As clicks dry up for news sites, could Apple News be a lifeline?
"The free version of Apple News is one of the biggest news platforms in the world. It’s the most widely used news application in the United States, the U.K., Canada, and Australia, and boasted over...
View ArticleDecentralized Systems Will Be Necessary To Stop Google From Putting The Web...
"The various decentralized social media systems that have been growing over the past few years offer a very different potential approach: one in which you get to build the experience you want, rather...
View ArticleProPublica’s new “50 states” commitment builds on a decade-plus of local news...
"It’s a good time to be ProPublica. And it’s a good thing that we have ProPublica." Hey, that's where I work! The article continues: "Spreading its journalistic wealth has long been core to its...
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Dispatches from the media apocalypse
Without serious intervention, newsrooms are going to disappear. Changes to social media and the advent of generative AI threaten their businesses and the impact of their work. They need to own their...
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Unoffice Hours
I’m enamored with Matt Webb’s unoffice hours: a way to chat with him about anything, without needing to email him first, for 30 minutes.As Matt says:I loved those open conversations over coffee in the...
View ArticleThe AI data goldmine
If I was a nefarious software company, here’s how I might be thinking:AI functionality tends to require that data is sent to a centralized service for processing.This is often data that is not being...
View ArticleThe Fatal Flaw in Publishers' OpenAI Deals
"It’s simply too early to get into bed with the companies that trained their models on professional content without permission and have no compelling case for how they will help build the news...
View ArticleWhy publishers are preparing to federate their sites
"At least two digital media companies are exploring the fediverse as a way to take more control over their referral traffic and onsite audience engagement." The Verge and 404 Media will both support...
View ArticleNostr Journalism Accelerator
Nos is running a "journalism accelerator", which onboards independent journalists and publications onto Nostr with guaranteed promotion and 1:1 help. Nostr is a different kind of open network, in the...
View ArticleStudy Finds That 52 Percent of ChatGPT Answers to Programming Questions Are...
On answering programming questions: "We found that 52 percent of ChatGPT answers contain misinformation, 77 percent of the answers are more verbose than human answers, and 78 percent of the answers...
View ArticleWho actually uses Instagram’s Threads app? Taiwanese protestors
"While young Taiwanese users discuss everything from relationships to celebrity gossip on Threads, the app has gradually become a gathering space for progressives, who favor independence from China to...
View ArticleCan we at least agree that killing is wrong?
I don’t think it’s possible to morally support the ongoing bombardment of Gaza, but that’s too weak a statement. What’s happening there seems to be — based on what I’ve read through the news, what...
View ArticleUnexpected Anti-Patterns for Engineering Leaders
"The key to effective engineering leadership lies in figuring out which scenarios are worth deliberately defying conventional logic, and when to simply follow the rules." Lots of good food for thought...
View ArticleUser Research Is Storytelling
I shared this with my team and one of them said they had to check that I didn't write it. This is exactly how I think about (and ask my team to think about) rooting software development in human...
View Article“The way we raise the money at The Guardian is different than any place I’ve...
"The way we raise the money at The Guardian is different than any place I’ve ever been. This is truly a jointly owned responsibility among the business side and editorial." Every non-profit newsroom...
View ArticleHow Black Lives Became The Hidden Cost of Clean Energy
"The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6 million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death...
View ArticleThe 21 best science fiction books of all time – according to New Scientist...
This list of the New Scientist's favorite science fiction books is brilliant. The books I've read that are included here are some of my favorites of all time; the others are on my to-read list. What's...
View ArticleKnown fizzled
One of my biggest regrets is how the Known hosted service declined. The paid subscriptions came to an end, and eventually the hosting whimpered out. Behind the scenes, the database cluster was in need...
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Protecting artists on the fediverse
Over the weekend, I started to notice a bunch of artists moving to Cara, a social network for artists founded by Jingna Zhang, herself an accomplished photographer.The fediverse is a decentralized...
View ArticleZoom CEO Eric Yuan wants AI clones in meetings
Eric Yuan has a really bizarre vision of what the future should look like:"Today for this session, ideally, I do not need to join. I can send a digital version of myself to join so I can go to the...
View ArticleUK broadcasters trade ad airtime for advertisers’ shares
This is an interesting business model: UK broadcasters are trading unused ad space for equity in digital media startups, turning them into venture-scale investors."The move comes as broadcasters...
View ArticleHow Tony Stubblebine turned Medium around in the AI era
This is a lovely piece about Tony Stubblebine, who, as it rightly says, is doing an excellent job as the new CEO of Medium."Under Stubblebine’s direction, Medium, a site known for its many pivots, is...
View ArticleColumbia Law Review Board Nukes Website Over Palestine Article
"Eghbariah’s paper for the Columbia Law Review, or CLR, was published on its website in the early hours of Monday morning. The journal’s board of directors responded by pulling the entire website...
View ArticleOnline Privacy and Overfishing
"The pervasive nature of modern technology makes surveillance easier than ever before, while each successive generation of the public is accustomed to the privacy status quo of their youth."The key,...
View ArticleIs Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
Microsoft's Recall software seems like a horrible idea:"Surprise! It turns out that the unencrypted database and the stored images may contain your user credentials and passwords. And other stuff. Got...
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