onfocus

Journalists covered their protests, minimally, when they had to. But did you ever see diner interviews with people who opposed Trump, or feature stories on them? Did you hear their voices regularly reflected in the coverage? No, you didn’t. The media pretty much ignored their presence in the polity.

Great point about the highly visible No Kings protests. They weren't covered much by the media but millions of people attended and viscerally knew there were others like them everywhere. They didn't need a "Joe Rogan of the left" to let them know they weren't alone. It deserves more kudos.

Silicon Valley billionaires claim they are building a godlike “superintelligence” that will save—or destroy—humanity. But is this apocalyptic storyline a massive marketing scheme to seize natural resources and consolidate power?

Yes. This is a great interview with Timnit Gebru that helps deflate the AI doomerism that doubles as IPO hype. Just hearing a bit of the history of the way the current AI hype came to be helps cut through the illusion.

As part of last night’s shocking blue tsunami, voters selected candidates with tough policies on data centers at all levels of government, in a clear rebuke to the industry’s buildout in states across the country. Almost a quarter of all voters told NBC News that data centers were “crucial” to their vote, while nearly two-thirds said it was either a major or minor factor.

This happens when you don't even try to work with communities and try to force them to do things against their interests.

In Texas and Maine, voters elected the first Democrats to the Senate in their states in nearly 40 years. In Kansas, voters elected the first Democratic candidate to the Senate in nearly 100 years. By midnight, the possibility of Republicans losing a Senate seat in deep-red Mississippi wasn’t off the table, and Abdul El-Sayed was projected to defeat Trump-backed Republican Mike Rogers in a closely watched Senate race in Michigan.

Bluenami was amazing. Feels like we're finally going to get an opposition party. Thanks to everyone who voted for people who care about people--it makes a difference!

All of the major factions of the American right — Silicon Valley oligarchs, AI sex cult dweebs, Substack race scientists, Trumpist DC staffer goblins, psychotic Nazi wizards, and pickup truck selfie divorcés — are all on one app now. It’s the perfect honey pot. They spend their days on X getting their brains absolutely melted by the site’s infinite scroll 4chan feed and because they’re conservatives they obviously assume their sad, lonely worldview and experience online is universal. And most hilarious of all, in the weeks leading up to the midterms, there was a wave of pitiful journalists and academics, desperate for attention, willing to go on Andreessen Horowitz-sponsored livestreams to declare that “Twitter was so back.” But it wasn’t! It turns out The Cruel Kid’s Table was shadowboxing with algorithmic ghosts all summer while a big chunk of their core demographic realized owning the libs doesn’t feel so good when gas is $6 a gallon.

The cringe! It burns! But seriously, you should still not be on The Everything App. You're getting poisoned information.

It is the plagiarism machine being used for plagiarism, but also it is random people using AI to take control back over devices whose proprietary software was used to arbitrarily lock away basic functionality, to add advertisements, surveillance, and bloat to devices that probably shouldn’t have them, or whose functionality was bricked altogether. 

It makes me wonder how long this is going to be allowed. I would think that plagiarizing software was not in the plan and I would expect some decompiling controls to be added to the centralized models soon.

Limit Wikipedia to your immediate area. Such a great idea and well executed here!

What troubles me most is the disconnect at the ESPN executive level between making money and caring about the human impact of constantly bombarding fans with betting odds and talk. It’s become impossible to escape—during live games, studio shows, podcasts, etc. But just because there aren’t yet laws here banning some of this during live sports broadcasts—as there are in some other countries—doesn’t mean they should be doing it.

I still find this jarring. Funneling everything into gambling just doesn't make any business sense to me. You're going to either turn off or eventually kill off a good percentage of your audience. Seems incredibly short sighted because enough people's lives have been ruined by gambling that we're well aware of the downsides.

Only 15 minutes before President Trump decided not to strike Iranian power plants on March 23, a few traders sank billions of dollars into predicting that the S&P 500 would go up and oil prices would fall, making a hefty profit, Bloomberg reports. The traders reportedly used a two-minute window at 6:49 a.m. that day to make the massive deals in futures markets. 

I hope we can spend the next decade finding every last one of these garbage people and hold them accountable. We need to have some real accountability to make people think twice about this profiteering in the future.

Describing them as “superintelligence” or “rogue models” ascribes agency to products rather than to the companies building them. This framing markets these companies’ products as “superhuman” and, at the same time, helps the companies evade accountability for their actions. 

These companies have gone rogue and don’t feel a responsibility to follow laws. I wish we had a government willing to enforce the laws we already have.

More than 200 people in roles such as engineering, finance, and communications will now be represented by the Communications Workers of America.

Great news, happy for them. Hopefully Wikipedia can continue to be a good example of something that works online.

Apparently DHH’s support for ethnic cleansing is not disqualifying to 1Password.

So tired of these rich fascist tech bros propping each other up. I cancelled my 1Password subscription. Lots of alternatives in the modern era.