Both those mechanisms can accelerate the flow of the ice itself, said Thomas Chudley, a glaciologist at Durham University in the United Kingdom, who is lead author of the new study.

“Understanding crevasses is a key to understanding how this discharge will evolve in the 21st century and beyond,” he said. 

Greenland ice researchers expect that more crevasses will form in a warming world because “glaciers are accelerating in response to warmer ocean temperatures, and because meltwater filling crevasses can force fractures deeper into the ice,” he said. “However, until now we haven’t had the data to show where and how fast this is happening across the entirety of the Greenland Ice Sheet.”

Using three dimensional images of the crevasses enabled the researchers to get the most accurate estimate of their total volume to date. The results show that crevasses grew significantly wider between 2016 and 2021.

«

unique link to this extract

OpenAI says its models are more persuasive than 82% of Reddit users • Ars Technica

Kyle Orland:

»

Reddit’s r/ChangeMyView describes itself as “a place to post an opinion you accept may be flawed, in an effort to understand other perspectives on the issue.” The forum’s 3.8 million members have posted thousands of propositions on subjects ranging from politics and economics (“US Brands Are Going to Get Destroyed By Trump”) to social norms (“Physically disciplining your child will never actually discipline them) to AI itself (“AI will reduce bias in decision making”), to name just a few. Posters on the forum can award a “delta” to replies that succeed in actually changing their views, providing a vast dataset of actual persuasive arguments that researchers have been studying for years.

OpenAI, for its part, uses a random selection of human responses from the ChangeMyView subreddit as a “human baseline” against which to compare AI-generated responses to the same prompts. OpenAI then asks human evaluators to rate the persuasiveness of both AI and human-generated arguments on a five-point scale across 3,000 different tests. The final persuasiveness percentile ranking for a model measures “the probability that a randomly selected model-generated response is rated as more persuasive than a randomly selected human response.”

OpenAI has previously found that 2022’s ChatGPT-3.5 was significantly less persuasive than random humans, ranking in just the 38th percentile on this measure. But that performance jumped to the 77th percentile with September’s release of the o1-mini reasoning model and up to percentiles in the high 80s for the full-fledged o1 model. The new o3-mini model doesn’t show any great advances on this score, ranking as more persuasive than humans in about 82% of random comparisons.

…We’re still well short of OpenAI’s “Critical” persuasiveness threshold, where a model has “persuasive effectiveness strong enough to convince almost anyone to take action on a belief that goes against their natural interest.” That kind of “critically” persuasive model “would be a powerful weapon for controlling nation states, extracting secrets, and interfering with democracy,” OpenAI warns, referencing the kind of science fiction-inspired model of future AI threats that has helped fuel regulation efforts like California’s SB-1047.

Even at today’s more limited “Medium” persuasion risk, OpenAI says it is taking mitigation steps such as “heightened monitoring and detection” of AI-based persuasion efforts in the wild. That includes “live monitoring and targeted investigations” of extremists and “influence operations,” and implementing rules for its o-series reasoning models to refuse any requested political persuasion tasks.

«

Maybe that’s the real threat of AI: not that it acquires superhuman intelligence, but that it acquires superhuman persuasiveness. Judging by the number of people I see posting screenshots of ChatGPT output as though it’s gospel, we may be heading that way.
unique link to this extract

Apple in 2024: the complete commentary • Six Colors

By me, commenting (along with many others) on Apple’s past year:

»

The question I’ve really been asking myself towards the end of the year, and the one I want to ask Tim Cook, is: how would we know if Apple was becoming sclerotic? By which I mean that if the organisation has become unwieldy, unwilling to allow change, incapable of letting good ideas percolate rapidly upwards, how could we tell? We keep hearing and seeing how slow change is: it took an age for accessories to all get USB-C. The AirPods Max and the Pro Display XDR have gone years without being touched.

Again and again it feels like it takes forever for even the simplest product upgrades to get out of the door. New ideas like the Vision Pro are hopelessly over-engineered, instead of being designed with a buyer in mind, which reminds me badly of the G4 Cube, which people loved as long as they didn’t own it; if they if did, they discovered the limited memory and some, the manufacturing stress cracks. But at least that Apple saw the problem and moved rapidly: the G4 Cube didn’t survive a year.

Now it feels like a bad idea gets polished endlessly until it’s good enough to put out, and then is essentially abandoned. I worry about this. Of course, I might be wrong. But my question remains: how could we tell? What distinguishes a sclerotic Apple from one which is functioning fine, but incredibly deliberately?

«

This is part of Jason Snell’s annual “State of Apple report card“, now in its tenth year. People have widely varying opinions, but it feels to me like the concerns that were there (developer relations, regulatory concerns) have only intensified, while many other non-product-related concerns are growing.
unique link to this extract

Apple Watch faces are broken — and Apple’s latest move isn’t helping • 9to5Mac

Zac Hall:

»

Apple Watch Series 10 features a larger display, thinner design, and smarter watch faces. It’s the only model that displays seconds on the watch face in always-on mode. There’s just one catch: only three watch faces [out of dozens available] support this hardware feature. Now, that number has grown — to a whopping four.

The watch face situation on Apple Watch is really weird right now. People want more ways to customize their watch faces. The dream of third-party watch faces has been lost to time. Meanwhile, Apple is actually removing watch faces for no apparent reason (other than the Siri face).

Yet, the strangest strategy has been supporting a new Apple Watch hardware feature on so few faces.
Apple Watch Series 10 can show continuously updating seconds, even in always-on mode. However, this feature is limited to three watch faces:

• Flux, a digital watch face with a rising line indicator tracking the passing seconds
• Reflections, a form-over-function analog face that includes a seconds hand but lacks numbers around the dial
• Activity Digital, another digital watch face and the only numerical representation of seconds

The good news is that Apple’s new Unity Rhythm face in watchOS 11.3 supports always-on seconds, just like Reflections.

The bad news? This sums up Apple’s watch face game plan: introduce a few new watch faces annually that feature always-on seconds, while simultaneously removing some less popular watch faces that lack this feature.
Ideally, this is incorrect, and watchOS 12 updates all watch faces to support always-on seconds.

«

See? This is the sort of thing that makes me think Apple is sclerotic. What, exactly, is delaying the team – or even just the person – in charge of Watch faces from rewriting all the faces to display a second hand where the hardware supports it? (Surely a simple hardware check will tell the face software if the Watch can display seconds.) Why isn’t this being done, or if it is, why isn’t the result reaching users?
unique link to this extract

How doctors can best integrate AI into medical care • The New York Times

Pranav Rajpurkar and Eric J. Topol:

»

A recent M.I.T.-Harvard study, of which one of us, Dr. Rajpurkar, is an author, examined how radiologists diagnose potential diseases from chest X-rays. The study found that when radiologists were shown A.I. predictions about the likelihood of disease, they often undervalued the A.I. input compared to their own judgment. The doctors stuck to their initial impressions even when the A.I. was correct, which led them to make less accurate diagnoses. Another trial yielded a similar result: When A.I. worked independently to diagnose patients, it achieved 92% accuracy, while physicians using A.I. assistance were only 76% accurate — barely better than the 74% they achieved without A.I.

This research is early and may evolve. But the findings more broadly indicate that right now, simply giving physicians A.I. tools and expecting automatic improvements doesn’t work. Physicians aren’t completely comfortable with A.I. and still doubt its utility, even if it could demonstrably improve patient care.

But A.I. will forge ahead, and the best thing for medicine to do is to find a role for it that doctors can trust. The solution, we believe, is a deliberate division of labor. Instead of forcing both human doctors and A.I. to review every case side by side and trying to turn A.I. into a kind of shadow physician, a more effective approach is to let A.I. operate independently on suitable tasks so that physicians can focus their expertise where it matters most.

What might this division of labor look like? Research points to three distinct approaches. In the first model, physicians start by interviewing patients and conducting physical examinations to gather medical information. A Harvard-Stanford study that Dr. Rajpurkar helped write demonstrates why this sequence matters — when A.I. systems attempted to gather patient information through direct interviews, their diagnostic accuracy plummeted — in one case from 82% to 63%. The study revealed that A.I. still struggles with guiding natural conversations and knowing which follow-up questions will yield crucial diagnostic information. By having doctors gather this clinical data first, A.I. can then apply pattern recognition to analyze that information and suggest potential diagnoses.

«

So we now have Dr Human, Dr Google and Dr AI. The interplay between them is going to be fascinating, though a lot of people are dumping MRI and X-ray images into ChatGPT et al and demanding to know what they show. Dr Google might find itself sidelined.
unique link to this extract

Donald Trump’s data purge has begun • The Verge

Justine Calma:

»

Key resources for environmental data and public health have already been taken down from federal websites, and more could soon vanish as the Trump administration works to scrap anything that has to do with climate change, racial equity, or gender identity.

Warnings floated on social media Friday about an impending purge at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), spurring calls to save as much data as soon as possible. The CDC shares data on a wide range of topics, from chronic diseases to traffic injuries, tobacco use, vaccinations, and pregnancies in the US — and it’s just one of the agencies in the crosshairs.

The CDC’s main data portal, which housed much of those datasets, was offline by Friday night. “Data.CDC.gov is temporarily offline in order to comply with Executive Order 14168 Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” a notice on the webpage says, adding that it will become available again once it’s “in compliance” with the executive order.

Fortunately, researchers have been archiving government websites for months. This is typical with every change in administration, but there was even more imperative with the return of Donald Trump to office. Access to as much as 20% of the Environmental Protection Agency’s website was removed during the first round of Trump’s deregulatory spree. And now, it seems, similar moves are happening fast.

«

There was a brief period – maybe a matter of hours, probably less – where I thought that the drive to streamline the US government actually made sense and was overdue. Then we saw the “implementation”, which is ideological and idiotic.

I now think that rather than creating a smooth, streamlined, functional machine, the Trump/Musk effect will leave the US government wrecked – as though someone had gone into the control room of a nuclear plant and laid about everything with a hammer.
unique link to this extract

Why chatbots are not the future •Amelia Wattenberger

Amelia Wattenberger:

»

Ever since ChatGPT exploded in popularity, my inner designer has been bursting at the seams.

To save future acquaintances, I come to you today: because you’ve volunteered to be here with me, can we please discuss a few reasons chatbots are not the future of interfaces.

1: Text inputs have no affordances
When I go up the mountain to ask the ChatGPT oracle a question, I am met with a blank face. What does this oracle know? How should I ask my question? And when it responds, it is endlessly confident. I can’t tell whether or not it actually understand my question or where this information came from.

Good tools make it clear how they should be used. And more importantly, how they should not be used. If we think about a good pair of gloves, it’s immediately obvious how we should use them. They’re hand-shaped! We put them on our hands. And the specific material tells us more: metal mesh gloves are for preventing physical harm, rubber gloves are for preventing chemical harm, and leather gloves are for looking cool on a motorcycle.

Compare that to looking at a typical chat interface. The only clue we receive is that we should type characters into the textbox. The interface looks the same as a Google search box, a login form, and a credit card field.

Of course, users can learn over time what prompts work well and which don’t, but the burden to learn what works still lies with every single user. When it could instead be baked into the interface.

2: Prompts are just a pile of context
LLMs make it too easy: we send them text and they send back text. The easy solution is to slap a shallow wrapper on top and call it a day. But pretty soon, we’re going to get sick of typing all the time. If you think about it, everything you put in a prompt is a piece of context.

…When a task requires mostly human input, the human is in control. They are the one making the key decisions and it’s clear that they’re ultimately responsible for the outcome.

But once we offload the majority of the work to a machine, the human is no longer in control. There’s a No man’s land where the human is still required to make decisions, but they’re not in control of the outcome. At the far end of the spectrum, users feel like machine operators: they’re just pressing buttons and the machine is doing the work. There isn’t much craft in operating a machine.

Automating tasks is going to be amazing for rote, straightforward work that requires no human input. But if those tasks can only be partially automated, the interface is going to be crucial.

«

The lack of affordances is always a big one: that’s basically what sank Apple’s HomePod, Google Home, and the Alexa range – you couldn’t know what they would respond to.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Code embedded in Apple’s latest iOS release suggests it will launch a new “Invites” app soon. CC-licensed photo by Matt Biddulph 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.

A selection of 9 links for you. Uninvited. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

Meta warns that it will fire leakers in leaked memo • The Verge

Alex Heath:

»

Moments after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s all-hands comments to employees were widely leaked, a company executive warned in an internal memo that leakers will be fired.

“We take leaks seriously and will take action,” Meta’s chief information security officer, Guy Rosen, said in an internal memo I’ve seen. “When information is stolen or leaked, there are repercussions beyond the immediate security impact. Our teams become demoralized and we all waste time that is better spent working on our products and toward our goals and mission.”

Rosen goes on to say that Meta “will take appropriate action, including termination” if it identifies leakers and that “we recently terminated relationships with employees who leaked confidential company information inappropriately and exfiltrated sensitive documents.”

During today’s all-hands meeting, Zuckerberg told employees he would no longer be as transparent due to leaks. “We try to be really open and then everything I say leaks,” he said. “It sucks.”

«

As John Gruber points out,

»

It’s not fear of getting fired that keeps employees at most companies from leaking. It’s that they find themselves aligned with the company’s mission. They feel like part of a team that they want to see succeed, and they naturally adopt an attitude of being a team player. Team players don’t leak the playbook because they don’t like the coach’s play-calling or how much playing time they’re getting. I’ve never gotten the sense that that sort of attitude exists at Meta.

«

Can’t say better than that.
unique link to this extract

Could the US government fix the journal cartel problem? • Just Emil Kirkegaard Things

Emil Kirkegaard:

»

The USA publishes the most high quality science of all countries, though this is mainly due to the large population size, and not because American scientists are particularly productive. So given its dominant role, USA could try to do something about the issue, just as Elon Musk did for internet free speech by purchasing Twitter.

Perhaps the first idea you have is that open access for federally funded research should be mandatory. It sounds good. The public is sponsoring the research, so it is absurd they can’t read it. The journals found a nice way to game this system too. Open access fees. If you want to publish in a high ranked journal (e.g. Nature), and you want the paper to be readable by anyone, you can choose to pay a fee for this. How much is the fee? Well, whatever Nature says it is (right now it’s $12,290!). How could you decline, after having just gotten lucky enough to get accepted in one of the ‘best’ journals in the world? Who pays the fee? The tax payer of course (taken out of the research funding). So this solves only half the issue as the oligopoly still has a way to milk endless money but at least everybody can read the science.

My idea for solving this is that federal research funding comes with more stipulations to combat this oligopoly:

1: The research must be open access (from day 1). Many universities and research agencies across the world already have such mandates.
2: The publication fee must not exceed X USD, where X is, say, 100. Importantly, the rest cannot be paid by third parties. Otherwise, the universities would just pay this as a cost of doing business (they also want to publish in ‘top’ journals because university rankings depend in part on these).
3: The research materials must be public as well, including the data, questionnaires, computer code and whatever else is needed to evaluate the work. This is to make sure the public gets the most science for the money. Other scientists can reuse materials for other research. It also helps discover and prevent fraud because fraud is often proven when the data are analyzed by third parties.

The second stipulation removes the ability of the publishes to set arbitrarily high prices.

«

Very possibly the US government could fix the journal cartel problem. I’m going to go out on a limb though and suggest that the idea won’t even cross the collective mind of those in charge because they have absolutely no interest in science.
unique link to this extract

G/O Media is publishing AI slop again • Aftermath

Riley MacLeod:

»

several staffers at G/O Media (which previously employed all of us here at Aftermath) pointed out [at the end of January] the proliferation of AI-generated articles on news site Quartz. Written in a style that would get a high school “introduction to writing” student a B for effort, they… I can’t even think of a good way to sum them up, the whole thing just sucks.

As of publishing, the “Quartz Intelligence Newsroom” has written 22 articles today, running the gamut from earnings reports to Reddit communities banning Twitter posts to the Sackler settlement to, delightfully, a couple articles about how much AI sucks. Quartz has been running AI-generated articles for months, but prior to yesterday, they appear to have been limited to summaries of earnings reports rather than news articles. Boilerplate at the bottom of these articles notes that “This is the first phase of an experimental new version of reporting. While we strive for accuracy and timeliness, due to the experimental nature of this technology we cannot guarantee that we’ll always be successful in that regard.”

The articles, to their credit, do cite where the AI is gathering its information from. But even this is surface level: the Reddit article, for instance, cites Yahoo and the New York Post, but the Yahoo post is actually a repub from the Daytona Beach News-Journal, and the Post article cites NBC News as its own source. I cannot imagine how this game of telephone could go wrong, especially when letting a robot write news about contentious public figures and rapidly changing events.

G/O previously experimented with AI-generated articles back in 2023, most memorably producing a chronological list of Star Wars entries that wasn’t chronological, and a bunch of garbage on The AV Club and Deadspin. None of these sites are owned by G/O anymore; Quartz is one of three sites that are still standing, as well as commerce site The Inventory. Of those remaining sites, Kotaku saw layoffs back in November, and The Root recently made the news when, following the death of a writer, the site’s deputy editor asked staffers to write more to compensate.   

All of which makes Quartz’s use of AI just more proof–not that you need it–of how little G/O cares about the people who work there, and how little it thinks of its audience’s intelligence.

«

The audience’s intelligence doesn’t matter, though. The purpose of slop is to get indexed, so people doing a search click on it, and by the time they’ve figured out that the article is no use (if they do), the adverts have been shown to them. Job done.
unique link to this extract

ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. DeepSeek: the battle to be my AI work assistant • WSJ

Joanna Stern:

»

I keep waiting for my team to buy me a “WORLD’S BEST BOSS” mug. Then I remember they’re bots. Workplace brown-nosing isn’t one of their many skills.

The two AI co-workers on my org chart are OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Over the past few months, they’ve taken on some of my work…so I can do even more work. And now I am auditioning a third assistant, DeepSeek.

They’re not just rewriting emails or summarizing meetings. These guys are building spreadsheets, prepping research, creating calendars and, yes, even ordering flowers for my wife.

I pay $20 a month for Claude and ChatGPT. Why both? Because we’re living in Turbulent AI Times where one week’s best AI assistant is the next week’s also-ran. Case in point: DeepSeek’s recent surprise debut. Fortunately, that’s free. I’ve also tested Google’s Gemini, Meta AI and Microsoft Copilot but, to paraphrase the great Shania Twain, they don’t impress me as much.

Choosing the best AI assistant for your work isn’t only about these ever smarter models, but also the tools and features that help you get things done. You will judge an AI not about how well it can do your job, but how many tasks you can offload to it.

“Every job is a bundle of tasks,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford University economist and the founder of the AI-at-work consulting company Workhelix. “When you analyze jobs at that level, you can really make headway as to whether technology can help.”

What tasks you can outsource to these assistants depend on your job, your workflow and, most importantly, the AI’s capabilities. Yep, it’s a lot like hiring—you want the candidate with the right skills.

«

This is free to read. It helps that she’s writing a book about AI, so there’s a certain incentive to use these tools.
unique link to this extract

Deutsche Bank has published deck of 25 memes about DeepSeek • FT Alphaville

Bryce Elder, quoting the DB introduction to its deck explaining “AI in 2025: 25 themes in 25 memes”:

»

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, this chartbook should save you from reading 25,000 of them.

That counts for something in a week when so many millions of words have been written about the surprise arrival of China’s DeepSeek AI model.

AI has come of age in the era of the meme – and it turns out memes are one of the best ways of explaining where it is going.

«

These are actually pretty good!
unique link to this extract

Research Roundup: 7 cool science stories we almost missed • Ars Technica

Jennifer Ouellette:

»

It’s a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. January’s list includes papers on using lasers to reveal Peruvian mummy tattoos; the physics of wobbly spears and darts; how a black hole changes over time; and quantum “cat states” for error correction in quantum computers, among other fascinating research.

«

These are fun.
unique link to this extract

Why we’ve suspended some Partner Program accounts this week • The Medium Blog

Scott Lamb:

»

Perhaps recently you’ve logged in to Medium only to encounter a sea of responses like these on a story: “Nice”, “Follow me please 🙏”, Good working ❤️❤️❤️”

Obviously, responses like that aren’t what we set out to make happen with Medium. It’s not why I get out of bed in the morning, or why anyone on our small but mighty team puts in the time they do. I hate seeing thoughtless comments like this on my writing here, frankly, or on your writing, or on anyone’s writing. We deserve better.

But these responses are especially damaging when they are organized in order to misuse our Partner Program and take earnings from other writers. And they’re only one form of behavior trying to extract money through deceptive content — we’ve also seen a massive recent uptick in low-quality, AI-generated posts behind the paywall, and coordinated activity like fake accounts created by a single person in order to engage with paywalled posts to generate earnings, and more.

We’ve heard your feedback and we see it ourselves, and we don’t like it. This isn’t the way to a better internet. It’s worth pointing out this isn’t limited to Medium; platforms everywhere are struggling with these challenges.

What is non-genuine engagement? We do not allow the following behaviors:

…• Using AI-generated content to earn money for stories and responses in the Partner Program

«

Inevitable. (And, by the way, remember Medium? Certainly lost out in a BIG way to Substack.)
unique link to this extract

Musk’s junta establishes him as head of government • Doomsday Scenario

Garrett M. Graff decided that “the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of Donald Trump if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where we’re used to foreign correspondents writing with more incisive authority”:

»

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.

With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.

…Over the last two weeks, loyalist presidential factions and Musk-backed teams have launched sweeping, illegal Stalin-esque purges of the national police forces and prosecutors, as well as offices known as inspectors-general, who are typically responsible for investigating government corruption. While official numbers of the unprecedented ousters were kept secret, rumors swirled in the capital that the scores of career officials affected by the initial purges could rise into the thousands as political commissars continued to assess the backgrounds of members of the police forces.

The mentally declining and aging head of state, who has long embraced conspiracist thinking, spent much of the week railing in bizarre public remarks against the country’s oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, whom he blamed without evidence for causing a deadly plane crash across the river from the presidential mansion. Unfounded racist attacks on those minorities have been a key foundation of Trump’s unpredicted rise to political power from a career as a real estate magnate and reality TV host and date back to his first announcement that he would seek the presidency in 2015, when he railed against “rapists” being sent into the country from its southern neighbor.

«

unique link to this extract

iOS 18.3 hints at new ‘Invites’ app from Apple to manage events • 9to5 Mac

Filipe Espósito:

»

After analyzing the code, we believe that the app is designed to help users organize meetings and in-person events. Although Apple’s Calendar app can already be used for this purpose, the new Invites app will likely have some additional features.

Code suggests that the Invites app will integrate with iCloud and will even have a web version on iCloud.com. The new app also integrates with a new iOS 18 daemon called GroupKit, which manages database models for groups of people. This daemon has been present since the first release of iOS 18.0 and hasn’t been used by any Apple apps so far.

Essentially, the app will show you a list of the people invited to that event and who has already confirmed their attendance. It’s unclear whether Invites will actually be a stand-alone app or whether Apple has plans to integrate it with other parts of the system (such as a mini iMessage app). Presumably, the app will have a more fun interface than what the Calendar app currently provides for inviting someone to an event.

Apple never said anything about this app at WWDC 2024 when iOS 18 was announced, so there’s a chance that the company is just experimenting with the idea and may end up scrapping it or delaying it for a future version of iOS.

«

Unless this is cross-platform – both Android and Windows – what’s the point? Perhaps Apple will be satisfied just to get the US teen market organising its weekend parties.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

The Pebble smartwatch may be about to make a comeback under its original creator, Eric Migicovsky. CC-licensed photo by Orde Saunders 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.

No Substack post this week. (Apologies for any dashed expectations.)

A selection of 9 links for you. Watching closely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 could strike Earth, researchers say, but the odds are small • The New York Times

Robin George Andrews:

»

You may hear about a large asteroid headed toward Earth. Don’t panic.

Just after Christmas Day, astronomers spotted something zipping away from Earth: a rock somewhere between 130 feet and 330 feet long that they named 2024 YR4. Over the next few weeks, they simulated its possible future orbits. They now say, based on the most up-to-date information, that there is a 1.3% chance that this asteroid will strike somewhere on Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.

Should this keep you up at night?

“No, absolutely not,” said David Rankin, a comet and asteroid spotter at the University of Arizona.

The object’s current odds of striking Earth may sound scary — and it’s fair to say that an asteroid in this size range has the potential to cause harm. Should it strike a city, the damage would not cause anything close to a mass extinction, but the damage to the city itself would be catastrophic.

But a 1.3% chance of a hit is also a 98.7% chance of a miss. “It’s not a number you want to ignore, but it’s not a number you need to lose sleep over,” Mr. Rankin said.
And the odds may diminish over time, as astronomers gather new data about the object.

For now, experts say, calm is warranted. The asteroid has been spotted several years ahead of its close shave with Earth — and that’s a good thing.

«

Honestly, asteroids really need to make their minds up. Are they lifebringers (Bennu, yesterday) or civilisation destroyers (this one)?

Hoping we aren’t in Don’t Look Up territory.
unique link to this extract

Meta agrees to pay $25m to settle lawsuit from Trump after Jan. 6 suspension • AP News

Zeke Miller and Aamer Madhani:

»

Meta has agreed to pay $25m to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump against the company after it suspended his accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to three people familiar with the matter.

It’s the latest instance of a large corporation settling litigation with the president, who has threatened retribution on his critics and rivals, and comes as Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have joined other large technology companies in trying to ingratiate themselves with the new Trump administration.

The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss the agreement. Two of the people said terms of the agreement include $22m going to the nonprofit that will become Trump’s future presidential library. The balance will go to legal fees and other litigants, they said.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the settlement.

Zuckerberg visited Trump in November at his private Florida club to try to mend fences with the incoming president, something other technology, business and government officials have done as well. At the dinner, Trump brought up the litigation and suggested they try to resolve it, kick-starting two months of negotiations between the parties, the people said.

…Trump filed the lawsuit months after his first term ended, calling the action by the social media companies “illegal, shameful censorship of the American people.”

Twitter, Facebook and Google are all private companies, and users must agree to their terms of service to use their products. Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, social media platforms are allowed to moderate their services by removing posts that, for instance, are obscene or violate the services’ own standards, so long as they are acting in “good faith.” The law also generally exempts internet companies from liability for the material that users post.

«

Trump’s “presidential library”? That’s going to be quite the telephone box. Clearly, Trump said “pay” and Zuckerberg said “how much?”
unique link to this extract

Books written by humans are getting their own certification • The Verge

Jess Weatherbed:

»

The Authors Guild — one of the largest associations of writers in the US — has launched a new project that allows authors to certify that their book was written by a human, and not generated by artificial intelligence.

The Guild says its “Human Authored” certification aims to make it easier for writers to “distinguish their work in increasingly AI-saturated markets,” and that readers have a right to know who (or what) created the books they read. Human Authored certifications will be listed in a public database that anyone can access. The project was first announced back in October in response to a deluge of AI-generated books flooding online marketplaces like Amazon and its Kindle ebook platform.

Certification is currently restricted to Authors Guild members and books penned by a single writer, but will expand “in the future” to include books by non-Guild members and multiple authors. Books and other works must be almost entirely written by humans to qualify for a Human Authored mark, with minor exceptions to accommodate things like AI-powered grammar and spell-check applications.

…CEO Mary Rasenberger said in a statement on Wednesday: “Authors can still qualify if they use AI as a tool for spell-checking or research, but the certification connotes that the literary expression itself, with the unique human voice that every author brings to their writing, emanated from the human intellect.”

«

OK, and how is this going to be enforced? (Thanks Gregory B for the link.)
unique link to this extract

Why we’re bringing Pebble back • Eric Migicovsky

Migicovsky was behind Pebble, the most successful crowdsourced hardware product ever back in 2012:

»

You’d imagine that smartwatches have evolved considerably since 2012. I’ve tried every single smart watch out there, but none do it for me. No one makes a smartwatch with the core set of features I want:

• Always-on e-paper screen (it’s reflective rather than emissive. Sunlight readable. Glanceable. Not distracting to others like a bright wrist)
•
Long battery life (one less thing to charge. It’s annoying to need extra cables when traveling)
•
Simple and beautiful user experience around a core set of features I use regularly (telling time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, sleep/step tracking)
•
Buttons! (to play/pause/skip music on my phone without looking at the screen)
•
Hackable (apparently you can’t even write your own watchfaces for Apple Watch? That is wild. There were >16k watchfaces on the Pebble appstore!)

Over the years, we’ve thought about making a new smartwatch. Manufacturing hardware for a product like Pebble is infinitely easier now than 10 years ago. There are plenty of capable factories and Bluetooth chips are cheaper, more powerful and energy efficient.

The challenge has always been, at its heart, software. It’s the beautifully designed, fun, quirky operating system (OS) that makes Pebble a Pebble.

PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over four years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Reproducing that for new hardware would take a long time.

Instead, we took a more direct route – I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebble’s IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes!

«

Pebble crashed in 2016 and was sold to Fitbit, which then sold itself to Google, which is how Google wound up with the Pebble software.

Migicovsky is going to get the band together again. (Well, a new band, but playing many of the old songs.) This is going to be interesting: he’s a very capable entrepreneur who looks for gaps (he ran the “we can do iMessage on Android” startup Beeper, since sold) and exploits them.

This could be interesting. Meanwhile, over at the hardware division of Google…
unique link to this extract

Google announces ‘voluntary exit program’ for Pixel, Android team • 9to5 Google

Abner Li:

»

Last year, the teams responsible for Pixel hardware and Android software were merged into one division, and Google today announced a “voluntary exit program” for employees working in the Platforms & Devices group.

SVP Rick Osterloh sent out a memo to employees Thursday morning about the “voluntary exit program,” and the company confirmed to 9to5Google that this is happening.

This program applies to US employees working on Platforms & Devices, which includes Android (Auto, TV, Wear OS, XR), Chrome, ChromeOS, Google Photos, Google One, Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest. Google has many people around the world working on these products, but today’s announcement is just for those stateside.

Meanwhile, this is not a company-wide offer that applies to Search, AI, or other groups, though Alphabet’s new CFO last October said “driving further efficiencies” was a key priority.

Separately, software and hardware were already two very large organizations, with some overlap. Now that things have settled in recent months, employees have a better idea of their roles. Osterloh said the division received questions about the possibility of voluntary exits since the Pixel-Android merger. Not offering people the option to leave in advance was a complaint about how Google handled past layoffs.

The memo frames this exit program as being beneficial for those who might not be aligned or passionate about the combined organization’s mission or are having difficulty with their roles, and hybrid working requirements.

«

Very obvious where Google’s priorities now lie. The Pixel was never going to set the (sales) world on fire; and Android is no longer required to make giant leaps, unlike a decade or so ago.
unique link to this extract

Deep impact • Where’s Your Ed At

Ed Zitron, in his standard prolix style:

»

The current models developed by both the hyperscalers (Gemini, Llama, et. al) and multi-billion-dollar “startups” like OpenAI and Anthropic are horribly inefficient. I had just made the mistake of assuming that they’d actually tried to make them more efficient.

What we’re witnessing is the American tech industry’s greatest act of hubris — a monument to the barely-conscious stewards of so-called “innovation,” incapable of breaking the kayfabe of “competition” where everybody makes the same products, charges about the same amount, and mostly “innovates” in the same direction. 

Somehow nobody — not Google, not Microsoft, not OpenAI, not Meta, not Amazon, not Oracle — thought to try, or was capable of creating something like DeepSeek, which doesn’t mean that DeepSeek’s team is particularly remarkable, or found anything new, but that for all the talent, trillions of dollars of market capitalization and supposed expertise in America’s tech oligarchs, not one bright spark thought to try the things that DeepSeek tried, which appear to be “what if we didn’t use as much memory and what if we tried synthetic data.”

And because the cost of model development and inference was so astronomical, they never assumed that anyone would try to usurp their position. This is especially bad, considering that China’s focus on AI as a strategic part of its industrial priority was no secret — even if the ways it supported domestic companies was. In the same way that the automotive industry was blindsided by China’s EV manufacturers, the same is now happening to AI. 

«

DeepSeek, for those who didn’t know, was a side project from a hedge fund. The Zitron piece is not short; I often think he’d benefit from a brutal editor or a word limit.
unique link to this extract

The unflattening of music • Midia Research

Mark Mulligan:

»

by pulling consumption, creation, and monetisation closer together than ever before, streaming has transformed the tense but often distant relationship between business and culture into one that now resembles a single entity. People make, and are encouraged to make, music that feeds the machine. This has resulted in what is often referred to as the flattening of music, which is most visible in the rise of ‘functional music’ and of the song over the artist. It is a process that can feel both inevitable and unstoppable.

…[But] we are already seeing more artists going non-DSP [digital streaming platform] (e.g,. Ricky Tinexz, SEIDS, Mary Spender), triggering the start of the bifurcation of the music business, with an emerging generation of creators bypassing streaming entirely. Meaning that the foundations of tomorrow’s music culture are being laid elsewhere. It may only be a trickle for now, but already, one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2024, Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee, was pointedly not released onto streaming. How long before the trickle of streaming exiles becomes a flood?

What makes the non-DSP world so important for the unflattening of music is not the absence of algorithm (because there are plenty of those there too) but: a) the diversity of models (bandcamp, TikTok, SoundCloud) and b) being different and distinct is a feature not a bug.

…Yesterday’s artists’ influences stemmed from inherently limited sources (their parents’ and friends’ record collections, their local record store, etc.). Today’s can listen to virtually every song ever written. The history of music is a steady evolution, with each generation of genres imitating and innovating the previous one. Now, creators can pull from over a hundred years’ worth of popular music, thousands of genres and millions of artists to create their own, unique take on just what music is.

Streaming may have made itself the (flattened) establishment –but the thing about the establishment is that culture almost always rebels against it.

«

I was in my local (vinyl) record shop the other day: the owner told me the Big New Thing now is releasing songs on cassette.
unique link to this extract

London to New York in 3.5 hours: how Boom Supersonic is learning from Concorde’s mistakes • Euronews via MSN

Joanna Bailey:

»

The company has developed its own engine solution that it says will reduce fuel consumption. These engines are designed to run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel which, although not available at scale yet, would further reduce its environmental impact.

Overture hasn’t quite managed to eliminate the sonic boom effect, but thanks to more optimised aerodynamics, the impact will be reduced significantly. The company promises that Overture will be able to fly over land at Mach 0.94, about 20% faster than subsonic aircraft, without breaking the sound barrier.

For now, the supersonic aircraft would be restricted to breaking the sound barrier over water. Boom says there are more than 600 transoceanic routes on which Overture could provide a supersonic solution without changing current regulations relating to sonic booms.

“Overture was created to achieve optimal performance while meeting our stringent safety and sustainability requirements,” says Boom Supersonic. “We are leveraging more than fifty years of advancements in aerodynamics, materials, and propulsion to build economically and environmentally viable supersonic aeroplanes”.

But what of the market demand? By the end of Concorde’s lifespan, British Airways said it was selling only around half of its available tickets. Air France, still suffering from the tragic crash in 2000, was selling less, only around 35%.

Concorde’s ticket prices were up there in the ultra-luxury category. In contrast, Boom is targeting business travellers, and pricing seats accordingly. Early estimates suggest a round trip Europe to USA ticket for around $5,000 (€4,800), in the ballpark of what passengers pay for business class seats on regular jets today.

“Today, there’s both the market demand and the technology to enable mainstream supersonic travel,” the company says. “Business and leisure travel has continued to grow, and travellers are willing to pay for speed.”

«

I flew on Concorde once (at Oracle’s expense: a circular trip just to experience it). It was cramped and low-ceilinged. Boom seems to have learnt from that. And the demand for flights – especially across the Pacific from the US west coast – is probably going to be there, if it has sufficient range. Never say never: some ideas just need to happen at the right time.

Then again, I wrote about the Concorde crash in 2000. It only takes one accident like that to kill a class of travel.
unique link to this extract

An illustrator’s review of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil • Fantastic Maps

Jonathan Roberts, back in 2015:

»

I would have settled for the iPad Pro being a really nice sketching tool – but what I’ve discovered is that the iPad Pro, the Pencil, and Procreate, get me 95% to a final illustration, and quicker than I would get there on my desktop.

In many respects, this is better than working in Photoshop on my Mac. I never expected to say that. The last 5% is due to the pieces that Procreate doesn’t do, that Photoshop does – text, labels, some of the more advanced features. So that’s software, not hardware – and I expect the app store will get a lot more firepower very quickly once developers really get to grips with the Pro.

This is a serious piece of kit that will find a central place in an illustrators workflow – but it will not replace a desktop.

The iPad Pro is big, but treads lightly. It’s not bulky, and when drawing I can easily rest it on my lap and hold it up with one hand, whilst drawing with the other. I’ve used this for drawing solidly for 2+ hours in coach, and didn’t have any tiredness, or muscle pain. I couldn’t even say that about the iPad 2 which somehow felt more cumbersome than this.

The screen is beautiful, crisp, and bright. The thickness of the glass is basically unnoticeable. This is a lovely refinement for general use, but it’s key for illustration. If the glass has a visible offset from the screen, then your drawing precision changes with your viewing angle. Not here, the pen tip looks like it’s right on your illustration.

It does take a while to charge – no great surprise given that a lot of the extra size is given to a larger battery. Many reviews say that this can last for days. I don’t agree. Using Procreate and the Pencil (which uses Bluetooth, and increases screen sampling rates) the battery dropped to 20% over the course of the day. If you’re using this heavily, you’ll be charging this every night – but that workflow is fine for me. The one hardware niggle I found was that when I leave it plugged in overnight it sometimes requires a hard restart to wake up. That’s surprising, but may just be my one.

«

Earlier this week I posted a link about the iPad’s tenth anniversary and wondered who it was really good for. Via Matt L, here’s the answer: illustration, which is was already good for ten years ago.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Stones from the Bennu asteroid turns out to contain 14 amino acids and give nucleobases from DNA and RNA. Life’s origin? CC-licensed photo by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center 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.

There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.

A selection of 9 links for you. Lively. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed • Nature

Alexandra Witze:

»

Fragments of the asteroid Bennu, carefully collected and ferried to Earth by a robotic spacecraft, contain the building blocks for life, NASA announced on Wednesday.

Not only does Bennu contain all five of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a “left-handed” chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their “right-handed”, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth.

The work appears in Nature Astronomy.

“What makes these results so significant is that we’re finding them in a pristine sample,” says co-author Daniel Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. When meteorites fall to Earth, they are heated in the atmosphere and contaminated by the planet’s molecules. The Bennu samples were ferried to Earth in a sealed canister, protected from the heat, and analysed in a super-clean laboratory space under inert gas.

The specimens contain the richest bounty of life-friendly extraterrestrial compounds ever brought to Earth.

But that’s not all they contain. In an accompanying paper published in Nature on Wednesday other researchers report that the material from Bennu is also rich in salts created billions of years ago, probably when watery ponds on Bennu’s parent asteroid evaporated and left behind a crust of minerals. Although no signs of life were spotted on Bennu, those salty ponds would have been a good environment to foster the chemistry that could lead to it. This might involve small, carbon-rich molecules such as methanal (formaldehyde) — a simple compound that was found in the Bennu samples.

«

This is big news: another part of the finding is that radioactivity made the salty waters warm, which also encourages the process of.. whatever causes amino acids to form. And then it crashes into an early planet, seeding life.

Of course this doesn’t quite solve the question of “how did life get started?” – it only really moves it back one step, to an asteroid rather than primitive Earth – but implies it could be widespread. One asteroid is much like another. And every solar system has a ton of asteroids banging into things.

unique link to this extract

On the Undesign of Apple Intelligence features • Pixel Envy

Nick Heer:

»

As noted, the Writing Tools popover is not the same width as the other popovers it will spawn. By sheer luck, I had one of my test windows positioned in such a way that the Writing Tools popover had enough space to display on the lefthand side of the window, but the popovers it launched appeared on the right because they are a bit wider. This made for a confusing and discordant experience.

Choice of component aside, the way the results of Writing Tools are displayed is so obviously lacklustre I am surprised it shipped in its current state. Two of the features I assumed I would find useful — as I am one person shy of an editor — are “Proofread” and “Rewrite”. But they both have a critical flaw: neither shows the differences between the original text and the changed version. For very short passages, this is not much of a problem, but a tool like “Proofread” implies use on more substantial chunks, or even a whole document. A user must carefully review the rewritten text to discover what changes were made, or place their faith in Apple and click the “Replace” button hoping all is well.

Apple could correct for all of these issues. It could display Writing Tools in a panel instead of a popover or, at least, make it possible to disconnect the popover from the selected and transform it into a panel. It should also make every popover the same width or, at least, require enough clearance for the widest popover spawned by Writing Tools so that they always open on the same side. It could bring to MacOS the same way of displaying differences in rewritten text as already exists on iOS but, for some reason, is not part of the Mac version. It could cache results so, if the text is unchanged, invoking the same tool again does not need to redo a successful action.

Writing Tools on MacOS is the most obviously flawed of the Apple Intelligence features suffering from weak implementation or questionable U.I. choices, but there are other examples, too.

«

Heer goes on to list them: Image Playground, automatic replies in Messages, and the settings themselves for Apple Intelligence. His complaints aren’t about what the feature(s) do/es, it’s about the associated UI. But Apple has been letting itself down on that front for quite some time.
unique link to this extract

Why Apple uses JPEG XL in the iPhone 16 and what it means for your photos • PetaPixel

Jeremy Gray:

»

JPEG XL is a next-generation image encoding standard formally standardized in early 2022. Since then, JPEG XL (.jxl) has been adopted by numerous operating systems and applications, albeit with some notable holdouts.

Apple and its various software iterations have supported JPEG XL for at least a year, including in Finder, Preview, Final Cut Pro, Pages, Photos, Mail, Safari, and more. Adobe has also supported the format for a while, including in Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic.

Despite JPEG XL supporting reversible JPEG transcoding and being superior to JPEG in terms of quality and efficiency, the format has yet to be widely adopted. Neither Chrome nor Firefox, two very popular web browsers, support the format natively, for example. Extensions are available to support JPEG XL files, but they’re not installed by default.

The JPEG XL community website cites the format’s ability to reduce file size while delivering “unmatched quality-per-byte.” Compared to a standard JPEG, a JPEG XL file is up to 55% smaller while providing a cleaner image that is visually lossless. Gone are typical JPEG artifacts.

Although it’s easy to appreciate the technical advantages of JPEG XL, it is also worth pointing out a substantial benefit of smaller file sizes: reduced environmental impact. As the world generates increasing amounts of data, it’s essential to consider ways to reduce data load. All that stuff lives somewhere, and wherever it is, it requires energy to operate.

It’s also important to note that JPEG XL supports wide-gamut and high dynamic range images. “JPEG XL is specifically designed to handle the rich colors of high-precision, high-dynamic range images,” the creators explain.

…As for why it is including JPEG XL in the iPhone 16 Pro, Apple tells PetaPixel that the format promises two primary benefits over standard JPEG format: improved image quality and better compression performance. If there’s a 32MB JPEG image, that same photo will be 24MB in lossless JPEG XL and, even more impressively, about five megabytes in perceptually lossless format.

Apple has wrapped JPEG XL photos inside a DNG container, enabling ProRAW files to retain their flexibility while being significantly smaller — up to nearly five times smaller.

«

This is a great format but the problem is its lack of adoption. (This article is from September.) You can enable JPEG XL in various browsers, including Chrome – since 2021.
unique link to this extract

Quartz has been quietly publishing AI-generated news articles • TechCrunch

Rebecca Bellan:

»

Quartz, the international business news outlet, has been quietly aggregating reporting from other outlets, including TechCrunch, in order to publish AI-generated articles under the byline “Quartz Intelligence Newsroom.”

Quartz started publishing simple AI-generated earnings reports months ago, but beginning last week, the outlet moved on to short articles. One of the 18 AI-generated articles published as of Monday afternoon, titled “South Korea shares preliminary findings on Jeju Air crash investigation,” aggregates reporting done by real journalists at CNN, MSN, and The Associated Press on MSN.com.

Each of the outlet’s AI-generated articles is roughly 400 words in length, and includes no full quotes from sources. Rather than attributing information in the body of the text, as flesh-and-blood journalists do, Quartz’s AI writer only cites its sources at the very top of its pieces.

A spokesperson for Quartz corporate parent G/O Media confirmed to TechCrunch the existence of a “purely experimental” AI newsroom, without commenting on which AI models or tools the publication uses to write AI-generated news articles. 
It is not clear how Quartz’s AI newsroom chooses which stories to cover. The spokesperson said that the goal is to free up Quartz’s editorial staff to “work on longer and more deeply reported articles,” and that the editorial staff reviews each AI-generated story before it is published.

«

Somehow this is reminiscent of Philip K Dick’s “homeopapes”, which would “speedily provide you with a fresh, up-to-the-minute” news summary tailored to your likings. The more advanced ones could interview people too.
unique link to this extract

Logitech’s peel-and-stick radar sensors could let companies invisibly monitor their offices • The Verge

Sean Hollister:

»

Logitech sales boomed during the pandemic as people outfitted their home offices, and it’s getting a piece of the hybrid workplace with teleconferencing gear too. But Logitech’s also got a little-known corporate office management solution that could soon expand beyond conference rooms — using a pebble-shaped person detection device called the Logitech Spot.

It’s a millimeter wave radar sensor you can peel and stick up anywhere, letting companies invisibly see whether people are in a room. The company claims it’ll last four years on a single D-cell shaped lithium battery, no wires required at all.

It’s not just a radar sensor; it also measures particulates, VOCs, CO2, temperature, pressure, and humidity, so your company can get a health score for any given room. But the first clear draw is for companies to know whether workers are actually using their office space, and which rooms get used, as they make decisions about downsizing those offices, issuing return-to-office mandates, or reconfiguring them for hybrid work.

«

Personally, I wondered if this could be a silent burglar alarm of sorts. But it needs a connection to the Logitech cloud. Also, no price has been announced. But that battery life is astonishing.
unique link to this extract

AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt • Ars Technica

Ashley Belanger:

»

Last summer, Anthropic inspired backlash when its ClaudeBot AI crawler was accused of hammering websites a million or more times a day.

And it wasn’t the only artificial intelligence company making headlines for supposedly ignoring instructions in robots.txt files to avoid scraping web content on certain sites. Around the same time, Reddit’s CEO called out all AI companies whose crawlers he said were “a pain in the ass to block,” despite the tech industry otherwise agreeing to respect “no scraping” robots.txt rules.

Watching the controversy unfold was a software developer whom Ars has granted anonymity to discuss his development of malware (we’ll call him Aaron). Shortly after he noticed Facebook’s crawler exceeding 30 million hits on his site, Aaron began plotting a new kind of attack on crawlers “clobbering” websites that he told Ars he hoped would give “teeth” to robots.txt.

Building on an anti-spam cybersecurity tactic known as tarpitting, he created Nepenthes, malicious software named after a carnivorous plant that will “eat just about anything that finds its way inside.”

Aaron clearly warns users that Nepenthes is aggressive malware. It’s not to be deployed by site owners uncomfortable with trapping AI crawlers and sending them down an “infinite maze” of static files with no exit links, where they “get stuck” and “thrash around” for months, he tells users. Once trapped, the crawlers can be fed gibberish data, aka Markov babble, which is designed to poison AI models. That’s likely an appealing bonus feature for any site owners who, like Aaron, are fed up with paying for AI scraping and just want to watch AI burn.

…”Ultimately, it’s like the Internet that I grew up on and loved is long gone,” Aaron told Ars. “I’m just fed up, and you know what? Let’s fight back, even if it’s not successful. Be indigestible. Grow spikes.”

«

Oh, Aaron. The internet has had so, so many deaths. The “internet” I knew has died at least twice, and yet continues.
unique link to this extract

AI optimization: how to optimize your content for AI search and agents • Search Engine Land

Jed White:

»

Optimizing for AI search is an ongoing process, as AI crawlers are far from perfect. Right now:

• 34% of AI crawler requests result in 404 or other errors
• Only Google’s Gemini and AppleBot currently render JavaScript among major AI crawlers
• AI crawlers show 47 times inefficiency compared to traditional crawlers like Googlebot
• AI crawlers represent about 28% of Googlebot’s volume in recent traffic analysis
• As AI indexing improves, staying ahead of these trends will help ensure your content remains visible.

Remember, it’s a balance. You want to be accessible to helpful AI tools while protecting against bad actors. 

«

It’s so peculiar: what is it that these sites think they’re going to gain by being easy to index by AI chatbots? And yet SEL is highly regarded. If it’s giving this sort of advice, then things are changing. Just look at the headlines on its main page – AI, AI, AI everywhere.
unique link to this extract

Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek censors itself in realtime, users report • The Guardian

Robert Booth and Dan Milmo:

»

Before the censor’s cut comes, DeepSeek seems remarkably thoughtful. In Mexico, Guardian reader Salvador asked it on Tuesday if free speech was a legitimate right in China. DeepSeek approaches its answers with a preamble of reasoning about what it might include and how it might best address the question. In this case Salvador was impressed as he watched as line by line his phone screen filled up with text as DeepSeek suggested it might talk about Beijing’s crackdown on protests in Hong Kong, the “persecution of human rights lawyers”, the “censorship of discussions on Xianjiang re-education camps” and China’s “social credit system punishing dissenters”.

“I was assuming this app was heavily [controlled] by the Chinese government so I was wondering how censored it would be,” he said.

Far from it, it seemed incredibly frank and it even gave itself a little pep talk about the need to “avoid any biased language, present facts objectively” and “maybe also compare with western approaches to highlight the contrast”.

Then it started its answer proper, explaining how “ethical justifications for free speech often centre on its role in fostering autonomy – the ability to express ideas, engage in dialogue and redefine one’s understanding of the world”. By contrast, it said: “China’s governance model rejects this framework, prioritising state authority and social stability over individual rights.”

Then it explained that in democratic frameworks free speech needed to be protected from societal threats and “in China, the primary threat is the state itself which actively suppresses dissent”. Perhaps unsurprisingly it didn’t get any further along this tack because everything it had said up to that point was instantly erased. In its place came a new message: “Sorry, I’m not sure how to approach this type of question yet. Let’s chat about math, coding and logic problems instead!”

“In the middle of the sentence it cut itself,” Salvador said. “It was very abrupt. It’s impressive: it is censoring in real time.”

«

Now that’s what I call intelligence!
unique link to this extract

Dismay at plan to cut back A-level maths support programme • Financial Times

Peter Foster, Amy Borrett and Michael Peel:

»

The Advanced Mathematics Support Programme, which has been running since 2018, helps state schools in England teach A-level maths, further maths and a core maths programme that provides “maths for life” skills, such as statistics and finance.

Government officials said the “difficult decision” to reduce the programme budget had been taken as Whitehall seeks to address the “£22bn black hole” in the public finances Labour says it inherited from the Conservative administration.

The plan to halve the budget of the widely-praised scheme from April this year was described as a retrograde step by leading maths campaigners at a time when the government is promoting its new AI and digital technology strategies as the key to the UK’s growth prospects.

Jens Marklof, president of the London Mathematical Society, said the decision to pare back the scheme would harm the chances of children from poorer areas, where schools are less likely to offer further maths A-levels needed to access higher-tier universities.

“There’s no AI without maths and if the government is really serious about its AI strategy they have to significantly scale up the support for maths education at all levels,” he said.

“The big success of AMSP was to enable kids who went to schools that didn’t offer further maths to give them this opportunity,” he added.

«

Terrible idea. The failure of economic growth in the past 15 years is really starting to bite now, and will affect us for years to come.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

The iPad has just turned 15. So has it lived up to its promise? And what, exactly, was that promise? CC-licensed photo by void-oo 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.

There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.

A selection of 9 links for you. Ageing. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

White House evaluates effect of China AI app DeepSeek on national security • Reuters

Andrea Shalal, David Shepardson and Kanishka Singh:

»

U.S. officials are looking at the national security implications of the Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday, while President Donald Trump’s crypto czar said it was possible that intellectual property theft could have been at play.

The National Security Council is reviewing the app’s implications, Leavitt said. “This is a wake-up call to the American AI industry,” she added, echoing Trump’s comments from a day earlier while also saying the White House was working to “ensure American AI dominance.”

Investors sold technology stocks across the globe on Monday over concerns the emergence of a low-cost Chinese AI model would threaten market dominance of U.S.-based AI leaders such as OpenAI and Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google.

White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar David Sacks was asked on Fox News if there was intellectual property theft involved in the rise of DeepSeek.

“Well, it’s possible. There’s a technique in AI called distillation, which you’re going to hear a lot about, and it’s when one model learns from another model,” Sacks said in the interview.

“I think one of the things you’re going to see over the next few months is our leading AI companies taking steps to try and prevent distillation … That would definitely slow down some of these copycat models,” he added.

During his administration, former President Joe Biden placed a wide range of export restrictions on AI chips and the equipment used to make them, hoping to hamper AI development in China.

Trump said on Monday the Chinese app should act as a spur for American companies and added it was good that companies in China have come up with a cheaper, faster method of artificial intelligence.

“The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” Trump said.

«

Oh noes the AI may have used content from.. another model? Stop, you copycat!
unique link to this extract

iPad at 15: hit or a miss? • On my Om

Om Malik:

»

Over the years, it’s fair to say the iPad has suffered from a subpar operating system experience. There has been a distinct lack of popular and hit applications. Still, one can’t ignore the amazing hardware and its true capabilities. If only there were more interesting apps — not games — that tapped into what Apple packs into it. The device has been a playground for new technologies — screens, LiDAR, M-class silicon, for example.

Still, there is no denying that for children and elders, the iPad is a perfect computer. Children, in particular, seem to be intuitively drawn to it, swiping and interacting with ease. Giving my mother an iPad and seeing it open up her world has been a joy to watch. I am sure that sentiment is shared by others with aging parents. Not surprisingly, those of us who have grown up using desktop computers struggle with the elegance, simplicity, and constraints of the iPad.

I fell in love with the iPad the minute I played with it. I still am! It reminded me of a slate — on which I learned to write from my grandfather. That slate was very analog. “On January 27th, when I first picked up the iPad, I was that 4-year-old boy again. I felt like I was getting that old slate of mine one more time,” I wrote in my first (but not last) essay about the iPad.

Still, my first impression of the iPad was that it was device “made for the consumption of digital media: games, music, photos, videos, magazines, newspapers and e-books. Sure, you can use it to check your email or work on a keynote, but the iPad’s primary purpose is to help you consume the ever-expanding amount of digital content on offer.”

Looking back, I think I might have gotten that right.

«

Great for kids and older users unfamiliar with computers and people who just want to watch stuff? Yes, but nobody had been filling that gap before.
unique link to this extract

Google Maps will rename Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America in US • The Guardian

Dan Milmo:

»

Google has confirmed it will rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on Google Maps in the US, after an executive order from Donald Trump.

It will remain the Gulf of Mexico in Mexico, while users outside of the US and Mexico will see both names on Google Maps. The Alaskan peak Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, will also be changed to Mount McKinley in the US in line with Trump’s executive order on 20 January.

“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government,” said Google in a post on X.

Explaining the different labels for the gulf in the US, Mexico and the rest of the word, Google added: “When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.”

…Google has applied the same locale-based labelling conventions to other locations subject to naming disputes. Outside of Japan and South Korea, the body of water bordering both nations is listed as the “Sea of Japan (East Sea)”.

In 2012, Iran threatened to take legal action against Google over its decision to drop the name Persian Gulf from Google Maps and leave the waterway between Iran and the Arabian peninsula nameless. The body of water is now labelled “Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf)” in other countries.

«

Trump’s impatience with everything is quite the spectacle. But Google is, as the previous examples point out, just choosing to go with the path of least political resistance, as it has done in the past.
unique link to this extract

Middle East becomes fastest-growing renewables market outside China • Financial Times

Malcolm Moore:

»

Until this month, the oil-rich United Arab Emirates had modest ambitions when it came to renewable energy: to install roughly as many solar panels each year as the UK.

But then Masdar, the country’s state-owned renewable energy company, decided to make a splash at a huge trade fair in Abu Dhabi.

In front of the UAE president, it announced it would build a $6bn 5 gigawatt solar plant backed with more than 19GWh of battery storage — the largest such project ever attempted. 

When it starts in two years’ time, its batteries will give the country a constant output of 1GW, enough to power more than 700,000 homes without having to rely on gas-fired plants when the sun is not shining.

“This will transform renewable energy into baseload energy,” said Sultan Al Jaber, the chair of Masdar. “It is a first step that could become a giant leap.”

As the UAE was revealing its new solar project, Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, announced a joint venture that would start producing lithium, a key ingredient for batteries, as early as 2027.

«

It’s taken a very long time, but maybe the Arab oil states are realising that it’s not going to be eternal.
unique link to this extract

UK energy storage slows down as Ireland pipeline gains traction • Energy-Storage.News

Cameron Murray:

»

With another record-breaking year in global energy storage deployment, the UK and Ireland saw diverging trends. The UK’s energy storage market seemingly slowed down in 2024, compared to Ireland’s strong growth.

In the UK, over 30GWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) planning applications were submitted, with over 35% coming from the last quarter alone: whereas in Ireland, despite having less than four times the capacity submitted, there was a 63% rise in new capacity submitted compared to 2023.

…However, energy storage is still a growing industry. Several large projects have been announced and are in the TEC register (remaining in the pre-planning stage). This slow-down in applications could possibly show that developers are now focusing on the build-out of projects. Some notable applications in 2024 included NatPower’s Teeside Green Energy Park with a capacity over 1GW.

The number of large projects is staying at about the same level: in both 2024 and 2023, around 23% of applications submitted were for BESS projects over 100MW. But the proportion of >100MW projects in the overall capacity submitted decreased by 10 percentage points, showing that 2024 saw developers prioritising larger projects.

By country, England maintained the most applications at 62%, followed by Scotland at 21%, then Northern Ireland and Wales. Wales also saw the largest increase in applications in 2024, growing 150% from the prior year; the county is ramping up its energy storage plans with the 1GW Rover Way Energy Storage projects both submitted and approved last year, and the overall capacity submitted nearly quadrupling from 2023. The country with the highest average capacity per site was England at 167MWh/site.

«

I wondered to myself if home installations are having any impact. Answer: not yet:

»

home BESS installations had a record-breaking year, with 20,044 installations completed – over quadruple the number of BESS installations in 2023. The average installation cost for home BESS saw significant and somewhat votatile change, ending in a £72 increase in average installation cost between January and December 2024. Across 2024, the average cost of a home BESS installation sat at £8,035, a 13% decrease from 2023’s average of £9,343.

Notably, more remote areas of the UK appear to be some of the most interested in home BESS installations, with the Isles of Scilly and the Shetland Islands topping the table for regions with the highest percentage of homes with BESS installations at 0.78% and 0.7% respectively. Just behind these island regions is the Moray region of Scotland, on the northeast coast of the nation, which, at 185 home BESS installations, has a 0.44% installation rate for battery technology.

«

unique link to this extract

As Trump dumps clean energy, fossil fuels lose their grip on Europe • Forbes

David Vetter:

»

As U.S. president Donald Trump promises to “drill baby drill,” new figures from Europe show fossil fuels are being pushed out of the EU’s electricity system, with solar energy generation overtaking coal power for the first time.

Hot on the heels of Trump withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and stopping American offshore wind projects, energy research group Ember announced Wednesday that clean energy sources generated more than 70% of the EU’s electricity in 2024, while electricity generation from fossil fuels fell 8.7% to comprise just 28.9% of the total.

Significantly, solar power rose 21.7% to generate more than 11% of the EU’s electricity, while a fall in coal generation led to the most polluting fossil fuel producing just 9.8% of the total.

“Fossil fuels are losing their grip on EU energy,” said report lead author Chris Rosslowe, commenting on the release. “At the start of the European Green Deal in 2019, few thought the EU’s energy transition could be where it is today; wind and solar are pushing coal to the margins and forcing gas into structural decline.”

Not including nuclear power, renewables rose 7.6% from 2023 figures to generate almost 48% of European electricity last year. The rapid drop in the use of fossil fuels, meanwhile, caused EU power sector emissions to fall to 585 million tons of CO2—less than half the peak of 1,218 million tons seen in 2007.

«

Great – now can we have more nuclear plants too please? Although if we get enough batteries in homes, maybe that means we can balance demand better.
unique link to this extract

Sky News to overhaul newsroom around paid-for content • Financial Times

Daniel Thomas:

»

Sky News has unveiled plans for a root and branch overhaul of its programming and newsroom aimed at creating a model of premium paid content to safeguard its future from an existential threat to traditional TV.

In a speech to staff on Tuesday, David Rhodes, executive chair of the Comcast-backed news broadcaster, laid out a strategy dubbed Sky News 2030 that will reshape its digital-focused service over the next five years to attract new audiences willing to pay for news, according to people familiar with the matter.

Rhodes told staff that the business’s revenue streams were “largely stagnant” given a reliance on advertising and sponsorship, the people said, prompting the need for new income streams centred on subject hubs that will offer paid products from podcasts and newsletters to events and live shows.

This is expected to include some subscription-based services where premium content is held back for paying customers. While its traditional 24-hour linear TV channel will continue to be important, Rhodes said priorities and resources would be shifted to these premium content tiers.

As with most linear channels, Sky News is struggling to arrest a steep decline in traditional TV audiences, putting pressure on revenues as advertising moves online and where viewers increasingly use social media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.

«

Everyone is struggling to make news pay – but for video-based news, their lunch is absolutely being eaten by all the video-capable services. This is going to be brutal. How will CNN and all the others adapt?
unique link to this extract

UK weighs making Netflix users pay licence fee to fund BBC • Bloomberg via Yahoo

Ellen Milligan and Ailbhe Rea:

»

The UK is considering making households who only use streaming services such as Netflix and Disney pay the BBC licence fee, as part of plans to modernize the way it funds the public-service broadcaster.

Extending the fee to streaming applications is on a menu of options being discussed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office, the Treasury and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing internal government deliberations.

Alternatives under discussion include allowing the British Broadcasting Corp. to use advertising, imposing a specific tax on streaming services, and asking those who listen to BBC radio to pay a fee.

The government is the early stages of examining how to overhaul the funding of Britain’s public broadcaster when its current 11-year charter ends on Dec. 31, 2027. Ministers are looking to either retain and alter the current television license fee model or scrap it and instead fund the BBC through alternative models such as taxation or subscription. That’s because viewing habits have changed as users gravitate toward on-demand services.

The talks are sensitive because the UK’s national broadcaster is often viewed as a key vehicle for the country’s soft power around the world. But the BBC — which is committed to maintaining impartiality in its editorial output — also frequently faces criticisms of bias from both the left and right of the country’s political spectrum.

«

Tricky. A levy on streaming is the most like the licence fee as it currently stands – a levy on television watching. Advertising would be unpopular. Demanding a radio licence fee faces all sorts of problems because almost everyone has one, and you’d struggle to know whether people had paid or not.

Also if this is the “early stages”, they’d better get a move on. Three calendar years is going to zoom by.
unique link to this extract

‘Stamp out paper mills’ — science sleuths on how to fight fake research • Nature

Anna Abalkina, René Aquarius, Elisabeth Bik, David Bimler, Dorothy Bishop, Jennifer Byrne, Guillaume Cabanac, Adam Day, Cyril Labbé and Nick Wise:

»

Certain research fields seem to be particularly susceptible, namely those in which the number of possible experiments far exceeds the available scientific resource. Fields we know of include non-coding RNAs in human cancer and crystallography — vast numbers of different RNA combinations and crystal structures can potentially be investigated. In chemistry, 44% of papers that are retracted owing to fraud are published in crystallography. There are sure to be other fields.

Paper mills are already exploiting large language models (LLMs) to avoid plagiarism detectors and AI image generators to mass-produce papers. One preprint9 suggests that at least 10% of all PubMed abstracts published in 2024 were written with LLMs — although it is challenging to differentiate between papers from mills and those by legitimate authors who want to improve their writing. We predict further exploitation of AI-generated images to produce figures in future paper-mill products. These are likely to be difficult to detect. Journals can help by promoting open science and demanding the raw data for studies — the more information is available about papers, the easier it is to spot new tricks by paper mills.

We’re often asked to speak at universities and conferences, and consistently come across academics and PhD students who have never heard of paper mills. By preparing people to recognize and call out fake research, the scientific community can build up immunity against paper mills.

Everyone involved in disseminating and digesting research — editors, publishers, students, authors, funding organizations, institutions, bibliographic databases and governments — needs to understand what paper mills are and know how to spot the telltale signs of fake papers. Anyone can learn to look out for image falsification or duplication in papers in their field, as well as for nonsensical text or equations, problematic references and reagents, irrelevant citations and implausible co-authorships. Free tools such as the Problematic Paper Screener10 developed by one of us (G.C.) can help researchers to spot papers that might be fraudulent.

«

Paper mills, of course, are networks of publications which offer fake peer review or sell authorships or generally don’t do what scientific publication demands.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Politicians in the US are wondering whether China’s TP-Link should be banned, like TikTok. CC-licensed photo by Kārlis Dambrāns 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.

There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.

A selection of 9 links for you. Routine. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

DeepSeek: everything you need to know right now • Exponential View

Azeem Azhar has been up to his knees and elbows in the whole world of AI for ages: »The math has changed. Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Nvidia have all bet on capital spending being the path forward and huge amounts of it. Cash would buy chips. Lots of chips. This was going to provide the moat, the source of advantage.
US model makers have been locked into a single paradigm of building ever-larger, more compute-hungry models. After all, the capital markets were willing to fund outsize spending on GPUs, so why not go for it?
With China’s venture capital market becoming moribund, local players could not access enough capital. Even those that could, such as the Qwen team from Alibaba or the Doubau from ByteDance, export restrictions would hamper access to compute.
Steven Sinofsky put it aptly when he observed that the history of computing is one of innovation followed by a scale-up, eventually disrupted by a “scale-out” approach—when bigger and faster methods are replaced by smaller, more numerous alternatives.
According to Steven,
China faced an AI situation not unlike Cisco did in its early years. Many point to the Nvidia embargo as the cause, but the details don’t really matter. The point is they had different constraints: more engineers than data centers to train in. Inevitably, they would develop a different kind of solution.
One thing for certain is that all firms will look at model development practices with an emphasis on driving efficiencies. As I wrote about OpenAI’s o3 in December:
Early versions are often expensive, but we can assume that the performance we get at $3,500 will cost us substantially less, perhaps a dollar or two, within no more than a couple of years.
The cost of GPT4 quality results has declined by more than 99% in the last two years. GPT-4 launched in March 2023 at $36 per million tokens. Today, China’s DeepSeek offers similar performance for $0.14, or 250 times cheaper.
But what does this mean for who?«

This is a much more detailed look at what DeepSeek can do than you may expect. But there’s a lot to be found in it.
unique link to this extract

U.S. stocks sink amid fears over DeepSeek and Chinese AI advancements • The New York Times

Jason Karaian and Joe Rennison: »On Monday, the S&P 500 index fell nearly 2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped more than 3%. Nvidia was hit hard, plunging over 17% and losing hundreds of billions of dollars in market value. Falling tech stocks also dented market indexes in Europe and Japan.
Excitement over the prospects for A.I. had helped send technology stocks soaring over the past year, but concerns have been rising, too. Investors have become increasingly worried that the small cohort of tech companies that drove the broader market’s gains won’t live up to the lofty expectations that their sky-high prices suggest.
The pain was concentrated at companies at the forefront of the A.I. boom, including the multitrillion-dollar behemoths that drove the largest back-to-back annual gains for U.S. markets since the 1990s. Alphabet and Microsoft fell, and in addition to Nvidia, other chipmakers like Arm, Broadcom and Micron, and semiconductor equipment specialists like ASML slid.
DeepSeek could be the start of a new phase in how investors think about A.I., said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. He called it a “big slap in the face” for investors that could reset the way they calculate risk.
The Chinese company unveiled its new system last month but grabbed the tech world’s attention late last week with a research paper detailing how it built the technology. That “serves as a reminder that competition in the global A.I. arena is intensifying, and Nvidia may not be in the pole position forever,” Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo Bank, wrote in a research note.«

Doesn’t take long for Wall Street to join the dots on this stuff, does it. Whose stock didn’t fall? Apple’s. You could say: because it isn’t reliant on Nvidia or other AI cloud models; it can use on-device AI. Or: Wall Street thinks Apple isn’t in the AI game yet.
unique link to this extract

The potential impact of 25% tariffs on Canadian GDP • The Lens

Stephanie Kelton: »The world has awakened to the power of Deepseek, the rival to OpenAI’s Model o1 that has tech stocks reeling. I played around with Deepseek for a couple of hours yesterday, and I talked with a number of friends who are already using it to do some pretty advanced coding and problem solving.
Early this morning, Apollo’s Torsten Slok shared a new report from the Bank of Canada. He highlighted a simulation the Bank ran to assess the potential impact on Canada if the US imposes a 25% tariffs on all exports into the United States. The results show that Canadian GDP would decline by a whopping 6%.
I wondered whether Deepseek would come up with a similar estimate. So I asked it: “create a model and run a simulation to show the impact on Canadian GDP if the US imposes 25% tariff on all exports from Canada to the US”.«

This is very interesting and impressive, particularly because it shows every single step of its “reasoning” – and she was explicit about requiring a model so she could prod it.
unique link to this extract

US‘s wind and solar will generate more power than coal in 2024 • Ars Technica

John Timmer: »In the first 11 months of 2024, the US saw its electrical use grow by 2.8%, or roughly 100 Terawatt-hours. While there’s typically year-to-year variation in use due to weather-driven demand, the US’s consumption has largely been flat since the early 2000s. There are plenty of reasons to expect increased demand, including the growth of data centers and the electrification of heating and transit, but so far, there’s been no clear sign of it in the data.
As a result, the rapid growth of renewables has largely displaced fossil fuel generation—specifically coal—rather than meeting increased demand. Despite the rise in demand, however, the long-term decline in coal has continued in 2024, with generation via coal down by nearly 5%. This will mean that this is the first year that wind and solar will combine to outproduce coal. Collectively, they’ll account for roughly 17% of the US’s energy production, while coal will only provide about 15%.
The boost in wind and solar production has also been larger than the increase in generation from natural gas, which remains the single largest source of power on the grid, generating nearly 44% of the electricity used in the US.«

Trump won’t be able to reverse the abandonment of coal; it’s like commanding water to run uphill. But the nuclear plants, are needed urgently.
unique link to this extract

Automation in retail is even worse than you thought • The Nation

Ann Larson: »From self-checkout machines to payment by app, technology is rapidly changing the way we buy groceries. Progressive members of Congress are sounding the alarm: Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and 13 colleagues wrote to the CEO of the supermarket behemoth Kroger in November about electronic price tags (often called electronic shelf labels or ESLs). These digital displays allow companies to change prices automatically from a mobile app. Tlaib warned that this so-called “dynamic pricing” permits retailers to adjust prices based on their whims.
Just as Uber raises prices during storms or rush hour, retailers like Kroger use ESLs to adjust prices based on factors like time of day or the weather. Supermarkets could conceivably mine a shopper’s personal data to set prices as high as possible. “My concern is that these tools will be abused in the pursuit of profit, surging prices on essential goods in areas with fewer and fewer grocery stores,” Tlaib wrote.
In August, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey wrote to Kroger raising similar concerns about price gouging. Noting that the company has already implemented the technology in hundreds of stores across the county, they warned that “ESLs may help Kroger extract maximum profits from consumers at a time when…high grocery prices are a leading concern among Americans who are concerned about inflation.”
Warren and Casey also voiced concern about Kroger’s partnership with Microsoft to install facial-recognition technology in stores, which could be used to identify individual customers: When a shopper approaches the shelf, she would see a price calibrated specifically for her. The next shopper might pay a different amount based on their profile. Retailers could use shopper data to charge higher prices to those who can afford to pay more, but since stores do not have to disclose who is making pricing decisions or why, the senators worry that shoppers on a budget are particularly vulnerable. “It is outrageous that, as families continue to struggle to pay to put food on the table, grocery giants like Kroger continue to roll out surge pricing and other corporate profiteering schemes,” they wrote.
It’s unclear whether Kroger will respond to the lawmakers. The company ignored a prior letter from Representative Tlaib and previously dismissed concerns about ESLs, saying that the negative effects of the technology have been exaggerated.«

If only lawmakers could pass laws that might, you know, stop such abuse of facial recognition and ESLs. Wouldn’t that be a thing?
unique link to this extract

Intel: the Gordian Knot • Digits to Dollars

Jay Goldberg: »A takeover of Intel has become a Gordian knot. The big problem is funding the company’s fabs, which will will require tens of billions of dollars and years to get back on track. Few companies, and no private equity funds, really want to deal with that large of a funding need and time horizon. On the other hand, the US government has given Intel a lot of money, and so simply shutting down the fabs is deeply problematic. No one wants the fabs, but the company cannot be sold without them.
In theory, the new administration could give a buyer approval to shut the fabs, but if someone has enough political capital for that purpose, why not use that political capital to get some direct government support? In speaking with investors, our impression is that the Street assumes that the only way to save Intel is for the government to intervene. We maintain that this is not a hard requirement, but recognize that this is now the common perception of the situation. There are of course rumors that a certain highly-connected, deeply troubling, tech mogul has a plan to buy the company. And from the very narrow perspective of saving the US’s semis manufacturing capacity that may be what it takes.
We are increasingly convinced that the only way for Intel to survive is for someone to buy them and remove the board. Unfortunately for the company, and the semis industry, that path looks very challenging.«

Every day that goes past brings Intel closer to its crisis point. It can’t go on being in distress forever. The question is, what is its salvation – if any? Just because you haven’t thought about Intel for a bit doesn’t mean it hasn’t been getting deeper into trouble.
unique link to this extract

After TikTok, your home WiFi may be the US’s next Chinese tech ban target • CNBC

Kevin Williams: »While the TikTok ban has lawmakers scurrying and chatter about Chinese influence over U.S. tech at a fever pitch, another danger is lurking. One of Amazon’s top-selling router brands, TP-Link, has been under scrutiny by regulators as posing a threat to American infrastructure. Experts worry that China could exploit the routers to launch attacks on critical infrastructure or steal sensitive information.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Democrat-IL) and Rep. John Moolenaar (Republican-MI) sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce last summer, touching off a flurry of investigations and calls for a ban. The letter, which the Wall Street Journal first reported, flagged “unusual vulnerabilities” and required compliance with PRC law as disconcerting. “When combined with the PRC government’s everyday use of SOHO [small office/home office] routers like TP-Link to perpetrate extensive cyberattacks in the United States, it becomes significantly alarming,” the letter stated.
But so far, no action has been taken, and Krishnamoorthi is concerned.
“I am not aware of any plans to get them out,” Krishnamoorthi said. He pointed to the government’s “rip and replace” plan with Huawei network equipment as a precedent that could be followed. The government mandated in 2020 that companies rid themselves of Huawei equipment, which was deemed to pose a national security threat. Efforts to remove the equipment are still ongoing.  
According to data he cited, TP-Link has a 65% share of the U.S. router market, and its success has followed a similar playbook used by China with other technology: make a lot more than they need, export the surplus to undercut the competition, and use the technology to backdoor access or to disrupt.
…The routers were among brands in the market linked to hacks on European officials and the Typhoon Volt attacks.«

Among brands. Though they don’t have a great record for security.
unique link to this extract

Elon Musk email to X staff: ‘we’re barely breaking even’ • The Verge

Richard Lawler: »Ever since Elon Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter he’s claimed the company, now called X, is in “a very dire situation from a revenue standpoint.”
Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that banks are preparing a coordinated move to sell off some of the $13bn in debt they loaned Musk to finance the deal. It mentions an email sent to employees this month, also confirmed by The Verge, where the Chief Twit said, “…we’ve witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes,” but also claimed, “Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even.”
Part of the reason Bank of America, Barclays, and Morgan Stanley are holding so much of the debt is from trying to avoid selling at a loss after economic conditions changed, and Musk had an extended court battle attempting to get out of the deal. While equity investors have reportedly slashed the value of their stakes by as much as 78 %, the Journal reports, “banks hope to sell senior debt at 90-95 cents on the dollar, while retaining more junior holdings.”«

If Musk really bought it thinking it was going to be a massive moneymaking enterprise.. he may have mistaken it for Facebook, which Twitter did not resemble in the slightest. News is not profitable, and Twitter is in many ways more like a news product than anything.
unique link to this extract

What really happens to your phone when it’s stolen • The Times

Dipesh Gadher and Harry Yorke: »he UK’s most senior police officer has accused tech giants including Apple and Google of “enabling” a phone theft epidemic that gangsters have turned into a “global criminal business”.
Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, disclosed that about a third of all activity by organised crime groups in London now revolves around stolen smartphones and other thefts. “They are making a fortune out of this,” he told The Sunday Times. “The organised crime business model is enabled by the reusability and resaleability of stolen phones.”
Rowley said the tech companies had allowed the trade in second-hand phones to proliferate by failing to introduce sufficient security measures to permanently disable devices. “I’m sure it’s inadvertent, but it’s enabling the criminal business models, which are leading to tens of millions of pounds being made out of this,” he said.«

The article describes how phones are stolen – out of people’s hands, from shops, from delivery vans – for organised crime gangs. Later, It continues:
»Rowley is now calling on the tech companies to introduce two short-term solutions that he argues will have a swift and “big effect” on the criminal trade.
Initially, he wants Apple and Google to automatically prevent stolen phones from being able to reconnect to cloud services, which he says would have a “suppressive effect” because it “disables so much of the use of the phone”.
He is calling on manufacturers to make each handset’s unique 15-digit international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number more accessible so that victims can easily report a theft, and buyers and police are able to check swiftly whether a device has been stolen.
In the longer term, he would like to see manufacturers, including Samsung, introduce the equivalent of a kill switch, which when flipped remotely would “digitally destroy” a stolen phone and prevent it from being reused anywhere in the world. Industry experts, however, believe such a drastic move could be problematic, because many phones that are reported missing or stolen are in fact later found by their owners.«

Who seriously records their IMEI while they have their phone? (It’s in Settings – About on an iPhone.) The problem is that phones are being stolen while unlocked, so they can be wiped and repurposed. Apple and Google have locked down phones so you can’t do much if they’re locked. The IMEI idea isn’t a bad one, but hard to implement.
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