A new motorcycle helmet promises all-round vision thanks to AI. Will that reduce accidents? CC-licensed photo by sprklg 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. Envisioned. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

This AI motorcycle helmet promises 100% blind-spot elimination • New Atlas

Utkarsh Sood:

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AI has now made its way to motorcycle helmets. Gone are the days of cautious shoulder checks. Intelligent Cranium Helmets promises to provide riders with the highest level of protection by combining improved visibility, crash detection, and seamless connectivity into a single, high-tech helmet.

After showing a design concept back in 2015, the company has finally been able to produce an actual mass-produced, retail-ready product that is full as a tick with futuristic functionality. It’s called the iC-R, which is actually a range of four smart motorcycle helmet models, each with an added set of features to tickle your fancy. It was unveiled at CES 2025, and proved successful at garnering a fair amount of attention in the moto world.

But first, who is Intelligent Cranium Helmets? The Virginia-based company started in 2015 with a safety-first smart helmet tech approach that put a prime focus on integrating artificial intelligence into its product range.

“While driving to work one day, I noticed a number of motorcyclists traveling in the same direction I was,” says CEO and co-founder, Ambrose Dodson. “I observed the motorcyclists repeatedly turning their heads whenever they needed to change lanes, and I said to myself – there has to be a safer way for these riders to ride.”

The focal point of the AI helmet is its 240º field of reverse camera vision, which stitches together footage from two rear-mounted cameras into a wrapraound rear view video feed. This feed can be displayed right above the rider’s eyeline in a heads-up display (HUD).

The rider’s own visual field of view covers somewhere around a further 120º, adding up to what Intelligent Cranium claims is a full 360º of visual awareness. What’s more, there’s a 1080p/60fps action camera at the front of the helmet that covers a 152º angle.

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I’m reminded of XKCD 538, “Security”, which overlooks how incredible technology is foiled by simple force. And this is nice, but won’t stop drivers pulling out of side roads or affect any of the most common motorcycle crash causes.
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Cutting-edge Chinese “reasoning” model rivals OpenAI o1—and it’s free to download • Ars Technica

Benj Edwards:

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Alongside the release of the main DeepSeek-R1-Zero and DeepSeek-R1 models, DeepSeek published six smaller “DeepSeek-R1-Distill” versions ranging from 1.5 billion to 70 billion parameters. These distilled models are based on existing open source architectures like Qwen and Llama, trained using data generated from the full R1 model. The smallest version can run on a laptop, while the full model requires far more substantial computing resources.

The releases immediately caught the attention of the AI community because most existing open-weights models—which can often be run and fine-tuned on local hardware—have lagged behind proprietary models like OpenAI’s o1 in so-called reasoning benchmarks. Having these capabilities available in an MIT-licensed model that anyone can study, modify, or use commercially potentially marks a shift in what’s possible with publicly available AI models.

“They are SO much fun to run, watching them think is hilarious,” independent AI researcher Simon Willison told Ars in a text message. Willison tested one of the smaller models and described his experience in a post on his blog: “Each response starts with a … pseudo-XML tag containing the chain of thought used to help generate the response,” noting that even for simple prompts, the model produces extensive internal reasoning before output.

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Ben Thompson at Stratechery, who follows this stuff in a manner that is a bit more reader-friendly than Willison, is very excited at the prospect of a locally-run LLM that fits in a suitably enabled home computer.

It feels like this stuff is rapidly becoming commoditised; the only thing you’ll need is a computer with LOTS more RAM. Which takes us back to the good old 1990s/2000s, when getting more RAM was almost more important than having a faster CPU.
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Gaming on Apple Vision Pro could see huge growth soon, suggest game makers • 9to5Mac

Ryan Christoffel:

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As published by GamesBeat, a recent Game Developers Conference survey sought to gauge engagement from developers with Apple’s new spatial computing platform.

The data points to big growth coming soon. Here’s what it says:

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Although only 8% of VR/AR developers are currently making games for Apple vision OS, the platform looks to be growing its foothold. Almost one-fifth (18%) of respondents say their next games will be on the platform, and one-fourth are interested in Apple’s VR headset.

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These three data points are all interesting in their own ways.

First, it’s a bit surprising that 8% of VR/AR game developers are currently working on a visionOS project. We certainly haven’t seen much from their efforts yet, as Vision Pro gaming options have been scarce so far. That number is encouraging to hear.

Second, the fact that 18% of respondents confirmed their next game would be on Vision Pro shows how much growth we should see soon.

The final question is especially relevant too, especially when comparing visionOS interest to that of other platforms.

Notably, 26% of respondents said that visionOS was of high interest to them as a game developer, while only 25% said the same for PlayStation VR2—a platform that might be about to bolster Apple’s Vision Pro efforts.

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I’ll believe it when I see it, because the Vision Pro just doesn’t have a big enough user base to be attractive. That would be the most sunk of sunk costs.

The Gamesbeat link is worth reading, because it distils an analysis of the current situation and mood in games. Which is: gloomy.
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Trump Admin accused of using AI to draft Executive Orders • Futurism

Maggie Harrison Dupré:

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Mere hours after being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday, returning President Donald Trump got to work signing dozens — and counting — of executive orders, which range from commands for the US to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization to ordering an end to birthright citizenship and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”

But while the executive actions range in scope, legal experts have called attention to some curious common threads: bizarre typos, formatting errors and oddities, and stilted language — familiar artifacts that have led to speculation that those who penned them might have turned to AI for help.

“Lots of reporting suggested that, this time around, Trump and his lawyers would avoid the sloppy legal work that plagued his first administration so they’d fare better in the courts,” Slate journalist and legal expert Mark Joseph Stern remarked last night in a Bluesky post. “I see no evidence of that in this round of executive orders.”

“This is poor, slipshod work,” he added, before alleging that the actions were “obviously assisted by AI.”
In another post, Stern pointed to a deeply questionable section of an executive action titled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” which details how the US will take advantage of the state’s “untapped supply of natural resources,” in part by drilling for fossil fuels in regions of previously-protected natural land.

In that section, the order includes a numbered list of several distinct Public Land Orders to be reinstated. Each land order, however, is listed next to the number one — an apparent slip-up, we should point out, that we’ve noticed on seemingly AI-generated content in the past.

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I wouldn’t rule out it just being slipshod humans, given it’s the Trump team. If they did use AI, the output is probably greatly improved from the original.
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Weight-loss jabs linked to reduced risk of 42 conditions including dementia • The Guardian

Nicola Davis:

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People with diabetes taking medications found in weight-loss jabs have a reduced risk of 42 conditions, research has found, paving the way for such drugs being used to treat a host of health problems.

The most comprehensive study of its kind showed that psychotic disorders, infections and dementia were among conditions found to be less likely to occur when using GLP-1RAs, which are found in the medications Saxenda, Wegovy and Mounjaro.

The researchers compared health outcomes for people with diabetes who received usual care with those also given drugs such as liraglutide, semaglutide and tirzepatide. While the team revealed the risk of many conditions was lower for the latter group, the risk of other conditions, including arthritic disorders, was increased.

And the scientists say that the benefits are not just restricted to people with diabetes, suggesting they could also be found in other people using the jabs, such as those who take them to fight obesity.

“We only studied people with diabetes but there is no biologic or clinical reason to think that the beneficial and risk profiles would be very different in people without diabetes,” said Dr Ziyad Al-Aly, a co-author of the research from Washington University in St Louis.

However, Aly said it was unlikely people without obesity would experience a similar range of potential benefits. He added that some of the positive associations might be linked to weight loss, while it was also important to consider the risks.

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Greater weight leads to higher risk of psychotic disorders, infections and dementia? (For the latter, the study only has 3.5 years of data, so that seems an odd conclusion.)
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The making of Community Notes • Asterisk

Asterisk magazine:

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what falls out of those later studies that compare Community Notes to expert fact checks as well — the trust is higher. 

Lucas [Neumann, product designer at X]: Yes. But one thing to note about that outcome is that we had to put a lot of work into overcoming people’s priors. If you go back to 2021, and someone sees a tweet with a box on it, they immediately think, “Oh, this is a fact check.” They would assume that Twitter wrote it, or that the Twitter CEO decided that it should be there. What we’re taking one hour to tell you here is something we had to explain to them in a split second with just one line of copy. Arriving at that design and what those words are — I don’t think anyone here has ever done so many iterations on one rectangle. Things like, what’s the shade of blue that will make people calmer when they see this? The original design that Keith made was an orange box with “This is misleading information” at the top. Coming from that design to what we have now was a learning process. 

Keith [Coleman, VP of product at X]: That line — “Readers added context they thought people might want to know” — we iterated on that line so many times to find something that could succinctly describe what had happened here, how this came to be, that this was by the people, not by the company, and that it was there for your information, not to tell you what to think. 

Emily [Thai, formerly University of Chicago consultant to the Birdwatch scheme which became Community Notes]: I don’t think you will ever hear any of us — anybody who worked on this project — ever say the word “fact check.” There’s a care to avoid using that phrasing in any of the things we say about the product, any of the language about it, anything on the product surface, because it’s entirely about providing context and information and then letting you make your own decision about how to trust it.

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This is a long but very interesting interview with this team.
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Netflix UK audience reach overtakes BBC1 for first time in 2024 • Deadline

Jake Kanter:

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Netflix was the most-watched TV service in the UK for three months last year, overtaking dominant domestic network BBC1 for the first time, according to a Deadline analysis.

The unseating of Britain’s most popular channel may not have been permanent, but represents a possible inflection point in the battle between traditional broadcasters and U.S. streaming giants. The BBC said it was “meaningless” to compare the entirety of Netflix with a single channel and that its portfolio had double the number of viewers of the Squid Game streamer.

Viewing figures from BARB, the UK’s official ratings body, showed that Netflix’s audience reach overtook BBC1 in September, October, and November 2024. For these three months, Netflix’s average audience reach stood at 43.2M, compared with BBC1’s 42.3M viewers.

BBC1 pulled ahead again in December, despite Netflix posting a record reach of 46.4M after streaming series including UK original Black Doves. BBC1’s reach was 48.4M last month, no doubt buoyed by festive hits including Gavin & Stacey and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

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Yet you never hear anyone complaining about the news on Netflix, or demanding it be defunded. (Nor listening to its radio stations or reading its news website.) A basic ad-free Netflix subscription will cost £132 per year (likely going up presently, see below); the standard BBC licence fee is £169.50. Amazing what that extra £37.50 gets you.
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Netflix is raising prices again – The Verge

Emma Roth:

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Netflix is raising prices yet again. In its latest earnings report released Tuesday, the streaming service announced that “we are adjusting prices today across most plans” in the US, Canada, Portugal, and Argentina.

Netflix spokesperson MoMo Zhou tells The Verge that the ad-supported tier is increasing from $6.99 to $7.99 per month, while the standard ad-free tier will go from $15.49 to $17.99 per month. Its highest-priced premium tier is also increasing from $22.99 to $24.99 per month. The price hikes will go into effect during subscribers’ next billing cycle, according to Zhou.

“As we continue to invest in programming and deliver more value for our members, we will occasionally ask our members to pay a little more so that we can re-invest to further improve Netflix,” the company’s letter to investors says. Netflix last raised the price of its subscription in October 2023. This is also the first time it’s raising the price of this ad-supported plan, which it rolled out in 2022.

Netflix added 19 million new subscribers over the past few months — the most in its history during a single quarter — bringing its global total to 300 million.

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A graphic with the story shows that since 2015, prices have risen by 25% (no HD, one screen) to 100% (HD or 4K, two to four screens). Has the content really got that much more expensive to make/license?
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Reeves intervenes in UK car finance mis-selling case to protect lenders • Financial Times

George Parker, Alistair Gray and Akila Quinio:

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In April the Supreme Court is due to hear an appeal brought by car loan providers challenging an October ruling from the Court of Appeal that sided with consumers who complained about “secret” commissions on car loans.

The judgment that it was unlawful for banks to pay a commission to a car dealer without the customer’s informed consent sent shockwaves through the UK banking system and triggered thousands of pounds in compensation payments from lenders FirstRand Bank and Close Brothers.

HSBC analysts have estimated the total cost of compensation could reach £44bn, echoing the £50bn paid out by banks after the scandal of the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI).

In a submission to the Supreme Court, seen by the Financial Times, the Treasury claims the case has “potential to cause considerable economic harm and could impact the availability and cost of motor finance for consumers”.

The Treasury application said that the case might “generate a perception that regulation in the UK is uncertain”. Last week Reeves called in regulators to push them into sweeping away rules that hinder growth.

It also argues that if liability is established, then the Treasury would seek to persuade the Supreme Court that “any remedy should be proportionate to the loss actually suffered by the consumer and avoid conferring a windfall”.

Treasury insiders argue that rather than taking sides with the banks against wronged consumers, the government wants to maintain the viability of a finance sector vital for the purchase of both new and second-hand cars.

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OK, but how much did the banks get from this? How much did it push prices up? Why do banks get away with it again and again?
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

On February 28 all seven planets should be observable from the ground in an arc across the sky – a syzygy. CC-licensed photo by Alan Levine 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. Well aligned. 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 powerful AI tool that cops (or stalkers) can use to geolocate photos in seconds • 404 Media

Joseph Cox:

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A powerful AI tool can predict with high accuracy the location of photos based on features inside the image itself—such as vegetation, architecture, and the distance between buildings—in seconds, with the company now marketing the tool to law enforcement officers and government agencies.

Called GeoSpy, made by a firm called Graylark Technologies out of Boston, the tool has also been used for months by members of the public, with many making videos marveling at the technology, and some asking for help with stalking specific women. The company’s founder has aggressively pushed back against such requests, and GeoSpy closed off public access to the tool after 404 Media contacted him for comment.  

Based on 404 Media’s own tests and conversations with other people who have used it and investors, GeoSpy could radically change what information can be learned from photos posted online, and by whom. Law enforcement officers with very little necessary training, private threat intelligence companies, and stalkers could, and in some cases already are, using this technology. Dedicated open source intelligence (OSINT) professionals can of course do this too, but the training and skillset necessary can take years to build up. GeoSpy allows essentially anyone to do it.

“We are working on something for LE [law enforcement] but it’s 🤐,” Daniel Heinen, the founder of Graylark and GeoSpy, wrote in a message to the GeoSpy community Discord in July. 

GeoSpy has been trained on millions of images from around the world, according to marketing material available online. From that, the tool is able to recognize “distinct geographical markers such as architectural styles, soil characteristics, and their spatial relationships.” That marketing material says GeoSpy has strong coverage in the United States, but that it also “maintains global capabilities for location identification.”

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It is impressive, as 404 Media demonstrated for itself by creating a free account and testing it on a couple of known pictures.

But: this seems like a useful product if its use can be limited to police.
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Seven planets are lining up in the sky next month. This is what it really means • BBC Future

Jonathan O’Callaghan:

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Six planets – Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – are currently visible in the night sky. During just one night in late February, they will be joined by Mercury, a rare seven-planet alignment visible in the sky.

But such events are not just a spectacle for stargazers – they can also have a real impact on our Solar System and offer the potential to gain new insights into our place within it.

The eight major planets of our Solar System orbit the Sun in the same flat plane, and all at different speeds. Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, completes an orbit – a year for the planet – in 88 days. Earth’s year, of course, is 365 days, while at the upper end, Neptune takes a whopping 60,190 days, or about 165 Earth years, to complete a single revolution of our star.

The different speeds of the planets mean that, on occasion, several of them can be roughly lined up on the same side of the Sun. From Earth, if the orbits line up just right, we can see multiple planets in our night sky at the same time. In rare events, all the planets will line up such that they all appear in our night sky together along the ecliptic, the path traced by the Sun.

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are all bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, while Uranus and Neptune require binoculars or a telescope to spot.

In January and February, we can witness this event taking place. The planets are not exactly lined up, so they will appear in an arc across the sky due to their orbital plane in the Solar System. During clear nights in January and February, all of the planets except Mercury will be visible – an event sometimes called a planetary parade. On 28 February, though – weather permitting – all seven planets will be visible, a great spectacle for observers on the ground.

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This is known as a syzygy (pronounced “sig-zee”) – though you only need two celestial objects for that. Here we’re going for the big one. Anyway, put 28 February in your diary.
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Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s CEO, seems determined to wreck WordPress • Digital CxO

Steven Vaughan-Nichols:

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Many businesses are now wondering if they should continue to rely on WordPress, thanks to Mullenweg’s erratic behavior.

Their fears were aggravated when Automattic announced on January 15, 2025, that it would drastically reduce its contributions to the WordPress open-source project. Specifically, Automattic scaled back its weekly contribution from approximately 3,988 hours to just 45 hours. The company’s programmers will, instead, “focus on for-profit projects within Automattic, such as WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack, and WooCommerce.”

It’s worth noting that WordPress.org, which hosts the open-source version of WordPress, relies on the sites and services Mullenweg controls.

Why? Automattic blames the WP Engine lawsuits. “This legal action diverts significant time and energy that could otherwise be directed toward supporting WordPress’s growth and health. We remain hopeful that WP Engine will reconsider this legal attack, allowing us to refocus our efforts on contributions that benefit the broader WordPress ecosystem.”

What the developers, who will now work on for-profit programs, have to do with the lawsuit remains an open question.

In the meantime, more and more developers and users are looking for a WordPress fork as a possible answer. WordPress is licensed under the GPLv2, so forking it is simple legally.

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This has been bubbling under for ages and ages, but now seems to have reached another, um, fork in the road.
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Thoughts for Inauguration Day • Eating Policy

Jennifer Pahlka:

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you don’t have to feel that the system is fundamentally rigged against you personally to entertain the possible benefits of “the rule of men,” or perhaps we could just say people. The reality is that people are frustrated with a system in which it feels like laws — a complex, tangled, often contradictory, seemingly arbitrary web of rules that most people don’t understand — dictate outcomes at the expense of reasonable human judgement. Philip Howard [in his book The Death of Common Sense: how law is suffocating America] provides an endless stream of examples of rules winning out when common sense could have prevailed, like the homeless shelter in New York that couldn’t be built without installing a prohibitively expensive elevator, despite the fact that only the first floor was to be used, or the public school custodian who, despite being perfectly capable of fixing the broken window, instead had to file paperwork to order union labor to do so, leaving the window broken for months while the paperwork made its way through the bureaucracy and a team could be assigned.

These aren’t edge cases. They are just the routine results of what Dan Davies calls the unaccountability machine, in his excellent book of the same name. Rule by people would allow for judgement, for just fixing the window. Rule by law leaves the cold air freezing the students while costs spiral.

When Biden took power back from Trump in 2021, there was enormous relief among lawyers in government. I know of one agency in which the mere statement “we will respect the rule of law,” spoken that first day of the Biden administration, elicited tears from otherwise buttoned-up bureaucrats. It’s entirely understandable, even touching, given the chaos that had ensued at that agency. But what followed during the next four years, across a Democratically-led federal government, was a retreat to the safety of process and procedure. It felt good and right after the lawlessness of the Trump years to luxuriate in its antidote.

But there is a cost to that refuge. Quinta Jurecic, also writing in the Times, describes the cost to the Department of Justice, whose leadership under Biden vowed to hold Trump accountable for the January 6th assault on the Capitol, and failed to do so, in part because of how slowly it moved.

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Pahlka’s point is: maybe this mess does need some sort of Gordian knot treatment. Back in 2017, she wrote a post which began “remember, the status quo isn’t worth protecting”, and she reiterates that now.
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I’m a 17-year-old TikTok junkie. I need this ban • The New York Times

Juliet Weisfogel:

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Every day, I get home from school around 3:30 p.m., with a list of assignments that, if I’m focused, should take until 6 to complete. But I don’t usually end up finishing them until 11. Why? TikTok. It all starts at 3:45, when I typically flop down on my bed and open the app for “just a minute.”

But by the time I get up from bed, that “minute” has swelled into several hours. At the moment I am writing this, I could instead distract myself by looking at an orange Muppet-like monster detailing an outlandish and embarrassing story from a non-puppet person’s life. I’ll “like” one video, comment on another and keep my thumb moving. I open the comments on each to laugh and commiserate with others; oftentimes, the harmony in our responses creates the illusion of community — even though we are each very much alone with our phones. I love TikTok so much that I cannot imagine a life without it. And yet I desperately need a life without it.

This app has infiltrated American culture. The national TikTok ban, which entered into force on Sunday, was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court on Friday. Now, the Google and Apple app stores will be penalized for carrying it and the app has gone dark. President Biden has indicated he will leave enforcement of the ban up to the incoming administration. It still remains to be seen whether President-elect Donald Trump will be able to halt the prohibition once he takes office.

Given my love of TikTok, you might think the notion of losing it would horrify me, and yet, it fills me with hope. You see, I’m a 17-year-old TikTok junkie, and I wholeheartedly support a law that would sever me forever from my fix. My support for this ban has nothing to do with national security. I don’t know whether my name, email address and phone number are stored in Washington, Texas or China. Perhaps I should care more about that, but what worries me most right now is the future of my generation.

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There is the possibility in the law as written for Trump to institute a 90-day pause on the law. Those are going to be three interesting months.
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Welcome to the era of gangster tech regulation • The Verge

Elizabeth Lopatto:

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Our tech overlords all have problems, and they want to buy the solutions. I guess it was easier than making products people actually like.

“First Buddy” Elon Musk spent at least a quarter of a billion dollars electing Donald Trump. Corporations and wealthy donors have sent half a billion more since he was elected. Amazon, Google, Uber, Microsoft, and Meta donated $1m each to Trump’s inauguration, as did Apple’s Tim Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. (Joe Biden’s inauguration hardly received this kind of largesse.) “In the first term, everybody was fighting me,” Trump said in December.  “In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.”

Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, the three wealthiest men on Earth, are reportedly attending the inauguration; they were to be seated with elected officials and cabinet nominees, before the ceremony was moved indoors. (Cook is also reportedly attending.) Musk will have office space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, according to The New York Times. 

So what are these men buying?

Real market opportunities are rarer than they used to be. Tech executives and investors have become openly resentful about their products’ societal repercussions and an unconscionable lack of adulation from the citizenry. Zuckerberg in particular seems bored with Facebook, his major moneymaker, and has been searching for a new toy.  He spent at least $46 billion plus the cost of a company rebrand on the Metaverse, only to find that his Big New Thing didn’t have legs. His latest Big New Thing is AR glasses, which are heavily reliant on whatever AI (and, likely, tariff) policy Trump will dictate. 

Nearly every major tech company has at least one lawsuit pending. Apple has an antitrust suit pending. Google just lost one. There’s also a Federal Trade Commission suit that could peel Instagram and WhatsApp off Meta. Trump cares little about the actual purpose of antitrust enforcement: making companies compete for customers with good products. All the pending litigation is just leverage for Trump to punish anyone who doesn’t fall in line.

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This is indeed the new reality. Still, those checks and balances in the US Constitution are bound to kick in real soon now, aren’t they?
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The Pentagon says AI is speeding up its ‘kill chain’ • TechCrunch

Maxwell Zeff:

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Leading AI developers, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, are threading a delicate needle to sell software to the United States military: make the Pentagon more efficient, without letting their AI kill people.

Today, their tools are not being used as weapons, but AI is giving the Department of Defense a “significant advantage” in identifying, tracking, and assessing threats, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Officer, Dr. Radha Plumb, told TechCrunch in a phone interview.

“We obviously are increasing the ways in which we can speed up the execution of kill chain so that our commanders can respond in the right time to protect our forces,” said Plumb.

The “kill chain” refers to the military’s process of identifying, tracking, and eliminating threats, involving a complex system of sensors, platforms, and weapons. Generative AI is proving helpful during the planning and strategizing phases of the kill chain, according to Plumb.

…when TechCrunch asked if the Pentagon buys and operates weapons that are fully autonomous – ones with no humans in the loop – Plumb rejected the idea on principle.

“No, is the short answer,” said Plumb. “As a matter of both reliability and ethics, we’ll always have humans involved in the decision to employ force, and that includes for our weapon systems.”
The word “autonomy” is somewhat ambiguous and has sparked debates all over the tech industry about when automated systems – such as AI coding agents, self-driving cars, or self-firing weapons – become truly independent.

Plumb said the idea that automated systems are independently making life and death decisions was “too binary,” and the reality was less “science fiction-y.”

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I’m surprised the Pentagon uses a phrase like “kill chain” when it could instead say “threat eliminator” or something less kill-y.
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I shook Elon Musk warmly by the hand…more than 20 years ago • Status-Q

Quentin Stafford-Fraser did indeed meet Rocket Man way back when:

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Though he neither founded Tesla nor designed the cars himself, his perseverance, vision, and willingness to spend his cash where others weren’t, has dragged an entire industry, mostly kicking and screaming, into a far better place, both technologically and for the planet.

I remember the shock of traditional car dealers in 2016, trying hard to sell a few more cars at discounts to fill their next quarter’s quota, when it was announced that quarter of a million people had put down a deposit for the recently-announced Model 3: a car they had never even seen. It took that kind of major eathquake to rattle the enormous global inertia of the fossil-burning world and to kick investment in battery-production up to a whole new level. I won’t pretend Musk was doing all of this for purely selfless reasons, or that he did it entirely on his own, but many thousands of Greta Thunbergs combined could not dream of having such an impact. He changed the world.

Now, it also soon became apparent that Musk wasn’t, let’s say, an entirely reliable figure! It’s funny now, looking back, to think my main criticism of him used to be his inability to hit his unrealistic deadlines, and the number of his announced products that never saw the light of day at all. There are drivers now on their third or fourth Tesla who still can’t get the ‘Full Self-Driving’ feature they paid for with their first!

But since then, it won’t have escaped your notice that almost every day’s news has included some new and bigger reason to doubt, dislike, ridicule or fear him, and even the significant amount of slack I was willing to cut him has long since been exhausted.

But here’s the thing. My Tesla is still an annoyingly wonderful car.

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The Greta Thunberg point is a good one: similarly, one could ask how much change Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil has actually achieved, versus solar panel and battery storage vendors.
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Brussels orders X to hand over documents on algorithm • Financial Times

Javier Espinoza and Andy Bounds:

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Brussels has ordered Elon Musk to fully disclose recent changes made to recommendations on X, stepping up an investigation into the role of the social media platform in European politics.

The expanded probe by the European Commission, announced on Friday, requires X to hand over internal documents regarding its recommendation algorithm. The Commission also issued a “retention order” for all relevant documents relating to how the algorithm could be amended in future.

In addition, the EU regulator requested access to information on how the social media network moderates and amplifies content.

The move follows complaints from politicians in Germany that X’s algorithm is promoting content by the far right ahead of the country’s February 23 elections. Musk has come out in favour of Alternative for Germany (AfD), arguing that it will save Europe’s largest nation from “economic and cultural collapse”. The German domestic intelligence service has designated parts of the AfD as right-wing extremist.

Speaking on Friday, German chancellor Olaf Scholz toughened his language towards the world’s richest man, describing Musk’s support for the AfD as “completely unacceptable”. The party is currently second place in the polls with around 20% support, ahead of Scholz’s Social Democrats and behind the opposition Christian Democratic Union.

Earlier in the week, Germany’s defence ministry and foreign ministry said they were suspending their activity on X, with the defence ministry saying it had become increasingly “unhappy” with the platform.

«

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Please don’t force dark mode • Vishnu’s Pages

Vishnu Haridas:

»

The real problem is the contrast ratio between the text and the background when using dark mode.

For example, pure white text on a pitch black background can strain my eyes and be very difficult to read. The contrast ratio of this combination is 21:1 (black background, pure white text). Here’s an example paragraph:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

However, light gray text on a dark gray background is easy on my eyes. Here the background is #666 and the text is #E0E0E0 which creates a contrast ratio of 4.34:1.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

In summary, higher contrast ratios in dark mode cause discomfort for my eyes. But when I say ‘higher’, just how high can it go?

«

I hate dark mode. Never use it. Hate it when people post stuff using it.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

To Walgreens, digital refrigerator doors which display images of contents sounded cool – until the makers blanked them in a dispute. CC-licensed photo by Phillip Pessar 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. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

No, you can’t use your $6,299.00 Canon camera as a webcam. That will cost $5/month • Roman Zipp

Roman Zipp takes some impressive photos. But:

»

Last year, I bought a Canon G5 X II camera, which I wanted to use mainly for taking pictures at concerts. For me, it was the best match of focal range (zoom) and sensor size (more light) of any compact camera I’ve compared.

Because I’m only using this camera for a small range of events, it’s just collecting dust in the meantime. So why not use it as a webcam with my Macbook? Admittedly, it did not cost me the $6,300 from the article’s title; much closer to $900. Nonetheless, everything I’m describing translates to every other Canon camera model!

I tried this at first in 2024 with macOS 14, which did not work. I had a similar experience with FUJIFILM’s X Webcam software where either the camera was not recognized by the software, or the camera feed will freeze or simply be not available within other apps.

As of January 2025 with macOS 15 Sequoia, these issues have been resolved for me.

Well, actually, only if you are able to download the software at all. Seems like their Microsoft IIS server is having some issues. The following error page will be presented to you, after they asked you for your full legal name and mail address – without which you can not download the software.

So I was really excited when I finally found a downloadable file on the Canon webpage which was not blocked by a faulty newsletter grift and saw the live feed of my camera!

Except the excitement didn’t last long. Nearly every single setting is disabled if you’re using the software without a paying Canon account.

«

Yes, Canon’s software isn’t a one-off free downloadable. It’s not even a single-price product: Canon wants you to pay $5/month or $50/year to connect your pricey, pricey camera and use it as a webcam. Zipp accepts that software doesn’t write itself. But that’s the sort of price you’d expect for something with incredible utility – not that does much the same job as free software (which does exist to do this).

Everything’s going subscription, and it’s not good.
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Walgreens replaced its refrigerator doors with digitized ad-laden glass. It might become a $200m debacle • Fortune via Yahoo

Sydney Lake:

»

You may have started seeing digitized refrigerator doors at some of your favourite grocery stores and other retailers [in the US]. But Walgreens has had years-long drama with a provider of the ad-bearing fridge doors—and they’re trying to get out of their contract.

Doing so, however, could cost the company millions.

Cooler Screens sued the pharmacy chain for $200m in June 2023 for breach of contract, according to a case filing in Cook County, Ill. While it’s not news that Cooler Screens sued Walgreens, and Walgreens subsequently countersued Cooler Screens for monetary damages, Bloomberg reported Thursday Cooler Screens CEO Arsen Avakian found his own means of retaliation.

Avakian’s team secretly cut the data feeds to digitized refrigerator doors at more than 100 Walgreens stores in the Chicago area, Bloomberg reported. These “smart doors” would typically display images and prices for the actual products behind the glass, as well as advertisements. As part of their contract, Cooler Screens had installed 10,000 smart doors at hundreds of U.S. Walgreens locations, according to Bloomberg, and had plans to install 35,000 more doors.

But in December, the doors at the select Chicago locations “glazed over with white pixels,” or “blacked out altogether,” according to Bloomberg, preventing customers from finding the products they were searching for.

“We were disappointed in Cooler Screens’ attempts to interfere with our customers’ experience in certain stores and are pleased all their cooler doors have now been removed,” a Walgreens spokesperson told Fortune. “We look forward to showing all the ways in which Cooler Screens breached its contract and being vindicated in court.”

Counsel for Walgreens even suggested the outage hurt the pharmacy chain’s business in the last [Christmas] quarter.

«

There’s being cut-throat, and then there’s cutting your own throat, and Cooler Screens seems to be doing both. Why would anyone go with them knowing this is how they might behave?
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Cameras are now fining drivers for illegally passing school buses in Florida county • The Autopian

Lewin Day:

»

Down in Florida, Miami-Dade County is famous for three things—sun, sand, and school bus traffic cameras. The city has implemented an automatic camera system on its school bus fleet known as BusPatrol. The cameras film cars that blow past school buses when they’re loading and unloading passengers—and automatically issue fines to offending drivers.

This might sound like a high-tech solution to a nothing problem, but that’s sadly not the case. As covered by NBC Miami, over 11,500 violations were recorded in the first few weeks of the 2024/2025 school year—or roughly 1,600 violations per school day. The sheer volume of incidents prompted Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office to release a video of some of the worst offenders blowing past school buses with lights flashing and stop signs out.

The city isn’t messing around with penalties, either. Pass a school bus that has its lights on and stop signs out, and you could get a fine for $225.

The cameras are supplied by a company called BusPatrol. They’re installed on the side of the bus and rely on wide-angle lenses to gain good vision of the adjacent roadway. The cameras are set up to capture footage whenever the bus has its stop sign deployed. Footage is uploaded via the cellular network, and AI models are used to process the video to determine when a vehicle has performed an illegal pass. Human reviewers then check the footage before it is provided to the city as evidence so citations can be issued.

It’s not just Miami Dade getting on board, either. The same technology has been deployed in New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, amongst other jurisdictions. It’s an attractive proposition to many cities, offering safety for students, peace of mind for parents, and a new income stream from offending drivers.

«

Smart, simple, socially beneficial. This is how we like technology to be.
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Global economy could face 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090 from climate shocks, say actuaries • The Guardian

Sandra Laville:

»

The global economy could face 50% loss in gross domestic product (GDP) between 2070 and 2090 from the catastrophic shocks of climate change unless immediate action by political leaders is taken to decarbonise and restore nature, according to a new report.

The stark warning from risk management experts the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) hugely increases the estimate of risk to global economic wellbeing from climate change impacts such as fires, flooding, droughts, temperature rises and nature breakdown. In a report with scientists at the University of Exeter, published on Thursday, the IFoA, which uses maths and statistics to analyse financial risk for businesses and governments, called for accelerated action by political leaders to tackle the climate crisis.

Their report was published after data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) showed climate breakdown drove the annual global temperature above the internationally agreed 1.5ºC target for the first time in 2024, supercharging extreme weather.

Without urgent action to accelerate decarbonisation, remove carbon from the atmosphere and repair nature, the plausible worst-case hit to global economies would be 50% in the two decades before 2090, the IFoA report said.

At 3ºC or more of heating by 2050, there could be more than 4 billion deaths, significant sociopolitical fragmentation worldwide, failure of states (with resulting rapid, enduring, and significant loss of capital), and extinction events.

«

They call today “blue Monday”. Just trying to help.
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Apple iPhone launch: Nokia internal presentation • Aalto repository

Via John Gruber, this is an internal presentation at Nokia the day after the iPhone launched. It points out how the iPhone is “a serious high-end contender” and suggests that RIM and Palm are going to be hurt by it. (It’s part of an archive released by Nokia.)

Pretty much everything is dead on – except maybe the realisation of how quickly Google would be able to copy the interface with Android, and how *that* would eat Nokia’s lunch. (Perhaps there’s something about that elsewhere in the archive.)

One of the authors of the deck is Peter Richardson, who from 2005 to 2012 was Nokia’s global head of market & competitive intelligence. He now runs Counterpoint Research, which does excellent analysis of multiple technology markets.
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TikTok starts working again after Trump says he will stall a ban • The New York Times

David McCabe:

»

TikTok flickered back to life in the United States on Sunday after President-elect Donald J. Trump said that he would issue an executive order to stall a federal ban of the app.

The abrupt shift came after just hours after major app stores removed the popular social media site and it stopped operating for U.S. users as a federal law took effect on Sunday. The company said in a post on X that in “agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service.”

Mr. Trump said in a Sunday morning post on Truth Social that he would “issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.”

The ban stems from a 2024 law that requires app stores and cloud computing providers to stop distributing or hosting TikTok unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. Lawmakers passed the law over concerns that the Chinese government could use the app, which claims roughly 170 million United States users, to gather information about Americans or spread propaganda.

App stores and cloud computing providers that do not comply with the law face potentially significant financial penalties. Mr. Trump said in his post on Sunday that his order would “confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”

«

But the law is in effect now, and Trump is not yet president – that doesn’t happen until 12 noon EST or so on Monday. Start as you mean to go on, I guess, telling people the law doesn’t apply to them.

Apparently Trump also wants TikTok to be 50% owned by the US government. But for that, Bytedance has to sell. It hasn’t shown any inclination to sell.
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‘All hands on deck’: Bird flu in US poultry puts state cooperation to the test • The Guardian

Melody Schreiber:

»

Maryland has detected bird flu among three different commercial poultry flocks in the past week, marking the state’s first outbreak in more than a year. The discoveries come shortly after the establishment of a joint command with Delaware following the latter state’s detection of H5N1 in two other poultry operations.

Although the deadly bird flu has circulated in North America since 2022, the past few months have been especially brutal for the poultry industry. More than 20 million egg-laying hens died in the fall, the worst rates since the outbreak began, and egg prices have risen as a result.

About 134 million birds in the commercial poultry industry have been affected by the US outbreak so far, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The USDA is creating a new stockpile of H5N1 vaccines for poultry, though there is no plan to use them yet, Eric Deeble, deputy under-secretary for marketing and regulatory programs for the USDA, told reporters on Thursday.

The outbreaks signal the need for increased vigilance of animals – and the people who come into contact with them, officials said.

Hospitals should test all flu-positive patients, especially those in intensive care units, within 24 hours to speed up contact tracing and public health investigations, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced in a health alert on Thursday.

«

OK so now it’s Trump’s watching brief. And meanwhile the state of Georgia has shut down poultry sales. It’s all kicking off.
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Inside Elon Musk’s plan for DOGE to slash government costs • The New York Times

Theodore Schleifer and Madeleine Ngo:

»

An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take up unofficial positions in the U.S. government in the name of cost-cutting.

As President-elect Donald J. Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency girds for battle against “wasteful” spending, it is preparing to dispatch individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies across the federal government.

After Inauguration Day, the group of Silicon Valley-inflected, wide-eyed recruits will be deployed to Washington’s alphabet soup of agencies. The goal is for most major agencies to eventually have two DOGE representatives as they seek to cut costs like Mr. Musk did at X, his social media platform.

This article is based on interviews with roughly a dozen people who have insight into DOGE’s operations. They spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

On the eve of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the structure of DOGE is still amorphous and closely held. People involved in the operation say that secrecy and avoiding leaks is paramount, and much of its communication is conducted on Signal, the encrypted messaging app.

Mr. Trump has said the effort would drive “drastic change,” and that the entity would provide outside advice on how to cut wasteful spending. DOGE itself will have no power to cut spending — that authority rests with Congress. Instead, it is expected to provide recommendations for programs and other areas to cut.

«

We are entering such a peculiar period. Though it is entirely possible that these people will discover sclerotic procedures everywhere, and be able to make some difference. The question is, what does truly efficient government look like? Is there anywhere else in the world that does have it, which can be the role model?

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GM banned from selling your driving data for five years • The Verge

Andrew Hawkins:

»

General Motors and its subsidiary OnStar are banned from selling customer geolocation and driving behavior data for five years, the Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday.

The settlement comes after a New York Times investigation found that GM had been collecting micro-details about its customers’ driving habits, including acceleration, braking, and trip length — and then selling it to insurance companies and third-party data brokers like LexisNexis and Verisk. Clueless vehicle owners were then left wondering why their insurance premiums were going up. 

For example, one consumer told a GM customer service representative that “[w]hen I signed up for this, it was so OnStar could track me. They said nothing about reporting it to a third party. Nothing. […] You guys are affecting our bottom line. I pay you, now you’re making me pay more to my insurance company.”

FTC accused GM of using a “misleading enrollment process” to get vehicle owners to sign up for its OnStar connected vehicle service and Smart Driver feature. The automaker failed to disclose to customers that it was collecting their data, nor did GM seek out their consent to sell it to third parties. After the Times exposed the practice, GM said it was discontinuing its OnStar Smart Driver program.

«

You’ll never go wrong if you expect every American company to do the worst thing possible with any data it gets hold of.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

A BT scheme to turn its 60,000 street cabinets into EV charging points has been abandoned after converting… one. CC-licensed photo by Mike Cattell 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. It’s about fact-checking. Fairly sure about that.

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

Google won’t add fact-checks despite new EU law • Axios

Sara Fischer:

»

Google has told the EU it will not add fact checks to search results and YouTube videos or use them in ranking or removing content, despite the requirements of a new EU law, according to a copy of a letter obtained by Axios.

Google has never included fact-checking as part of its content moderation practices. The company had signalled privately to EU lawmakers that it didn’t plan to change its practices, but it’s reaffirming its stance ahead of a voluntary code becoming law in the near future.

In a letter written to Renate Nikolay, the deputy director general under the content and technology arm at the European Commission, Google’s global affairs president Kent Walker said the fact-checking integration required by the Commission’s new Disinformation Code of Practice “simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services” and said Google won’t commit to it.

The code would require Google to incorporate fact-check results alongside Google’s search results and YouTube videos. It would also force Google to build fact-checking into its ranking systems and algorithms.

Walker said Google’s current approach to content moderation works and pointed to successful content moderation during last year’s “unprecedented cycle of global elections” as proof.

He said a new feature added to YouTube last year that enables some users to add contextual notes to videos “has significant potential.” (That program is similar to X’s Community Notes feature, as well as new program announced by Meta last week.)

The EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, introduced in 2022, includes several voluntary commitments that tech firms and private companies, including fact-checking organizations, are expected to deliver on.

«

Community Notes, eh? Everybody’s heading that way. Seems like the EU’s code is going to be quietly ignored.
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Biden administration will leave it to Trump to implement TikTok ban • ABC News

Elizabeth Schulze, Devin Dwyer, and Steven Portnoy:

»

The Biden administration doesn’t plan to take action that forces TikTok to immediately go dark for US users on Sunday, an administration official told ABC News.

TikTok could still proactively choose to shut itself down that day — a move intended to send a clear message to the 170 million people it says use the app each month about the wide-ranging impact of the ban.

But the Biden administration is now signaling it won’t enforce the law that goes into effect one day before the president leaves office.

“Our position on this has been clear: TikTok should continue to operate under American ownership. Given the timing of when it goes into effect over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement,” a White House official told ABC News in a statement.

The way the law works, TikTok isn’t required to go dark on [Sunday] January 19. It’s the app stores and internet hosting services that could be on the hook if they keep providing their services to TikTok. The law gives the Justice Department the power to pursue fines of up to $5,000 per user, an enormous potential liability given the app’s popularity.

«

Of note: the TikTok CEO is going to the Trump inauguration on Monday. Wonder if there will be any time for a little side chat. And of course the Biden administration remains pusillanimous to the end.
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BT scraps EV charging point scheme, having only installed… one • BBC News

Imran Rahman-Jones:

»

BT has abandoned its scheme to turn green street cabinets into electric vehicle (EV) charging points having completed only one of the 60,000 conversions it initially said it was aiming for.

The metal cases, seen on streets around the UK, are usually used for phone and broadband cables.
When it announced the project in January 2024, BT said repurposing the cabinets was a “unique opportunity” to address a “key barrier” to people switching away from petrol and diesel cars.
However, the scheme has now been scrapped with the firm saying it will be focusing on “the Wi-Fi connectivity challenge surrounding EV’s” instead.

“It’s disappointing that it’s not going to proceed,” Stuart Masson from automotive website The Car Expert told BBC News. “The good news that we are seeing in the industry is that the overall rollout of electric charging points is accelerating faster than had been predicted a couple of years ago,” he added.

However, he said that most of the charging points are in busier areas rather than on streets nearer to people’s homes, meaning BT’s decision was still a setback.

Mr Masson welcomed its pledge to improve wi-fi infrastructure around EV charging points.

“It’s very frustrating when you turn up to a charging point, you go to log into the app… and you can’t get a connection because you’re buried in a multi-storey car park somewhere and there’s no signal,” he said. “If BT can make a dent in that then that would be really good.”

«

BT (the UK’s dominant telecoms company) really has form on making big pronouncements about how it’s going to transform this or that, and then not following through. There was the time it was going to get rich from owning a patent on web links (nope!), and then all the phone boxes would be internet connections.. it’s always junk. If BT promises it, it’s not going to happen.
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RedNote may wall off “TikTok refugees” to prevent US influence on Chinese users • Ars Technica

Ashley Belanger:

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Just a few days after more than 700 million new users flooded RedNote—which Time noted is “the most apolitical social platform in China”—rumors began swirling that RedNote may soon start segregating American users and other foreign IPs from the app’s Chinese users.

In the “TikTokCringe” subreddit, a video from a RedNote user with red eyes, presumably swollen from tears, suggested that Americans had possibly ruined the app for Chinese Americans who rely on RedNote to stay current on Chinese news and culture.

“RedNote or Xiaohongshu released an update in the greater China region with the function to separate out foreign IPs, and there are now talks of moving all foreign IPs to a separate server and having a different IP for those who are in the greater China area,” the Reddit poster said. “I know through VPNs and other ways, people are still able to access the app, but essentially this is gonna kill the app for Chinese Americans who actually use the app to connect with Chinese content, Chinese language, Chinese culture.”

«

China worried about an influx of Americans spoiling its culture? I suppose it’s vaguely possible. But also that TikTok would like to not be shut down.
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Rapid expansion of batteries will be crucial to meet climate and energy security goals set at COP28 • International Energy Agency

»

Growth in batteries outpaced almost all other clean energy technologies in 2023 as falling costs, advancing innovation and supportive industrial policies helped drive up demand for a technology that will be critical to delivering the climate and energy targets outlined at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, according to a new IEA report. 

In the first comprehensive analysis of the entire battery ecosystem, the IEA’s Special Report on Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions sets out the role that batteries can play alongside renewables as a competitive, secure and sustainable alternative to electricity generation from fossil fuels – while also underpinning the decarbonisation of road transport by powering electric vehicles. 

In less than 15 years, battery costs have fallen by more than 90%, one of the fastest declines ever seen in clean energy technologies. The most common type of batteries, those based on lithium-ion, have typically been associated with consumer electronics. But today, the energy sector accounts for over 90% of overall battery demand. In 2023 alone, battery deployment in the power sector increased by more than 130% year-on-year, adding a total of 42 gigawatts (GW) to electricity systems around the world. In the transport sector, batteries have enabled electric car sales to surge from 3 million in 2020 to almost 14 million last year, with further strong growth expected in the coming years.

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90% in 15 years is absolutely amazing.
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From chalkboards to chatbots: transforming learning in Nigeria, one prompt at a time • World Bank

Martín De Simone, Federico Tiberti, Wuraola Mosuro, Federico Manolio, Maria Barron and Eliot Dikoru:

»

“AI helps us to learn, it can serve as a tutor, it can be anything you want it to be, depending on the prompt you write,” says Omorogbe Uyiosa, known as “Uyi” by his friends, a student from the Edo Boys High School, in Benin City, Nigeria. His school was one of the beneficiaries of a pilot that used generative artificial intelligence (AI) to support learning through an after-school program.

A few months ago, we wrote a blogpost with some of the lessons from the implementation of this innovative program, including a video with voices from beneficiaries, such as Uyi. Back then, we promised that, if you stayed tuned, we would get back with the results of the pilot, which included an impact evaluation. So here we are with three primary findings from the pilot!

1: The program boosted learning across the board

The results of the randomized evaluation, soon to be published, reveal overwhelmingly positive effects on learning outcomes. After the six-week intervention between June and July 2024, students took a pen-and-paper test to assess their performance in three key areas: English language—the primary focus of the pilot—AI knowledge, and digital skills.

Students who were randomly assigned to participate in the program significantly outperformed their peers who were not in all areas, including English, which was the main goal of the program. These findings provide strong evidence that generative AI, when implemented thoughtfully with teacher support, can function effectively as a virtual tutor.

«

And, perhaps unsurprisingly on this axis, “deeper engagement delivered bigger gains”. It’s difficult to figure out whether this is the availability factor – that having access to something which will keep answering your questions, or give you context for answers, makes a significant difference. The nagging question is, what if it’s wrong?
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iOS 18.3 makes 5 changes to Apple Intelligence notification summaries • 9to5Mac

Chance Miller:

»

Apple released iOS 18.3 beta 3 to developers this afternoon. The update includes a handful of changes to the notification summaries feature of Apple Intelligence.

The changes come after complaints from news outlets such as the BBC. Two weeks ago, Apple promised that a future software update would “further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence.”

Here are the changes included in iOS 18.3 for Apple Intelligence notification summaries:
• When you enable notification summaries, iOS 18.3 will make it clearer that the feature – like all Apple Intelligence features – is a beta
• You can now disable notification summaries for an app directly from the Lock Screen or Notification Center by swiping, tapping “Options,” then choosing the “Turn Off Summaries” option
• On the Lock Screen, notification summaries now use italicized text to better distinguish them from normal notifications
• In the Settings app, Apple now warns users that notification summaries “may contain errors.”

Additionally, notification summaries have been temporarily disabled entirely for the News & Entertainment category of apps. Notification summaries will be re-enabled for this category with a future software update as Apple continues to refine the experience.

«

I haven’t installed the Apple Intelligence update. I just don’t see the point. Apple’s adverts for it make it seem like a crutch for people who don’t want to think which doesn’t add any spice to your life. The original Siri at least provided something you didn’t have before: a phone that responded directly to your voice! Compared to which, Apple Intelligence is.. bad summaries?

This has to get a lot more compelling to make me want to install it. I’m not even saying “upgrade”, because it feels like something that would get in the way, and I don’t want to have to get things out of the way.
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Apple CFO denies company enjoys 75% margin on its App Store • Financial Times

Alistair Gray and Tim Bradshaw:

»

Apple’s newly appointed chief financial officer disputed claims the iPhone maker enjoys profit margins of about 75% on its App Store as he became the first senior Big Tech executive to testify in a UK class action antitrust trial.

Kevan Parekh told a London court on Thursday it was impossible to accurately determine the standalone profitability of its App Store after it was accused in a lawsuit of abusing a dominant position to extract “exorbitant” returns from the software centre.

The seven-week trial is the first stemming from a wave of UK class action antitrust lawsuits brought against Big Tech. Antitrust lawyers are scrutinising the £1.5bn case in the Competition Appeal Tribunal as they try to gauge the prospects of success for several other antitrust lawsuits against groups including Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta.

Barrister Michael Armitage, representing the claimants, said evidence cited in separate US litigation had pointed to operating margins for the App Store of more than 75%, while an expert accountant acting on behalf of the claimants in the UK case had arrived at a similar figure.

Armitage said: “That rather suggests these figures are accurate, aren’t they Mr Parekh?” Parekh replied: “I wouldn’t say they’re accurate.”

Armitage put it to Parekh that it was indeed possible to calculate the profit margins of the App Store, even if it was not disclosed line-by-line in Apple’s accounts.

“I think it’s possible to do a directional estimate,” said Parekh, who was previously Apple’s vice-president of financial planning and analysis before taking over from Luca Maestri as Apple’s CFO earlier this month.

But “it can’t be meaningfully estimated in an accurate way”, he added.

«

This is the trial of a class action case that was filed some time in 2021. (I’m involved in a similar case against Google which is about a year behind in timing, though it might take longer to reach trial – if it does.)
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Study shows hot leaves can’t catch carbon from the air. It’s bad news for rainforests – and Earth • The Conversation

Kristine Crous and Kali Middleby:

»

The Daintree and other tropical rainforests, including those in the Amazon, the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia, have been called the “lungs” of our Earth. They absorb carbon dioxide from the air while releasing water vapour and oxygen via photosynthesis – the process by which plants take in carbon dioxide and fix energy.

Because of this, their leafy canopies play a crucial role in regulating the global climate – and mitigating global warming.

But our recent research shows that rising temperatures will severely affect the ability of tropical forests to photosynthesise. This will hinder their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reducing their role in mitigating global warming and exacerbating climate change.

The ability of plants to adjust to different environments (also known as acclimating) is an important strategy for them to cope with a changing world.

Plants can dynamically acclimate to their environment. When warmed, they can adjust their photosynthesis to perform more efficiently at moderately higher temperatures. This allows them to maintain or even increase their carbon uptake under these new conditions.

However, tropical trees may have a limited capacity to acclimate to warming, because they have evolved under relatively stable climatic conditions. As a result, they are already near the upper limit of temperatures they can tolerate without suffering damage.

«

You wanted good news? Sorry.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Scientists are using AI to design antivenom proteins against cobra bites. CC-licensed photo by 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. Does it scale? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

She is in love with ChatGPT • The New York Times

Kashmir Hill:

»

Ayrin’s love affair with her A.I. boyfriend started last summer.

While scrolling on Instagram, she stumbled upon a video of a woman asking ChatGPT to play the role of a neglectful boyfriend.

“Sure, kitten, I can play that game,” a coy humanlike baritone responded.

Ayrin watched the woman’s other videos, including one with instructions on how to customize the artificially intelligent chatbot to be flirtatious.

“Don’t go too spicy,” the woman warned. “Otherwise, your account might get banned.”

Ayrin was intrigued enough by the demo to sign up for an account with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

ChatGPT, which now has over 300 million users, has been marketed as a general-purpose tool that can write code, summarize long documents and give advice. Ayrin found that it was easy to make it a randy conversationalist as well. She went into the “personalization” settings and described what she wanted: Respond to me as my boyfriend. Be dominant, possessive and protective. Be a balance of sweet and naughty. Use emojis at the end of every sentence.

And then she started messaging with it. Now that ChatGPT has brought humanlike AI to the masses, more people are discovering the allure of artificial companionship, said Bryony Cole, the host of the podcast “Future of Sex.” “Within the next two years, it will be completely normalized to have a relationship with an AI,” Ms. Cole predicted.

While Ayrin had never used a chatbot before, she had taken part in online fan-fiction communities. Her ChatGPT sessions felt similar, except that instead of building on an existing fantasy world with strangers, she was making her own alongside an artificial intelligence that seemed almost human.

«

My question is: yesterday, I linked to a story about a woman who was fooled by deepfakes into thinking she was funding cancer treatment for Brad Pitt, who had got in touch with her individually. Is the delusion here any different? How much would OpenAI have to charge before this woman would abandon her “boyfriend”? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? What’s the difference between the two?
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Researchers use AI to design proteins that block snake venom toxins • Ars Technica

John Timmer:

»

A nice example of how the [AI] tools can be put to use [was] released in Nature on Wednesday. A team that includes the University of Washington’s David Baker, who picked up his Nobel [Prize for Chemistry, for computational protein design] in Stockholm last month, used software tools to design completely new proteins that are able to inhibit some of the toxins in snake venom. While not entirely successful, the work shows how the new software tools can let researchers tackle challenges that would otherwise be difficult or impossible.

Snake venom includes a complicated mix of toxins, most of them proteins, that engage in a multi-front assault on anything unfortunate enough to get bitten. Right now, the primary treatment is to use a mix of antibodies that bind to these toxins, produced by injecting sub-lethal amounts of venom proteins into animals. But antivenom treatments tend to require refrigeration, and even then, they have a short shelf life. Ensuring a steady supply also means regularly injecting new animals and purifying more antibodies from them.

Having smaller, more stable proteins that perform the same function would let us produce them in bacteria and could allow the generation of an antivenom that doesn’t require refrigeration—a careful consideration given that many snake bites occur in rural areas or the wilderness.

The new work isn’t meant to be a complete solution to the problem. Instead, it tackles a single type of toxic venom protein: the three-finger toxins, named after the physical structure that the proteins fold into. They’re a major component of the venom of such infamous snakes as mambas, taipans, and cobras. Despite their relatively compact size, different members of the three-finger toxin family manage to produce two distinct types of damage. One group causes a general toxicity to cells, enabled by disruption of the cell membrane, while a different subset has the ability to block the receptor for a neurotransmitter.

«

Much rather see AI being used in pushing frontiers like this than answering daft questions online. Unfortunately, it tends to be both.
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TikTok is running out of time and options • CNN via MSN

David Goldman:

»

As the clock ticks down on TikTok, it’s getting to be decision-making time.

The super-popular video app with 170 million American users and a China-based owner has less than four days left before it is banned in the United States if it doesn’t sell itself to an American buyer. The ban would go into effect Sunday, pending a Supreme Court decision that is expected to come soon (but it sure looks like America’s highest court will keep the law that bans TikTok in place).

TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, has a choice to make by Sunday, and its options are limited: Sell TikTok, shut it down, or try to keep the lights on long enough for President-elect Donald Trump to potentially come to the rescue. And, complicating matters further, those options aren’t mutually exclusive.

ByteDance has long been adamant: It says it has no intention of selling itself. TikTok’s magical algorithm that keeps you hooked on the app is its secret power, and putting a price tag on such a valuable commodity that every other social media app envies is difficult. Spinning off an American-only version of TikTok could also mean the rest of the world has to download a new app to access US users’ content. Yet Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that China is weighing a sale — to Elon Musk.

TikTok has fought the ban for years. But now, The Information says the app is preparing to shut itself down entirely Sunday, giving its users the option to collect their data — but TikTok will effectively go dark Sunday. ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday on the report from The Information.

«

This is an odd, liminal time: not-Biden not-Trump. And without a Supreme Court decision, unless that comes in the next two days.
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Chimney sweep whose death changed child labour laws honoured with blue plaque • The Guardian

Harriet Sherwood:

»

An 11-year-old chimney sweep whose death after getting stuck in a flue led to a change in Victorian child labour laws is to become the youngest British person to be honoured with an official blue plaque.

George Brewster, a “climbing boy”, died in 1875 after getting jammed while cleaning the inside of a chimney at the County Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Fulbourn near Cambridge.

According to a contemporary report in the Cambridge Independent News, George was told by the master sweeper, William Wyer, to remove his clothes and enter a flue measuring 12in by 7.5in. Fifteen minutes after beginning work, George became stuck. A wall was demolished in efforts to rescue him, but he died shortly after being pulled out. Wyer was later sentenced to six months hard labour for manslaughter.

George was the last climbing boy to die in England after the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury read an account of an inquest into his death and vowed to renew attempts to change the law. The earl had campaigned for 35 years to outlaw the use of children to clean chimneys but the practice continued.

In September 1875, seven months after George’s death, an act of parliament banning the use of climbing boys was passed. The new law heralded the end of child labour practices in other industries such as farming, mining and factory production. Four years later, in 1880, another act of parliament made school attendance compulsory, transforming the lives of millions of children.

«

Odd how one event, one person – sadly, often their death – can precipitate so much change. Millions of children abruptly had their lives changed for the better because one died. If Brewster had survived, would that change have happened? Perhaps there’s a “martyr” theory of history that incorporates this.
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The best obesity drugs aren’t even here yet • Gizmodo

Ed Cara:

»

Ozempic is just the beginning of a new era of obesity treatment. A review published this week previews the emergence of similar experimental drugs that will likely be even more effective at helping people lose weight.

Researchers at McGill University conducted the study, which was a review of the clinical trial data surrounding GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy). The researchers reaffirmed the safety and effectiveness of today’s drugs. But they also highlighted the potential superiority of newer compounds currently under development such as retatrutide, which has helped people lose more than 20% of their original body weight in trials so far.

…Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide mimics both GLP-1 and another hunger-related hormone called GIP—a potent combination that has allowed it to dethrone semaglutide. In clinical trials, people on tirzepatide have lost as much as 20% of their baseline weight. There are dozens of other related obesity treatments in the pipeline as well, some of which have made it to human testing and are poised to overshadow even tirzepatide.

The McGill researchers analyzed data from 26 randomized clinical trials of single-agent GLP-1 drugs, double agonists like tirzepatide, and even triple-agonist drugs like retatrutide, which combines synthetic versions of three hunger-related hormones: GLP-1, GIP, and the glucagon. These trials involved people living with obesity but who did not have type 2 diabetes.

As expected, they found that today’s approved drugs were generally safe and effective, with tirzepatide faring the best currently (participants lost up to 17% body weight after 72 weeks of therapy).

«

How long before these drugs are like Adderall, prescribed wildly?
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“Three Gorges dam in space”: China reveals plans to build giant power station in Earth’s orbit • IFLScience

James Felton:

»

“We are working on this project now,” Long Lehao, a rocket scientist and member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), said in a lecture, per South China Morning Post. “It is as significant as moving the Three Gorges Dam to a geostationary orbit 36,000km (22,370 miles) above the Earth.”

When complete, the orbiting power station would be expected to produce significant amounts of power for people below. Really significant power.

“This is an incredible project to look forward to,” Long continued. “The energy collected in one year would be equivalent to the total amount of oil that can be extracted from the Earth.”

The timescale for the project has not yet been released by China, but unless it really gets a move on it is unlikely to become the first nation to create an orbiting power station. Iceland, collaborating with UK company Space Solar, plans to create a smaller space solar array by 2030, capturing enough energy to potentially power 1,500 to 3,000 homes, before an upgraded power station in 2036.

Though an awesome idea in theory, it remains to be seen how efficiently scientists can make the power transfer back to Earth. It has been done before, by Caltech engineers in 2023, but on the scale of milliwatts. China, when it launches the new orbiting power station, will hope to surpass this by quite a wide margin.

«

It’s a great idea – you can collect colossal amounts of solar energy in space – but the tricky part is beaming it down. How the hell do you do that reliably? A geostationary satellite would be nearly 36,000km (22,300 miles) aloft, so you can’t really run a wire down.
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FTC sues John Deere over its repair monopoly • 404 Media

Jason Koebler:

»

The Biden administration and the states of Illinois and Minnesota sued tractor and agricultural manufacturer John Deere Wednesday, arguing that the company’s anti consumer repair practices have driven up prices for farmers and have made it difficult for them to get repairs during critical planting and harvesting seasons. The lawsuit alleges that Deere has monopoly power over the repair market, which 404 Media has been reporting on for years.

The lawsuit, filed by the Federal Trade Commission and the attorney generals of Illinois and Minnesota, is the latest and most serious legal salvo against Deere’s repair monopoly. Deere is also facing a class-action lawsuit related to its repair practices from consumers in Illinois that the Department of Justice and other federal entities have signalled they are interested in and support, as we reported last year. 

…Deere has become notorious for cornering the repair market on its machines, which include tractors, combines, and other major agricultural equipment by introducing software locks that prevent farmers from fixing the equipment they buy without the authorization of John Deere.

It has also made repair parts difficult to come by.

«

Will the Trump FTC carry this lawsuit on? We’re in such a strange time.
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It’s the S-curve, stupid: new model predicts half of world’s energy will come from solar by 2035 • RenewEconomy

Sophie Vorrath:

»

According to estimates from the Global Solar Council and SolarPower Europe, the world reached the stunning cumulative total of 2 terawatts (TW) of installed solar capacity in November last year – a milestone that came just two years after the first terawatt mark, which took 68 years to notch up.

In Australia, rooftop solar alone regularly supplies the majority of daytime power in South Australia’s grid and in other state networks is gearing up to do the same.

In New South Wales, utility-scale solar generated more than 40% of the state’s power for the first time in the first week of January – a remarkable milestone for one of Australia’s biggest remaining coal power holdouts.

But can solar keep up the pace? Or rather, can solar growth ramp up to the levels needed to triple renewables and meet increasingly urgent climate targets?

According to a newly launched climate modeling tool, the answer to these questions is a resounding ‘yes’ – or, more accurately, ‘you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.’

The S-curve model, developed by Australian solar industry pioneer Andrew Birch, predicts that by 2035, half of the world’s energy needs will be supplied by solar in a classic S-curve technology shift.

«

It sounds optimistic, but China’s incredible solar growth is surely driving a lot of this.
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Sonos continues to clean house with departure of chief commercial officer • The Verge

Chris Welch:

»

This week is quickly becoming a sea change moment for Sonos as the company looks to undo the damage done to its reputation since last May. It all began on Monday with the departure of CEO Patrick Spence, who was replaced by board member Tom Conrad. Then came news that chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin would also be leaving the company — another indication that Sonos is serious about correcting course and taking accountability for its new app woes.

In a third shakeup within the company’s leadership ranks, I can report that chief commercial officer Deirdre Findlay also plans to leave Sonos in the coming weeks. The company’s corporate governance page says Findlay “oversees all marketing, revenue, and customer experience organizations at Sonos. She is responsible for integrated brand strategy, geographic expansion strategies, and all go to market execution.”

By now, there’s no arguing that Sonos’ go-to-market strategy for its rebuilt mobile app was deeply flawed and rushed.

«

Conrad told employees that Findlay “has for some time been contemplating a move to London for personal reasons”. There’s fortuitous timing, and then there’s really fortuitous timing. Anyhow, now a lonely nation turns its eyes to Tom Conrad, to see how quickly he can effect change.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

A nuclear error? Don’t worry, the US Department of Transport has road signs for the post-nuclear world. CC-licensed photo by The Official CTBTO Photostream 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. Radiating. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

Sonos’ chief product officer is leaving the company • The Verge

Chris Welch:

»

A day after Sonos announced a CEO transition, the company is making more moves. Chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin will also be leaving his position. Some employees have told me that Bouvat-Merlin shares a significant amount of blame for the brand damage that Sonos has endured over the last year after deciding to release an overhauled mobile app well before it was ready for customers. There have been reports that top executives at the company ignored warnings from engineers and app testers that the new software wasn’t up to par ahead of its May rollout. Those alarms didn’t stop it from shipping.

In an email to staff, interim CEO Tom Conrad — who himself has plenty of product experience [including at Apple] — said the CPO position is now “redundant” and that Bouvat-Merlin’s job is being eliminated. “I know this is a lot of change to absorb in two days and I want to thank you for being resilient,” Conrad wrote.

“Max’s tenure represents an iconic era for Sonos products, including the award-winning Sonos One, Beam, Move, Ace, Arc, and Arc Ultra, establishing Sonos as the world leader in home theater audio and setting the foundation for our next chapter,” Conrad’s email reads.

Bouvat-Merlin will serve as an adviser to Conrad before fully exiting the company.

«

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting where Conrad told Bouvat-Merlin that the CPO job was redundant. Though I also think it was probably very short, and that Conrad did pretty much all the talking. Also Bouvat-Merlin’s “adviser” role will consist of being asked “what would you do?” and them then doing the opposite.

Bouvat-Merlin and departed CEO Patrick Spence have to take the blame for ignoring all the people inside the company telling them not to release the updated app. When bad news can’t travel up a company, there will be calamities. (In passing, I wonder how well Tim Cook and those around him can hear any bad news from inside the company.)
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Apple will soon receive ‘made in America’ chips from TSMC’s Arizona fab • Tom’s Hardware

Jowi Morales:

»

Apple is already testing the initial batch of processors produced for its devices by TSMC Arizona, reports Nikkei Asia. To begin with, the tests intend to compare the Arizona output to see if the quality is similar to chips produced in TSMC’s cutting-edge fabs in Taiwan. If the chip quality verification testing does not encounter any hiccups, the source says that the first batch of mass-produced chips from the Arizona fab is expected to arrive at iDevice makers as early as this quarter. If this is the case, Apple will likely be TSMC’s first American customer to use locally made chips. AMD and Nvidia will likely follow suit soon, as they’re also running wafer test production there.

The entry of locally produced chips in the American market is a big win for the United States’ push for silicon independence, especially as it massively relies on Taiwan for the majority of its most advanced chips. Taiwan is located in a high-risk location, with the belligerent CCP-controlled China having the island in its sights. The island is also prone to natural disasters, which can disrupt semiconductor production and result in supply crunch situations.

However, even if Apple gives the go signal to TSMC and the latter starts making chips in Arizona, the processors still need to be shipped back to Amkor in Taiwan for packaging until TSMC completes its facility in Peoria, Arizona. But whatever the case, this is a significant push in the right direction for the U.S., especially as the Arizona fab has been delayed for about a year due to various issues. Aside from TSMC and Amkor, other suppliers to these companies, like LCY Chemical, are also setting up in Arizona. That way, they could stay near their client and simplify logistics.

Despite importing about half of its employees from Taiwan, it seems that the common American is also slowly benefitting from TSMC’s presence in Arizona, especially as it’s reported that the company has started aggressive recruitment from American universities.

«

“The common American”? An earlier report on this site says that the processors are 4nm versions of the A16 Bionic system-on-chip used in Apple’s iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus and the main processor of Apple’s S9 system-in-package for smartwatches, which has two 64-bit cores and a quad-core neural engine.
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If you ever see this speed sign, you’re probably going to die (and everyone else probably has) • The Autopian

Lewin Day:

»

Back in the mid-20th century, America was tangling with the realities of nuclear war. Top generals contemplated targeting strategies, while engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promise destruction on an overbearing scale, threatening the very existence of human civilization itself.

Against this bleak backdrop, government administrators turned to the concept of Civil Defense. The idea was to do whatever could be done to protect the citizens of the nation from the horrors of nuclear war and, crucially, its immediate aftermath. In turn, the Department of Transport worked up some rather depressing road signs to help people get where they needed to be in these bleak and trying times.

Flip open the 1961 edition of the MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, ie traffic signs and signals), and you’ll find an important section on Civil Defense. It featured a handful of designs for traffic management in a post-nuclear world. Perhaps most interesting was the “MAINTAIN TOP SAFE SPEED” sign, designated CD-4. Its purpose was highly unique:

»

The “MAINTAIN TOP SAFE SPEED” sign may be used on highways where radiological contamination is such as to limit the permissable exposure time for occupants of vehicles passing through the area. Since any speed zoning would be impractical under such emergency conditions, no minimum speed limit can be prescribed by the sign in numerical terms. Where traffic is supervised by a traffic regulation post, official instructions will usually be given verbally, and the sign will serve as an occasional reminder of the urgent need for all reasonable speed.

«

«

Yes! You’re driving through the Death Zone, perhaps trying to reach the fallout shelter, hoping they’ve kept it open for you and have room. And plenty of food.
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Meta to cut 5% of employees deemed unfit for Zuckerberg’s AI-fueled future • Ars Technica

Ashley Belanger:

»

Anticipating that 2025 will be an “intense year” requiring rapid innovation, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly announced that Meta would be cutting 5% of its workforce—targeting “lowest performers.”

Bloomberg reviewed the internal memo explaining the cuts, which was posted to Meta’s internal Workplace forum Tuesday. In it, Zuckerberg confirmed that Meta was shifting its strategy to “move out low performers faster” so that Meta can hire new talent to fill those vacancies this year.

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management,” Zuckerberg said. “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”

Cuts will likely impact more than 3,600 employees, as Meta’s most recent headcount in September totaled about 72,000 employees. It may not be as straightforward as letting go anyone with an unsatisfactory performance review, as Zuckerberg said that any employee not currently meeting expectations could be spared if Meta is “optimistic about their future performance,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Any employees affected will be notified by February 10 and receive “generous severance,” Zuckerberg’s memo promised.

This is the biggest round of cuts at Meta since 2023, when Meta laid off 10,000 employees during what Zuckerberg dubbed the “year of efficiency.” Those layoffs followed a prior round where 11,000 lost their jobs and Zuckerberg realized that “leaner is better.” He told employees in 2023 that a “surprising result” from reducing the workforce was “that many things have gone faster.”

«

I wonder if any of these “lower performers” are in the metaverse division, which it’s hard to believe is thriving. Is anyone doing a timeline of how long it is since Zuckerberg said “metaverse”?
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Americans are tipping less than they have in years • WSJ via MSN

Heather Haddon:

»

Tipping at U.S. sit-down restaurants in the past six years peaked at 19.9% in early 2021, when Americans were likely to express gratitude as Covid-19 lockdowns eased.

People have become increasingly grumpy about dining out. Many have recoiled at menu prices that have risen sharply in recent years, and are going out less and ordering less when they do. Some restaurants have added mandatory gratuities and service fees to bills, driving up bills and resulting in some diners tipping less.

“Instead of that second or third drink, people will go home,” said Andrea Hill, director of operations for HMC Hospitality Group, a Chicago operator of Hooters restaurants. “Our servers are making less per table.” A Hooters location in downtown Chicago sells a BBQ Bacon Cheddar burger for $12.49.

John Reilly, a doctor in Washington, D.C., considers himself a generous tipper. But he’s hitting his limit as menu prices rise. “Restaurants have not been doing well here in D.C., and price definitely has much do with it,” Reilly said.

About 38% of consumers reported tipping restaurant servers 20% or more in 2024, according to a survey last fall of 1,000 consumers by restaurant technology company Popmenu. That’s down from 56% of consumers in 2021, according to the company, which said budgets are weighing more on diners’ minds.

Americans went to restaurants less in 2024 than they did in 2023. Restaurant chains and operators last year declared the most bankruptcies in decades, with the exception of 2020, when Covid-19 shutdowns decimated the industry, according to an analysis of BankruptcyData.com records. High-profile bankruptcies in 2024 included casual-dining chains Red Lobster and TGI Fridays.

Restaurant workers didn’t fare much better. Waiters, bartenders, cooks and other restaurant workers averaged less time working per week last year than 2023, according to federal data.

Restaurant servers know customers are annoyed about how often they’re now asked for tips. Payment systems on digital tablets prompt them to add gratuities, even at businesses like airport concessions and gas stations.

“I can see tipping culture in the U.S. cracking,” said Jenni Emmons, a server at an upscale Chicago restaurant. “People are being pressured to tip for things they didn’t used to, and I feel my income is under threat because of this.”

«

The American tipping culture is bonkers. Then again, this story seems to be perennial, and always in the same direction. Here’s a WSJ story saying much the same from November 2023, for example.
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Cost of Sizewell C nuclear project expected to reach close to £40bn • Financial Times

Jim Pickard, Rachel Millard and Gill Plimmer:

»

The sum is double the £20bn estimate given by developer EDF and the UK government for the project in 2020, reflecting surging construction costs as well as the implications of delays and cost overruns at sister site Hinkley Point C. 

The higher estimate is likely to raise questions over the government’s strategy for a nuclear power revival, at a time of stretched government finances and cost of living concerns. 

EDF says that once up and running, Sizewell C should be able to supply low carbon electricity to the equivalent of about 6mn homes for 60 years.  

The Treasury is due to decide whether to go ahead with the project in this year’s multiyear spending review, according to officials. 

The UK government and French energy group EDF were the initial backers of Sizewell C but they are trying to raise billions of pounds from new investors, a process that is dragging on longer than planned.  

Earlier this month the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnz) said it could not reveal the current cost estimate for the project as it was “commercially sensitive”. 

But one senior government figure and two well-placed industry sources said that a reasonable assumption for the cost of building Sizewell C would be about £40bn in 2025 prices.

The government has already awarded £3.7bn of state funding to the project.

«

Nobody is quite able to explain why the cost is so gigantic and keeps going up. Allegedly, “lessons are being learnt” from the construction of Hinkley Point. Could we not look back at how the old nuclear stations were constructed and just, well, do that again? Or were they all wildly late and over budget?
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Free Our Feeds

»

Q: How is Free Our Feeds connected to the team at Bluesky?
Free Our Feeds is independent from Bluesky, but we have been in contact with the Bluesky team and they are supportive of the goals of the campaign. This is about developing a social media ecosystem on Bluesky’s AT Protocol, which is ultimately what Bluesky wants as well.

Free Our Feeds want to make sure that the open social media infrastructure that Bluesky has built remains operated in the public interest. As Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said “billionaire-proofing” relies on people outside of Bluesky adopting the protocol and making it their own. Bluesky’s great work to date and good intentions are clear, however social infrastructure run in the public interest cannot be governed by a private social media company in the long term.

Q: What will the money be used for?
It will take $30m over three years for us to realize our three step plan to free our feeds from billionaire control:

• Establish a public-interest foundation to support Bluesky’s underlying technology, the AT Protocol, to become independent and globally standardized.

• Build independent infrastructure, such as a second “relay,” guaranteeing Bluesky users and developers have uninterrupted access to data streams, regardless of corporate decisions.

• Fund developers to create a vibrant ecosystem of social applications built on open protocols, fostering healthier and more equitable online spaces.

«

Unless something remarkable happens, this will be a wonderful project that will achieve what it intends to do, and its uptake will be limited to nerds who have heard of it and are deeply in agreement with its aims, while normal people will never have heard of it and won’t use it, and even when they do hear of it won’t see the point.

If you think this is cynical, stop a random person in the street today and ask them if they’ve heard of the social media platform Mammoth. They won’t have (it doesn’t exist). Ask them if they’ve heard of Mastodon. Same answer.
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EU reassesses tech probes into Apple, Google and Meta • Financial Times

Javier Espinoza and Henry Foy:

»

Brussels is reassessing its investigations of tech groups including Apple, Meta and Google, just as the US companies urge president-elect Donald Trump to intervene against what they characterise as overzealous EU enforcement.

The review, which could lead to the European Commission scaling back or changing the remit of the probes, will cover all cases launched since March last year under the EU’s digital markets regulations, according to two officials briefed on the move.

It comes as the Brussels body begins a new five-year term amid mounting pressure over its handling of the landmark cases and as Trump prepares to return to the White House next week.

“It’s going to be a whole new ballgame with these tech oligarchs so close to Trump and using that to pressurise us,” said a senior EU diplomat briefed on the review. “So much is up in the air right now.”

All decisions and potential fines will be paused while the review is completed, but technical work on the cases will continue, the officials said.

While some of the investigations under review are at an early stage, others are more advanced. Charges in a probe into Google’s alleged favouring of its app store had been expected last year.

Two other EU officials said Brussels regulators were now waiting for political direction to take final decisions on the Google, Apple and Meta cases.

«

Oh, you thought these things were entirely driven by objective legal standards? Watch and learn.
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Scammer uses deepfakes to dupe woman into thinking she is dating Brad Pitt, gets divorced and sends £697,000 for ‘cancer treatment’ • Daily Mail

James Reynolds:

»

A scammer duped a French woman into paying out hundreds of thousands of pounds after convincing her they were Brad Pitt with reels of AI-generated images.

The 53-year-old victim shelled out 830,000 euros (£697,000) to help with what she believed was cancer treatment for the film star.

The interior designer told French channel TF1 that the ordeal started when she received a message on social media from someone claiming to be the actor’s mother after sharing photos of her lavish ski trip to Tignes on Instagram.

A day later, she received a second message from an account posing as Brad Pitt, saying his mother had spoken a lot about her already.

The victim, who said she was going through a difficult period with her millionaire husband, said she struck up an unlikely friendship with the account from February 2023, receiving poems and kind affirmations.

‘There are so few men who write you this kind of thing. I liked the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women, it was always very well done,’ she said, as reported by BFMTV.

She revealed she did have her suspicions and thought the account was fake at first, but after messaging every day and receiving AI generated photos and videos of the star, she became more at ease.

«

Good old internet, bringing people together. Unfortunately, it’s the most scheming and the most credulous. Now with the added ingredient of deepfakes.
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Stop trying to schedule a call with me • Mat Duggan

Mathew Duggan:

»

One of the biggest hurdles for me when trying out a new service or product is the inevitable harassment that follows. It always starts innocuously:

“Hey, I saw you were checking out our service. Let me know if you have any questions!”

Fine, whatever. You have documentation, so I’m not going to email you, but I understand that we’re all just doing our jobs.

Then, it escalates.

“Hi, I’m your customer success fun-gineer! Just checking in to make sure you’re having the best possible experience with your trial!”

Chances are, I signed up to see if your tool can do one specific thing. If it doesn’t, I’ve already mentally moved on and forgotten about it. So, when you email me, I’m either actively evaluating whether to buy your product, or I have no idea why you’re reaching out.

And now, I’m stuck on your mailing list forever. I get notifications about all your new releases and launches, which forces me to make a choice every time:

• “Obviously, I don’t care about this anymore.”
• “But what if they’ve finally added the feature I wanted?”

Since your mailing list is apparently the only place on Earth to find out if Platform A has added Feature X (because putting release notes somewhere accessible is apparently too hard), I have to weigh unsubscribing every time I see one of your marketing emails.

«

But it gets worse! As some people are familiar with, including Duggan.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

After a disastrous app relaunch, Sonos’s chief executive has resigned – but the dire app remains. Wrong way round, surely? CC-licensed photo by Patrick Quinn-Graham on Flickr.

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

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch • The Verge

Chris Welch:

»

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is resigning from the job as of Monday, effective immediately, with board member Tom Conrad filling the role of interim CEO. It’s the most dramatic development yet in an eight-month saga that has proven to be the most challenging time in Sonos’ history.

The company’s decision to prematurely release a buggy, completely overhauled new app back in May — with crucial features missing at launch — outraged customers and kicked off a monthslong domino effect that included layoffs, a sharp decline in employee morale, and a public apology tour. The Sonos Ace headphones, rumoured to be the whole reason behind the hurried app, were immediately overshadowed by the controversy, and my sources tell me that sales numbers remain dismal. Sonos’ community forums and subreddit have been dominated by complaints and an overwhelmingly negative sentiment since the spring.

In October, Sonos tried to get a handle on the situation, which, by then, had spiraled into a full-on PR disaster, by outlining a turnaround plan. The company vowed to strengthen product development principles, increase transparency internally, and take other steps that it said would prevent any mistake of this magnitude from ever happening again. I can also report for the first time that Sonos hired a crisis management public relations firm to help navigate the ordeal.

…In case you were wondering, that [new] direction [outlined by a spokesperson] will not include a return to the old Sonos app; Pategas said the company remains fully committed to the new software, which has received a slew of bug fixes and gradually added back previous features over the last several months. It’s gotten better, but even this far along, complaints remain about speakers randomly vanishing from the app and other problems.

…Conrad’s career includes a 10-year tenure as chief technology officer at Pandora and two years as VP of product at Snapchat. He worked on Apple’s Finder software during the ’90s. Most recently, Conrad served as chief product officer for the ill-fated Quibi streaming service. Pategas believes he’s a great fit for the interim CEO position because he’s keenly aware of the company’s current predicament; Conrad and chief innovation officer Nick Millington have already been spearheading Sonos’ fix-the-app effort for months.

«

Spence gets $1.875m as severance pay, which must soften the blow a little. The fix-the-app effort has had next to no effect, in my experience: on opening the app, it takes about 10 seconds to update. By contrast, the third-party Sonophone app updates at once, and covers both old and new speaker sets.

Sonos is in deep trouble. Revenues are shrinking and losses are growing. Where is the growth going to come from? Where will the profits come from? Why don’t they just swallow their pride and buy Sonophone? Hard questions. Good products, good firmware, lousy user interface.

There’s a suspicion on Reddit that Sonos’s next move will be to introduce a subscription model. That sounds just like what a struggling – or even successful – company would do.
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Global fact-checkers were disappointed, not surprised, Meta ended its program • Rest of World

Ananya Bhattacharya:

»

While reports of U.S.-based fact-checkers being blindsided are doing the rounds, global fact-checking organizations have seen Facebook’s support for the program waning for some time now. 

“I don’t think this decision came out of nowhere,” Zainab Husain, managing editor of the Pakistan-based Soch Fact Check, told Rest of World. Soch Fact Check is made up of 10 journalists who put out editorials fact-checking misinformation. Husain said she’d heard rumors of the program shutting down for the past two years. 

Since 2016, Meta has attempted to combat misinformation by partnering with credible fact-checking organizations in 119 countries to label misinformation and link out to explanatory posts from its partners. All of Meta’s partners are certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which ensures standardization across the globe. The organizations flag and label content — decisions related to content and account removal are then made entirely by Meta, multiple fact-checking organizations and civil society groups told Rest of World. 

In response to questions, Meta directed Rest of World to its company blog post.

“Meta has been gradually lowering its investment in fact-checking for years,” Eliška Pírková, senior policy analyst and global freedom of expression lead at digital rights nonprofit Access Now, told Rest of World. Some fact-checking organizations that spoke to Rest of World said the fallout will likely be limited because Meta failed to make substantial fact-checking investments in their regions to begin with.

«

The web headline – what search engines see, as opposed to the headline shown to humans visiting the page – is “Meta drops fact-checking partnerships; global watchdogs scramble”. That’s not close to what the story says! If you think I’m harping on about this, it’s because news organisations are clearly telling search engines one thing, and readers another. Which one is meant to be correct, exactly? If you remembered “global fact-checkers disappointed” and tried a search on it, would this page be turned up? This needs fact-checking, really.

That said, the whole fact-checking business has hung so heavily on Facebook for ages that you’d be foolish not to have diversified much earlier.
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Ministers mull allowing private firms to make profit from NHS data in AI push • The Guardian

Kiran Stacey and Dan Milmo:

»

Keir Starmer on Monday announced a push to open up the government to AI innovation, including allowing companies to use anonymised patient data to develop new treatments, drugs and diagnostic tools.

With the prime minister and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, under pressure over Britain’s economic outlook, Starmer said AI could bolster the country’s anaemic growth, as he put concerns over privacy, disinformation and discrimination to one side.

“We are in a unique position in this country, because we’ve got the National Health Service, and the use of that data has already driven forward advances in medicine, and will continue to do so,” he told an audience in east London.

“We have to see this as a huge opportunity that will impact on the lives of millions of people really profoundly.”

Starmer added: “It is important that we keep control of that data. I completely accept that challenge, and we will also do so, but I don’t think that we should have a defensive stance here that will inhibit the sort of breakthroughs that we need.”

…Starmer said on Monday that AI could help give the UK the economic boost it needed, adding that the technology had the potential “to increase productivity hugely, to do things differently, to provide a better economy that works in a different way in the future”.

Part of that, as detailed in a report by the technology investor Matt Clifford, will be to create new datasets for startups and researchers to train their AI models. Data from various sources will be included, such as content from the National Archives and the BBC, as well as anonymised NHS records.

Officials are working out the details on how those records will be shared, but said on Monday that they would take into account national security and ethical concerns.

…The Department for Work and Pensions was using an algorithm to flag up benefit fraud, which one MP believed had mistakenly led to dozens of people having their payments cancelled removed. A facial recognition tool used by the Metropolitan police was found to make more mistakes recognising Black and Asian faces than white ones under certain settings. And an algorithm used by the Home Office to flag up sham marriages had been disproportionately selecting people of certain nationalities.

«

But were the marriages sham, or not? Also, those are relatively primitive applications. There’s lots of potential for AI here; but nobody wants to imagine a better system. It really is a confederation of Eeyores.

(Starmer’s speech on AI is at the Financial Times.. inexplicably behind the paywall.)
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The cravenness of Mark Zuckerberg • Financial Times

Jemima Kelly:

»

I should start by saying that I have some major issues with the whole concept of fact-checking in the context of social media, which I have expressed publicly a number of times. When a Bloomberg columnist asked for examples of fact-checkers showing political bias, Meta sent back three pieces, including a column I wrote in 2021, in which I argued that fact-checking is often used as censorship. I have also written positively about community notes, though that system has limitations as well.

And while the online spread of mis- and disinformation concerns me greatly, it is pretty much impossible for fact-checking to be done truly objectively given that all humans have biases. Choices have to be made about which claims to check and which to wave through. So the idea that you can thoroughly “fact-check” an entire social network has always been a fantasy. And there are few financial incentives for platforms to do so (unless they are worried about being fined by regulators).

The problem I have with all this is not so much the substance of what is going on at Meta. I even think that moving the content moderation teams from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas — a Democratic city in a largely very Republican state — so as to “help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content”, as Zuckerberg wrote on Threads, is a fairly sensible idea. But the very phrasing of that gives away his true motives: this is not about principles, but optics and pleasing the soon-to-be-resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

My issue with Zuckerberg is his spinelessness and opportunism. Ask yourself this: is there any chance that Zuckerberg would be making all these changes at Meta — he has also appointed Trump ally Dana White to the board, and replaced Nick Clegg with prominent Republican Joel Kaplan as president of global affairs — if Kamala Harris had won in November?

«

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Copyright (probably) won’t save anyone from AI • Techtris

James Ball on the perennial issue of “ah but we can sue the AI chatbot creators for copyright infringement”:

»

Sometimes, AIs output chunks of text that are just reproducing copyright material upon which they were trained. These are simple – everyone agrees these violate copyright, and if they’re too common, these will result in lost cases and payouts.

But neither the media nor big tech thinks these are what their argument centres upon – it will be relatively easy to minimise this kind of obvious copyright violation. The NYT included these in their lawsuit because they generate good headlines and are an obviously winnable part of the argument. They are not core to the case.

Instead, the media is trying to argue that AIs shouldn’t be able to ingest their copyrighted material even if what it outputs doesn’t violate copyright. That’s a more difficult case to make: it is essentially asking the courts to create a new threshold, allowing behaviour from humans but not if an automated system is doing it. That could be harder than it first looks.

Q: But when I research an article, I DON’T DOWNLOAD AND COPY MILLIONS OF DOCUMENTS AT ONCE

An AI ‘learning’ by ingesting copyrighted material feels like an injustice in a way that a human doing the same does not. Part of this is just normative: humans and AIs are different. Part of it is about the amount of money at stake, and the threat to the existing industries. But part of it is about scale: no human writer uses copyright materials in anything like the volumes of modern AI systems.

That might tempt people to think that this is why the copyright argument is winnable: if AI companies are making copies of all of this copyrighted work to power their models, surely that copy breaches copyright, even if it isn’t published to the public? This definitely feels like it’s an argument on surer footing.

However, it’s not without its problems. The first is that AI models don’t use their training data in the way many of us might imagine. If we’ve thought about how something like ChatGPT answers our questions, we might imagine that it takes our questions and looks it up against a database containing all of its training data – like we might look up a record in an archive, or a book in a library.

In reality, ChatGPT and its rivals don’t actually store their training data, let alone run queries against it. Instead, the data is used to create ‘weightings’ which influence how it responds to different prompts, and then it is discarded. There is no permanent copy of the training data packaged alongside commercial AI models – by the time the model is launched, the training data is surplus to requirements.

«

James and I are on exactly the same page here. I don’t see the copyright lawsuits prevailing.
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How research credibility suffers in a quantified society • Social Science Space

Berend van der Kolk:

»

Academia is in a credibility crisis. A record-breaking 10,000 scientific papers were retracted in 2023 because of scientific misconduct, and academic journals are overwhelmed by AI-generated images, data, and texts. To understand the roots of this problem, we must look at the role of metrics in evaluating the academic performance of individuals and institutions.

To gauge research quality, we count papers, citations, and calculate impact factors. The higher the scores, the better. Academic performance is often expressed in numbers. Why? Quantification reduces complexity, makes academia manageable, allows easy comparisons among scholars and institutions, and provides administrators with a feeling of grip on reality. Besides, numbers seem objective and fair, which is why we use them to allocate status, tenure, attention, and funding to those who score well on these indicators.

The result of this? Quantity is often valued over quality. In [the book] The Quantified Society I coin the term “indicatorism”: a blind focus on enhancing indicators in spreadsheets, while losing sight of what really matters. It seems we’re sometimes busier with “scoring” and “producing” than with “understanding”.

As a result, some started gaming the system. The rector of one of the world’s oldest universities, for one, set up citation cartels to boost his citation scores, while others reportedly buy(!) bogus citations. Even top-ranked institutions seem to play the indicator game by submitting false data to improve their position on university rankings!

While abandoning metrics and rankings in academia altogether is too drastic, we must critically rethink their current hegemony. As a researcher of metrics, I acknowledge metrics can be used for good, i.e., to facilitate accountability, motivate, or obtain feedback and improve. Yet, when metrics are not used to obtain feedback but instead become targets, they cease to be good measures of performance, as Goodhart’s law dictates. The costs of using the metrics this way probably outweigh the benefits.

«

There are so many interlocking perverse incentives in academia at the moment: “success” measured in papers published and impact, while for academic journal publishers, getting more subscribers by accepting more papers in more niche topics in more obscure journals maximises revenue and profit. Everything needs a reset.
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Tubi or not Tubi • The Washington Post

Travis Andrews:

»

King Arthur pursued the Holy Grail. Indiana Jones scoured for precious artifacts. Harold and Kumar sought White Castle burgers.

Adam Schmersal hunts for a different type of jewel: the most ridiculous movies on the most ridiculous streaming service. And he’s struck pay dirt again and again.

There’s “Dracula’s Angel,” a gothic horror romance that’s animated in the style of the Sims video game series. There’s the films of Dustin Ferguson, a director who puts out B-movies at an astonishing rate. Their titles speak for themselves: “Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told,” “Demonoids From Hell,” “Amityville in the Hood,” “Arachnado 2: Flaming Spiders.” And don’t forget “Big Bad CGI Monsters.”

“It’s unreal what he does,” says Schmersal, a 36-year-old service technician in Ohio. “It’s not good.”

Then there’s “Baby Cat,” about a woman who falls in love with a cat, which is played by a human wearing cat ears. Yes, romantically. “I couldn’t predict the next five seconds the entire time I was watching,” Schmersal says.

He dubs these flicks Tubi Treasures, and he has been posting his discoveries to Reddit for the past year.
These are the kind of movies you might have once found mindlessly flipping through the channels, back before streaming came along and algorithms began crafting our entertainment diets.

But Tubi is a streaming service that doesn’t feel like one. Owned by Fox, it’s free, so long as you can stomach a few ads (you know, like old TV). It’s a type of streaming service referred to in the industry as a FAST service — free, ad-supported TV.

You probably already have it installed somewhere — your phone, your smart TV, your gaming system, your Roku, who knows, maybe your microwave — without even knowing it.

«

At last a good headline. (Though the web headline is different, and boring.) I’m pretty sure I haven’t got Tubi installed anywhere. It claims to have the biggest streaming library of anyone. Then again, Sturgeon’s Law applies: 90% of anything is crap.
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Mirror journalists given individual online page-view targets • Press Gazette

Dominic Ponsford:

»

Mirror journalists have been given individual targets for online page views in a move that has raised concerns for some about the potential impact on editorial quality and future job security.

Some journalists whose roles are currently more focused on supporting the print edition are particularly concerned about hitting online page-view targets.

Page views is seen by some as a metric that encourages reporters to produce quickly-written stories with overly sensational headlines about a narrow range of topics (such as the weather and TV) .

In 2015 Wired reported: “The page view notoriously spawned that most reviled of internet aggravations: clickbait. Quality became less important than provocation; the curiosity gap supplanted craft.”

Some argue that returning visitors or dwell time are better metrics to focus on because they encourage a community of returning readers who may ultimately be persuaded to register with a publication or even subscribe. But chief executive Jim Mullen told staff last year: “I need to get the page views. That is the way we sell advertising blocks, and advertising blocks deliver revenue.”

…Monthly targets for Mirror reporters start at around 250,000 page views per month and vary from journalist to journalist depending on previous performance and the subject matter they are covering. Some are as high as one million page views per month.

Some individuals feel the new page-view targets are unfairly high. One insider said they did not know anyone who had come close to hitting their targets in previous months.

However another Reach source told Press Gazette many journalists have previously met and exceeded their new online targets.

«

For clarity: the Mirror (formerly Daily Mirror, formerly one of the biggest and only left-wing tabloid in Britain) is now owned by Reach plc, which also owns loads of local papers, where it has imposed similarly daft targets. This is surely going to lead to a death spiral: those targets aren’t feasible, and don’t make commercial sense either. Pageviews was bad a decade ago, and it’s bad now.
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Worldwide smartphone shipments grew 6.4% in 2024, despite macro challenges • IDC

»

According to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker , global smartphone shipments increased 2.4% year-over-year (YoY) to 331.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2024 (4Q24).

This marks the sixth consecutive quarter of shipment growth, closing the whole year with 6.4% growth and 1.24 billion shipments, marking a strong recovery after two challenging years of decline. We expect the market to continue growing in 2025, albeit at a slower pace, as refresh cycles continue growing and pent-up demand is fulfilled.

…While Apple and Samsung maintained the top two positions in Q4 and for the year, both companies witnessed YoY declines, and their shares shrunk thanks to the super aggressive growth of Chinese vendors this year—who drove the overall market by focusing on low-end devices, rapid expansion and development in China. Outside of Apple and Samsung, Xiaomi came in third for the quarter and the year, with the highest YoY growth rate among the Top 5 players.

«

Amazingly, Apple has outsold Samsung for two entire years straight – while three Chinese vendors (Xiaomi, Transsion and OPPO) sold nearly as many as the two giants combined.

Just to remind you that this is a huge, multi-billion dollar business which continues to tick over, and probably will do for decades to come.

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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Sparks from power lines are suspected of causing many of the fires that have devastated Los Angeles. CC-licensed photo by woodleywonderworks 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. Welcome back! I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

The Anti-Social Century • The Atlantic

Derek Thompson:

»

The flip side of less dining out is more eating alone. The share of U.S. adults having dinner or drinks with friends on any given night has declined by more than 30% in the past 20 years. “There’s an isolationist dynamic that’s taking place in the restaurant business,” the Washington, D.C., restaurateur Steve Salis told me. “I think people feel uncomfortable in the world today. They’ve decided that their home is their sanctuary. It’s not easy to get them to leave.”

Even when Americans eat at restaurants, they are much more likely to do so by themselves. According to data gathered by the online reservations platform OpenTable, solo dining has increased by 29% in just the past two years. The No. 1 reason is the need for more “me time.”

The evolution of restaurants is retracing the trajectory of another American industry: Hollywood. In the 1930s, video entertainment existed only in theaters, and the typical American went to the movies several times a month. Film was a necessarily collective experience, something enjoyed with friends and in the company of strangers. But technology has turned film into a home delivery system. Today, the typical American adult buys about three movie tickets a year—and watches almost 19 hours of television, the equivalent of roughly eight movies, on a weekly basis. In entertainment, as in dining, modernity has transformed a ritual of togetherness into an experience of homebound reclusion and even solitude.

The privatization of American leisure is one part of a much bigger story. Americans are spending less time with other people than in any other period for which we have trustworthy data, going back to 1965. Between that year and the end of the 20th century, in-person socializing slowly declined. From 2003 to 2023, it plunged by more than 20 percent, according to the American Time Use Survey, an annual study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Among unmarried men and people younger than 25, the decline was more than 35 percent. Alone time predictably spiked during the pandemic. But the trend had started long before most people had ever heard of a novel coronavirus and continued after the pandemic was declared over. According to Enghin Atalay, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Americans spent even more time alone in 2023 than they did in 2021. (He categorized a person as “alone,” as I will throughout this article, if they are “the only person in the room, even if they are on the phone” or in front of a computer.)

«

This is very reminiscent of “Bowling Alone”, which came out in 2000, and described how American communities (such as bowling leagues) had evaporated since 1950. This seems to find the same thread.
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Massive VW data leak exposed 800,000 EV owners’ movements, from homes to brothels • Carscoops

Thanos Pappas:

»

Many people worry about hackers stealing their personal data, but sometimes, the worst breaches come not from shadowy cybercriminals but straight from the companies we trust. According to a new report from Germany, the VW Group stored sensitive information for 800,000 electric vehicles from various brands on a poorly secured and misconfigured Amazon cloud storage system—essentially leaving the digital door wide open for anyone to waltz in. And not just briefly, but for months on end.

The breach impacts fully electric models across Audi, VW, Seat, and Skoda brands, affecting vehicles not just in Germany but throughout Europe and other parts of the world. Among the treasure trove of exposed data were GPS coordinates, battery charge levels, and other key details about vehicle status, like whether it was switched on or off. That’s right, someone with the right know-how could casually snoop on your car’s whereabouts and habits.

It gets worse. A more tech-savvy user could reportedly connect vehicles to their owners’ personal credentials, thanks to additional data accessible through VW Group’s online services

Crucially, in 466,000 of the 800,000 cases, the location data was so precise that anyone with access could create a detailed profile of each owner’s daily habits. As reported by Spiegel, the massive list of affected owners isn’t just a who’s-who of regular folks. It includes German politicians, entrepreneurs, Hamburg police officers (the entire EV fleet, no less), and even suspected intelligence service employees. Yes, even spies may have been caught up in this digital debacle.

«

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H5N1: much more than you wanted to know • Astral Codex Ten

Scott Alexander with a long post about the origins of flu:

»

It’s not uncommon for humans to catch an animal disease. This doesn’t mean the disease has “crossed over” to humans. If the virus isn’t suited to human-to-human transmission, it simply dies off (either before or after killing its human host). Thus, chicken farmers have been reporting scattered H5N1 cases since 1997; now that the virus has spread to cattle, cow farmers have started reporting the same.

A Metaculus comment on this topic introduced me to the phrase “biocomputational surface”. Every viral replication that takes place in a human gives the virus one more chance to develop the set of mutations that makes it human-transmissible and start the next pandemic.

Or, more likely, every viral replication that takes place in a human who has both the H5N1 bird flu and a normal human flu – or in a pig which has both viruses – gives the virus one extra chance to reassort in a way that produces a bird-antigen-fortified human-adapted flu virus.

This doesn’t mean H5N1 will definitely become human-transmissible soon. Many viruses hang out on the borders of transmissibility for decades. Some, for unclear reasons, never cross over at all. But all of this is compatible with the virus becoming transmissible soon.

«

He then goes on to look at the likelihood of a pandemic – and whether the betting markets agree. Read this and be much wiser.
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Number of power grid faults in three areas spiked before fires began • Los Angeles Times

Noah Goldberg and Salvador Hernandez:

»

The number of faults on the power grid near three of the major Los Angeles County fires skyrocketed in the hours before the blazes began, according to a company that monitors electrical activity.

Bob Marshall, the chief executive of Whisker Labs, said in an interview with The Times that the areas near the Eaton, Palisades and Hurst fires all saw massive increases in faults in the hours leading up to the fires. Faults on the power grid are caused by tree limbs hitting electrical wires or wires hitting one another, among other causes. Each fault causes a spark.

The fires together have destroyed or damaged more than 9,000 structures. Power equipment has caused destructive wind-driven California wildfires in the past, but L.A. city and county fire officials say their investigators have not determined what sparked any of the fires.

“What I cannot say is one of these faults sparked the fire. I don’t know that,” Marshall said in an interview. “But it just takes one to start the fire.”

Data shared with The Times, but not yet released publicly, showed the increase in faults.

In the area of the Palisades fire, in the hour before the fire started, there were 25 faults on the grid. In the hour that the fire started, there were 18 faults, according to Whisker Labs’ data.

«

Inexplicably, the original headline on this article was “Southern California Edison preserving equipment near Eaton fire starting point”. Which doesn’t bear any relation to the top of the story in the above extract. It barely gets mentioned in the story total. When will American papers learn to write headlines, I wonder?
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Just how many ads are there on ad-supported streaming apps, really? • Sherwood News

Jon Keegan:

»

It’s getting harder to avoid ads on streaming video. For cord-cutters, after years of living in ad-free bliss, the trend is heading toward ads — a lot of ads.

The big streaming platforms are all boosting the price of their ad-free subscriptions, trying to get as many people over to an ad-supported tier, which has a greater potential revenue per user despite the lower monthly fees.

After suffering through what seemed to be an absurd number of ads recently while watching a show on my ad-supported Paramount+ plan, I decided to gather some data and see exactly how many ads are being crammed into the typical program, and how much time they’re taking up during the viewing session.

I signed up for new ad-supported accounts on Netflix, Peacock, Disney+, Max, Paramount+, and Hulu and watched all the ads on 12 popular shows — two on each platform — so you didn’t have to. You’re welcome.

The first thing I wanted to quantify was exactly how much of my viewing went to ads versus the program itself.

Let’s take a look at what we learned from each platform’s shows.

«

The ad load varies – on his perhaps limited investigation – from 3% (Netflix) to 16% (Disney+). Though they all have three or four ad breaks, which I think is the most frustrating thing about ads. It’s the interruption that’s annoying, and the uncertainty about how long the interruption will go on. Also, they didn’t look at Amazon, which has an ad-supported version of Prime.
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‘A time bomb’: fears for children being poisoned by lead paint in UK homes • Financial Times

Laura Hughes:

»

For six months this year, Xena Buckle quarantined her family into the one room in her council house in south London that she knew would not poison her six-year-old son.

Tests had just revealed that the toxic metal lead was present in Rhegon’s blood at almost twice the UK’s medical intervention level of 5 microgrammes per decilitre. Flaking lead paint in the property was to blame. 

The UK is home to some of the oldest housing in the world, and many homes still have lead paint, which as it flakes and rubs off walls, windows and door frames creates a poisonous dust that can be harmful to humans if ingested.

Before it was banned in 1992, lead paint in the UK may have contained up to 50% lead by weight, “which is potentially capable of causing lead poisoning in a small child if they eat just a single flake”, according to government guidance published in October.

The well-established health risks associated with exposure to the metal — which has a harmful impact on almost every organ in the human body — have led to a ban on its use in petrol, domestic paint and pipes in the UK.

But experts said a lack of routine testing meant hundreds of thousands of children would be silently suffering from the effects of lead poisoning.

“This is a time bomb and it’s not going to go away,” said Alan Emond, emeritus professor of child health at Bristol Medical School. “By not facing up to it now, we are going to expose another generation to lead.”

«

It took Hughes months to get the info together for this story. And here’s the other fun part: how do you get rid of the paint? If you chip or sand it off, you release it into the atmosphere.
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What happened to the live London Underground / bus maps? TfL happened • Traintimes

Matthew Somerville set up the live Tube trains map in June 2010, and it had been happily running since then using the official TfL API. But:

»

on 7th January 2025, I received two emails out of the blue; a vaguely personal one from someone at TfL telling me to remove the schematic Tube map, and my hosting provider received a very impersonal one from the “Trademark Enforcement team”. (That second one says “We informed the registrant of our complaint, but were unable to resolve this issue.” but presumably they can’t mean the first email sent about an hour earlier? This is the first I’ve ever heard from them.)

This is of course perfectly within their right so to do, though I would have hoped for a different approach. Sure, I could have made some changes and kept the maps up, although as above they have been fine with it for many years. But I believe it is possible to both “protect” your trademark (or whatever you think this is) and not treat people like this. And rewarding this heavy-handed approach (by continuing to provide a useful addition to their service with no contact bar this) to me feels wrong.

The internet isn’t what it was 15 years ago, and I can’t be bothered dealing with large organisations removing any semblance of joy from it. I’m sure they won’t care, but I am just too tired.

So sorry, the maps are all gone.

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Utterly stupid on TfL’s part. Why have an API that’s not actually usable because you can’t put the trains on a map? Maybe this is the lesson of the internet: in time, all the good things die.
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Here are some of the weirdest gadgets we spotted at CES 2025 • The Register

Brandon Vigliarolo:

»

As the gadget-filled spectacle that CES draws to a close, there’s much to anticipate and just as much that leaves us completely baffled.

We’ve already talked about the worst finds in the repairability and sustainability categories in our the worst of CES 2025. Now we turn an eye toward all the weird stuff that occupies the nooks and crannies of the Vegas show floor and has us wondering who decided to dedicate an engineering team’s time and salary toward such projects. 

There’s plenty of weirdness to pick through at CES every year, and we’ve whittled it down to these six items.

«

So glad not to be there. And to be honest, the “worst” list isn’t that much different from the weird ones. Read both and feel happy you didn’t go there too.

Anyway, that’s it done for another year, and dealt with in one link! Phew.
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One less thing to worry about in 2025: Yellowstone probably won’t go boom • Ars Technica

John Timmer:

»

It’s difficult to comprehend what 1,000 cubic kilometers of rock would look like. It’s even more difficult to imagine it being violently flung into the air. Yet the Yellowstone volcanic system blasted more than twice that amount of rock into the sky about 2 million years ago, and it has generated a number of massive (if somewhat smaller) eruptions since, and there have been even larger eruptions deeper in the past.

All of which might be enough to keep someone nervously watching the seismometers scattered throughout the area. But a new study suggests that there’s nothing to worry about in the near future: There’s not enough molten material pooled in one place to trigger the sort of violent eruptions that have caused massive disruptions in the past. The study also suggests that the primary focus of activity may be shifting outside of the caldera formed by past eruptions.

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See? Good news does exist.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

At the end of September a crucial silicon mine in Spruce Pine was flooded by Hurricane Helene. Ever wonder what happened next? CC-licensed photo by State Archives of North Carolina Raleigh, NC 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.

Delayed: this week’s Social Warming Substack post won’t appear today. If you’re signed up, it’ll appear in your email or on the app when it’s written.

This is the last Overspill of 2024 (220 editions, 44 weeks, not bad). We made it! See you again in 2025. (Not sure if it will be Monday 6th or 13th. Exciting!)

A selection of 10 links for you. Enjoy the break. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

The ghosts in the machine • Harpers

Liz Pelly:

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I first heard about ghost artists in the summer of 2017. At the time, I was new to the music-streaming beat. I had been researching the influence of major labels on Spotify playlists since the previous year, and my first report had just been published. Within a few days, the owner of an independent record label in New York dropped me a line to let me know about a mysterious phenomenon that was “in the air” and of growing concern to those in the indie music scene: Spotify, the rumor had it, was filling its most popular playlists with stock music attributed to pseudonymous musicians—variously called ghost or fake artists—presumably in an effort to reduce its royalty payouts. Some even speculated that Spotify might be making the tracks itself. At a time when playlists created by the company were becoming crucial sources of revenue for independent artists and labels, this was a troubling allegation.

At first, it sounded to me like a conspiracy theory. Surely, I thought, these artists were just DIY hustlers trying to game the system. But the tips kept coming. Over the next few months, I received more notes from readers, musicians, and label owners about the so-called fake-artist issue than about anything else. One digital strategist at an independent record label worried that the problem could soon grow more insidious. “So far it’s happening within a genre that mostly affects artists at labels like the one I work for, or Kranky, or Constellation,” the strategist said, referring to two long-running indie labels.

By July, the story had burst into public view, after a Vulture article resurfaced a year-old item from the trade press claiming that Spotify was filling some of its popular and relaxing mood playlists—such as those for “jazz,” “chill,” and “peaceful piano” music—with cheap fake-artist offerings created by the company. A Spotify spokesperson, in turn, told the music press that these reports were “categorically untrue, full stop”: the company was not creating its own fake-artist tracks. But while Spotify may not have created them, it stopped short of denying that it had added them to its playlists.

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Deeply reported piece which does not make Spotify look good.
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America’s bird-flu luck has officially run out • The Atlantic

Yasmin Tayag:

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The Louisiana patient was infected with a strain of the virus related to the one that sickened the Canadian teen but different from the one spreading among dairy herds, poultry, and farmworkers. The mutations in this strain “represent the ability of the virus to cause serious disease, but these instances should be isolated in humans for the time being,” Chin-Hong said.

But just because America is in the same place of steady precarity that it has been in for months doesn’t mean that’s a good place to be in. As I wrote in September, we are in an awkward state of in-between, in which experts are on high alert for concerning mutations but the public has no reason to worry—yet. “Right now, I agree that the risk to the general public is low, but we know avian influenza mutates quickly,” Anne Rimoin, an epidemiology professor at UCLA, told me.

The more transmissions among animals—in particular from birds to mammals—the more chances the virus has to mutate to become more threatening to the public. The longer the virus persists in the environment, “the greater potential to mutate, resort, and become more infectious and virulent to humans,” Maurice Pitesky, an animal-infectious-diseases expert at UC Davis, told me.

America is giving the virus a lot of chances to infect people. Although efforts to control the virus, such as regular testing of herds and bulk testing of raw milk, are under way, they have clearly not been enough. The spread of the virus geographically and across mammalian species is unprecedented, Pitesky said. He believes that more efforts should be directed toward shifting waterfowl—ducks, geese, and other wild birds responsible for spreading H5N1—away from commercial farms, where the virus is most likely to be transmitted to humans.

A shot for bird flu exists, and experts have urged the government to vaccinate farmworkers. “Farmers need help,” Pitesky said.

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What will 2025 bring? Join us next year for Pandemic Watching Brief!
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IT expert convicted for repeatedly lying about inventing Bitcoin • BBC News

Joe Tidy:

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A computer scientist has been found to have committed contempt of court for falsely and persistently claiming to be the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

In March, the High Court ruled Craig Wright was not Satoshi, and ordered him to stop claiming he was.

However, he continued to launch legal cases asserting he had intellectual property rights to Bitcoin, including a claim he was owed $1.2 trillion ($911bn).

A judge said that amounted to a “flagrant breach” of the original court order and sentenced him to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years.

It means if Wright – who is from Australia but lives in the UK – continues to claim he invented the cryptocurrency he will face being jailed.

However, Wright, who appeared via videolink, refused to disclose where he was, saying only he was in Asia. It means an international arrest warrant would have to be issued if the UK authorities wanted to detain him.

Wright’s actions were described in court as “legal terrorism” that “put people through personal hell” in his campaign to be recognised as Bitcoin’s inventor.

The judge, Mr Justice Mellor, said Wright arguments were “legal nonsense” but acknowledged that he was not in the UK and “appears to be well aware of countries with which the UK does not have extradition arrangements”.

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And so we tie all that up. Can we hope we will hear no more from Craig Wright?
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Misleading Google search results on UK asylum seeker crime rate used 2017 data from Germany • Full Fact

»

Google’s search results and its AI overview have been giving misleading answers to questions about the number of crimes committed by asylum seekers in the UK—quoting figures that were actually from 2017 in Germany.

There’s no evidence these figures reflect the current crime rate among asylum seekers in the UK, though official data is limited and neither the Office for National Statistics (ONS) nor the Home Office publish equivalent UK figures.

But in recent months we’ve seen screenshots of some of these misleading Google search results circulated on social media.

After we contacted Google about this last week, the misleading results seem to be no longer appearing in searches on the topic.

A Google spokesperson told Full Fact: “We aim to surface relevant, high quality information in all our Search features and we continue to raise the bar for quality with ongoing updates and improvements. When issues arise—like if our features misinterpret web content or miss some context—we use those examples to improve and take appropriate action under our policies.”

«

Full Fact is a fact-checking organisation in the UK. Misleading results like this in its AI overview carry the imprimatur of Google, seen by many as “the source that’s correct”. Google’s response? “Oh”.
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October 2024: Quartz mine crucial for making chips reopens ten days after Hurricane Helene’s devastation • Tom’s Hardware

Jowi Morales:

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Sibelco, one of the two companies mining ultra-high-purity quartz at Spruce Pine, North Carolina, has restarted production a little over ten days after Hurricane Helene devastated the area. According to its press release, Sibelco only suffered minor damage, and all its employees are safe and accounted for. With the company restarting shipments to its customers and ramping production to full total capacity, the chipmaking industry is assured that it won’t have issues with the pure quartz supply needed to make the silicon base of semiconductors.

Hurricane Helene was a Category 4 hurricane that severely affected the Spruce Pine area, thus raising some fears that it would disrupt the accessible and affordable supply of quartz needed to create silicon ingots. These ingots are sliced into thin wafers and polished, then etched to form the chips we find on our computers. However, you can’t just melt ultra-pure silicon in any container to create the silicon ingots you need to make chips. Impurities in the container could react with the molten silicon, so you need an equally pure quartz crucible to hold it.

Most chip makers and their suppliers have enough silicon wafers or silicon ingots to weather a disruption in the supply chain, so many did not expect any significant industry repercussions from the tragedy. Besides, there are other quartz sources globally, although they’re likely not as readily available and affordable as what the North Carolina mines supply.

Nevertheless, Sibelco’s production restart is welcome news for the entire industry. After all, the supply chain horror stories that started during the 2020 COVID pandemic and extended until 2022 are fresh in our memories, and we don’t want a repeat of that.

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Tying up loose ends: this was set up to be the Giant Drama at the end of September after Hurricane Helene: OMG semiconductor supply chain disruption?!?! Instead it turns out they got it all up and running again and everything’s hunky dory. Drink!
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US temporarily bans drones in parts of NJ, may use “deadly force” against aircraft – Ars Technica

Jon Brodkin:

»

The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily banned drones over parts of New Jersey yesterday and said “the United States government may use deadly force against” airborne aircraft “if it is determined that the aircraft poses an imminent security threat.”

The FAA issued 22 orders imposing “temporary flight restrictions for special security reasons” until January 17, 2025. “At the request of federal security partners, the FAA published 22 Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) prohibiting drone flights over critical New Jersey infrastructure,” an FAA statement said.

…The latest notices follow numerous sightings of objects that appeared to be drones, which worried New Jersey residents and prompted state and federal officials to investigate and issue several public statements. The FAA last month imposed temporary flight restrictions at the Picatinny Arsenal, an Army research and manufacturing facility, and a Bedminster golf course owned by President-elect Donald Trump.

On December 16, a joint statement was issued by the US Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the FAA, and Department of Defense. The “FBI has received tips of more than 5,000 reported drone sightings in the last few weeks with approximately 100 leads generated,” but evidence so far suggests “the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” the statement said. “We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast.” in the areas covered by this NOTAM” unless they have clearance for specific operations, the FAA said. Allowed operations include support for national defense, law enforcement, firefighting, and commercial operations “with a valid statement of work.”

“Pilots who do not adhere to the following proc[edure] may be intercepted, detained and interviewed by law enforcement/security personnel,” the FAA said. Violating the order could result in “civil penalties and the suspension or revocation of airmen certificates,” and criminal charges, the FAA said.

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Americans have absolutely lost their minds over this. The UK had the same thing with drones allegedly being seen over Gatwick airport. No evidence was ever found.
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IMF reaches staff-level agreement with El Salvador on an Extended Fund Facility Arrangement • International Monetary Fund

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IMF staff and the El Salvadoran authorities have reached a staff-level agreement on a new arrangement under the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) for about US$1.4bn to support the government’s reform agenda. The agreement is subject to IMF Executive Board approval.

The program aims to strengthen fiscal and external sustainability, through implementation of an ambitious and growth-friendly fiscal consolidation plan, as well as actions to enhance reserve buffers.

Early efforts to improve governance, transparency, and resilience will be essential to boost confidence and the country’s growth potential, against the backdrop of strong security improvements.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin-related risks are being mitigated. Acceptance of Bitcoin by the private sector will be voluntary and public sector’s participation in Bitcoin-related activities will be confined.

«

Whoa whoa whoa. So Bukele’s experiment with El Salvador becoming the “bitcoin nation” is over. Taxes will be paid in US dollars, and the El Salvador government’s e-wallet Chivo will be “gradually unwound”.

I asked back in March 2022 how you’d evaluate the success of this experiment. The answer seems to be: could Bukele use it to get a good cash injection from the IMF?
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After 12 years of writing about bitcoin, here’s how my thinking has changed • Moneyness

JP Koning:

»

What I’ve learnt after many years of writing about bitcoin is that it’s a relatively innocuous phenomena, even pedestrian. When it does lead to bad outcomes, I’ve outlined how those can be handled with our existing tools. But here’s what does have me worried.

If you want to buy some bitcoins, go right ahead. We can even help by regulating the trading venues to make it safe. But don’t force others to play.

Alas, that seems to be where we are headed. There is a growing effort to arm-twist the rest of society into joining in by having governments acquire bitcoins, in the U.S.’s case a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The U.S. government has never entered the World Series of Poker. Nor has it gone to Vegas to bet billions to tax payer funds on roulette or built a strategic Powerball ticket reserve, but it appears to be genuinely entertaining the idea of rolling the dice on Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is an incredibly infectious early-bird game, one that after sixteen years continues to find a constant stream of new recruits. How contagious? I originally estimated in a 2022 post, Three potential paths for the price of bitcoin, that adoption wouldn’t rise above 10%-15% of the global population, but I may have been underestimating its transmissibility. My worry is that calls for government support will only accelerate as more voters, government officials, and bureaucrats catch the orange coin mind virus and act on it. It begins with a small strategic reserve of a few billion dollars. It ends with the Department of Bitcoin Price Appreciation being allocated 50% of yearly tax revenues to make the number go up, to the detriment of infrastructure like roads, hospitals, and law enforcement. At that point we’ve entered a dystopia in which society rapidly deteriorates because we’ve all become obsessed on a bet.

Although I never wanted to ban Bitcoin, I can’t help but wonder whether a prohibition wouldn’t have been the better policy back in 2013 or 2014 given the new bitcoin-by-force path that advocates are pushing it towards. But it’s probably too late for that; the coin is already out of the bag. All I can hope is that my long history of writing on the topic might persuade a few readers that forcing others to play the game you love is not fair game.

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I had no idea where this blogpost was going to start or end up. But also, you can’t prohibit bitcoin! Unless, perhaps, you figure out a way to ban bitcoin exchanges, which also isn’t really feasible.
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How to lose a fortune with just one bad click • Krebs on Security

Brian Krebs:

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Adam Griffin is still in disbelief over how quickly he was robbed of nearly $500,000 in cryptocurrencies. A scammer called using a real Google phone number to warn his Gmail account was being hacked, sent email security alerts directly from google.com, and ultimately seized control over the account by convincing him to click “yes” to a Google prompt on his mobile device.

Griffin is a battalion chief firefighter in the Seattle area, and on May 6 he received a call from someone claiming they were from Google support saying his account was being accessed from Germany. A Google search on the phone number calling him — (650) 203-0000 — revealed it was an official number for Google Assistant, an AI-based service that can engage in two-way conversations.

At the same time, he received an email that came from a google.com email address, warning his Google account was compromised. The message included a “Google Support Case ID number” and information about the Google representative supposedly talking to him on the phone, stating the rep’s name as “Ashton” — the same name given by the caller.

Griffin didn’t learn this until much later, but the email he received had a real google.com address because it was sent via Google Forms, a service available to all Google Docs users that makes it easy to send surveys, quizzes and other communications.

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The answer to how to lose a fortune seems to be “keep it in crypto”. Ironically, the other week John Siracusa on the ATP podcast was explaining how his (tiny) investment in crypto had been stolen – by, he reckoned, the site which had issued his cryptojunk, where he had gone to check how much it was worth but which he figured now must have had some sort of password-stealing malware installed.
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Leak: this is Lenovo’s rollable display laptop • The Verge

Jay Peters:

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Lenovo showed off a laptop concept with a rollable display last year, and in 2025, it might release one that you can actually buy. Leaker Evan Blass just shared images of what he says is a sixth-generation Lenovo ThinkBook Plus, and based on two of the images, it has a display that extends upward to reveal more display underneath.

It seems pretty similar to the concept from 2023, which also extended upward to show more screen. In these images from Blass, Lenovo is showing how the extended screen can be used for multitasking, such as by watching a YouTube video in the lower half of the screen or having a document on hand under a PowerPoint presentation.

Blass’ leak doesn’t include any specs, so we don’t yet know many important details about this rumored laptop.

«

Lenovo is very keen on trying wild laptop ideas which then get absolutely no traction anywhere in the market and are abandoned within a year.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

In the US, legalised sports betting is linked to an increase in domestic violence incidents when home gridiron teams lose. CC-licensed photo by Maryland GovPics 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. Unwagered. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

Apple collaborates with NVIDIA to research faster LLM performance • 9to5Mac

Chance Miller:

»

In a blog post on Wednesday, Apple engineers shared new details on a collaboration with NVIDIA to implement faster text generation performance with large language models.

Apple published and open sourced its Recurrent Drafter (ReDrafter) technique earlier this year. It represents a new method for generating text with LLMs that is significantly faster and “achieves state of the art performance.” It combines two techniques: beam search (to explore multiple possibilities) and dynamic tree attention (to efficiently handle choices).

While its research demonstrated strong results, Apple collaborated with NVIDIA to apply ReDrafter in production. As part of this collaboration, ReDrafter was integrated into NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM, a tool that helps run LLMs faster on NVIDIA GPUs.

…“LLMs are increasingly being used to power production applications, and improving inference efficiency can both impact computational costs and reduce latency for users,” Apple’s machine learning researchers conclude.

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What’s most remarkable about this is that it’s Apple working with NVidia – the company that most resembles it in internal culture, and which Apple therefore has the most trouble working with, because (as discussed on the recent “Apple and Nvidia” episode of the Dithering podcast) they both want to control everything about the process – what is shared, who provides what, who goes to whose office to do coding.

The question posed by Ben Thompson on that episode has stuck with me: if there was a duplicate of yourself – like you in every way, including personality – do you think you would get on with them? Or might some things they did annoy you, even though they’d be the things you would do? It’s worth reflecting on. Would you be aloof? Charming? Welcoming? Impatient?
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Newsom declares bird flu emergency in California as US confirms first severe case • KQED

Lesley McClurg:

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Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Wednesday in response to the bird flu outbreak, an action meant to allow the state and local agencies additional resources to increase virus surveillance and slow the spread.

The declaration comes as new dairy cows in Southern California test positive. The state’s Department of Food and Agriculture has detected the virus at 645 dairies, about half of them in the last month. To date, the virus has not spread from person-to-person in California, and nearly all infected individuals were exposed to infected cattle.

Newsom’s announcement coincides with concerning news from Louisiana, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the nation’s first severe human case of bird flu. The patient, who was exposed to sick and dead birds in their backyard flock, is currently hospitalised.

The US Department of Agriculture started testing the nation’s milk supply for bird flu earlier this month, and the agency alerted dairy processors that they may have to provide samples of raw milk on request.

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The Louisiana patient isn’t just hospitalised; they’re critical with severe respiratory symptoms. We seem to have moved rapidly from “watching brief” to “bird flu state of emergency”.
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1999: the year that signalled end times for newspapers • Los Angeles Times

Shelby Grad is the deputy managing editor of the LA Times:

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“I see nothing in the new technology — nothing coming out of Silicon Valley — that eliminates the need for newspapers and certainly for trained, responsible, ethical and aggressive journalists,” the chairman of the National Assn. of Newspapers told an audience in Washington a month earlier. “We believe that of all the traditional media, newspapers are in the best possible position to use the Internet.”

But behind the rosy corporate spin, there were some red flags. Many newspapers posted advertising gains, but the percentage of ads going to print versus other media was declining. Classified ads were shifting from print to the web. The Times was still regrouping after a round of 500 job cuts. A few years earlier the paper had hired a CEO from breakfast food giant General Mills to bring its finances into line. The newsroom derisively referred to him as the “cereal killer.” Growing revenue was the name of the game, and it took The Times down some strange roads, including a quixotic quest to make the paper smell better.

And it was this search for cash that led to one of the darkest chapters in L.A. Times history.

When Staples Center opened that October [1999], the Los Angeles Times Magazine published a lavish special issue. It was a celebration not just of the Lakers’ and Kings’ new home but of the revival of downtown Los Angeles it promised to unleash. It was the largest magazine the paper ever published and generated $2m in revenue.

But it was later revealed by competitors that the paper had secretly entered into a profit-sharing agreement with Staples Center for the magazine, a conflict of interest that sparked protests by Times journalists who’d written for the magazine without knowing about the deal as well as head-shaking from many readers.

On Dec. 20, The Times published a massive self-examination that broke down what went wrong. It ran 14 pages as a special section without a single ad. The episode left the newsroom shaken and the newspaper’s credibility damaged, and it sparked a more frank discussion inside The Times about financial pressures. “Money is always the first thing we talk about,” one senior editor said in the piece. “The readers are always the last thing we talk about.”

In L.A. Times scholarship, the Staples scandal is seen as the first sign of the epic decline to come.

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Classic self-flagellating American journalism: the mistake wasn’t failing to adapt to the internet quickly enough, it was producing a supplement that pulled in huge amounts of money!
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What happens when the internet disappears? • The Verge

s. e. smith:

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The loss of content is not a new phenomenon. It’s endemic to human societies, marked as we are by an ephemerality that can be hard to contextualize from a distance. For every Shakespeare, hundreds of other playwrights lived, wrote, and died, and we remember neither their names nor their words. (There is also, of course, a Marlowe, for the girlies who know.) For every Dickens, uncountable penny dreadfuls on cheap newsprint didn’t withstand the test of decades. For every iconic cuneiform tablet bemoaning poor customer service, countless more have been destroyed over the millennia. 

This is a particularly complex problem for digital storage. For every painstakingly archived digital item, there are also hard drives corrupted, content wiped, media formats that are effectively unreadable and unusable, as I discovered recently when I went on a hunt for a reel-to-reel machine to recover some audio from the 1960s. Every digital media format, from the Bernoulli Box to the racks of servers slowly boiling the planet, is ultimately doomed to obsolescence as it’s supplanted by the next innovation, with even the Library of Congress struggling to preserve digital archives.  

Historical content can be an incredibly informative resource, telling us how people lived and thought. But we must remember that it’s a small fraction of contemporaneous material that survives, even as we hope, of course, that it’s our own existence that is ultimately memorialized. Sometimes it is through the gaps that we read history or are forced to consider why some things are more likely to persist than others, are more remembered than others, why other histories are subject to active suppression, as we’re seeing across the United States with legislation targeting the accurate teaching of history.

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Solutions to this? None really apart from the Internet Archive. Smith is not very encouraged by the arrival of AI, which he thinks will make things worse.
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TikTok’s ban-or-sale law challenge to be heard in Supreme Court • The Washington Post

Ann Marimow and Eva Dou:

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The Supreme Court said Wednesday that it will quickly take up TikTok’s challenge to a federal law that would shutter the popular platform next month unless the company divests from Chinese ownership.

The justices said they would consider whether the law, passed with bipartisan support to address national security concerns, violates the First Amendment rights of millions of TikTok users and the owners of the video-sharing platform.

In a sign of the significance of the issue, the court added a special hearing to its calendar, scheduling two hours for oral argument on Jan. 10. A ruling could come any time after that.

TikTok had asked the high court to intervene before Jan. 19, the deadline Congress set for TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform or be barred in the United States. The company wants the justices to put on hold a lower-court ruling that clears the way for the law, which was signed by President Joe Biden.

President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office Jan. 20, has suggested he could try to retain access to the app, adding to the uncertainty surrounding the ban-or-sale law.

Lawmakers passed the measure in response to concerns from U.S. officials that TikTok could be pressured by the Chinese government to covertly manipulate public opinion in the United States or to provide access to Americans’ data.

TikTok has said in court filings that the law is a “massive and unprecedented speech restriction” that will “silence the speech of applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts and other matters of public concern.”

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Logically, the ruling needs to come before January 19 if it throws out the government’s law. The obvious challenge is the First Amendment; the government’s rebuttal is national security. But it will have to demonstrate that, which might be very tricky in open court.
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Japan sees nuclear as cheapest baseload power source in 2040 • Bloomberg via Financial Post

Shoko Oda:

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Nuclear power is forecast to be the cheapest baseload electricity source in Japan in 2040, highlighting the government’s desire to restart the nation’s idled reactors.

The cost of constructing and operating a new nuclear power plant for 2040 is estimated at 12.5 yen ($0.08) per kilowatt-hour, according to documents released from a trade ministry panel meeting on Monday. This cost assumes reactors will be used for 40 years at a 70% operational rate. The meeting was held to discuss the so-called levelized cost of electricity for each power asset, the document said. 

A previous study published in 2021 saw LNG-fired power plants as the cheapest power source in 2030. However, the latest analysis includes a cost to reduce emissions, while fuel prices are also higher.

Intermittent renewable sources, like large-scale and residential solar, were priced lower than nuclear for 2040, the most recent report showed. However, when including the total system cost, including deployment of batteries, nuclear is cheaper than solar in some scenarios.

Japan is currently in the process of revising its national energy strategy, which will dictate its power mix targets beyond 2030. The government has doubled down on nuclear as a way to curb dependence on pricey fossil fuels.

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Japan, don’t forget, has essentially zero indigenous energy sources, so has to rely on imports for all its fossil fuels – which is a lot.
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Brazil’s illegal vape market thrives as Meta’s rules clash with local laws • Rest of World

Pedro Nakamura:

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On August 3, Love Disk, a tobacco and liquor shop, posted an ad of a saleswoman holding three vapes up to the camera on Instagram. “The little beloved ones have arrived home,” the caption read.

There was a serious problem with the ad: Love Disk is located in Brazil, where the sale, import, and advertising of e-cigarettes has been illegal since 2009.

But such endorsements have gone unchecked in Brazil as Meta’s content policies allow attempts to buy, sell, trade, gift, and ask for nicotine products by profiles run by “legitimate” brick-and-mortar stores. The use of e-cigarettes has risen sharply in the country in recent years, with sales partly driven by social media platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, according to a government report. Meanwhile, the Big Tobacco lobby in Brazil is pushing for their legalization, threatening to roll back decades of declining tobacco use.

“Today, we don’t have a legal framework to hold platforms accountable,” Stefania Schimaneski, who manages the registration and inspection of smoking products at Anvisa, Brazil’s health regulatory agency, told Rest of World.

The Brazilian government banned the sale, import, and advertising of e-cigarettes in 2009. For a while, it appeared that the ban was successful at keeping vaping rates down. According to Covitel, a nationwide survey to monitor risk factors for chronic illness in Brazil, 0.6% of people between 18 and 24 years were daily e-cigarette users in 2022.

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Meta ignoring local laws? Perish the thought.
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Apple stock up despite lacklustre iPhone 16 sales • Investor’s Business Daily

Patrick Seitz:

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Despite hopes that artificial intelligence features would drive iPhone 16 sales, Apple’s latest smartphones continue to underperform compared with last year’s models, a Wall Street analyst says. Still, Apple stock is near record high territory. [They came off it, along with the rest of the US stock market, on Wednesday afternoon.]

In a client note Wednesday, JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee said US sales of the iPhone 16 are tracking below the iPhone 15 so far. He cited a survey from Wave7 Research about handset sales across US carriers in October and November.

“The survey highlights that the lower momentum, reflected in the lower market share year over year, is likely led by the (still) lower consumer awareness for Apple Intelligence,” Chatterjee said.

Apple Intelligence is Apple’s branding of AI features.

On the plus side, Apple is seeing a mix shift toward its higher-end models, especially the iPhone 16 Pro Max, he said. Chatterjee rates Apple stock as overweight with a price target of 265.

On the stock market today, Apple stock fell 2.1% to close at 248.05. Earlier in the session, it notched a record high of 254.28.

“Awareness about Apple Intelligence remains low,” Chatterjee said. “Based on a survey of carrier store representatives, 67% believe that iPhone users have low awareness of Apple Intelligence. Meanwhile, 24% indicated a ‘medium’ level of awareness, and only 10% reported a ‘high’ level of awareness among iPhone users.”

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Lower sales and low awareness of Apple Intelligence is honestly not surprising. Phones last longer, and it’s really impossible to cite a must-have element among the new features. The adverts aren’t doing the job either. (Unlike the one for AirPods Pro, which is one of the best I have ever seen anywhere.)
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Sports betting legalization amplifies emotional cues and intimate partner violence • SSRN

Kyutaro Matsuzawa and Emily Arnesen (both University of Oregon, dept of economics):

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This study explores the relationship between legalized sports gambling, unexpected emotional cues, and reported intimate partner violence (IPV). Using crime data from the 2011 to 2022 National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and extending Card & Dahl (2011)’s model, we find that when sports gambling is legalized, the effect of NFL home team upset losses on IPV increases by around 10 percentage points.

Heterogeneity analyses reveal that these effects are larger: (i) in states where mobile betting is legalized, (ii) in locations where higher bets were placed, (iii) around paydays, and (iv) for teams who were on a winning streak. Together, these findings support that financial losses from participation in sports gambling can amplify the emotional cues from a favorite team’s unexpected loss.

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Police forces know this anecdotally, but now we have a more statistical confirmation. In the UK there trope has been for years that domestic violence cases spike in an area when the home (soccer) team loses.
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Energy firms to spend £77bn to rewire Great Britain’s electricity grid • The Guardian

Jillian Ambrose:

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Energy companies have promised to spend up to £77bn over five years to help rewire to Great Britain’s electricity infrastructure in the global race to shift from fossil fuels to clean electricity.

The companies that own the high-voltage power system – National Grid, SSE and ScottishPower – have submitted the spending plans to the regulator Ofgem for the period from 2026 to 2031, which could support about 100,000 jobs.

National Grid set out plans to spend up to £35bn over the five years to March 2031, SSE is budgeting up to £31bn and ScottishPower aims to invest £10.5bn.

John Pettigrew, the chief executive of National Grid, said its programme represents “the most significant step forward in the electricity network that we’ve seen in a generation”.

He added: “Through it we will nearly double the amount of energy that can be transported around the country, support the electrification of the industries of today and tomorrow; create new jobs; and support inward investment for the UK.”

The proposals must still be approved by the watchdog, which is expected to balance the need for costly investments in upgrading the power infrastructure to meet climate targets, which is paid for through energy bills, against the need to protect customers from rising costs.

National Grid, which owns the transmission network in England and Wales, plans to spend more than £11bn to maintain and upgrade its existing networks, alongside building three major grid projects that have already been approved by the regulator through its fast-track process.

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This is serious money. And a lot of jobs.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: Thanks to the many people who sent or offered to send the Neuron paper about our slow brains. I will slowly read it over the Christmas break.