-
We know what we’re missing, asshole.
Via NiemanLab: [Surveyed] adults from 206 counties that fit Medill’s definition of news deserts (“counties with no professional source of local news, such as a print or online newspaper, based within that county”), and adults from counties you might call news oases (those with 30 or more professional news outlets). Many people who live in…
-
Time for Mistletoe 2.0
Via NiemanLab, small newspapers are struggling with the Post Office’s recent service cutbacks. Some papers are still operating the old-fashioned way, running their own real press and sending out real papers to their real subscribers. Before last year the PO service was tolerable, but now ‘media mail’ is down to a low priority and sometimes…
-
Self-disengaging algorithm
Substack’s latest “update” prevents me from responding to its twitteroid Notes. I can write comments on full articles, but when I try to leave a reply on a Note it shows a big blank panel that won’t let me write. The panel seems like it should be conveying a warning, but there’s no text or…
-
Make beauty
Since the Bush-Trump torture chamber of 2020 I’ve been peeling away from Machiavellian shit. Trying to pay near-zero attention to politics and media noise. Focusing on making beauty and order where possible, trying to do the right thing though it’s never rewarded and usually punished. I’ve also been turning off subscriptions to writers who show…
-
Wrong in opposite ways
A couple of online comments on the public school system got me thinking. One of them is old. Public schools prepare you for assembly line jobs. The other is a bit newer: Public school trains you to follow instructions, not to complete tasks on your own. Both are wrong in opposite directions. Public schools DIDN’T…
-
The most damaging bullshit
In the 50s and 60s, every “fact” we learned in school or heard on TV was wrong. Some were wrong by omission or distortion, most were flatout diametrical bullshit. We should have listened to our grandparents instead of our teachers. Maybe the most damaging “fact”, emphasized constantly in school “science” and “health” classes: Don’t exercise…
-
Gernsback’s 1918 iPhone
The idea of a portable videophone was common around 1910, written and illustrated in electronics and sci-fi mags. Here’s one I hadn’t seen before in a 1918 Gernsback magazine. I’ve modeled it with one age-appropriate improvement to free up the user’s hands. Gernsback’s version resembled a vanity mirror mounted on a candlestick phone, including the…
-
Cornering?
I haven’t seen a verifiable human read here in a couple weeks, and no repeated human reads in at least a year. The AI bots continue swarming at times, always holding two years back from current content. This is clearly a rule, noticed by other observers. It’s certainly not part of copyright law. Altman doesn’t…
-
Gossip interceptors
Related to the bot invasion of Facebook local news sites…. Altman’s OpenAI says it handles 1 million questions per week about local news. Most are on the subjects that Facebook groups cover but legacy media totally ignores: People continue to trust local news more than national news, and the demand for reliable local news is…
-
It’s mostly offshoring, not automation
Waymo has admitted that its “autonomous” vehicles are mostly remote control, only partly autonomous. The controllers are in low-wage Phillipines. Waymo claims that the controllers only intervene in extreme situations, but I’m sure we’ll get the usual gradual increments of the real truth. Remote controlled vehicles are WAY older than Waymo. Trains had some remote…
-
The citing is as old as the citations.
Repeating dubious quotes from Mark Twain, CS Lewis, Einstein, Chesterton et al, is not a new problem! A joke from the Inland Printer trade journal, 1910: = = = = = START JOKE: They were boasting of the wonderful record of the new Linotype operator. “How many ems in fifty-four hours?” inquired the machinist. “Oh,…
-
Just fucking dumb
One of the AI defenders on substack is playing Altman’s game by planting doubt and confusion in our minds. If we believe this crap we’ll be less inclined to BLAME THE MAKER OF THE TOOL. = = = = = START IDIOCY: When an AI agent causes harm, who’s responsible? The developer, the deployer, the…
-
Aunt Rose in tech
Social platforms always introduce new crap at the start of the month, fulfilling their Prime Psychopath Directive: MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS. Never let the customer USE the service, always force the customer to spend time and attention on readjusting. Facebook’s menstruation for February is a question-asking bot. At the moment the bot’s comments are…
-
What did you expect?
Via Protos: Binance, one of the leading counterfeiters, did something in October that changed the fake value of its fake “money”. Now the people who bought large amounts of this particular counterfeit brand are suing Binance for …. For what? For being more counterfeit than you expected? Fakery is the OPENLY DECLARED ADVANTAGE of bitcoin.…
-
Tale of two alternatives
I’m pushing against two computer-related frustrations right now. One is the Kafkan rules of ADA, and the other is the Deepstate spying and molasses sludginess of Windows 11. Windows has a built-in screen reader but it’s rather weak and not widely used. NVDA is the most common alternative. NVDA is shaped BY and FOR blind…
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 