Scammers who call one of the numbers in their lists will encounter an “AI granny” who wastes time by talking about knitting. CC-licensed photo by IMLS Digital Collections & Content 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. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

Meta lobbyist turned regulator says Europe’s Big Tech rules have gone too far • WIRED

Morgan Meaker:

»

By 2022, around three-quarters of all Google and Meta lobbyists in Europe previously worked at the European Commission, according to LobbyControl research. [40-year-old Finnish former Meta lobbyist, Aura] Salla once fell into this category, too. Her career in Brussels started at the European Commission before she was hired by Meta in 2020. The company did not respond to WIRED’s request to comment on this article.

Salla is worried that recently passed laws—like the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, or the AI Act—may be stifling potential European rivals to the likes of OpenAI or Apple. “We have very layered regulation on the tech sector, and that’s harming our companies,” Salla says.

The MEP does not oppose the aims of laws like the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which includes rules forcing Apple to allow third-party app stores onto European iPhones. “I hope that the DMA will be enforced so we can enable more companies to enter this field where Apple is—absolutely, I would love to see that,” Salla says. Yet she’s pessimistic the regulation will actually compel Apple to change. “I’m sorry, the company will go around it, go around it, go around it.” Instead, the businesses that will suffer, she claims, will be some of Europe’s most successful—travel company Booking.com and online retailer Zalando. “So, our own companies.”

Salla is becoming an outspoken figure, articulating concern that regulation went too far, too fast. She believes the EU should focus on boosting innovation at home over restraining companies from abroad. “We did it completely the wrong way around,” she says. European companies should be able to collect and feed their AI models data, Salla says, arguing companies are limited by “too many overlapping” rules. She stresses she is advocating for businesses to be able to use traffic and metadata—not private data—to train AI. “Even if [they are] not limited, it takes an army of consultants to make sure everything is correct,” she says.

«

There is a strong feeling that the US has been too lax but the EU has been too strict in regulating tech, and getting each back to the ideal point is no easy task.
unique link to this extract

Bluesky tops 20m users, narrowing gap with Instagram Threads • TechCrunch

Sarah Perez:

»

Bluesky, the social network and X competitor, has been benefiting from a surge of departures from the Elon Musk-owned app formerly known as Twitter. On Tuesday, Bluesky hit a major milestone: it topped 20 million users. What’s more, new data indicates the app’s rapid growth is seeing it close the gap with another prominent X rival, Instagram Threads, across metrics like daily active users and website visits.

Bluesky’s user base is still much smaller than Threads, which recently reported north of 275 million monthly active users. However, if Bluesky’s current rate of growth holds up, it could catch up with Threads in time, market intelligence firm Similarweb believes.

Its data indicates that Threads had five times more daily active users (DAUs) than Bluesky ahead of the US elections, but on November 15, a peak day of activity for Bluesky, Threads’ lead over Bluesky had been reduced to just 1.5x in the US. (Daily active users include the mobile apps on iOS and Android, not website visitors.)

Instagram head Adam Mosseri denied Similarweb’s data is accurate, but Meta does not share DAUs.

«

It would be amusing if all Threads’s engagement-baiting (and news-minimisation) has been for naught, and what people wanted was a really vanilla social network.

You can see a real-time update of Bluesky registered users: presently just short of 20.3m users.
unique link to this extract

Is Bluesky the new Twitter? • The Atlantic

Ian Bogost:

»

Can Bluesky be the fix for all those woes, and a lasting replacement for the site that once was Twitter? I really doubt it.

Woe that people, myself included, have been inspired even to ask the question. Although white supremacy, scams, and porn are real and worsening problems on X and other social media, I have written before in The Atlantic about a problem that I see as superordinate to all of these others: People just aren’t meant to talk with one another this much. The decline of X is a sign that we may soon be free of social media, and the compulsive, constant attention-seeking that it normalized. Counterintuitively, the rise of Bluesky is also a good sign, in that so many people are still trying to hold on to the past. Giving up on social media will take time, and it will inspire relapse.

For all its growth, Bluesky still trails far behind Meta’s Threads—Mark Zuckerberg recently told investors that his Twitter-like app adds 1 million users each day. But numbers alone don’t tell the full story. Meta has added buttons to access Threads from Instagram, so that any of its 2 billion users can slide right over, even if they never end up posting there. Bluesky, meanwhile, seems to be drawing actual users, especially in the United States, who want to post and follow.

…the internet’s media ecosystem is more fragmentary this decade than it was during the last. Uncertainty about social media’s future produces existential questions about the major platforms: Will TikTok be banned? Will X become state media? Will the Bluesky bubble grow beyond this week? Whatever happens, I still hope that social media itself will fade away. In the meantime, though, hundreds of millions of people have become accustomed to this way of interacting with friends and strangers, noshing on news, performing identities, picking fights, and accruing cultural capital or longing to do so.

«

unique link to this extract

One Billion Users: the social media card game • Kickstarter

Mike Masnick

»

Have you ever been on social media and thought “I bet I could run this site better than the people in charge”? Well, now’s your chance to test your skills. We’ve created One Billion Users: a fast, fun card game where you’re in charge of your own social network. It’s for 2-4 players and lasts about 30 minutes.

In One Billion Users, players compete to build the most successful social network. Gain users and attract influencers to build your site while playing cards to slow down your rivals and overcome obstacles. But be careful about which communities you attract — the toxicity they bring with them could hurt your platform!

Community cards are the lifeblood of your network. They represent hundreds of millions of users on your path to One Billion and beyond, but they also bring with them different levels of toxicity that can hamper your future growth and hurt your final score.

«

Another month to go and about a tenth of the way there. Could be the next Exploding Kittens. Haven’t you always wanted to show Zuckerberg and Musk how it’s done? (Do we think Musk is hurting his final score presently?)
unique link to this extract

Nigeria’s Ogun State wants to lead the country’s EV revolution • Rest of World

Jesusegun Alagbe:

»

One day in September, Bisi Alade rode past a long line of motorists at a fuel station in Abeokuta, the capital city of Ogun State in southwest Nigeria. Two weeks earlier, Alade would have been stuck waiting in line with the other motorists. But not anymore — he’d traded his combustion motorcycle for an electric one.

A full charge of his Spiro Commando electric motorcycle is enough to last him for a day and costs just 2,500 naira ($1.53) — half as expensive as fuel, the 42-year-old ride-hailing driver told Rest of World. The savings are significant because since May 2023, when the newly elected Nigerian president Bola Tinubu scrapped fuel subsidies, gas prices in the country have shot up by more than 450%. There are also persistent shortages.

“Life is easier now since I started riding an electric motorcycle,” Alade said. “I pity my friends who are still riding regular motorcycles.”

Alade is among the first wave of drivers to benefit from Ogun State’s push for EVs. In October last year, the state announced the E-Mobility Program, under which it plans to turn its public transportation system electric. This made Ogun State the first Nigerian state with an EV road map. Government officials, including Sa’idu Alkali, the transportation minister, and Mele Kyari, chief of state-owned oil company Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited praised the effort.

“We are not just introducing a new mode of transportation; we are pioneering a movement towards a cleaner, more efficient, and technologically advanced way of life,” Ogun State governor Dapo Abiodun said at the launch.

«

EVs! They’re everywhere!
unique link to this extract

AI-generated shows could replace lost DVD revenue, Ben Affleck says • Ars Technica

Benj Edwards:

»

Last week, actor and director Ben Affleck shared his views on AI’s role in filmmaking during the 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit, arguing that AI models will transform visual effects but won’t replace creative filmmaking anytime soon. A video clip of Affleck’s opinion began circulating widely on social media not long after.

“Didn’t expect Ben Affleck to have the most articulate and realistic explanation where video models and Hollywood is going,” wrote one X user.

In the clip, Affleck spoke of current AI models’ abilities as imitators and conceptual translators—mimics that are typically better at translating one style into another instead of originating deeply creative material.

“AI can write excellent imitative verse, but it cannot write Shakespeare,” Affleck told CNBC’s David Faber. “The function of having two, three, or four actors in a room and the taste to discern and construct that entirely eludes AI’s capability.”

Affleck sees AI models as “craftsmen” rather than artists (although some might find the term “craftsman” in his analogy somewhat imprecise). He explained that while AI can learn through imitation—like a craftsman studying furniture-making techniques—it lacks the creative judgment that defines artistry. “Craftsman is knowing how to work. Art is knowing when to stop,” he said.

“It’s not going to replace human beings making films,” Affleck stated. Instead, he sees AI taking over “the more laborious, less creative and more costly aspects of filmmaking,” which could lower barriers to entry and make it easier for emerging filmmakers to create movies like Good Will Hunting.

While it may seem on its surface like Affleck was attacking generative AI capabilities in the tech industry, he also did not deny the impact it may have on filmmaking. For example, he predicted that AI would reduce costs and speed up production schedules, potentially allowing shows like HBO’s House of the Dragon to release two seasons in the same period as it takes to make one.

«

I dunno, no point getting the second season of House of the Dragon out faster if it’s not worth watching. Which it wasn’t.
unique link to this extract

Thanks to AI, Apple’s China problem is only getting worse • The Hill

Geoffrey Cain:

»

For years, Tim Cook insisted Apple could change China from the inside. Instead, China changed Apple.

The latest evidence? Apple spent billions developing cutting-edge electric vehicle battery technology with Chinese automaker BYD, only to watch its innovations become the cornerstone of BYD’s rise to global electric vehicle dominance. Apple walked away with nothing. China walked away with everything.

This isn’t just another story about corporate research and development gone wrong. It’s a cautionary tale about how even America’s most valuable company has become trapped in China’s web of technological control — and how that web is about to tighten even further.

The battery partnership reveals a familiar pattern: American innovation flows into Chinese hands, strengthening Beijing’s technological ambitions while weakening America’s competitive edge. 

But BYD isn’t the real story here: It’s about how deeply Apple has become entangled with the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic objectives. The company that once removed the Dalai Lama from its ads to appease Beijing now faces an even more consequential test: artificial intelligence.

As Apple races to roll out Apple Intelligence globally, it faces a stark choice in China. The country’s strict AI regulations require companies to hand over their algorithms for government review and ensure their AI systems “adhere to the correct political direction.” For Apple, this means either walking away from its largest overseas market or creating a separate, censored version of its AI assistant that advances the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance and control objectives.

History suggests Apple will choose accommodation.

«

This is an opinion piece rather than a closely researched news story, but it still comes across very solidly. (And you’d forgotten about the BYD deal, which was putatively going to work wonders for Apple’s Car, hadn’t you? I had.)
unique link to this extract

O2 deploys AI granny against scammers • The Register

Dan Robinson:

»

O2, the mobile operator arm of Brit telecoms giant Virgin Media (VMO2), says it has built the human-like AI to answer calls from fraudsters in real time, keeping them busy on the phone and wasting their time by pretending to be a potential vulnerable target.

“Daisy” is claimed to be indistinguishable from a real person, fooling scammers into thinking they’ve found perfect prey thanks to its ability to engage in “human-like” rambling chat, the biz claims.

For several weeks in the run-up to International Fraud Awareness Week (November 17–23), the AI has already frustrated scam callers with meandering stories about her family and talked at length about her passion for knitting, according to O2.

At this point, many Reg readers are probably feeling they know someone the telco might have used as training data.

But phone scams are an increasingly common threat. Criminals, often working from call centers, cold-call lists of numbers to try to con people out of their money. Common tricks include pretending to be their bank or a courier needing payment to deliver a parcel in order to get them to divulge their bank account details.

Daisy is said to combine various AI models that work together to listen to fraudulent calls and respond immediately, as if engaged in a conversation. Appropriate responses are generated through a custom large language model (LLM) with a character “personality” layer, and then fed back through a custom AI text-to-speech model to generate the spoken answer.

O2 claims it to be so lifelike that it has successfully kept fraudsters sidetracked for up to 40 minutes at a time. Some scammers were even tricked by Daisy offering false personal information, including made-up bank details.

…The AI has its own dedicated number, which the anti-fraud team managed to infiltrate into contact lists used by scammers to target Brits, an O2 spokesperson told us.

«

At last, AI used for good! Or against evil! (Thanks John K for the link.)
unique link to this extract

No, Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t say he prefers Logitech’s MX Master 3 over the Magic Mouse • MacRumors

Joe Rossignol:

»

While the Logitech MX Master 3 is a terrific mouse for the Mac, reports claiming that Apple CEO Tim Cook prefers that mouse over the Magic Mouse are false.

The Wall Street Journal last month published an interview with Cook, in which he said he uses every Apple product every day. Soon after, The Verge’s Wes Davis attempted to replicate using every Apple product in a single day. During that day, Davis said he mostly used the MX Master 3, but sometimes switched to a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad.

In other words, it was Davis who said he himself used a Logitech mouse, not Cook.

Unfortunately, The Mac Observer misinterpreted The Verge’s article and ran a since-deleted story claiming that Cook prefers the MX Master 3 over the Magic Mouse. Mistakes happen, but the false claim has since gained traction on Reddit multiple times, so hopefully this helps to clear up the situation before wrong information continues to spread.

«

That’s a bizarre mistake; you’ll have noticed that I didn’t pick up the story from the Mac Observer, but maybe I should have followed it back up the river to the source. Even so, I’d probably have ended up at the Mac Observer with its erroneous piece. Just goes to show how far and wide mistakes can go – even when they should make you think “uh?” (Thanks Fabian S and others for the link.)
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

The ISS is leaking air, but Nasa and the Russians can’t agree on how to fix it or how urgently to act. CC-licensed photo by NASA on The Commons 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. Pressurised. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

US lawyers will reportedly try to force Google to sell Chrome and unbundle Android • The Verge

Wes Davis:

»

The Department of Justice is planning to ask for Google’s antitrust trial judge to force the company to sell off its Chrome browser after the judge ruled the company has maintained an illegal search monopoly, reports Bloomberg.

Chrome is the world’s most widely used browser, and the government’s lawyers have argued that its use in cross-promoting Google’s products is one of the things limiting available channels and incentives for competition to grow.

Requirements that officials are preparing to propose include that Google separate Android from Search and Google Play, but without trying to force Google to sell off Android. Another requirement would say it has to share more information with advertisers and that it “give them more control over where their ads appear,” the outlet writes.

Bloomberg also reports that officials will recommend that the company “give websites more options to prevent their content from being used by Google’s artificial intelligence products.” Finally, they will reportedly push for “a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of the case against Google.”

«

Cleaving Chrome from Google would be quite the move: how do you transfer all the data that people have stored on Google’s servers (lots of passwords in there!). Do you then make people pay for it? Or do you rely on advertising to somehow pay for those coders?

One thing’s for sure: ChromeCo would have far fewer engineers than presently work on Chrome.
unique link to this extract

The ISS has been leaking air for 5 years, and engineers still don’t know why – Ars Technica

Stephen Clark:

»

US and Russian officials “don’t have a common understanding of what the likely root cause is, or the severity of the consequences of these leaks,” said Bob Cabana, a retired NASA astronaut who took the helm of the advisory committee earlier this year. Cabana replaced former Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford, who chaired the committee before he died in March.

The transfer tunnel, known by the Russian acronym PrK, connects the Zvezda module with a docking port where Soyuz crew and Progress resupply spacecraft attach to the station.

Air has been leaking from the transfer tunnel since September 2019. On several occasions, Russian cosmonauts have repaired the cracks and temporarily reduced the leak rate. In February, the leak rate jumped up again to 2.4 pounds per day, then increased to 3.7 pounds per day in April.

This prompted managers to elevate the transfer tunnel leak to the highest level of risk in the space station program’s risk management system. This 5×5 “risk matrix” classifies the likelihood and consequence of risks. Ars reported in June that the leaks are now classified as a “5” both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence.

NASA reported in September that the latest round of repairs cut the leak rate by a third, but it did not eliminate the problem.

“The Russian position is that the most probable cause of the PrK cracks is high cyclic fatigue caused by micro-vibrations,” Cabana said on November 13. “NASA believes the PrK cracks are likely multi-causal, including pressure and mechanical stress, residual stress, material properties, and environmental exposures.”

The ISS is aging. Zvezda and the PrK launched in July 2000 and will mark a quarter-century in orbit next year. NASA wants to keep the space station operating until at least 2030, while Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, has committed only through 2028.

Roscosmos has shared sample metals, welds, and investigation reports with NASA to assist in the study of the cracks and leaks. In a report published in September, NASA’s inspector general said NASA’s ISS Vehicle Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston said the leaks are “not an immediate risk to the structural integrity of the station.”

This is because managers have implemented mitigations to protect the entire station in the event of a structural failure of the PrK.

«

Well *this* wasn’t in Gravity.
unique link to this extract

Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea cut, Germany and Finland fear sabotage • Reuters via MSN

Johan Alexander, Essi Lehton and Adrius Sytas:

»

Two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, including one linking Finland and Germany, were severed, raising suspicions of sabotage by bad actors, countries and companies involved said on Monday.

The episode recalled other incidents in the same waterway that authorities have probed as potentially malicious including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year and the 2022 explosions of the Nord Sea gas pipelines.

The 1,200-kilometre (745-mile) cable connecting Helsinki to the German port of Rostock stopped working around 0200 GMT on Monday, Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms company Cinia said.

A 218-km (135-mile) internet link between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland Island went out of service at about 0800 GMT on Sunday, according to Lithuania’s Telia Lietuva, part of Sweden’s Telia Company group.

Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable” and were investigating “an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage.”

Europe’s security is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine and “hybrid warfare by malicious actors,” the joint statement said, without naming the actors.

«

One could be accident, two definitely feels like intent. By Russia.
unique link to this extract

How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could destroy one of civilization’s best achievements • The New York Times

Zeynep Tufecki:

»

Modern public health is one of civilization’s great achievements. In 1900, up to 30% of infants in some US cities never made it to their first birthday. Since that time, vaccines, sanitation and effective medications have eliminated many previously commonplace illnesses and consigned others to extreme rarity. It’s easy to take much of that for granted, especially as those days have receded from living memory, but those achievements are fragile and can be lost.

The danger isn’t merely that Kennedy — who has almost no experience in government or large-scale administration, and who has shown a sometimes breathtakingly loose connection to the truth — would be incompetent or misleading. At the helm of a department with over 80,000 employees and a $3 trillion budget, one that oversees key agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, he would have control over the nation’s medicines, food safety, vaccines and medical research. With that power he could inflict significant harm to the public health system — and to the public trust that would be needed to rebuild it once he’s gone.

Kennedy has brought attention to some worthwhile public health concerns, such as the downsides of ultraprocessed foods and the value of exercise. But beyond those reasonable issues, he has filled the internet and the airwaves with views on vaccines, food safety, medicines and supplements that are a mix of grave misrepresentations and far-fetched conspiracies.

His opposition to vaccines has attracted the most attention. He doesn’t say just that they merit closer scrutiny, as some “vaccine skeptics” claim. Last year he told a podcaster that “there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” When it later became expedient, he denied that he had ever said such a thing. The truth is that he has long promoted the lie that vaccines cause autism, and the extravagantly false claim that “researchers have done very little to study the health” of children after they get shots for once-common diseases.

«

Let’s be clear: Trump’s administration is going to be an utter clown show, with all the restraint of a lit flare thrown into a fireworks box. For a moment, while he isn’t yet in power, it’s funny. But that’s going to wear off.

For a similar view of more of the appointees, The Unpopulist has a rundown.
unique link to this extract

AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favourably • Scientific Reports

Brian Porter and Edouard Machery:

»

We conducted two experiments with non-expert poetry readers and found that participants performed below chance levels in identifying AI-generated poems (46.6% accuracy, χ2(1, N = 16,340) = 75.13, p < 0.0001).

Notably, participants were more likely to judge AI-generated poems as human-authored than actual human-authored poems (χ2(2, N = 16,340) = 247.04, p < 0.0001).

We found that AI-generated poems were rated more favorably in qualities such as rhythm and beauty, and that this contributed to their mistaken identification as human-authored. Our findings suggest that participants employed shared yet flawed heuristics to differentiate AI from human poetry: the simplicity of AI-generated poems may be easier for non-experts to understand, leading them to prefer AI-generated poetry and misinterpret the complexity of human poems as incoherence generated by AI.

«

You can see the poems here. And yes, I’d agree that it seems non-experts don’t like having to work too hard when reading poetry.
unique link to this extract

The Alex cartoon for Thursday 14 November 2024

“Alex” by Peattie and Taylor has been running for decades: it started in the London Daily News (I know, sounds like a made-up newspaper name from a film) in 1987 and has been going pretty much unbroken since.

This one nails yet another truism of life today, with a social media twist. (Bookmark the site and stay with it.)
unique link to this extract

A study found that X’s algorithm now loves two things: Republicans and Elon Musk • The Verge

Wes Davis:

»

Elon Musk’s X may have tweaked its algorithm to boost his account, along with those of other conservative-leaning users, starting around the time he announced his support of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. That’s according to a new study published by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which found that Musk’s posts in particular were suddenly much more popular.

The study’s authors — QUT associate professor in digital media Timothy Graham and Monash University communications and media studies professor Mark Andrejevic — first looked at Musk’s engagement before and after his July endorsement of Trump. They report that starting around July 13th, Musks’ posts received 138% more views and 238% more retweets than before that date.

Musk’s numbers “outpaced the general engagement trends observed across the platform,” they concluded. (This paper isn’t the first time it’s been suggested that X adjusted its algorithm to specifically boost Musk’s account.) The researchers also found that other Republican-leaning accounts they examined saw similar boosts that started in July, albeit to a lesser degree.

The study’s results are similar to other recently reported findings by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post of potential right-wing bias in X’s algorithms. However, the researchers say they were limited by the “relatively small amount of data” that could be collected since the platform cut off access to its Academic API.

«

unique link to this extract

Apple’s mouse is so bad that Tim Cook prefers using a different brand for work • Glass Almanac

Brian Foster:

»

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Tim Cook provided a glimpse into his daily workflow, listing several Apple devices he uses regularly: a Mac Studio, an iPhone 13 Pro Max, an iPad Pro, and even a retro iMac G4 for nostalgic flair. But when it came to the mouse he relies on the most, Cook admitted that his go-to is the Logitech MX Master 3 — not Apple’s Magic Mouse.

While Cook mentioned occasionally switching to the Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad, his preference for a competitor’s product caught many by surprise.

It’s easy to see why Cook opts for the Logitech MX Master 3. Designed with ergonomics in mind, it features a comfortable thumb rest, a customizable MagSpeed scroll wheel, and a Flow feature that allows seamless use across multiple devices. Notably, the MX Master 3 charges via a front-facing USB-C port, meaning it can continue to be used while plugged in — a stark contrast to the Magic Mouse’s disruptive design.

The Logitech MX Master 3 also offers impressive battery life and versatility, making it a popular choice for professionals juggling various tasks. Cook’s mention of this mouse could very well boost its appeal to Mac users — and even PC users — looking for a productivity-friendly alternative.

While it’s unusual for a CEO to promote a competitor’s product, Cook’s candidness is refreshing. His choice underscores a key lesson: even in a company as innovative as Apple, practicality sometimes requires looking beyond in-house solutions.

«

If Apple were ever to make a mouse that looked like the Logitech MX Master 3, everyone would assume that the designers were on hallucinogenic drugs.

unique link to this extract

Apple [allegedly] thinks about an Apple TV set — yet again • Business Insider

Peter Kafka:

»

Yes, you’ve heard this before: What if Apple built its own TV set?

It’s an idea that never goes away completely but has never actually happened.

That’s for good reason: An Apple TV set didn’t make sense years ago. It makes even less sense now.

Is Apple going to build a TV?

First: probably not. Second: It would be a terrible idea if Apple did.

But for the record, Apple is “evaluating” the idea of an Apple-branded set, reports Mark Gurman, Bloomberg’s very well-sourced Apple expert.

Gurman himself doesn’t seem to think there’s a meaningful chance that this happens. He made a short, throwaway reference to the idea in his latest column, which focuses primarily on Apple CEO Tim Cook’s relationship with Donald Trump. (TL;DR: Cook became an expert Trump manager during Trump 1.0 by letting the president do what he wanted in public, like take credit for things he didn’t do, while prevailing on him privately to do things Cook wanted Trump to do — namely, exempting Apple products from tariffs.)

What Gurman thinks Apple is going to do is roll out an “AI wall tablet” that people would use in their homes to control smart devices and talk to people in other rooms, etc. — basically, a souped-up intercom/doorbell system using a series of iPad-like devices. But in theory, if that goes well, then maybe Apple will be more interested in chasing an Actual TV Set. (I’ve asked Apple PR for comment.)

The thing is, we’ve been hearing about Apple and its ambitions to build an actual TV set for a long, long time. And they didn’t really make sense at the time, and they definitely don’t now.

«

Kafka knows this is not going to happen, and Apple knows it’s not going to happen, and you know it’s not going to happen, and I know it’s not going to happen: TV sets are utter commodities. But it entertains people to trot it out every so often. Kafka wearily tweeted that this is his third decade of writing about how this isn’t going to happen.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Deadly or delicious (or both)? Facebook put an AI chatbot offering potentially lethal advice into a mushroom Group. CC-licensed photo by Aleksey Gnilenkov 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. Uncapped. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

AI chatbot added to mushroom foraging Facebook Group immediately gives tips for cooking dangerous mushroom • 404 Media

Jason Koebler:

»

An AI chatbot called “FungiFriend” was added to a popular mushroom identification Facebook group last week. It then told users there how to “sauté in butter” a potentially dangerous mushroom, signaling again the high level of risk that AI chatbots and tools pose to people who forage for mushrooms.

404 Media has previously reported on the prevalence and risk of AI tools intersecting with the mushroom foraging hobby. We reported on AI-generated mushroom foraging books on Amazon and the fact that Google image search has shown AI-generated images of mushrooms as top search results. On Tuesday, the FungiFriend AI chatbot to the Northeast Mushroom Identification & Discussion Facebook group, which has 13,500 members and is a place where beginner mushroom foragers often ask others for help identifying the mushrooms they have found in the wild. A moderator for the group said that the bot was automatically added by Meta and that “we are most certainly removing it from here.” Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bot is personified as a bearded, psychedelic wizard. Meta recently began adding AI chatbots into specific groups, and has also created different character AIs.

Rick Claypool, research director for consumer safety group Public Citizen’s president’s office, told 404 Media about FungiFriend. Claypool has done important work about corporate capture of local and state governments, but is also an avid mushroom forager and has been documenting the risks of AI tools in mushroom foraging over the last few months.

Over the summer, he wrote a lengthy article in Fungi Magazine that noted “emerging AI technologies are being deployed to help beginner foragers identify edible wild mushrooms. Distinguishing edible mushrooms from toxic mushrooms in the wild is a high-risk activity that requires real-world skills that current AI systems cannot reliably emulate.” 

«

This is all a bit Darwinian. Are we sure that they haven’t achieved intelligence and are trying to wipe us out, quietly?
unique link to this extract

Netflix served the Tyson vs. Paul fight to 60 million households • The Verge

Wes Davis:

»

Netflix peaked at “65 million concurrent streams” during the boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul last night, according to Most Valuable Promotions, the promoter for the fight. Those streams went out to 60 million households globally, the group said in a press release shared with The Verge via email. That’s more than twice the traffic Netflix could see for its Christmas Day NFL stream this year, if everyone who watched last year streamed it.

The crush of people trying to watch Tyson vs. Paul seemed to be more than Netflix’s servers could easily handle, as the social web was awash with complaints about the quality of the stream, which many found to be muddy, or plagued with buffering and dropped connections. Downdetector recorded more than 100,000 complaints of Netflix streaming issues during the event, according to Bloomberg.

That’s also just a massive number of people streaming a single live event at the same time. Disney served 59 million concurrent streams of a World Cup cricket match through its Disney Plus Hotstar service last year. It hit similar numbers a few days earlier, and again in June this year.

Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone told employees that the company dealt with this “unprecedented scale” by prioritizing keeping the stream stable “for the majority of viewers,” according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

«

When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964, 60 years ago, 73 million people watched. Now, the quality might not have been tip-top, but it was as good as they could offer at the time, and modern broadcast could reach that number in HD.

A roundabout way of saying that we seem to do two steps forward, two steps back. (Or vice-versa.) We now do live sports! To lots of people! Which we did before. (I remember pay-per-view Tyson fights years ago. Everything old is new again.)
unique link to this extract

London bus crashes are the result of an unsafe model • FT

Camilla Cavendish, who met Tom Kearney, an American businessman who was hit by a London bus’s wing mirror and put into a coma (from which he recovered):

»

The most recent data show that 86 people died or were badly injured in bus collisions in London between 10 December 2023 and 31 March 2024. Kearney’s analysis of TfL data suggests that around three people a day are hospitalised after bus safety incidents. That doesn’t feel good, even though it’s tiny in comparison to the 1.8bn annual passenger journeys. Compared with other world cities like New York and Paris the capital’s buses rank in the top quartile for financial efficiency but the bottom quartile for collisions per kilometre. And the number of collisions in London has increased in the past couple of years, despite buses travelling fewer miles.  

Could this have anything to do with the way that bus contracts prioritise speed? Last week, hundreds of bus drivers marched to TfL headquarters to demand better working conditions and the right to report safety concerns “without fear of retribution from TfL or employers”. Drivers described the pressure of long shifts, few breaks and having to drive in sometimes blistering heat, all while being shouted at over a monitor by controllers who want them to make up the time to the next stop, and keep the right amount of distance between their bus and next. It’s not surprising that a third of bus drivers, before the pandemic, reported having had a “close call” from fatigue.  

With the government about to export the London franchise model to other parts of the country, someone in Whitehall needs to take a look. Michael Liebreich, a former McKinsey consultant who sat on the TfL board for six years, believes that TfL’s contracting out model is “institutionally unsafe”. Bus drivers are under such pressure, he thinks, that some may break the speed limit and overtake cyclists dangerously. 

I still wasn’t sure about this, until I met the families of more victims. Katrina Finnegan’s aunt Kathleen died earlier this year, after being hit by a bus at Victoria bus station. Trish Burr’s daughter Melissa also died in Victoria a few years earlier, after a driver accidentally hit the accelerator.

What shocked me was how badly the families were treated.

«

unique link to this extract

Dreaming of snow this winter? Look up the forecast • Washington Post

Harry Stevens and Ben Noll:

»

For Joseph Gordon, 83, a snowless season will further confirm his sense that the winters of his memory have been irretrievably lost. Four decades ago, Gordon moved to McLean, Virginia, where he raised his family. He remembers snowy days when he would pile his kids into a 10-foot toboggan or cross-country ski through acres of farmland where rows of houses now stand.

Gordon has not consulted a meteorological database, but his experience tells him McLean gets less snow than it used to. According to our analysis of 60 years of snowfall data, he’s right. “It’s so gradual,” Gordon said of the change in snowfall. “We’re like frogs in a pot of boiling water, and we don’t jump out until it’s too late.”

With the exception of part of the Northeast and a few patches elsewhere, the snowfall trend across the country has matched Northern Virginia’s, with less snow in the most recent three decades than in the three decades before that.

Over the past 60 years, as humans have added more than 2.3 trillion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, the average global temperature has increased by about 2.1ºF (1.2ºC). The warming has contributed to less snow in the United States and elsewhere.

“The laws of thermodynamics are tough to beat,” said Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist who has studied long-term snowfall trends. “As you warm temperatures up, you’re just going to get less snow. There’s just no way around that.”

«

The accompanying map shows that barely anywhere in the US is going to see “more” snow; almost everywhere will get less. Unsurprising.
unique link to this extract

Lucy Manning on how a sexually obscene phone call led to a two-year ordeal getting police to act • BBC News

Lucy Manning is a BBC journalist who received an obscene call – which she taped – and took it to the police:

»

I was concerned about my personal safety: if this man knew my first name and number, did he know me? Had I met him? Was it someone I’d interviewed? Did he know where I lived?

He had an accent I didn’t recognise, maybe Midlands. I assumed it was in some way connected to the fact I was an on-air BBC journalist but I wasn’t sure. I dialled 999 to report the crime.

The following day I went to my local police station to give a statement and was asked to upload the taped recording onto the Metropolitan Police’s system.

I was naively hopeful they could use it to quickly trace the caller and arrest the man.
I’ve worked on too many stories of violence against women – including the disappearance and subsequent rape and murder of Sarah Everard.

Police had failed to investigate Wayne Couzens for at least three indecent exposure offences before he murdered Sarah Everard. Experts say those offences may have been a “red flag” that someone could go onto more serious offending.

So I had two concerns: my own safety and making sure this man couldn’t go on to commit more serious sexual offences.

«

The incredibly screwed-up way that things which should have happened did not happen ought to shame the police. But you know that instead of remaking the way in which cases are handled, they’ll just shrug.
unique link to this extract

The X exodus: could Bluesky spike spark end of Elon Musk’s social media platform? • Sky News

Mickey Carroll:

»

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis, The Guardian newspaper, and even the Clifton Suspension Bridge have joined swathes of people deserting Elon Musk’s social media site X.

Millions have instead joined Bluesky, which has a stronger focus on moderation, set up by former Twitter founder Jack Dorsey – who is now no longer affiliated with the social media platform – in 2019.

According to the official Bluesky account, a million people joined the platform in just one day this week, after Musk was given a position in Donald Trump’s government.

“The alignment of Mr Musk with president-elect Trump and his use of the platform to promote the interests of president-elect Trump is obviously driving out a lot of people,” says Adam Tinworth, a social media expert and digital journalism lecturer at City St George’s University.

…Jason Barnard, the chief executive of Kalicube, spent nine years gathering three billion different data points that Google uses to decide what is factual information.

He told Sky News that although X has a long-standing agreement with Google to allow the search engine to use X posts to help it understand the world, Google’s trust appears to be waning.

“Bluesky is 20 times smaller in terms of the number of people on the platform,” he says. “If you search for people [on Google], you will find Bluesky 10 times less often than you will find X.

“But,” he says, “it’s 10 times more important to Google today for factual information.”

«

I think people like Bluesky perhaps a little more because they can create blocklists, and there will probably be APIs sooner. (It certainly needs better native Mac apps.) And shouldn’t it be called the Xodus?

That Google data point though is dramatic.
unique link to this extract

Why do we put fluoride in water? • The Atlantic

Charles C. Mann, writing in 2020:

»

Nonfluoridated nations such as Belgium, Luxembourg, and Denmark actually have better dental health by this measure than the United States, one of the world’s fluoridation champions. Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland tried fluoridation, abandoned it years later—and saw no rise in tooth decay. What’s going on?

One of the lesser-known advantages of government-run health-care systems, such as Britain’s National Health Service, is the fact that because taxpayers are funding everything, the government occasionally tries to determine whether the money is being spent usefully. In 1999, the government asked the NHS to “carry out an up-to-date expert scientific review of fluoride and health.” A research team based at the University of York evaluated every study of fluoridation it could find—about 3,200 of them. The team’s conclusion was, it said, “surprising.” Despite the long fight over fluoridation, few of the thousands of studies counted as “high-quality research.” The implication was that Britain had been tinkering with its water supply with little empirical support. Trevor Sheldon, the head of the York review’s advisory board, was blunt: “There’s really hardly any evidence” that fluoridation works, he told Newsweek. “And if anything there may be some evidence the other way.” These findings were respectfully ignored.

In 2015, the Cochrane organization waded into the debate. Founded in 1993, Cochrane is a London-based global network of about 30,000 medical researchers in multiple countries that provides systematic analyses of medical issues. The goal is to produce painstaking, rigorous assessments of what research has—and hasn’t—established about a given subject. Cochrane has a fiercely guarded reputation for impartiality and thoroughness. Its verdicts have global impact. Which may be why the pushback on its fluoridation work was so strong.

…The Cochrane group reported its work carefully. The evidence, it said, is poor and sparse, but what little there is “indicates” that the fluoridation of water reduces cavities in children. But, the group said, “these results are based predominantly on old studies”—from before 1975—“and may not be applicable today.” For adults, there is “insufficient evidence,” old or new, to determine whether fluoridation is effective. The report did not support or attack fluoridation; it only asked for more research.

«

Well, now RFK Jr is going to remove it. Let the research begin!
unique link to this extract

TikTok takes down 400k videos in Kenya over sexual content • Semafor

Martin Siele:

»

TikTok is deleting more videos in Kenya for violating community guidelines, as the company looks to avoid government scrutiny over content moderation for sexually explicit content.

TikTok pulled down 360,000 videos in Kenya in the three months to June, according to its newly published Q2 enforcement report. It took down 296,000 videos in all of 2023 in Kenya. The videos removed in the three-month period accounted for 0.3% of videos uploaded in Kenya in that quarter.

The platform was compelled by Kenya’s government in April to share quarterly compliance reports because it faced a petition that threatened to see it banned in the country.

The proliferation of sexual content in particular on TikTok in Kenya fueled the push for stricter moderation from regulators concerned about Only Fans-style content. Videos featuring ethnic incitement and violence are also often pulled down for violating guidelines.

«

A reminder that it’s not just the US where people get worked up over social media content.
unique link to this extract

The Onion CEO explains Infowars purchase amid Alex Jones’s claims about auction • Politico via MSN

Ashleigh Fields:

»

The Onion CEO Ben Collins confirmed that the publication purchased Alex Jones’s Infowars outlet in a Saturday series of posts on the social media platform Bluesky amid Jones’s claims of wrongdoing and illegal activity.  

“I just wanted to give a quick update on The Onion’s purchase of InfoWars, which we can’t wait to relaunch as the dumbest website on the internet,” Collins wrote. 

“The long and short of it: We won the auction and — you’re not going to believe this — the previous InfoWars folks aren’t taking it well.”

He shared that The Onion, a satirical news website, won the bid for Infowars on Thursday at Jones’s bankruptcy auction, along with the Connecticut Sandy Hook families of victims. Jones previously said the massacre was a “hoax.”

Jones was held liable for nearly $1.5bn in damages due to his false claims about the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. The families moved to liquidate his business and take over his social media accounts, which was granted by a judge in September.

Throughout their efforts to acquire Jones’s platforms, he has spread conspiracies about legal missteps in the process. He recently claimed that the auction for his Infowars site was changed from a “regular auction” to a “secret” auction two days before it occurred. He also said that higher bidders were prevented from submitting offers so that a lower bid could be accepted. 

«

For clarification of Friday’s link and its update. Alex Jones telling fibs? Perish the thought.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Incinerators are used to dispose of a lot of British household rubbish – but they’re very polluting. CC-licensed photo by Tim Sheerman-Chase 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 Bluesky.

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

OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are struggling to build more advanced AI • Bloomberg via NDTV

Rachel Metz, Shirin Ghaffary, Dina Bass and Julia Love:

»

OpenAI was on the cusp of a milestone. The startup finished an initial round of training in September for a massive new artificial intelligence model that it hoped would significantly surpass prior versions of the technology behind ChatGPT and move closer to its goal of powerful AI that outperforms humans.

But the model, known internally as Orion, did not hit the company’s desired performance, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss company matters. As of late summer, for example, Orion fell short when trying to answer coding questions that it hadn’t been trained on, the people said. Overall, Orion is so far not considered to be as big a step up from OpenAI’s existing models as GPT-4 was from GPT-3.5, the system that originally powered the company’s flagship chatbot, the people said.

OpenAI isn’t alone in hitting stumbling blocks recently. After years of pushing out increasingly sophisticated AI products at a breakneck pace, three of the leading AI companies are now seeing diminishing returns from their costly efforts to build newer models. At Alphabet Inc.’s Google, an upcoming iteration of its Gemini software is not living up to internal expectations, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Anthropic, meanwhile, has seen the timetable slip for the release of its long-awaited Claude model called 3.5 Opus.

The companies are facing several challenges. It’s become increasingly difficult to find new, untapped sources of high-quality, human-made training data that can be used to build more advanced AI systems. Orion’s unsatisfactory coding performance was due in part to the lack of sufficient coding data to train on, two people said. At the same time, even modest improvements may not be enough to justify the tremendous costs associated with building and operating new models, or to live up to the expectations that come with branding a product as a major upgrade.

«

AI systems are already hitting the asymptotic point, you say?

Also this in the story:

»

Anthropic declined to comment but referred Bloomberg News to a five-hour podcast featuring chief executive officer Dario Amodei that was released Monday.

“People call them scaling laws. That’s a misnomer,” he said on the podcast. “They’re not laws of the universe. They’re empirical regularities. I am going to bet in favour of them continuing, but I’m not certain of that.”

«

If someone who was not my editor had told me to go and find some information they already had by listening to a five-hour podcast I would have made it my life’s work to find them and torture them horribly.
unique link to this extract

The election proved the media is in crisis. Here’s what it needs to do to regain its relevance • CNN Business

Brian Stelter:

»

Some of these trends have been evident for years, but the election results have put an exclamation point on the concerns about distrust and dissatisfaction with the media status quo. Now, a reckoning is underway. Media executives and rank-and-file reporters are wondering what needs to change. What can news outlets do to regain trust and appeal to new audiences without alienating existing readers and viewers?

For the past week, CNN’s media team has been receiving feedback from readers of the Reliable Sources newsletter. Here are some of the concrete recommendations and ideas that have emerged.

First, recognize the scope of the problem: Mainstream media outlets have been losing public trust for decades, particularly among Republicans, but also among Democrats and independents. Alternative sources, often lacking any semblance of journalistic standards, have filled some of the voids. And smart phones, social networks and streaming services have introduced an almost infinite amount of competition for people’s attention. Algorithms have replaced human editors and artificial intelligence systems have started to replace search. These are huge changes that warrant equally big adjustments by news outlets.

Pop the bubbles: Many news consumers, and a good number of journalists, think national news coverage is too Washington-centric. Maybe, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan commented last week, the media collectively spent “too much time obsessing about polling (where did that get us?) and not enough time talking to people!” O’Sullivan and other correspondents interviewed voters all election season long, but those conversations and focus groups should inform editorial decisions and panel discussions.

Geographic diversity would also help. “When we cover MAGA,” a former ABC News executive said, ruefully, “it’s like going to the zoo to report on an exotic animal.” One logical takeaway: Publishers should embrace the Zoom era and have employees spread out across the country to balance out New York and Washington groupthink.

«

There’s plenty more, but you have to wonder if an organisation with so much inertia is going to be able to adjust. And the journalists too will have to consider quite what journalism looks like in this modern age.
unique link to this extract

Google executive picked to supercharge news efforts has resigned • WSJ

Alexandra Bruell:

»

Shailesh Prakash, a Google News executive central to the tech giant’s relationships with publishers, has resigned, according to people familiar with the situation.

The high-profile departure comes amid a continuing rift between Google and news outlets over how the search engine drives traffic and uses their content.

Prakash, a vice president and general manager for Google News, joined the tech giant two years ago from the Washington Post, where he spent more than a decade overseeing data and technology.

At Google, he brought an understanding of publishers’ frustrations as they have grappled with traffic declines and seek compensation for the Alphabet unit’s GOOGL -1.51%decrease; red down pointing triangle use of their content. While he oversaw product and engineering for the News group, he also communicated with leaders at news publishers regarding changes related to search and generative AI.

A representative from Google declined to comment on Prakash’s departure.

During his decade-plus tenure at the Post, where he was chief information officer, Prakash helped transform the news outlet’s digital operation and oversaw a number of technology experiments, including an advertising technology and digital publishing business that serviced publishers beyond the Post.

…Google is the greatest source of traffic to publishers’ websites, because when people search for information, the results often direct them to news articles. Publishers have balked in recent years at payment offers from Google, arguing that their content is worth more than Google has been willing to pay.

Currently weighing on publishers is Google’s use of their content to produce generative AI overviews, which respond to search queries with a complete answer, along with a link icon to the publishers’ sites that source the information.

«

unique link to this extract

Burning household rubbish now UK’s dirtiest form of power, BBC finds • BBC News

Esme Stallard, Matt McGrath, Patrick Clahane & Paul Lynch:

»

Burning household rubbish in giant incinerators to make electricity is now the dirtiest way the UK generates power, BBC analysis has found.

Nearly half of the rubbish produced in UK homes, including increasing amounts of plastic, is now being incinerated. Scientists warn it is a “disaster for the climate” – and some are calling for a ban on new incinerators.

The BBC examined five years of data from across the country, and found that burning waste produces the same amount of greenhouse gases for each unit of energy as coal power, which was abandoned by the UK last month.

The Environmental Services Association, which represents waste firms, contested our findings and said emissions from dealing with waste are “challenging to avoid”.

Nearly 15 years ago, the government became seriously concerned with the gases being produced from throwing away household rubbish in landfill and their contribution to climate change. In response, it hiked the taxes UK councils paid for burying waste.

Facing massive bills, councils turned to energy-from-waste plants – a type of incinerator that produces electricity from burning rubbish. The number of incinerators surged – in the past five years the number in England alone has risen from 38 to 52. About 3.1% of the UK’s energy comes from waste incinerators.

…In the past few years, more plastic has been going to incinerators and less food waste – which councils are now sending to anaerobic digesters or to be composted. But the government’s own calculations continue to assume that we send the same mix of rubbish as we did back in 2017 – potentially underestimating the scale of the issue.

The BBC’s five-year analysis used data on actual pollution levels recorded by operators at their incinerators, and found that energy-from-waste plants are now producing the same amount of greenhouse gases per unit of electricity as if they were burning coal.

«

Oh. That’s really not what we wanted at all.
unique link to this extract

AI-powered bots on X spread disinformation in Ghana’s election • Rest of World

Caroline Haskins:

»

The accounts — which appear to have AI-generated profile photos, and have names such as “Glenn Washington,” “Netflix Series&Movies,” and “Patriot” — also disparage John Mahama, the presidential candidate from the rival left-wing party National Democratic Congress. These posts often use hashtags such as #mahamaisaliar and #DrunkmaniMahama, accusing Mahama of being a drunkard. (Mahama has denied this.)

“The primary goal of the network appears to be to amplify pro-NPP messaging, promote the Bawumia administration and take aim at the opposition National Democratic Congress,” McKenzie Sadeghi, an editor of AI and foreign influence at NewsGuard who contributed to the research, told Rest of World.

Dimitris Dimitriadis, NewsGuard’s director of research and development, said in an interview with Rest of World that the bot accounts tend to post at “regular” and “predictable” intervals, often ten or more times per day. He said the accounts — which tend to be active between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. in Ghana — mostly receive likes and reposts from others in the bot network. These regimented patterns in timing and style tipped the researchers off that the accounts may be fake.

NewsGuard’s research team fed all 171 of the posts from the accounts into a tool from Pangram Labs, which assesses the likelihood of text being generated by AI, Dimitriadis said. The tool concluded that it was “highly likely” that all of the accounts were posting AI-generated content created by ChatGPT.

«

Don’t tell me – the moderators at X don’t care. Also, a Newsguard survey recently found that a quarter of (American) respondents thought users with blue ticks were more reliable than those without. (They’re not.)
unique link to this extract

Visualizing 13 million BlueSky users • Joel Gustafson

Joel Gustafson:

»

Anyone who uses Twitter a lot knows that it’s a big place. Not just that it has a lot of active users, but more that there are lots of different parts.

Over time, everybody develops their own mental map of the landscape, infering how vast and foreign the whole network is from hints and clues, stray tweets escaping containment, and chance encounters in a big account’s replies. But we never get to see the whole thing for real.

We can’t make a map of all of Twitter, because the data isn’t available and scraping it would be difficult and illegal. But we can do it for BlueSky, which has seen massive growth over the last several months thanks to Twitter’s ongoing antagonization of its userbase and Brazil banning Twitter outright in October 2024.

Here’s a sneak peek at the final result.

You can also explore the map interactively at https://aurora.ndimensional.xyz, although you’ll need desktop Chrome/Chromium since it uses WebGPU.

«

It’s an interesting thread, though it tells us what we’d expect: these networks tend to cluster, either by country or topic.
unique link to this extract

Guardian quits X social media platform, citing racism and conspiracy theories • Reuters

Andy Bruce:

»

British news publisher the Guardian said on Wednesday it will no longer post to X, citing “disturbing content” on the social media platform, including racism and conspiracy theories.

The left-leaning Guardian, which has 10.7 million followers on X, becomes the first large UK media company to retreat from the platform that Elon Musk purchased in 2022.

Critics say Musk’s hands-off approach has allowed lies and hate speech to spread on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere,” the Guardian said in an editorial published on its website.

“This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”

In response, Musk posted, opens new tab on X and said of the Guardian: “They are irrelevant.”

«

Guardian reporters are still OK to gather info from the site, and (if they want) to post there, and can embed content from it. It seems a slightly odd move: my view is that time spent there all costs Musk money (because it sure isn’t making a profit), and for the Guardian posting there has minimal marginal cost, and its stories might get picked up.

Come a long way from 2007 or so when I was technology editor and did an analysis suggesting that posting there was bringing in thousands of clicks per week for the Technology section alone. (It’s possible that bit.ly, the URL-shortening site which generated the metrics, didn’t ignore bots as well as it should have.)
unique link to this extract

How The New York Times beat the algorithm and became Facebook’s top publisher • Sherwood News

Ryan Broderick and Adam Bumas:

»

According to Garbage Day data, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign trounced Trump on Facebook. And the top publisher on the world’s largest social network in the lead-up to the big vote wasn’t some far-right disinformation operation, nor was it even a right-wing tabloid. For the first time in years, the leading news outlet on Facebook was The New York Times.

Times articles have been among the platform’s most popular shared links since August. The standout articles have included election reporting, like their August article about Black men supporting Harris, as well as more general stories, like coverage of the US Open. In October, 7 of the 10 most popular articles on Facebook came from the Gray Lady. Leading the pack was the single most-shared article in more than a year since Garbage Day started tracking: the website’s ongoing coverage of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, which included multiple references to Harris’ reaction.

The only outgoing link shared more times all year, in fact, was the donation page for the pro-Democrat PAC ActBlue. Across Facebook, the link was shared just under 2 million times after Harris announced her candidacy in July, including 1.4 million times in the first 10 days. For comparison, the most popular Trump donation link peaked at 174,000 shares in October.

That figure is perplexing compared to actual voting results, but the emergence of the Times as the top publisher on Facebook last month is even stranger — especially when you consider the sites that have occupied that spot all year. Between November 2023 and July 2024, the most popular news articles on the platform were all from a blog called Catholic Fundamentalism. Only obituaries for beloved cultural figures like Matthew Perry and Shannen Doherty came close to breaking its run.

«

But but but:

»

Garbage Day data confirms that news engagement on Facebook has cratered since early last year. The Times’ popularity has sent it higher than it’s been in a while, but even still, it’s less than half of where it was in early 2023.

«

unique link to this extract

No joke: The Onion parody website buys Alex Jones’ Infowars out of bankruptcy • Reuters

Dietrich Knauth and Katie Paul:

»

Like a headline lifted from the Onion, the parody news website is buying conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars in a bankruptcy auction.

The Onion said in a statement on Thursday it aims to replace Infowars’ “relentless barrage of disinformation” with the Onion’s “noticeably less hateful disinformation.”

Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed. Infowars’ website was shut down on Thursday and the Onion said it aimed to relaunch the platform in January.

The purchase marks a sharp turn for Infowars, one of the internet’s most notorious purveyors of right-wing conspiracy content and misleadingly marketed, opens new tab dietary supplements.
Founded in 1999, it became a prime example of how online media platforms could exploit tech companies’ hands-off approach to moderating content and disseminate evidence-free claims to vast audiences.

Among those theories were false claims that the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington and the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut were staged.

The Onion, led by a CEO who spent years covering online disinformation and extremism as an NBC News reporter, had the backing of several families of Sandy Hook shooting victims for its bid.
It will acquire Infowars’ intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory, certain social media accounts and the Infowars production equipment, the families said.

Jones filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022 after courts ordered him to pay $1.5bn for defaming the families of 20 students and six staff members killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.

Unable to pay those legal judgments, Jones was forced to auction his assets, including Infowars, in bankruptcy.

«

Irony is, in fact, not dead. It could only have been better if Jones had had to give the title away, rather than getting some money for it in the auction. Not that that will cover his court debts. Update: the sale is on hold because there were only two bidders and.. Jones had a higher bid?
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

An update to Apple’s iOS will mean AirTags will share their location with airlines – a boon for finding luggage. CC-licensed photo by Luigi Rosa 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. Localised. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

Elon Musk may already be overstaying his welcome in Trump’s orbit • NBC News

Dasha Burns, David Ingram and Julie Tsirkin:

»

Tech billionaire Elon Musk was handed a major win Tuesday evening when President-elect Donald Trump announced that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO would co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” with Vivek Ramaswamy.

The announcement reinforces the closeness that Musk has managed to achieve with Trump, even after the election. But for some people in Trump’s orbit, Musk’s presence has felt overbearing. 

Musk has been so aggressive in pushing his views about Trump’s second term that he’s stepping on the toes of Trump’s transition team and may be overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago, according to two people familiar with the transition who have spent time at the  Palm Beach, Florida, resort over the past week. 

The sources said that Musk’s near-constant presence at Mar-a-Lago in the week since Election Day had begun to wear on people who’ve been in Trump’s inner circle longer than the tech billionaire and who see him as overstepping his role in the transition. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak publicly. 

“He’s behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it,” one of the people said of Musk. 

“And he’s sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory. Bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen. He’s trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him. And the president is indebted to no one,” this person added. 

«

That the new department (which would have to be created through some sort of Congressional act?) is called “DOGE” would be eye-rolling enough. Politics is about to become “interesting” again, unfortunately. And the clock is already ticking on how long it will be before Musk and Trump fall out.
unique link to this extract

Apple AirTags to start sharing bag location directly with airlines • The Washington Post

Chris Dong:

»

When Apple introduced its location-tracking device more than three years ago, it quickly became a traveler favorite for one major reason: the ability to keep tabs on checked luggage. Now, AirTags are about to get a major update that will help fliers get reunited with their missing bags.

Apple announced a new feature Monday called “Share Item Location,” providing users the ability to securely communicate an AirTag’s location to third parties — including airlines.

Once rolled out as part of an upcoming iOS update, it could alter how missing items are found, retrieved and returned to their owners at airports around the world.

To start, Apple plans to work with 15 airlines globally, including Delta Air Lines and United Airlines in the United States. These carriers will integrate the new shared tracking technology directly into their customer service processes in the coming months.

Locating mishandled bags, a catchall industry term for lost, damaged or delayed, will look a lot different than today.

“Having an AirTag was great before, but there was no official policy for getting your bag back even if you could show its location to an airline employee,” said Stella Shon, a consumer travel expert for Upgraded Points. “The sharing functionality is a game-changing feature.”

«

The airlines are: Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Eurowings, Iberia, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines, Turkish Airlines, United, Virgin Atlantic, and Vueling. All of a sudden, AirTags seem a worthwhile purchase!
unique link to this extract

Romain Bardet: “carbon monoxide can explain the trajectory of some people we didn’t know about a year ago… it’s now up to the authorities to decide whether or not to ban” • Cyclinguptodate

Kieran Wood:

»

An aggressive approach called carbon monoxide inhalation, steps into the scientifically new and much riskier realm of inhaling the lightly poisonous gas (carbon monoxide) for the express purpose of performance enhancement. A growing body of recent scientific research suggests inhalation can have a powerful impact on measures of aerobic capacity like VO2max, or maximal oxygen uptake with reported links to teams such as UAE Team Emirates, Team Visma | Lease a Bike and Israel – Premier Tech. 

In an extensive interview with Eurosport upon the end of his career, Bardet was asked for a rider’s view on the controversial topic that currently escapes a WADA ban. “Honestly, I learned about it from the press. You see the studies. Anything is possible. I’ve never heard of anything, but then again, I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s so much research being done into the idea of optimising performance…” the Frenchman assesses. “It’s not surprising that there are some researchers, some teams, some people involved in cycling who are looking elsewhere. There will always be a desire to find competitive advantages.”

Is it a fair advantage though or should the use of carbon monoxide for performance gain be banned? “It’s up to each individual to set the threshold of what seems ethical and fair in the absolute and desperate search for the end result in relation to his or her values. It’s like ketones, like so many things, it’s open to interpretation. And unfortunately, since the rules are not clearly laid down, since this interpretation is left to the discretion of each individual and since we’re in an ultra-competitive sport where only victory counts, we shouldn’t be surprised by possible deviations,” Bardet ponders.

«

The Eurosport interview is in French. A report in July quotes one team saying that sure, they use CO rebreathing to monitor riders’ physiology.

Why? How? Because CO binds to haemoglobin (to make carboxyhaemoglobin) and prevents it carrying oxygen, stimulating (in theory) the body to produce more haemoglobin, which is what cyclists want. Except the teams say it’s just to measure haem levels, to see how their training is progressing.

The cycling world can’t seem to decide if it’s good, bad or illegal. (CO in large doses will kill you.)
unique link to this extract

23andMe cuts 40% of staff in restructuring • TechCrunch

Maxwell Zeff:

»

23andMe announced on Monday it would cut 40% of its workforce, representing more than 200 employees, as part of a restructuring at the company. The genetic testing company is also discontinuing its therapeutics business and winding down its clinical trials; it expects these changes to save $35m annually.

“We are taking these difficult but necessary actions as we restructure 23andMe and focus on the long-term success of our core consumer business and research partnerships,” said CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki in a press release. “I want to thank our team for their hard work and dedication to our mission.”
On Tuesday, 23andMe reported $44m in revenue during the second quarter, a decline from $50m during the same period last year.

The mass workforce reductions mark the latest disruption in a tumultuous year for 23andMe. In September, 23andMe’s entire board of directors — including Silicon Valley icons such as YouTube CEO Neal Mohan — resigned following Wojcicki’s attempt to take the company private in August.

«

Cutting nearly half your workforce suggests you’re in really deep trouble. But it is: in that second quarter it made a $59m loss. Don’t worry, though: in the year-ago quarter it lost $75m! Things are looking up!

Genomics has been a disappointment to so many: turns out too few people want to have their DNA sequenced to tell them what grisly unavoidable diseases lie in their distant future. Or whether they’re 1/64 Viking.
unique link to this extract

Exxon CEO Darren Woods: Donald Trump shouldn’t scrap methane regulations • Semafor

Tim McDonnell:

»

US President-elect Donald Trump’s aspiration to unleash a lot more oil and gas drilling domestically faces a fundamental obstacle: the global market is already well-supplied, the CEO of ExxonMobil told Semafor at the opening of COP29.

Darren Woods was in Baku for just one day of the global climate summit, ready to convince world leaders and thousands of highly skeptical activists that companies like Exxon can and should play a more proactive role in solving the climate crisis. But that doesn’t mean transitioning away from fossil fuels, the goal that was adopted by negotiators at COP28 last year, Woods said. Instead, Exxon’s approach is to engineer technologies that allow fossil fuels to be burned with lower carbon emissions, which in Woods’ view will serve the company’s bottom line as much as the global climate. Government policies designed to force a rapid phaseout of oil and gas consumption are the wrong strategy, he said: “A lot of the policies that have been pursued to date, which force you to choose between affordable energy and reduced emissions, aren’t working.”

But Woods agreed with recent comments from Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies, that the Trump administration shouldn’t move to scrap the Biden administration’s regulation to curb methane emissions from oil and gas operations.

«

This is the thing: the market is moving in one direction on fossil fuels, and just as in Trump’s first term when he talked a lot about coal and the market turned away from it, so one should expect the same this time.
unique link to this extract

Nicholas Carlson, former Business Insider editor, launches media start-up • The New York Times

Benjamin Mullin:

»

Nicholas Carlson has witnessed spectacular failures in the tech and media worlds over the years. As the former top editor of Business Insider, he chronicled the carnage at Yahoo and Groupon, and then watched several Silicon Valley companies and rival publications make an ill-fated “pivot to video.”

Now Mr. Carlson, 41, is trying to put the lessons he learned to good use. He is preparing to debut a media start-up of his own — one with a focus on video.

The new company, Dynamo, is betting big on the growing popularity of video on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn. It will produce “cinematic” video stories for those platforms, Mr. Carlson said, focusing on business journalism for a core group of strivers that he calls “dynamos.”

The average dynamo — Mr. Carlson considers himself one — is an ambitious, career-oriented viewer who believes that business can explain the world.
And he is quick to assert that his new company has more in common with Mr. Beast, the mega-popular YouTube star, than it does with Facebook Watch, a video service that was shuttered after struggling for years.

“We’re not pivoting to video,” Mr. Carlson said with a laugh. “We’re cannonballing into the deep end of video.”

Many media companies that have created content specifically for social media platforms have had a tough road. But Mr. Carlson said skyrocketing video viewership on tech platforms pointed to a business opportunity that had not been tapped by companies specializing in high-quality video journalism.

«

This, and the next story, show how much the media ground is shifting.
unique link to this extract

Broadcaster Chris Wallace quits CNN to build future in streaming or podcasting • The Daily Beast

Hugh Dougherty:

»

Chris Wallace is quitting CNN after three years as one of its biggest stars, he exclusively told the Daily Beast Monday.

The 77-year-old broadcaster said he will instead find a new home on an independent platform such as streaming or podcasting, which he described as “where the action seems to be.” He highlighted how podcasters including Joe Rogan and Charlamagne tha God had set the agenda during the presidential election, but added, “I don’t flatter myself to think I will have that sort of reach.”

The stunning decision by Wallace to walk away from CNN at the end of his three-year, seven-figure contract, rather than to renegotiate it, is a watershed moment for cable TV. It comes as other anchors face being fired or having salaries cut as declining ratings and cord-cutting hit the industry’s bottom line.

Wallace was one of the main faces of CNN’s election night coverage last week, correctly forecasting that Kamala Harris would need a “miracle” to win as the first exit polls showed the depths of her electoral difficulty. He came to CNN in 2021 after 18 years at Fox News, where he had interviewed Donald Trump repeatedly and earned praise for his handling of the fiery 2020 presidential debate between Trump and Joe Biden.

But he told the Daily Beast that his career in broadcast television–which began on local TV in Chicago in 1973 and spanned NBC’s The Today Show and Meet The Press, ABC’s PrimeTime Live and Fox News Sunday before he joined CNN–will be over when his contract lapses at the end of the year, describing it as “quite liberating.”

«

One would hope that Wallace isn’t depending on building a gigantic audience to pay the bills. Best guess is he starts a podcast which is also on YouTube. The Trump years are going to be kerching! times for politics analysts in the US, and Wallace is great at it.
unique link to this extract

Russia’s war in Ukraine is powered by ‘Deathonomics’ • WSJ

Georgi Kantchev and Matthew Luxmoore:

»

Going to war is now a rational economic choice in Russia’s impoverished hinterlands.

Facing heavy losses in Ukraine, Russia is offering high salaries and bonuses to entice new recruits. In some of the country’s poorest regions, a military wage is as much as five times the average. The families of those who die on the front lines receive large compensation payments from the government.

These are life-changing sums for those left behind. Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev calculates that the family of a 35-year-old man who fights for a year and is then killed on the battlefield would receive around 14.5 million rubles, equivalent to $150,000, from his soldier’s salary and death compensation. That is more than he would have earned cumulatively working as a civilian until the age of 60 in some regions. Families are eligible for other bonuses and insurance payouts, too.

“Going to the front and being killed a year later is economically more profitable than a man’s further life,” Inozemtsev said, a phenomenon he calls “deathonomics.”

So many soldiers have now been killed that the payments—totaling as much as $30 billion in the past year as of June—are a telling symptom of how the war is transforming Russian society and the economy at large. Since the start of the invasion, the Kremlin has boosted military spending to post-Soviet highs, offsetting some of the impact of Western sanctions. Weapons factories work around the clock, providing employment and high wages.

Now the mounting death payments are providing an injection of wealth into some of Russia’s poorest areas in return for a steady stream of soldiers for the war effort. Poverty levels are now at their lowest since data collection began in 1995, according to official statistics. Perceptions of what it means to join the military have been transformed.

«

It is rather weird; it feels like going back to the Middle Ages, when being a mercenary was a legitimate life choice that someone might make. (Thanks Karsten for the link.)
unique link to this extract

Teen infected in Canada’s first bird flu case is in critical condition • The Washington Post

Lena Sun:

»

A Canadian teenager infected with bird flu — that country’s first case involving a locally acquired infection — is in critical condition and experiencing difficulty breathing, health officials said Tuesday.
The previously healthy British Columbia teen went to a hospital emergency room Nov. 2 with initial symptoms of pink eye, fever and cough, conditions common to many respiratory illnesses, Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer, said during a news conference. The teen was sent home.

But after the patient’s condition deteriorated, the teen was admitted to BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver late Friday.

So far, no one who came into contact with the teen has fallen ill.

After a presumptive positive test for bird flu, the teen began receiving Tamiflu, an antiviral treatment. That medication works best when given in the first days of illness but is less effective in treating severe sickness, Henry said.

During the weekend, the teen received treatment to address severe respiratory conditions, Henry said.
“They are experiencing acute respiratory distress,” Henry said.

Severe illness occurs when a profusion of virus particles travel deep into the lungs causing viral pneumonia, making it hard for the body to get oxygen, she said.

Health officials do not yet know how the patient was exposed.

«

Totally a watching brief, nothing to be alarmed about, not at all. (Actually it isn’t, unless this thing figures out how to spread between humans.) (Thanks Joe S for the link.)
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Getting two child seats into the back of a normal car is fine – but three isn’t. A study suggests that limits family sizes. CC-licensed photo by Oregon Department of Transportation 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. Strapped up. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

Bitcoin hits record high as Trump vows to end crypto crackdown • Ars Technica

Ashley Belanger:

»

Bitcoin hit a new record high late Monday, its value peaking at $89,623 as investors quickly moved to cash in on expectations that Donald Trump will end a White House crackdown that intensified last year on crypto.

While the trading rally has now paused, analysts predict that bitcoin’s value will only continue rising following Trump’s win—perhaps even reaching $100,000 by the end of 2024, CNBC reported.

Bitcoin wasn’t the only winner emerging from the post-election crypto trading. Crypto exchanges like Coinbase also experienced surges in the market, and one of the biggest winners, CNBC reported, was dogecoin, a cryptocurrency linked to Elon Musk, who campaigned for Trump and may join his administration. Dogecoin’s value is up 135% since Trump’s win.

On the campaign trail, Trump began wooing the cryptocurrency industry, seeking donations and votes by promising to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet,” Fortune reported. He announced the launch of his own crypto platform, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), and vowed to “fire” Gary Gensler—the Securities and Commission Exchange (SEC) chair leading the US crypto crackdown—on “day one” in office, Al Jazeera reported.

Whether Trump can actually fire Gensler is still up in the air, The Washington Post reported. It seems more likely that Trump may demote Gensler, The Post reported, since people familiar with the matter suggested that “fully outing” the current SEC chair “could trigger a novel and complicated legal battle over the president’s authorities.” So far, Gensler has made no indications that he will step down once Trump takes office, although The Post noted that wouldn’t be considered unusual.

Sources told The Post that Trump is considering “a mix of current regulators, former federal officials, and financial industry executives,” for leadership positions, “many of whom have publicly expressed pro-crypto views.”

«

It’s like digital herpes. You think you’ve got rid of it, and that it’s vanished, but no, it just keeps coming back, bigger than ever.
unique link to this extract

‘It gets more and more confused’: can AI replace translators? • The Guardian

Kezza MacDonald:

»

Dutch publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning’s announcement that it would use AI translation for commercial fiction has outraged both authors and translators – despite attempts to reassure them with promises that no books will be translated in this way without careful checking and that authors will have to give consent.

“A translator translates more than just words, we build bridges between cultures, taking into account the target readership every step of the way,” says Michele Hutchison, winner of 2020’s International Booker prize for her translation of Lucas Rijneveld’s The Discomfort of Evening. “We smuggle in subtle clues to help the reader understand particular cultural elements or traditions. We convey rhythm, poetry, wordplay, metaphor. We research the precise terminology for say agricultural machinery, even in a novel.”

Translators and authors have also pointed out that AI translation requires very careful checking and editing – ideally by someone who knows both languages. At that point, that person may as well be translating the text themselves. Cultural sensitivity is a particular concern, as AI has been known to produce things that are wildly inappropriate.

“Last year a reader flagged some issues in a French edition of one of my books,” says Juno Dawson, author of the Her Majesty’s Royal Coven series. “The translator had used a slightly outdated term to describe a trans person. We were able to change the term before publication. It’s these nuances I suspect AI would miss, meaning that AI generated content would then require stringent editing anyway.”

There are however some scenarios in which machine translation could arguably help the creators of cultural works. For writers working in minority languages, for instance, whose works are not currently translated into English or other languages at all, an AI-assisted translation could bring them to the attention of many more readers. And in video games, localisation can be one of the bigger costs for smaller independent developers, especially those for whom English is not a native language.

«

unique link to this extract

How ChatGPT brought down an online education giant • WSJ

Miles Kruppa:

»

Most companies are starting to figure out how artificial intelligence will change the way they do business. Chegg is trying to avoid becoming its first major victim.

The online education company was for many years the go-to source for students who wanted help with their homework, or a potential tool for plagiarism. The shift to virtual learning during the pandemic sent subscriptions and its stock price to record highs.

Then came ChatGPT. Suddenly students had a free alternative to the answers Chegg spent years developing with thousands of contractors in India. Instead of “Chegging” the solution, they began canceling their subscriptions and plugging questions into chatbots.

Since ChatGPT’s launch, Chegg has lost more than half a million subscribers who pay up to $19.95 a month for prewritten answers to textbook questions and on-demand help from experts. Its stock is down 99% from early 2021, erasing some $14.5bn of market value. Bond traders have doubts the company will continue bringing in enough cash to pay its debts.

Though Chegg has built its own AI products, the company is struggling to convince customers and investors it still has value in a market upended by ChatGPT.

“It’s free, it’s instant, and you don’t really have to worry if the problem is there or not,” Jonah Tang, an MBA candidate at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, said of the advantages of using ChatGPT for homework help over Chegg.

A survey of college students by investment bank Needham found 30% intended to use Chegg this semester, down from 38% in the spring, and 62% planned to use ChatGPT, up from 43%.

“My concern is that the headwinds to Chegg’s top-line aren’t temporary—they’re more structural in nature,” said Needham analyst Ryan MacDonald.

«

This is going to require an almighty pivot, or else they’re ruined.
unique link to this extract

Taylor Swift fans are leaving X for Bluesky after Trump’s election • WIRED

Vittoria Elliott:

»

Following the us presidential election, Swifties, the name for Taylor Swift’s fans, are fleeing X for Bluesky. X’s owner, billionaire Elon Musk, was one of Donald Trump’s biggest backers, funnelling over $100m into the Trump-supporting America PAC; stumping for the candidate on the campaign trail; and boosting Trump’s messaging on X. Musk also helped Trump tap into a distinctly right-wing male audience. Swifties, who have built a robust community on the platform formerly known as Twitter, took notice. By Thursday, less than 48 hours after Trump won the presidency, they were starting to flock from the platform for good.

“I love the idea of building a new community here and would love not to have to support Elon in any way,” says Justin, who goes by @justin-the-baron.swifties.social on Bluesky and asked to use only his first name for fear of harassment. “Elon is of course a big Trump supporter, which doesn’t align with Taylor’s values or the values of Swifties.”

Though there are Swifties on all sides of the political spectrum, the community prides itself on being a positive and accepting space. After Kamala Harris was announced as the Democratic nominee for president, Swifties began to mobilize to support her. In September, Swift herself endorsed Harris. In an Instagram post announcing her support, Swift cited AI-generated images of herself and her fans that had been used by Trump to imply she’d endorsed him.

…Irene Kim, an organizer with Swifties for Kamala, says that the outpouring of misogyny following the election pushed her and many other Swift fans to abandon X and seek refuge on Bluesky. Though research has found that hate speech and disinformation increased after Musk took over the platform, the election of Trump seems to have supercharged it. A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that in the 24 hours following Trump’s electoral victory, phrases like “Your body, my choice,” parroting the election night rhetoric of white supremacist Nick Fuentes, rose 4,600% on X.

«

unique link to this extract

Yes, car seat laws reduce the birth rate • Mises Institute

Ryan McMaken:

»

Opponents of the Trump campaign had fun in September with some year-old comments from vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance. Apparently, in a Senate hearing during March 2023, Vance stated that car seat laws have an impact on the number of children parents feel they can afford. As quoted in the Ohio media site cleveland.com:

“I think there’s evidence that some of the things that we’re doing to parents is driving down the number of children that American families are having,” he said. “In particular, there’s evidence that the car seat rules that we’ve imposed — which of course, I want kids to drive in car seats — have driven down the number of babies born in this country by over 100,000.”

Anti-Trump activists got to work mocking the idea, and some suggested that Vance must have simply made these numbers up. 

Most of the mockery was based on the idea that a $100 or $200 dollar car seat is surely not the deciding factor in whether or not to have another child.  This claim may seem perfectly plausible to anyone who has never had children or has only had one or two small children at any given time. Anyone who has actually considered having a third child, however, knows that the cost of the car seat itself is not what dissuades parents from having an additional child. 

Rather, the realities of car seats and car-seat laws mean that a third child adds significant costs and obstacles in the form of a necessarily larger car. As anyone who has three small children knows, it is difficult to fit three car seats in the back seat or an ordinary car. This is why so many people with more than two children end up buying a minivan—which is more costly than a small sedan. The third row of seats is often necessary to accommodate a third car seat. Or, in some cases, the problem may be addressed with a large vehicle, such as a costly full-size SUV, that is sufficiently wide to accommodate a third car seat. 

Anyone who isn’t wealthy and who owns small cars has encountered this problem. When it comes to having a third child, it often becomes necessary to purchase a larger, more expensive car. This is about much more than the cost of a single car seat. 

This has been known for years among more honest researchers. For example, a 2020 study by business professors Jordan Nickerson and David Solomon plainly notes this challenge of finding a back seat in a vehicle that accommodates three car seats. 

«

Not what you’d expect, is it. But the study does suggest the effect is real. (Car seats are mandatory up to the age of eight in many states.)
unique link to this extract

Apple explains why the M4 Mac mini power button is located on the bottom • 9to5Mac

Chance Miller:

»

As part of its dramatic redesign, Apple moved the power button on the M4 Mac mini from the back of the machine to the bottom. In a new interview, Apple executives Greg Joswiak and John Ternus addressed this surprisingly controversial decision.

In an interview posted to Chinese video sharing website Bilibili and spotted by ITHome, Ternus and Joswiak explained that the dramatically smaller form factor of the Mac mini forced Apple to find a new position for the power button.

Ternus and Joswiak said (translated):

»

Well, we’ve shrunk the size of it so much, right? It’s equivalent to half the size of the previous generation. So we needed to put the power button in the most appropriate spot because it’s so small. It’s convenient to press. Just tuck your finger in there and hit the button.

In fact, the most important thing is you pretty much never use the power button on your Mac. I don’t even remember the last time I turned on a Mac.

«

«

“The most appropriate spot”? I think he meant “most convenient for our manufacturing” – it’s on the plastic part, rather than having to drill into the aluminium.
unique link to this extract

New York Times tech guild ends strike • The New York Times

Katie Robertson:

»

The Times Tech Guild, which represents more than 600 tech workers at The New York Times, announced on Monday that it had ended its weeklong strike despite not reaching a deal on a contract.

The union has been on strike since Nov. 4 and has regularly picketed outside The Times’s Manhattan headquarters. The strike was planned to coincide with Election Day, when readership interest is high.

The Times Tech Guild workers, which include software developers, designers and data analysts, will return to their jobs on Tuesday.

Kathy Zhang, the unit chair of the union and a senior analytics manager at The Times, said the strike “showed that we have the full support of subscribers and allies across the country going forward.” She said the union would continue to fight for a fair contract.

«

Coded Wordle and Connections and all the rest of the games so well they didn’t fall over like you hoped, eh? And the Guild’s demand to (lest we forget) get a veto over which letters to the editor are published seems likely to vanish too. Tech strikes are hard to make stick when you’ve built the products already.
unique link to this extract

Don’t switch off clean power • Notes on Growth

Sam Dumitriu:

»

Britain used to be a nuclear superpower. In 1932, the atom was first split in Britain. In 1956, Britain opened the world’s first full-scale commercial nuclear reactor. Less than ten years later, it had built 21 more. As late as 1965, Britain had more nuclear reactors than the rest of the world combined.

Yet Britain hasn’t completed a new nuclear power station in almost 30 years and most of our remaining fleet is set to be taken offline in the next few years. Only Sizewell B, which opened in 1995, is planned to stay online past 2028. Assuming one unit at Hinkley Point C has not been completed by 2029, and Sizewell B will close for two months, then Britain will have no nuclear power whatsoever on the grid. For the first time in more than 70 years, the sun will set on British nuclear power.

For energy security, household bills, and net zero, this situation must be avoided. We can and should extend the life of our existing fleet of Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs) to avoid it happening.

What will take nuclear’s place on the grid? Some of the time, it will be renewables like wind and solar. Batteries charged at times of high wind or sun will pick up some of the slack too. But there are limits to intermittent renewables and the short-duration batteries they charge. When the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, our grid will more often than not fall back on expensive, carbon-emitting natural gas. The result will be higher emissions and higher electricity prices.

The planned phase-out of Britain’s remaining AGRs therefore threatens to derail the Government’s Clean Power by 2030 target. This is the finding of the now-Government-owned National Energy Systems Operator, or NESO’s new report into the feasibility of the Government’s “Clean Power by 2030” target.

«

unique link to this extract

Xiaomi SU7 Ultra Prototype laps the Nürburgring in 6:46 minutes • Car and Driver

Jack Fitzgerald:

»

Remember the other week when Ford’s CEO Jim Farley made a surprising announcement that not only has he been driving an electric Chinese sedan for the past six months, but he doesn’t want to give it up? That sedan was the production version of the standard Xiaomi SU7—the first car from Xiaomi, a Chinese consumer electronics brand. Xiaomi’s next step is the higher-performance SU7 Ultra, and a prototype version just lapped the Nürburgring Nordschleife in 6:46.87 minutes, which is hugely impressive, even though it doesn’t qualify for any production-car records.

A video released by the Nürburgring shows the Xiaomi prototype smashing the official lap records for production versions of four-door and electric cars. Not only is the electric sedan’s time remarkable, but the SU7 Ultra managed it while appearing to lose power around the 4:15-minute mark, as indicated by the onboard video.

Anything under seven minutes at the ‘Ring is an achievement worthy of praise, though the SU7 Ultra’s lap wasn’t considered an official production record attempt (the company intends to do that later) and instead falls into the Prototypes and Pre-Production vehicles list.

«

Xiaomi really is becoming the anything manufacturer. Phones, fitness trackers, air purifiers.. and now cars. Apple must be envious. And this proof of the speed and maneouvrability of EVs is quite something.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

The comma isn’t part of the default iPhone keyboard (you need to press another key to be offered it) but has that affected what people type? CC-licensed photo by Rasmus Olsen 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. Punctual. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

Punctuation is dead because the iPhone keyboard killed it • Android Authority

Rita El Khoury:

»

Open any social media site today, and you’ll find a slew of tweets, shorts, messages, videos, photos, and more — almost all written with lower capital letters and barely any punctuation. For me, that phenomenon started as a fun observation many years ago, became very irritating as I noticed it more and more, and eventually settled into an unavoidable reality.

People these days don’t use punctuation like they should, despite how much this can irk sticklers for grammar like me. This is especially true for the younger generations, who grew up in the mobile-first age with a smartphone in their hands before they ever saw a full physical QWERTY keyboard.

But I posit that the trend isn’t due to some teenage rebellion, coolness factor, informal texting, or lack of understanding of what the Shift or Caps Lock key can do. No, I think the real reason is a mix of laziness and smartphone use, particularly the iPhone and its terrible keyboard without accessible period or comma keys.

See, even the most grammar-fanatic user, like me, ends up dreading using punctuation when it takes extra taps to add it. I’ve noticed this so often because I always use Gboard on my Android phones, so I punctuate my sentences properly. But on the rare occasion that I dig out my test iPhone 13 to check an app or feature, I end up hating every second of my typing experience because of how tedious it is to add periods or commas to my sentences. So I start skipping them here and there — sometimes, everywhere. So much so that the auto-capitalization stops getting triggered, and I end up with very Gen Z-looking sentences with a random string of lower-cap words separated by nothing more than spaces.

Pundits will say that it’s just an extra tap to add a period (double-tap the space bar) or a comma (switch to the characters layout and tap comma), but it’s one extra tap too many. When you’re firing off replies and messages at a rapid rate, the jarring pause while the keyboard switches to symbols and then switches back to letters is just too annoying, especially if you’re doing it multiple times in one message. I hate pausing mid-sentence so much that I will sacrifice a comma at the altar of speed.

«

I don’t really buy this, but it might be worth someone doing some sort of study into this.
unique link to this extract

LG’s new stretchable display can grow by 50%, bendy panels can be deformed into new form factors • Tom’s Hardware

Jowi Morales:

»

LG Display, one of the global leaders in display technologies, unveiled a new stretchable display prototype that can expand by up to 50%. This makes it the most stretchable display in the industry, more than doubling the previous record of 20% elongation. LG Display showcased the new screen at the LG Science Park in Seoul as part of the Stretchable display national project, with over 100 stakeholders taking part in the event.

This stretchable technology goes beyond expanding its size, though, as you can freely twist, extrude, and fold it without damaging the screen. This gives the technology a limitless number of applications — from clothing and wearable technologies to extruded touchable automotive panels. LG even showed a concept where the stretchable display is sewn or attached directly to firefighter uniforms and displays real-time information to the rest of their team.

The prototype being flexed in the top image is a 12-inch screen with a 100-pixel-per-inch resolution and full RGB color that expands to 18-inches when pulled. LG Display said that it based the stretchable display on a “special silicon material substrate used in contact lenses” and then improved its properties for better “stretchability and flexibility.” It also used a new wiring design structure and a micro-LED light source, allowing users to repeatedly stretch the screen over 10,000 times with no effect on image quality.

The Stretchable display national project is one of the programs spearheaded by the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MOTIE) and the Korea Planning & Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology. This move has allowed LG Display and South Korea to gain a foothold in the next-generation display market, as well as ensuring that the research, development, and manufacturing supply chain will benefit local companies and organizations. In fact, aside from LG Display which took the lead, the current stretchable display prototype involves over 19 domestic industry and research institutions. So, its commercial success will likely benefit the South Korean economy as a whole.

«

The photos in the article really are remarkable.
unique link to this extract

How weight loss drugs took over Instagram • Financial Times

Hannah Gordon:

»

In one hand, a slender young woman holds up a bottle of clear liquid. The words “Skinny” and “GLP-1” — a new class of weight loss drugs — are visible on the label. In the other hand, she raises up a pipette filled with the liquid, as if to drop it in her open mouth. “Lose up to 15% of your body weight,” reads the caption on the Instagram post. 

The marketing, from a little-known online pharmacy called Skinny Rx, is one of thousands of advertisements that are targeting young women on social media, promising users they can get their hands on “affordable” anti-obesity or anti-diabetic medications in just a few clicks.

In recent weeks, I’ve found my own Instagram feed taken over by the adverts despite never having purchased the drugs. Up to eight consecutive ads will appear for weight loss pills, oral liquids or injectables.

Looking on Meta’s Ads Library, it’s clear I am not the only one. There are more than 5,000 active adverts listed that contained the phrase GLP-1, plus more than 3,100 campaigns that mentioned the GLP-1 drug “semaglutide” and over 4,000 referencing “Ozempic”. As a comparison, popular beauty product terms, such as nail polish and blusher, featured in fewer ads — around 3,000 and 1,100 respectively.

The value of these drugs in treating obesity and diabetes is clear. And marketing for legitimate prescription medications is legal here in the US. But allowing people to be bombarded with advertising that promotes rapid weight loss — at a time when social media platforms face increased pressure to take more responsibility for the content shown to users — is irresponsible, say experts. 

«

unique link to this extract

How much will Twitter matter to Donald Trump this time? • Business Insider

Peter Kafka:

»

the big unknown I’m thinking about right now is a pretty simple one: Does Donald Trump know, or care, about what’s happening on Twitter?

Trump famously loved Twitter during his first term in office. But he wasn’t addicted to it the way many of us are — constantly scrolling for things to enrage or delight or distract. Instead, he was using it like a remote control — to program the media’s coverage, and reality itself.

Here’s Trump in 2019 talking to Fox News about the way he used Twitter:

»

I have destroyed bills that were going to be voted on that were bad, and I’ve gotten bills passed that were good by using Twitter. And Twitter is really a typewriter for me. It’s really not Twitter — it’s — Twitter goes on television, or if they have breaking news, I’ll tweet, I’ll say, “Watch this — boom.”

I did the Golan Heights to Israel, and I put it out on Twitter. If I put out a news release, nobody’s even going to see it. Today’s Huawei, I put it out on Twitter. People see. That’s not to build Twitter. That’s to say that as soon as it goes out, it goes on television, it goes on Facebook, it goes all over the place, and it’s instant — it really is, to me, it’s a modern way to communicate.

«

But note whom Trump was talking to in that interview: Fox News.

Trump 1.0 was a president who understood that digital media was important. But he was first and foremost a president who came of age in the 1970s and ’80s, and his media diet reflected that: print newspapers and magazines, which he would scrawl notes on using a Sharpie. And, above all else: TV.

Trump was the TV president. Trump was transfixed by TV, and that meant TV was the most important medium during his first presidency. If you wanted to communicate with the president, the conventional wisdom became, you did it by going on TV because you knew he’d see it there. Fox News in particular.

That was four years ago, and since then, the TV landscape has continued to bleed money and audience. Election-night ratings last week were down 25% from 2020. Newish mediums and platforms like podcasts, YouTube, and TikTok are ascendant, and Trump and his campaign spent a lot of time and effort over there.

So is it possible that Trump, who is approaching 80 and played songs from 1978 at his rallies, has changed his media diet, too?

I mean, sure? I guess it’s conceivable that he went on Theo Von’s podcast/YouTube show because he’s a big Theo Von fan.

My hunch, though, is that he’s getting his information the way he always has — by watching and reading Old Media. And, as The New York Times reports, by asking whoever’s in his orbit at the moment:

«

unique link to this extract

We need internet culture journalism more than ever • Passionfruit

Steven Asarch:

»

During Donald Trump’s election-night victory speech, UFC owner and Trump supporter Dana White thanked several people, including YouTubers the Nelk Boys, podcaster Theo Von, streamer Adin Ross, and podcaster Joe Rogan. 

For those with little internet presence, these names might not be notable. But for the internet-addicted young men who helped carry Trump to four more years in the White House, this was a congratulatory shout-out. These internet edge lords with millions of followers — some who spew antisemitic conspiracy theories and make grand sweeping gestures and endorsements for Trump — are now some of the most powerful creators in American culture. 

Though there is no clear single reason as to why Trump won the election, there’s no doubt that the internet and the chaos it evolved into fueled the anger of young men over the past decade and played a major role. According to exit polls, men between the ages of 18 and 29 shifted rightward by eight percentage points since the 2020 election, citing the economy as a top issue. 

…At Passionfruit, I’ve covered the rise of the conservative gamer, the controversial (and childish) content of Adin Ross, as well as dozens of other stories about how right-wing creators are exploiting the frustrations of young men and rotting our social fabric. Complaints about Star Wars or Marvel making bad TV get shoehorned into the overall culture war, blaming bad writing or dialogue on the “woke mind virus.” That rhetoric becomes a slippery slope, leading young men down rabbit holes to more conservative voices like Charlie Kirk or Ben Shapiro.

But at other newsrooms I’ve worked with, getting anyone to care about internet culture journalism has proven to be a herculean feat. One editor at an outlet (that shall not be named) told me to “focus on more mainstream personalities” since those are the ones “that get clicks.”

«

The real missing link, I think, is podcast culture journalism. The problem, though, is that it takes so long to listen to them.
unique link to this extract

What are the most commonly used movie clichés? • Stephen Follows

Stephen Follows:

»

Last week, a group of friends and I watched Last Action Hero (1993). The script started life as a satire on dumb action moves (its original title was “Extremely Violent”) but was so heavily re-written during development and production that (a) its original writers lost their full writing credit, and (b) it became the exact thing it was looking to send up – i.e. a forgettable dumb action movie.

During the many dull moments we had to chat while the movie draaagggggggged on, the conversation turned to dialogue clichés. Last Action Zero included a number of classics, including “This is not happening”, “I’m just doing my job”, and “Did you hear something?”.

This movie gets a pass on clichés as its intent is to be a semi-parody, so some of those uses could be aimed at being self-aware and (intended at least) for comedic effect.

But what of the whole pantheon of movies? How many cite familour clichés? And which are the ones coming in and out of fashion?

I turned to my database of subtitle files to find out. I generated my long list of 138 dialogue clichés after consulting with screenwriters, reading blogs, and talking it through with Jack Malvern from The Times. With my list in hand, I tracked their appearance in over 72,000 movies released since 1940.

«

It’s all very, very American. (Unsurprisingly.) He also looks at those phrases in rapid decline: “We meet again” has fallen off very quickly. “You’d better come in” is basically dead.
unique link to this extract

DNA shows Pompeii’s dead aren’t who we thought they were • Ars Technica

Jennifer Ouellette:

»

Four Pompeii victims were found in 1974 in what is known as the “House of the golden bracelet.” Three (two adults and one child) were found at the foot of a staircase leading to a garden and the seafront. Archaeologists thought this was likely a father, mother, and their child because of the arrangement of the bodies, as well as a golden bracelet worn on the arm of one of the bodies. But it wasn’t possible to definitely determine the sex of any of the bodies. The hypothesis was that the trio had taken shelter in the stairwell but were killed when it collapsed. A fourth body of a child, about age 4, was found nearby, presumed to have died while trying to escape to the garden.

This new DNA analysis showed that this conventional interpretation was incorrect. All the bodies were male, including the one with the golden bracelet, and none of them were genetically related. It wasn’t possible to glean much information about physical characteristics, but one person had black hair and dark skin, and two others probably had brown eyes. The ancestry of all four was consistent with origins in North Africa or the Mediterranean.

In 1914, nine bodies were found in the garden in front of the “House of the cryptoporticus,” so named because there is an underground passage running along three sides of that garden. Only four were preserved in plaster, including two bodies that seemed to be embracing. Archaeologists suggested they were lovers, mother/daughter, or two sisters. The authors were only able to extract DNA from one of those bodies, revealing that it was male, excluding two of those possible interpretations. His ancestry was of Near Eastern/North African origin.

Pompeii plaster casts in the House of the Golden Bracelet. Credit: Archeological Park of Pompeii
Several bodies were found in the “Villa of the Mysteries” in 1909–1910, known for its decorative frescoes dedicated to Bacchus, the god of wine, religious ecstasy, and fertility. The villa even had a wine press, since it was common for wealthy families to make their own wine and olive oil, among other products. The authors focused on one particular body found lying on top of a layer of ash, wearing an engraved iron and carnelian ring on the left hand. Archaeologists suggested he was probably the custodian of the villa rather than a family member.

The DNA analysis confirmed that this body was a male of mixed genetic ancestry, primarily Eastern Mediterranean and European origin. In short, “The scientific data we provide do not always align with common assumptions,” said co-author David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University. “These findings challenge traditional gender and familial assumptions.”

«

unique link to this extract

The Matter smart home standard gains support for more devices, including heat pumps and solar panels • The Verge

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:

»

However, the launch of the Matter 1.4 specification this week shows some signs that the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the organization behind Matter) is using more sticks and fewer carrots to get the smart home industry coalition to cooperate.  

The new spec introduces “enhanced multi-admin,” an improvement on multi-admin — the much-touted interoperability feature that means your Matter smart light can work in multiple ecosystems simultaneously. It brings a solution for making Thread border routers from different companies play nicely together and introduces a potentially easier way to add Matter infrastructure to homes through Wi-Fi routers and access points.

Arguably, these should have all been in place when Matter launched. But now, two years later, the CSA is finally implementing the fixes that could help move the standard forward. 

Matter 1.4 also brings some big updates to energy management support, including adding heat pumps, home batteries, and solar panels as Matter device types.

Disappointingly, security cameras didn’t make it in this time. The CSA’s CTO, Chris LaPré, tells The Verge that while support for cameras is still part of the plan, there’s no timeline for a release. However, he points out that Matter 1.4 now covers almost every other device category in the home, which should provide a solid foundation to move the standard forward.

«

One of the things that Pete Warden didn’t mention in his article quoted yesterday was interoperability, but that’s a big thing too: buying a lightbulb that refuses to work with your ecosystem or loses functionality all matters (ha) too.
unique link to this extract

If I want to get fitter, should I wear a fitness watch? • Tim Harford

Tim Harford got a new smartwatch, and wondered whether its quantification of many fitness elements would make him get fitter:

»

In 2022, Lancet Digital Health published a systematic review that tried to bring together all the credible research done to that date, covering 164,000 people. The study came to exactly the conclusion you might expect, if you weren’t tying yourself in knots of counterintuition: fitness trackers do help people to be fitter.

More specifically, wearable activity trackers lead people to walk more — 1,800 steps or 40 minutes of extra walking per day — and to lose some weight (1kg) on average. There is also evidence, albeit weaker evidence, that fitness trackers lead people to burn more calories, improve blood sugar and cholesterol, improve wellbeing, reduce disability, and lower levels of pain, anxiety and depression. Emotional wellbeing improves and resting heart rate falls.

Some of these apparent benefits are small or uncertain but, broadly speaking, the picture is what you’d hope: people who were given fitness trackers in a randomised trial were more active than those who, at random, were not. That extra physical activity led to all the benefits we might expect.
None of these studies was designed to answer the question, “If I want to get fitter, should I buy a fitness watch?” Instead, they answer the stranger question, “If I was given a fitness watch as part of an academic study, would I get fitter?”

Consider the parallel pair of questions: “If I want to take up running, should I buy some running shoes?” and, “If I was given some running shoes as part of an academic study, would I run more?” For most purposes, the answer to the first question is obvious and the answer to the second is irrelevant.

Perhaps that’s how I should view my fitness watch. It’s like a gym membership or an exercise bike: great if you use it, pointless if you don’t.

«

I can also recommend a dog if you want to increase the number of steps per day.
unique link to this extract

Editor’s Note: What’s Next for WIRED • WIRED

Katie Drummond:

»

I won’t sugarcoat it: The outcome of last week’s US presidential election wasn’t the one WIRED wanted. As I wrote last week, several of the core values that underpin our publication and inform our journalism—unwavering respect for democratic institutions, a commitment to human rights and bodily autonomy, recognition that climate change is a dire emergency—are at odds with those of Donald Trump and the incoming GOP administration.

Our values aren’t changing, and our commitment to rigorous, independent reporting and investigative journalism across WIRED coverage areas remains steadfast, particularly as the US navigates this new and uncertain political chapter. But as I reminded our team last week, there’s one more value that we hold dear here at WIRED, and it’s one I want to share with all of you today: hope.

At WIRED we believe that technological progress and scientific discovery will, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly—often turbulently, too often inequitably—improve human lives and introduce possibilities that were once unfathomable. We believe in the potency and creativity of the human mind, and we love nothing more than to introduce all of you to the ingenious ideas and inventions that emerge from brilliant people across so many fields of inquiry.

We believe that the internet can still, amid the AI slop and trolls of it all, be a place to find community, to connect across physical borders, to be informed, and to be entertained. We believe in being weird. We believe in fun. At WIRED we will always choose to believe that the world’s best days—maybe the galaxy’s best days, when we all live on Mars—are still to come. So yes. Yes, dammit. We believe in hope.

«

Perhaps it’s my distance from the event, but I find this announcement – which was prominently on the top left of the Wired home page, so I wasn’t cherrypicking it – strange. Why does Wired’s editor think we would think a different president is going to change its journalism, or approach to same? American journalists really are an odd bunch sometimes.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

We were warned that the US presidential election would be overrun with deepfakes – so what happened? CC-licensed photo by Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken 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. Verified. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

AI’s underwhelming impact on the 2024 elections • TIME

Andrew Chow:

»

fears of the election being derailed or defined by AI now appear to have been overblown. Political deepfakes have been shared across social media, but have been just a small part of larger misinformation campaigns. The U.S. Intelligence Community wrote in September that while foreign actors like Russia were using generative AI to “improve and accelerate” attempts to influence voters, the tools did not “revolutionize such operations.”

Tech insiders acknowledge 2024 was not a breakthrough year for generative AI in politics. “There are a lot of campaigns and organizations using AI in some way or another. But in my view, it did not reach the level of impact that people anticipated or feared,” says Betsy Hoover, the founder of Higher Ground Labs, a venture fund that invests in political technology.

At the same time, researchers warn that the impacts of generative AI on this election cycle have yet to be fully understood, especially because of their deployment on private messaging platforms. They also contend that even if the impact of AI on this campaign seems underwhelming, it is likely to balloon in coming elections as the technology improves and its usage grows among the general public and political operatives. “I’m sure in another year or two the AI models will get better,” says Sunny Gandhi, the vice president of political affairs at Encode Justice. “So I’m pretty worried about what it will look like in 2026 and definitely 2028.”

Generative AI has already had a clear impact on global politics. In countries across South Asia, candidates used artificial intelligence to flood the public with articles, images and video deepfakes. In February, an audio deepfake was disseminated that falsely purported to depict London Mayor Sadiq Khan making inflammatory comments before a major pro-Palestinian march. Khan says that the audio clip inflamed violent clashes between protestors and counter-protestors.

«

The BBC link for the Khan mention dates back to February, and relates to a deepfake audio clip that sounded like Khan which circulated in November 2023, encouraging a Palestinian march in London. But that march was going ahead, and there’s no evidence it was made worse by the clip.

I’m going to suggest that deepfakes – videos or audios – aren’t going to be effective in disrupting politics. There’s too much flow, so that any fake can be quickly checked and disavowed. The Washington Post agrees that AI didn’t change anything, though it might have deepened divides – except the number of swing voters suggests to me that isn’t true either.
unique link to this extract

Why has the Internet of Things failed? • Pete Warden’s blog

Pete Warden:

»

Setup: The biggest obstacle is the setup tax. All of our communication technologies, from WiFi to cellular, cost money to use, and so require authentication and billing accounts. This isn’t as big a problem with PCs and phones because we only replace them every few years, and they have screens and keyboards, so going through the setup process is comparatively straightforward. By comparison, your fridge or toaster probably doesn’t have a full-featured user interface, and so you’re expected to download a phone app, and then use that to indirectly set up your appliance.

This adds multiple extra steps, and anyone who’s ever worked on a customer funnel means that every additional stage means losing some people along the way. If you also factor in that a household might have dozens of different devices that all want you to go through the same process, with different applications, accounts, and quirks, it’s clear why people suffer from setup fatigue and often don’t even try.

Uselessness: Last year I talked to an engineer who had spent six months working on a smart dishwasher that could be connected to the internet. He confessed that none of the team had been able to figure out a compelling user benefit for the system. You could start the dishwasher remotely, but how did that help if you had to be there in person to load it? Knowing when it was done was mildly useful, but most people would know that from when they started it. With phones and PCs adding an internet connection unlocked immediately compelling use cases, thanks to all the human-readable content on web pages, and once the network was widely available more applications like Salesforce or Uber added to the appeal.

We’ve never seen anything like this for IoT in the consumer space. Getting an alert that your fridge door has been left open is nice, but isn’t much better than having an audible alarm go off. Amazon, Apple, and Google have tried to use voice interfaces as a selling point for devices to connect through their ecosystem, but almost nobody uses them for anything other than setting alarms and playing songs.

There’s also no inherent reason to send audio data to the cloud to have a voice interface, one of the reasons we founded Useful was to bring local speech interfaces to everyday objects. People need a motivation to connect their devices, especially with the time cost involved in setup, and nobody has given them one.

«

As he points out, less than 50% of internet-capable appliances actually get connected.
unique link to this extract

TSMC will stop making 7 nm chips for Chinese customers • Financial Times via Ars Technica

Kathrin Hille and Ryan McMorrow:

»

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has notified Chinese chip design companies that it will suspend production of their most advanced artificial intelligence chips, as Washington continues to impede Beijing’s AI ambitions.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, told Chinese customers it would no longer manufacture AI chips at advanced process nodes of 7 nanometers or smaller as of this coming Monday, three people familiar with the matter said.

Two of the people said any future supplies of such semiconductors by TSMC to Chinese customers would be subject to an approval process likely to involve Washington.

TSMC’s tighter rules could reset the ambitions of Chinese technology giants such as Alibaba and Baidu, which have invested heavily in designing semiconductors for their AI clouds, as well as a growing number of AI chip design start-ups that have turned to the Taiwanese group for manufacturing.

The US has barred American companies like Nvidia from shipping cutting-edge processors to China and also created an extensive export control system to stop chipmakers worldwide that are using US technology from shipping advanced AI processors to China. There have been reports that a new US rule would ban foundries from making advanced AI chips designed by Chinese firms, according to analysts at investment bank Jefferies.

TSMC is rolling out its new policy as the US Commerce Department investigates how cutting-edge chips the group made for a Chinese customer ended up in a Huawei AI device. The Chinese national tech champion is subject to multiple US sanctions and export controls.

«

The Huawei restrictions, in case you’d forgotten, date back to Trump’s first term.
unique link to this extract

How It Went • Daring Fireball

John Gruber:

»

My mom died at the end of June this year.

I know, and I’m sorry — that’s a hell of a way to open a piece ostensibly about a depressing, worrisome, frightening election result. But here’s the thing I want to emphasize right up front: my mom’s death was OK. It really was. She was 78, which isn’t that old, but her health had not been great. She was hospitalized for several days in May, just a month prior, after she had collapsed at home, too weak to stand, and for days it wasn’t clear what was wrong. Then some more test results came back and we had the answer. She had ovarian cancer, bad. It had already metastasized. The prognosis was grim: months to live, at best. And those months, toward the end, would inexorably grow ever more painful and profoundly sad.

Her mental acuity had begun to slip in recent years, too. Not a lot, but if you knew her you’d notice. But she faced this prognosis with remarkable dignity, courage, and clarity. She knew the score. It was what it was, and she’d make the best of the time she had left. She was tired but still felt pretty good most days. There were flashes of her younger self, the Mom I remember growing up with. It was wonderful to see those flashes. The bad times were coming, but they laid ahead. On the last Monday night in June she and my dad went out to eat at their favorite restaurant. They had a good meal and a good time. It was a great day. Tuesday morning she played Wordle and reported her score to our family group chat. Then around noon, she just fell over, dead. My dad found her unresponsive, called 911, and they arrived in minutes, but she was gone. No suffering.

«

This is only the opening of a long, beautiful, elegiac piece, which is your day’s must-read. It will uplift you. But you have to read through to the end. I think I’ve read everything Gruber has written on his site, which goes back 22 years, and this is without a doubt the best thing he has ever written.
unique link to this extract

Apple Mac Mini M4 review: a tiny wonder • The Verge

Chris Welch:

»

As I said earlier, the $599 Mini is the best value around if you haven’t yet joined the Mac side of Apple’s ecosystem. Even the $799 configuration I tested, with 16GB of memory and a 512GB SSD, seems reasonable. But once you go beyond that in RAM or storage, Apple’s pricing smacks of greed and padding the company’s bottom line. That’s true across the line, but it’s felt more acutely on a machine that starts at only $599. Stepping up to 1TB of storage and 32GB of RAM brings the price to $1,399. Yikes.

For most, the Mini will be a stationary computer, and the presence of three Thunderbolt ports means you can attach a speedy external SSD without caving to Apple’s farcical rates. Given that, the other $799 config, with 24GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, could be more worthwhile. Neither can be upgraded later, so it’s important to get the specs right when buying.

You can use Apple’s display and accessories… or get as creative as you want with third-party options.
Every time I glance over at the new Mac Mini on my desk, it feels like the Mini’s ideal form. The redesigned enclosure makes the most of Apple Silicon’s small footprint, and with Apple’s M4 chip and an ample selection of ports, the 2024 Mini should remain a zippy, reliable computer for years to come. It’s never been more mighty. Well, except for the much pricier M4 Pro version. Stay tuned for more on that soon.

«

A calculation on the ATP podcast suggested that Apple’s RAM and SSD upgrades are priced at 6.5x above retail level. Given Apple would buy at wholesale, ie 40% of retail at most, that’s about 16x the wholesale price, or more. It’s insane, but Apple has been doing it for years. At least for SSDs you can plug in an external drive.
unique link to this extract

Deleted tweets, missed warnings and calls for the ‘hangman’: the bitter political fallout from Spain’s floods • The Guardian

Sam Jones:

»

The sun still hadn’t risen on Tuesday 29 October when the mayor of Utiel, Ricardo Gabaldón, took another look at the warnings from Spain’s state meteorological office and ordered all the schools in the small Valencian town to close.

“The warning early that morning – at 5am or 6am – was orange,” he said. “That’s when I was weighing up whether to close the schools here. In the end, I ordered them to close at six or seven that morning. Soon after, the alert went red.”

Although the rain brought floods that have so far claimed at least 223 lives in Spain – six of them in Utiel – Gabaldón knows the death toll could have been far higher in his town had the schools been open. Children and their parents would have died on flooded roads during the drive in from surrounding villages, and students could have been drowned in their school corridors. “Thank goodness that the children weren’t here,” he said. “Otherwise we’d be talking about something else entirely.”

The foresight and initiative Gabaldón showed in the first moments of the worst natural disaster in Spain’s modern history were far from ubiquitous. The alerts that are pinged to people’s mobile phones in times of civil emergency were not sent out by the Valencian regional government until after 8pm on Tuesday. By then, a year’s worth of rain had fallen in some areas in a matter of hours and the flood waters in Utiel were three metres high.

Even as emergency teams search for the 78 people still listed as missing, questions are being asked about the authorities’ handling of the crisis, one that has brought out the very worst, and the very best, in people.

«

Climate change is going to affect governments around the Mediterranean because warmer water evaporates more easily and is dumped on the land. This sort of crisis will become more, not less, common.
unique link to this extract

The media’s identity crisis • The Atlantic

Charlie Warzel:

»

“You are the media now.” That’s the message that began to cohere among right-wing influencers shortly after Donald Trump won the election this week. Elon Musk first posted the phrase, and others followed. “The legacy media is dead. Hollywood is done. Truth telling is in. No more complaining about the media,” the right-wing activist James O’Keefe posted shortly after. “You are the media.”

It’s a particularly effective message for Musk, who spent $44 billion to purchase a communications platform that he has harnessed to undermine existing media institutions and directly support Trump’s campaign. QAnon devotees also know the phrase as a rallying cry, an invitation to participate in a particular kind of citizen “journalism” that involves just asking questions and making stuff up altogether.

“You are the media now” is also a good message because, well, it might be true.

A defining quality of this election cycle has been that few people seem to be able to agree on who constitutes “the media,” what their role ought to be, or even how much influence they have in 2024. Based on Trump and Kamala Harris’s appearances on various shows—and especially Trump and J. D. Vance’s late-race interviews with Joe Rogan, which culminated in the popular host’s endorsement—some have argued that this was the “podcast election.” But there’s broad confusion over what actually moves the needle.

Is the press the bulwark against fascism, or is it ignored by a meaningful percentage of the country? It is certainly beleaguered by a conservative effort to undermine media institutions, with Trump as its champion and the fracturing caused by algorithmic social media. It can feel existential at times competing for attention and reckoning with the truth that many Americans don’t read, trust, or really care all that much about what papers, magazines, or cable news have to say.

«

People have been “cable-cutting” – dropping their cable contracts – for years in favour of YouTube and the internet. Megyn Kelly was on the Today programme last week boasting about how CNN had had 4 million viewers on election night – and she had had 4 million on her YouTube stream at the same time. Plus the median age of these channels is zooming up: MTV’s median age is 50; for CNN, it’s 70. Those channels are not coming back from that cliff edge.
unique link to this extract

Questionmarks of the Mysterians • New Cartographies

Nicholas Carr:

»

what if our faith in nature’s knowability is just an illusion, a trick of the overconfident human mind? That’s the working assumption behind a school of thought known as Mysterianism. Situated at the fruitful if sometimes fraught intersection of scientific and philosophic inquiry, the Mysterianist view has been promulgated, in different ways, by many prominent thinkers, from the philosopher Colin McGinn to the linguist Noam Chomsky to the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker. The Mysterians propose that human intellect has boundaries and that many of the mysteries of the cosmos will forever lie beyond our comprehension.

Mysterianism is most closely associated with the so-called hard problem of consciousness: How can the inanimate matter of the brain produce subjective feelings? The Mysterians suggest that the human mind is incapable of understanding itself, that we will never know how consciousness works. But if Mysterianism applies to the workings of the mind, there’s no reason it shouldn’t also apply to the workings of nature in general. As McGinn has suggested, “It may be that nothing in nature is fully intelligible to us.”

The simplest and best argument for Mysterianism is founded on evolutionary evidence. When we examine any other living creature, we understand immediately that its intellect is limited. Even the brightest, most curious dog is not going to master arithmetic. Even the wisest of owls knows nothing of the physiology of the field mouse it devours. If all the minds that evolution has produced have bounded comprehension, then it’s only logical that our own minds, also products of evolution, would have limits as well. As Pinker has put it, “The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours.” To assume that there are no limits to human understanding is to believe in a level of human exceptionalism that seems miraculous, if not mystical.

…What’s truly disconcerting about Mysterianism is that, if our intellect is bounded, we can never know how much of existence lies beyond our grasp. What we know or may in the future know may be trifling compared with the unknowable unknowns.

«

This has always seemed an obvious point to me: there must be aliens whose cognitive abilities are beyond ours, just as ours are beyond dogs. What happens if we meet them?
unique link to this extract

The sinking of the Bayesian and the Mohawk • Churbuck

David Churbuck:

»

In the department of history-repeating-itself, here is a strange historical coincidence from the realm of current events, maritime history and 19th century American yachting: two superyachts capsize and sink at anchor, only a few hundred yards from shore, killing their wealthy owners, guests, and crew when a summer squall overwhelmed them. The story of the two catastrophes dominated the news for weeks.

This is the story of the Mohawk and the Bayesian: two superyacht tragedies that killed their wealthy owners a century and a half apart.

«

Bizarre how these things happen. Then happen again.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

The price of Apple products seems likely to shoot up if Trump’s tariffs come into effect. CC-licensed photo by Brian Snelson on Flickr.

You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.

It’s Friday, so there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time.

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

Trump’s 60% tariffs could push China to hobble tech industry growth • Ars Technica

Ashley Belanger:

»

Now that the US presidential election has been called for Donald Trump, the sweeping tariffs regime that Trump promised on the campaign trail seems imminent. For the tech industry, already burdened by the impact of tariffs on their supply chains, it has likely become a matter of “when” not “if” companies will start spiking prices on popular tech.

During Trump’s last administration, he sparked a trade war with China by imposing a wide range of tariffs on China imports, and President Joe Biden has upheld and expanded them during his term. These tariffs are taxes that Americans pay on restricted Chinese goods, imposed by both presidents as a tactic to punish China for unfair trade practices, including technology theft, by hobbling US business with China.

As the tariffs expanded, China has often retaliated, imposing tariffs on US goods and increasingly limiting US access to rare earth materials critical to manufacturing a wide range of popular products. And any such retaliation from China only seems to spark threats of more tariffs in the US—setting off a cycle that seems unlikely to end with Trump imposing a proposed 60% tax on all China imports. Experts told Ars that the tech industry expects to be stuck in the middle of the blow-by-blow trade war, taking punches left and right.

Currently, there are more than $300bn in tariffs on Chinese imports, but notably, there are none yet on popular tech like smartphones, laptops, tablets, and game consoles. Back when Trump last held office, the tech industry successfully lobbied to get those exemptions, warning that the US economy would hugely suffer if tariffs were imposed on consumer tech. Prices on game consoles alone could spike by as much as 25% as tech companies coped with increasing costs from tariffs, the industry warned, since fully decoupling from China was then, and is still now, considered impossible.

Trump’s proposed 60% tariff would cost tech companies four times more than that previous round of tariffs that the industry dodged when Trump last held office. A recent Consumer Technology Association (CTA) study found that prices could jump even higher than previously feared if consumer tech is as heavily taxed as Trump intends. Laptop prices could nearly double, game console prices could rise by 40%, and smartphone prices by 26%.

«

Bet Apple is absolutely delighted at this prospect.
unique link to this extract

Tracking Harris and Trump’s ad spending on Facebook and Instagram • Bellingcat

Pooja Chaudhuri and Melissa Zhu:

»

By summing up the average spending for all ads by each presidential candidate’s campaigns, we found that Harris’ campaign has spent about US$113m  – more than a small country’s GDP – advertising on Facebook and Instagram between July 21 and Oct. 30, while Trump’s campaign spent about US$17m in total.

Both figures likely represent just the tip of the iceberg for the candidates’ total ad spending across television and digital advertising including on other online platforms such as Google. 

Almost all (99.8%) of the ads sponsored by Harris’ campaign ran on both Facebook and Instagram, whereas almost 26% of those supporting Trump were only shown on Facebook, and 7.5% targeted only Instagram. 

This is only a fraction of both campaigns’ and their supporters’ spending on ads. An NPR analysis published on November 1, found that over $10bn has been spent in the 2024 election cycle, beginning January 2023, on races from president, senate to county commissioner. This includes ads on TV, radio, satellite, cable and other digital ads.

To estimate how much each campaign spent advertising on Meta’s platforms, we multiplied the average spending for each ad with the the percentage of ad delivery for each region (the data previously extracted from the “delivery_by_region” column), assuming that the amount spent in each region was proportional to where audiences eventually saw the ad.

Based on our calculations, the Harris campaign directed more advertising dollars in swing states with the highest spending in Pennsylvania – reported as the toughest swing state by election strategists – than any other state.

Pennsylvania played a crucial role in the 2020 election with Biden winning by a narrow margin. The state backed Trump in the 2016 election. 

The seven swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – are regarded as holding the key to the White House in the 2024 election. The Trump campaign has also focused on the swing states, but Democrats have outspent Republicans in each of those states.

«

My conclusion, based on that: 2016 is long gone. This was not the social media election.
unique link to this extract

Foundation’s edge • Unbalancing Mechanism

Adam Bell:

»

[In the 1980s and 1990s] New nuclear power stations were considerably more expensive than building a new fleet of combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power stations. These were able to achieve thermal efficiencies of 55-60% and make best use of cheap North Sea gas. We stopped building nuclear power stations because we had a cheaper alternative.

And this was not simply a matter of Government making the wrong investment decisions. At privatisation the new generation companies refused to take on the UK’s existing nuclear fleet, judging both its running costs and potential liabilities as being not worth the candle. The Government kept them in public hands and forced utilities to buy power from them through the Non-Fossil Fuels Obligation. If we had maintained the nuclear build-out under public control, we would have had higher electricity costs throughout the 90s and 00s. And, consequently, lower growth.

The second explanation the authors [of the essay Foundations] put forward is that the increased use of wind and solar in our power system is driving costs up. This is not because of how much it costs to build out these technologies, but rather the costs of integrating them into our electricity system – more transmission lines to where the wind actually is, increased costs of balancing to accommodate intermittency, and the need to pay for backup for periods of low wind and low sun.

The reason why we cancelled our nuclear build-out and the reason why industrial power prices are now high is the same: the price of gas. The CCGT fleet we built in the 90s is now driving prices higher. The bounty of the North Sea ran out in the 2000s and we now import the majority of our needs. As a result, our marginal gas supply is liquified natural gas traded on global markets over which we have little control. Even the minor expansion of North Sea extraction that new exploration would unlock would do very little to move the dial here.

«

And there are tons of pricing contracts for renewables which pay at least as much as the price of gas on the network. It’s strange how we get locked into our past actions; for all that we tell ourselves we can forecast the future, we get stuck with one foot in the solid concrete of what we did.
unique link to this extract

Secrets of a ransomware negotiator • The Economist

»

Last autumn, somewhere in Europe, a security operations centre noticed something. This is the primary job of a security operations centre – to notice things. Its role is simple, protecting organisations by tracking the people using their computer networks. Its name is often abbreviated to a simple acronym, SOC (pronounced “sock”.) The people who work at a SOC are the cyber-security equivalent of night guards at the mall, sitting at a bank of television screens: watching, waiting, trying not to doze off.

In this case, what they noticed was someone trying to log in to a staff member’s account at one of the companies the SOC monitors, using a series of incorrect passwords. About a thousand times in one day. This seemed suspicious. Someone at the SOC sent someone at the company an email, letting them know about the failed logins.

The cyber-security industry exists to keep information secret and reputations intact. I am able to tell you this story only if I keep the company in question anonymous, though you might have heard of it. Picture a company that provides boring administrative services to thousands of organisations across the planet. The kind of company that your own employer subcontracts. A company everyone relies on but no one really bothers to think about.

Both the SOC and the company were certified as meeting “the world’s best-known standard for information security”. But when the SOC alerted the company’s staff to the failed logins, they did nothing. The SOC didn’t press the issue. No one noticed that the user was eventually able to log in. Or that the account belonged to an employee who no longer worked there. No one noticed that it was an administrator-level account, which provided access to the company’s entire network. No one noticed anything amiss – for about a month.

Then, one day, the company’s servers began malfunctioning. A series of alarming emails arrived. “We managed to obtain a lot of secret documents, internal documents classified as strictly confidential, personal data of current employees!” read one. There was a link to a private chat room, and a deadline for using it. The hackers wanted to talk.

Some hours later, a phone rang on the other side of the world. Nick Shah was asleep at his beach house on the tropical island of Mauritius, which is in the middle of the Indian Ocean. When he picked up, it was a colleague with bad news.

«

Shah is the ransomware negotiator (it’s a fast-growing trade) and this is an entertaining story.
unique link to this extract

India’s lithium mining plans in Kashmir have stalled • Rest of World

Yashraj Sharma:

»

Sunil Thakur, a 24-year-old engineering graduate, once planned to build a career as a civil engineer. But jobs were scarce, and so Thakur spent his days frying samosas for his family’s snack shop in Salal — a picturesque mountain village of about 10,000 people in India’s northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Then, in February 2023, Thakur’s dreams of prosperity were suddenly revived.

India’s mining ministry informed the villagers that they were sitting on a fortune: 5.9 million metric tons of lithium, a silver-white metal that is a core component of the batteries necessary for India’s transition to clean energy.

The discovery — a first in India — would make the country the holder of the fifth-largest lithium reserve in the world, mining officials announced. Indian media outlets jubilantly reported that companies including Mitsubishi, Tesla, and Ola Electric were eyeing the reserve.

Thakur and his family started daydreaming about selling their land in exchange for “a duplex home in a big Indian city, and loads of cash,” he said. He imagined investing in the family business, first established by his grandfather nearly four decades ago.

Two years later, nothing has happened. The government tried to auction the lithium block twice in March, and failed both times, due to a lack of bidders. The extraction plans have been halted indefinitely.

«

“Did we say 5.9 million? We meant 0.02 million, and in clay deposits that make it hard to extract. Anyone?”
unique link to this extract

Botched little animals • New Cartographies

Nicholas Carr:

»

In the course of writing Superbloom over the last few years, I found myself losing patience with the prevailing critique of social media and the internet, the one that portrays the technology as something imposed on us by an imperious external force (progress or capitalism or Big Tech or what-have-you) and that in turn depicts us as the hapless, helpless victims of that force’s exploitative and manipulative powers. The problem with this line of inquiry is not that it’s invalid — it’s valid, and it’s necessary — but that it’s incomplete. It skirts around our own complicity. It too easily separates our botched little animals from our botched little selves.

One of the central arguments of the book is that the commercial internet, and social media in particular, is a machine fine-tuned to sense our desires and fulfill them. If “the algorithm” manipulates us, it does so by giving us what we want. The machine’s manipulative power is secondary to, and dependent on, the pleasure it provides.

The moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre stressed the importance of distinguishing “between what we desire and the choiceworthy” and “between what pleases those others whom we desire to please and the choiceworthy.” Making such distinctions has always been difficult. Digital media, with its hyperactive solicitude and its automation of the act of choosing, makes them more difficult than ever — and more important than ever. Because technology is a repository of human desire, a full critique of any machine needs also to be a critique of human desire. We’re the machine’s makers before we’re its victims.

«

unique link to this extract

Democrats join 2024’s graveyard of incumbents • Financial Times

John Burn-Murdoch:

»

the economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world.

From America’s Democrats to Britain’s Tories, Emmanuel’s Macron’s Ensemble coalition to Japan’s Liberal Democrats, even to Narendra Modi’s erstwhile dominant BJP, governing parties and leaders have undergone an unprecedented series of reversals this year.

The incumbents in every single one of the 10 major countries that have been tracked by the ParlGov global research project and held national elections in 2024 were given a kicking by voters. This is the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years of records.

Ultimately voters don’t distinguish between unpleasant things that their leaders and governments have direct control over, and those that are international phenomena resulting from supply-side disruptions caused by a global pandemic or the warmongering of an ageing autocrat halfway across the world.

Voters don’t like high prices, so they punished the Democrats for being in charge when inflation hit. The cost of living was also the top issue in Britain’s July general election and has been front of mind in dozens of other countries for most of the last two years.

That different politicians, different parties, different policies and different rhetoric deployed in different countries have all met similar fortunes suggests that a large part of Tuesday’s American result was locked in regardless of the messenger or the message. The wide variety of places and people who swung towards Trump also suggests an outcome that was more inevitable than contingent.

But it’s not just about inflation. An update of economist Arthur Okun’s “misery index” — the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates — for this era might swap out joblessness and replace it with immigration. On this basis, the past couple of years in the US, UK and dozens of other countries have been characterised by more economic and societal upheaval than they have seen in generations.

«

unique link to this extract

Police freak out at iPhones mysteriously rebooting themselves, locking cops out • 404 Media

Joseph Cox:

»

Law enforcement officers are warning other officials and forensic experts that iPhones which have been stored securely for forensic examination are somehow rebooting themselves, returning the devices to a state that makes them much harder to unlock, according to a law enforcement document obtained by 404 Media.

The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time. After being rebooted, iPhones are generally more secure against tools that aim to crack the password of and take data from the phone.

“The purpose of this notice is to spread awareness of a situation involving iPhones, which is causing iPhone devices to reboot in a short amount of time (observations are possibly within 24 hours) when removed from a cellular network,” the document reads. 

Apple did not provide a response on whether it introduced such an update in time for publication. Regardless, the reported iPhone reboots highlight the constant cat and mouse game between law enforcement officers and forensic experts on one side, and phone manufacturers Apple and Google on the other.

«

It would make sense as a safety feature for “Find my iPhone”, for example: the phone will turn on and let the world know where it is.
unique link to this extract

Man spent $2m to find new largest prime number • Popular Science

Andrew Paul:

»

Formed in 1999, GIMPS [Greater Internet Mersenne Prime Search] relies on an international network of volunteers who download specialized software that harnesses their computers’ unused programming capabilities to search for exceptionally large Mersenne prime numbers. Named after Marin Mersenne, the 17th-century French friar who first studied them, Mersenne primes are defined as 2n-1, where “n” is any integer. While these begin relatively simply with the number 3 (22-1), they quickly climb to giant numbers that surpass any single human mind’s mathematical skills. They become so difficult to calculate, in fact, that the newest example, officially designated M136279841, is just the 52nd known Mersenne prime number.

Announced on Tuesday, GIMPS explained that M136279841 was first suspected on October 11 by a 36-year-old former NVIDIA employee named Luke Durant using what’s known as Fermat probable prime test. After Durant notified GIMPS of his possible breakthrough, several other computers around the world conducted multiple Lucas-Lehmer primality tests to ensure M136279841’s prime-ness, leading to its official confirmation 10 days later.

Durant’s achievement also marks a major moment in the hunt for Mersenne prime numbers—it’s the first of its kind to be found through the use of graphics processing units (GPUs) instead of traditional central processing units (CPUs). GPUs have come to prominence in recent years in conjunction with the rise of machine learning, large language models, and artificial intelligence, all of which often rely on massive GPU networks to function. For 28 years, GIMPS volunteers relied on CPU power to use the organization’s original software. In 2017, however, a developer named Mihai Preda designed an open-source program called GpuOwl to continue the Mersenne prime research through these muc-improved machines.

A single GPU isn’t likely to net a 41,024,320-digit number, however. Durant, for example, found M136279841 through a supercomputer cloud network he built using server GPUs throughout 24 datacenter regions in 17 countries. Such a large system isn’t cheap, either—The Washington Post reports the project cost Durant around $2m since he started looking for the 52nd Mersenne number in October 2023.

«

The discoverers of the Mersenne primes are a varied bunch. Previously, in 2018: Fedex employee discovers largest prime number.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

The fastest mobile speeds you can get in London tend to be down in the Underground. CC-licensed photo by Mike Knell 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. Jammed? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

Trump’s win is neither an oil gusher nor a green crusher • Bloomberg

Liam Denning:

»

as much as Trump calls the energy transition a scam, he entered office in 2017 amid sustained declines in the price of clean technologies. Developers’ decisions are certainly influenced by policy but few can resist the siren call of lower costs. For example: More US wind-power capacity was installed under the former president who speculates that the sound of spinning turbines can cause cancer than under Biden (Biden still wins big on solar and batteries).

Similarly, anyone expecting another round of energy dominance to spark a big jump in US oil and gas output should remember that the industry has in recent years grown rather fond of profitability. The same day Americans went to the polls, shale darling Diamondback Energy Inc. hosted an earnings call luxuriating in the company’s efficiency gains but warning against using that extra firepower to boost production: “I think that spreadsheet math is what’s gotten this industry in trouble in the past” — see: the Obama oil boom — as Chief Financial Officer Matthew Kaes Van’t Hof put it.

Trump will certainly reduce hurdles for producers; expect lower royalties and easier environmental rules on federal lands as well as more lease auctions. But federal lands account for a minority of oil and gas production and there are far bigger forces shaping the outlook for prices — and, therefore, the path of domestic production.

Chinese oil imports have slowed, exacerbating an excess of supply that has forced OPEC+ to delay bringing back production. If the group decides to pull the trigger in the first quarter — seasonally weak for oil demand — Trump’s inauguration could coincide with a slump in prices. That’s before we get to the negative impacts on oil and gas prices from a potential easing of sanctions on Russia or the chilling effect on global trade, and the opposite effect on US inflation, of his promised sweeping tariffs.

Similarly, Biden’s signature green policy, the Inflation Reduction Act, isn’t necessarily dead come January. The vast majority of announced cleantech manufacturing investment and associated jobs, underpinned by IRA subsidies, are in red [Republican] House districts.

«

This is an important point: Trump can’t buck the market, and the price of renewables is cratering. In 2016 he was full of talk about coal: its use plummeted. The fact that the Inflation Reduction Act is making so much impact in Republican areas makes it much, much harder to kill.
unique link to this extract

How the Trump whale correctly called the election • WSJ

Alexander Osipovich:

»

The mystery trader known as the “Trump whale” is set to reap almost $50 million in profit after running the table on a series of bold bets tied to the presidential election.

Not only did he see Donald Trump winning the presidency, he wagered that Trump would win the popular vote—an outcome that many political observers saw as unlikely. “Théo,” as the trader called himself, also bet that Trump would win the “blue wall” swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Now, Théo is set for a huge payday. He made his wagers on Polymarket, a crypto-based betting platform, using four anonymous accounts. Although he has declined to share his identity, he has been communicating with a Wall Street Journal reporter since an article on Oct. 18 drew attention to his bets.

In dozens of emails, Théo said his wager was essentially a bet against the accuracy of polling data. Describing himself as a wealthy Frenchman who had previously worked as a trader for several banks, he told the Journal that he began applying his mathematical know-how to analyze US polls over the summer.

…Polls failed to account for the “shy Trump voter effect,” Théo said. Either Trump backers were reluctant to tell pollsters that they supported the former president, or they didn’t want to participate in polls, Théo wrote.

To solve this problem, Théo argued that pollsters should use what are known as “neighbour polls” that ask respondents which candidates they expect their neighbours to support. The idea is that people might not want to reveal their own preferences, but will indirectly reveal them when asked to guess who their neighbours plan to vote for.

Théo cited a handful of publicly released polls conducted in September using the neighbour method alongside the traditional method. These polls showed Harris’s support was several percentage points lower when respondents were asked who their neighbours would vote for, compared with the result that came from directly asking which candidate they supported.

To Théo, this was evidence that pollsters were—once again—underestimating Trump’s support. The data helped convince him to put on his long-shot bet that Trump would win the popular vote. At the time that Théo made those wagers, bettors on Polymarket were assessing the chances of a Trump popular-vote victory at less than 40%.

«

People who saw the size of the bets thought the “Whale” must be some sort of foreign influence operation. Half-right, at least. (How did they think a big bet would influence millions of voters?) I hadn’t heard of neighbour polls, but it seems like a clever method to discover revealed preference.
unique link to this extract

Walking Phoenix • Chris Arnade Walks the World

Chris Arnade has been walking around all sorts of countries, seeing them from the ground, for years. In March this year he was in Phoenix, Arizona, seeing the American dream at ground zero:

»

The second morning began at the same McDonald’s, with the now familiar woman yelling at Susan — my own little Groundhog Day-like riff (“Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don’t forget your booties”) which I chuckled at.

By noon I wasn’t chuckling anymore. The walk, although in a different direction, was just as depressing. Long empty stretches on mile-long blocks, with just me and the distraught. It became another day-long lesson in the zoology of American dysfunction — the homeless addict, the mentally-ill homeless addict, the bored and aimless teens, the elderly with no family, the physically handicapped, the obese, the obese physically handicapped, the perc 30 addict, the angry mentally ill, and so on and so on.

After a lunch my body had no interest in, I realized I was in over my head, and needed to get out of the sun, needed water, so I called it quits, and found a bus route to get the six miles back to my motel. The first bus was running forty-five minutes late, and the stop had no shade, so instead of waiting, I walked to the second, which was an hour and fifteen late. I also walked that last bit.

When I finally got to my room, I realized I’d made a massive mistake2. I had zero appetite, despite having eaten little all day, and I badly needed hydration, so I went to the corner 24 7 Convenience Store to stock up on Gatorade, where all my cards were declined, then locked. I’ve used these cards in Senegal, Mongolia, and Ecuador without triggering so much as a security text, but the corner of 27th and Indian School Rd was too much for the algorithm. Given who was around me and the amount of plexiglass between me and the clerk, it was probably justified.

«

Do you want the remain candidate? Or the change candidate?
unique link to this extract

The old man lost his horse • Flavia Ouyang

Flavia Ouyang:

»

There is a well-known parable in the book Master of Huainan that encapsulates Daoist’s idea of the relativity of luck in life. It’s known as “The old man lost his horse, how could he know if this is not fortuitous” (Original: 塞翁失馬，焉知非福).

Here’s the story:

Once Upon a time, a skilled equestrian lived near the border. For no reason, his horse ran off into the barbarian kingdoms. Everyone felt bad for him. But his father said, “Don’t be glum. Who’s to say this won’t take a turn for the better?”

Months passed. His horse came back with a herd of well-bred barbarian horses. People congratulated him. His father said, “Don’t be overjoyed. Who’s to say this won’t take a turn for the worse?”

Now with an abundance of horses, the son indulged in riding. One day, he fell and broke his leg. Again, people sympathized with him. Yet his father said, “My son, who’s to say this won’t take a turn for the better?”

A year later, the barbarian breached through the border. All able-bodied men were conscripted to fight. Nine out of ten were killed. Due to his injury, the father and son were spared.

Thus, misfortune can bring fortune, and fortune can lead to misfortune. This happens time and time again. The evolution of fortune is endless and unfathomable.

«

Ouyang’s comment: “Here’s to the horse we [in the US] lost last night.”
unique link to this extract

Sweden scraps plans for 13 offshore windfarms over Russia security fears • The Guardian

Miranda Bryant:

»

Sweden has vetoed plans for 13 offshore windfarms in the Baltic Sea, citing unacceptable security risks.

The country’s defence minister, Pål Jonson, said on Monday that the government had rejected plans for all but one of 14 windfarms planned along the east coast.

The decision comes after the Swedish armed forces concluded last week that the projects would make it more difficult to defend Nato’s newest member.

“The government believes that it would lead to unacceptable consequences for Sweden’s defence to build the current projects in the Baltic Sea area,” Jonson said at a press conference.

The proposed windfarms would have been located between Åland, the autonomous Finnish region between Sweden and Finland, and the Sound, the strait between southern Sweden and Denmark. The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad is only about 310 miles (500km) from Stockholm.

Wind power could affect Sweden’s defence capabilities across sensors and radars and make it harder to detect submarines and possible attacks from the air if war broke out, Jonson said.

The only project to receive the green light to was Poseidon, which will include as many as 81 wind turbines to produce 5.5 terawatt hours a year off Stenungsund on Sweden’s west coast.

«

Quite a thing when you have to bear in mind that your renewable energy strategy might interfere with your defence strategy.
unique link to this extract

Why is London’s phone signal so bad? • London Centric

Jim Waterson:

»

Astonishingly, tests carried out by London Centric found that in several high-profile areas of the capital the best place to find a fast 5G mobile data connection is now hundreds of feet under the capital in deep tube tunnels. This is thanks to new equipment – known as “leaky feeders” – installed in recent years under a contract with Transport for London.

In a damning indictment of the capital’s outdoor mobile infrastructure, if you want to tether your laptop to your phone and work remotely you might be better off tapping into the tube network and doing your work while riding around at 40km/hr underneath London. (Much of this article was written on the tube in this manner.)

On a packed rush hour Jubilee line train to Canary Wharf on Thursday morning it was possible to download data over EE’s network at 217mbps (megabits per second), as fast as many home broadband connections. But the moment you go above ground and are surrounded by the financial district’s skyscrapers the data download speed falls by more than three quarters to 49mbps.

Get back on the Jubilee line heading east from Canary Wharf and, thanks to the train emptying out, it was possible to hit a super-fast 371mbps on 5G in a tunnel deep under the Thames, enough to download an entire film in little over a minute. But on arrival at Stratford station there was no data connection on many platforms.

Jump on the Elizabeth Line to central London and the in-tunnel data speed returns to 203mbps – but outside Tottenham Court Road station, where you might be trying to meet a friend, it immediately falls to a barely-usable 2mbps. Even wandering around the corner to the middle of an empty Soho Square, free from obstructions, did little to improve download speeds.

The solution to all of this is to install more masts with greater capacity. Gareth Elliott works for lobby group Mobile UK, which represents the interests of mobile phone network providers. He said the biggest issue the operators face in London is the planning system, with local councillors across the capital politically incentivised to object to new masts at all costs – either on aesthetic grounds, or over dubiously-sourced fears about the supposed health impacts.

«

Planning regulations really are a blight.
unique link to this extract

Just have AI build an app for that • David Gomes

David Gomes:

»

I sometimes need to search for a website that will “convert a PNG to SVG”, or “remove page from PDF” or “resize svg”. And these apps are… okay. I don’t really trust most of them with my data, and also a lot of times they just don’t work or have too many ads.
So, I’ve been noticing a trend of people just using AI agents to create full blown apps for these simple use cases.

I decided to try it myself for a “resize SVG” app since I recently had to go through a bunch of websites to do this. So, I pulled up Replit Agent and even though I’ve used it before, it doesn’t cease to amaze me just how insanely good it is. The level of polish on this product is unlike any other AI agent out there right now.

It starts off by drawing up a plan and asking you for feedback on that plan. Then, it’ll just go to town and try to build the app. But what’s super clever about it is that the agent asks you for feedback along the way. Effectively, the Replit Agent guides you, not the other way around (as one might have expected).

«

This is going to be the next generation of apps. Total junk, but single-use.
unique link to this extract

Fate of Google’s search empire could rest in Trump’s hands • Ars Technica

Ashley Belanger:

»

A few weeks before the US presidential election, Donald Trump suggested that a breakup of Google’s search business may not be an appropriate remedy to destroy the tech giant’s search monopoly.

“Right now, China is afraid of Google,” Trump said at a Chicago event. If that threat were dismantled, Trump suggested, China could become a greater threat to the US, because the US needs to have “great companies” to compete.

Trump’s comments came about a week after the US Department of Justice proposed remedies in the Google monopoly trial, including mulling a breakup.

“I’m not a fan of Google,” Trump insisted. “They treat me badly. But are you going to destroy the company by doing that? If you do that, are you going to destroy the company? What you can do, without breaking it up, is make sure it’s more fair.”

Now that Trump is presumed to soon be taking office before the remedies phase of the DOJ’s litigation ends next year, it seems possible that Trump may sway the DOJ away from breaking up Google.

Experts told Reuters that a final ruling isn’t expected until August, giving Trump plenty of time to possibly influence the DOJ’s case. But Trump’s stance on Google has seemed to shift throughout his campaign, so there’s no predicting his position once he takes power.

«

Creates the perfect conditions to force Sundar Pichai to come and pay fealty in the hope of getting amelioration.
unique link to this extract

Mozilla Foundation lays off 30% staff, drops advocacy division • TechCrunch

Zack Whittaker:

»

The Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Firefox browser maker Mozilla, has laid off 30% of its employees as the organization says it faces a “relentless onslaught of change.”

When reached by TechCrunch, Mozilla Foundation’s communications chief Brandon Borrman confirmed the layoffs in an email.

“The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all. That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward,” read the statement shared with TechCrunch.

According to its annual tax filings, the Mozilla Foundation reported having 60 employees during the 2022 tax year. The number of employees at the time of the layoffs was closer to 120 people, according to a person with knowledge. When asked by TechCrunch, Mozilla’s spokesperson did not dispute the figure.

This is the second layoff at Mozilla this year, the first affecting dozens of employees who work on the side of the organization that builds the popular Firefox browser.

«

I think the “onslaught of change” is actually an absence of money. Mozilla is getting walloped by the drying up of Google’s funding.
unique link to this extract

What are you Haydn? The hoaxers who fooled the classical music world • The Guardian

Phil Hebblethwaite:

»

In 1993, completely out of the blue, the Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda was sent a photocopy of a manuscript purporting to be six lost Haydn keyboard sonatas. It came with a letter from a little-known flautist from Münster, Germany called Winfried Michel, who told Badura-Skoda that he’d been given it by an elderly lady whose identity he could not reveal.

Badura-Skoda was suspicious, but once he played the music, he became sure that the works were real. He asked his wife Eva, a musicologist, to examine the manuscript. Although the music wasn’t in Haydn’s hand, she believed it to be an authentic copyist’s score dating from around 1805 and originating in Italy. They checked with the Haydn scholar, HC Robbins Landon, and he too was convinced. He penned an article for BBC Music Magazine, headlined Haydn Scoop of the Century, tipped off the Times, and called a press conference for 14 December 1993.

Within hours, the Joseph Haydn Institute in Cologne declared the manuscript to be a fake. An expert from Sotheby’s in London agreed. The Badura-Skodas had been hoaxed, or so it seemed. The following February, Eva gave a talk in California titled: The Haydn Sonatas: A Clever Forgery. Paul played a selection of the works – in a confused state of mind. Eva told the music scholar Michael Beckerman, reporting for the New York Times, “My husband still thinks they’re genuine,” raising difficult questions about truth and art. What did Paul believe he was playing? What was the audience hearing? And did it matter?

In his article, Beckerman wrote: “Knowing that a work is by Haydn or Mozart allows us to see ‘inevitable’ connections. Take away the certainty of authorship, and it’s devilishly difficult to read the musical images within.” He noted, too, that it was the inauthenticity of the manuscript that had exposed Michel and not the fidelity of the music. And so, Beckerman dared to ask: “If someone can write pieces that can be mistaken for Haydn, what is so special about Haydn?”

«

That is the question, isn’t it? I’m surprised, in passing, that AI music generators haven’t yet given us Beethoven’s Tenth, or Schubert’s Finished Symphony.
unique link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified