[Maxwell Zeff at TechCrunch] I know "don't be evil" is from another era of Google, but still, this rankles: "Google removed a pledge to not build AI for weapons or surveillance from its website this week. The change was first spotted by Bloomberg. The company appears to have upda … | Continue reading
[Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards at ProPublica] From my colleagues at ProPublica: "Citing an urgency to protect students’ civil rights in a second Trump administration, Illinois lawmakers filed a new bill Monday that would explicitly prevent school police from ticketing … | Continue reading
[The Guardian Editorial] The Guardian editorial board isn't mincing words: "Donald Trump is provoking a US constitutional crisis, claiming sweeping powers to override or bypass Congress’s control over spending in a brazen attempt to centralise financial power in the executive bra … | Continue reading
[Jameel Jaffer in The New York Times] Jameel Jaffer is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University: "The spectacle of powerful media organizations debasing themselves before Mr. Trump has become so familiar that it is beginning to feel li … | Continue reading
I’ve been a technical leader a few times: CTO and Director of Technology at two nonprofit newsrooms; technical lead at five tech companies of varying sizes; investor and advisor in early-stage startups. I’ve enjoyed reading Ask a Manager for years, and it occurred to me that a si … | Continue reading
[Cathy Gellis at TechDirt] On point: "So that Elon Musk and his minions have managed to walk right into government offices to take over computer systems where they had no legitimate authorization or entitlement needs to be understood as a cyberattack by a rogue actor. And every o … | Continue reading
[Matt Haughey] I really like the way this guide to Signal lays it all out. As Matt Haughey explains: "A friend of mine works in the federal government and wrote a guide for their fellow federal workers on how to use Signal. There are lots of good reasons for switching to Signal f … | Continue reading
Okay, friends. Here’s what we’re going to do. It’s not going to take long. Let’s install Signal. Signal is an open-source, end-to-end encrypted instant messaging app. When you message someone with Signal, nobody can intercept your conversation to learn what you’re saying. It’s ve … | Continue reading
[Naseem S. Miller at the Journalist's Resource] A massive, last-minute data preservation effort was undertaken this week as important federal datasets were taken offline: "The new Trump administration has at least temporality halted most communications from the Department of Heal … | Continue reading
Imagine being so genuinely empty as a human being that you support a regime that conducts mass deportations and runs concentration camps because they support Bitcoin. Imagine watching the rights, freedoms, and safety of trans people being torn down over the course of 72 hours and … | Continue reading
The 19th celebrated its fifth birthday yesterday. CEO Emily Ramshaw’s reflective post is quite lovely, but also announces a very bold strategy: On our fifth anniversary, we’re launching our first-ever endowment campaign, with a goal of raising $20 million over the next three year … | Continue reading
[Herman Martinus] I recognize a lot of the sentiment here. Twenty years ago, I ran an open source social networking startup and tried to differentiate ourselves by saying many of these same things. "Bear won't sell. I'm not building this to flip it to the highest bidder. No VC fu … | Continue reading
[Adrian Hon] I was today years old when I learned the original meaning of an "adventure playground": "The post-war period saw “junk playgrounds” flourish as a kind of reparations for the trauma of war. They gave children the freedom to build, explore, experiment, and role play – … | Continue reading
[Ross Douthat and Marc Andreessen in The New York Times] This podcast conversation with Marc Andreessen is very revealing. It's particularly fascinating to me that what I experienced as "America finally having a much-needed moral awakening" presented to people like Andreessen as … | Continue reading
[Taylor Lorenz at UserMag] This is like something from a cyberpunk novel: "The phrase “cute winter boots” is not about footwear. It's a code phrase being used to discuss resistance to Trump and how to fight back against the draconian immigration policies his administration is ena … | Continue reading
I was out buying eggs when I saw a video of Elon Musk giving a Hitler salute at the inauguration. In the movies, this stuff is highlighted and separated: punctuation in itself instead of an event that you see in the background of your everyday life. Hannah Arendt talked about “th … | Continue reading
Nobody should have to move to another country to be themselves. However, I’ve spoken to multiple people who feel they need to move away from the US in order to avoid harms caused by the new administration’s executive orders that target trans people. Exactly how to do this is some … | Continue reading
The last time this man was in power we wound up with one of the largest civil rights movements ever conducted in the United States. There is so much light; so much bravery; so much fairness and equity and rebellion in so many. Those are the people I believe in. That's what I'm ho … | Continue reading
[Mike Masnick at TechDirt] On Zuckerberg's claims about why he's changing Meta's fact-changing policy: "If you only remember two things about the government pressure campaign to influence Mark Zuckerberg’s content moderation decisions, make it these: Donald Trump directly threate … | Continue reading
[Ethan Zuckerman in The Atlantic] I completely agree with the points Ethan makes here. The TikTok ban was a spectacular own-goal for all kinds of reasons. In particular: "[...] This is a depressing moment for anyone who cherishes American protections for speech and access to info … | Continue reading
I’ve written a few times about how blogging has been the single most important accelerant in my career. I mentioned this when I asked more of you to blog, in remarks about other peoples’ posts on blogging, and so on. But I’ve never actually explained how. The arc of this journey … | Continue reading
[Matthew Green] I think this is the most important discussion with respect to AI: "[...] I would say that AI is going to be the biggest privacy story of the decade. Not only will we soon be doing more of our compute off-device, but we’ll be sending a lot more of our private data. … | Continue reading
Skip to main content | Continue reading
[David Marchese in The New York Times] This profile of Curtis Yarvin in the New York Times (paywalled, probably for the best) is far softer than it should have been, with far less formal fact-checking. It is of the moment, though: this guy’s writing is highly influential to the p … | Continue reading
[Oliver Milman in The Guardian] Car culture isn't just physically bad for us, it affects us mentally too: "The car is firmly entrenched as the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans, with more than nine in 10 households having at least one v … | Continue reading
If ever there was a litmus test about who to avoid, it’s the people who see the language of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 21st Century and think, “oh, that’s problematic”. Here is the full text: SECTION 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by th … | Continue reading
[Joan Westenberg] An absolutely spot-on call to action: "Cynicism is the cheap seats. It’s the fast food of intellectual positions. Anyone can point at something and say it’s broken, corrupt, or destined to fail. The real challenge? Building something better. [...] Cynicism comes … | Continue reading
[Dave Karpf at Tech Policy Press] Peter Thiel and other tech oligarchs are seeking to weaponize US foreign policy as a way to enforce their corporate agendas: "Thiel is developing a blueprint for putting Big Tech’s policy agenda at the center of US foreign policy. Australia’s soc … | Continue reading
[Sergio Hernández, Nat Lash, Brandon Roberts and Ken Schwencke at ProPublica] Private schools in the US are much whiter than public schools. My colleagues over in the newsroom at ProPublica explored this data while illuminating the ongoing extent of segregation academies in the s … | Continue reading
[Joseph Cox at 404 Media] Not just obeying in advance but actively collaborating: "Multiple speech and content moderation experts 404 Media spoke to drew some parallels between these recent changes and when Facebook contributed to a genocide in Myanmar in 2017, in which Facebook … | Continue reading
I realized some time ago that all the ways I want America to change just bring it closer to being Europe. Like, what if we had this can-do attitude and all the good parts without the guns and with universal healthcare, real education, unprocessed food without sugar in it, a real … | Continue reading
[Mark Lemley on LinkedIn] Meta's lawyer in its AI case has fired them as a client, and is not beating around the bush as to why: "I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness. While I have thought about … | Continue reading
[Andrew J. Hawkins at The Verge] I think this is the wrong kind of protectionism: "The Biden administration finalized a new rule that would effectively ban all Chinese vehicles from the US under the auspices of blocking the “sale or import” of connected vehicle software from “cou … | Continue reading
[Free Our Feeds] The non-profit social media foundation space is really heating up. Which is not a bad thing! Enter Free our Feeds: "It will take independent funding and governance to turn Bluesky’s underlying tech—the AT Protocol—into something more powerful than a single app. W … | Continue reading
[Mastodon] Mastodon is growing up: "Simply, we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new non-profit organization, affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or control … | Continue reading
[Social Web Foundation] The Social Web Foundation's statement about Meta's moderation changes is important: "Ideas matter, and history shows that online misinformation and harassment can lead to violence in the real world. [...] Meta is one of many ActivityPub implementers and a … | Continue reading
[Adria R Walker at The Guardian] A full century after the Bureau of Investigation blamed the Tulsa race massacre on Black men and claimed that the perpetrators didn't break the law, the DoJ has issued an update: "“The Tulsa race massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique … | Continue reading
In Oxford, my hometown, the flagship Blackwell’s bookshop looks like any ordinary bookstore at ground level. But if you go down a set of stairs, you find yourself in the Norrington Room: one of the largest rooms full of books in the world. The shelves expand out around you to enc … | Continue reading
[Jared White] I've been thinking about this paragraph since I read it: "In times past, we would worry about singular governmental officials such Joseph Goebbels becoming a master of propaganda for their cause. Today’s problem is massively scaled out in ways Goebbels could only dr … | Continue reading
We live in a world where right-wing nationalism is on the rise and many governments, including the incoming Trump administration, are promising mass deportations. Trump in particular has discussed building camps as part of mass deportations. This question used to feel more hypoth … | Continue reading
[Mike Masnick in TechDirt] Mark Zuckerberg is very obviously running scared from the incoming Trump administration: "Since the election, Zuckerberg has done everything he can possibly think of to kiss the Trump ring. He even flew all the way from his compound in Hawaii to have di … | Continue reading
[Rae Morey at The Repository] The bananas activity continues over at Automattic / Matt Mullenweg's house: "Members of the fledgling WordPress Sustainability Team have been left reeling after WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg abruptly dissolved the team this week. [...] The disb … | Continue reading
[Natasya Salim, Najma Sambul, and Bill Birtles at ABC News] This is something that every nation should provide. It's really impressive that Indonesia is putting it into action: "Indonesia has launched a transformative free meal program designed to combat malnutrition and support … | Continue reading
[Jason Kottke] Jason nails what the supposed focus on free speech by Meta and others is really about: "What Zuckerberg and Meta have realized is the value, demonstrated by Trump, Musk, and MAGA antagonists, of saying that you’re “protecting free speech” and using it as cover for … | Continue reading
[Arno Rosenfeld at the Forward] The Heritage Foundation is out to "identify and target" Wikipedia editors, using antisemitism as a cover: "Employees of Heritage, the conservative think tank that produced the Project 2025 policy blueprint for the second Trump administration, said … | Continue reading
Previous birthday posts: 45 wishes, 44 thoughts about the future, 43 things, 42 / 42 admissions, 41 things. One. I lie in bed as Ma read Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians to me. It was the fifth, and last, straight time; after this, she would finally put her foot down … | Continue reading
[Alex Weprin at The Hollywood Reporter] I don't think this is a great thing at all: "Meta will also move its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, with content review to be based in Texas. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help u … | Continue reading
When did you last look up? What’s the best thing you’ve seen lately? Who did you want to show it to? Why? | Continue reading