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We Need a New Approach to Social Platforms
The Elon-gate’d Man | Jared White:
Jared White mounts a solid argument as to where we have gone wrong with big tech celebrity, and talks about how me might be able to do better in the future.
with this maturity has to come broader awareness that Big Tech can’t simply act like 21st century echoes of the robber barons. Either the tech sector must demonstrate its ability to police itself and show good corporate governance and a willingness to let bottom-up creativity and entrepreneurship flourish in the marketplace of ideas, or we must call for increased regulatory scrutiny on all fronts.
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And for the love of all that is holy, we must rid ourselves of this absurd myth that a single person just shows up one day with a skip in their step and a spark of genius in their brain to change everything overnight. Never again should we fall for an Elizabeth Holmes. Never again should we fall for an Adam Neumann. Never again should we fall for a Sam Bankman-Fried. Never again should we fall for a Mark Zuckerberg.
Doing the same thing again, with a different company, a different founder offering a story of salvation, a different VC backer… any of that will only take us to the same place we’ve been, and has been proven to fail.
Let’s build something different. Let’s build interop.
Musk Has Destroyed His Own Mythos
Ed Zitron has published “The Fraudulent King”, a marvellous explainer on the latest happenings at Twitter, but at the same time, outlined what a petulant, unimpressive person Elon Musk is — and how the world now knows it.
There were so many great lines in this article, it was hard to know which to highlight as an extract:
…we are in the process of watching said timeline wholesale reject Elon Musk and his ideology. Musk has paid $44 billion to purchase a website that has all told him to go fuck himself.
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Under the largest spotlight in the world, Musk has proven himself to be a petty charlatan who lacks any meaningful skills necessary to run a company. While we may have been able to fool ourselves that Musk could have successfully run three or four companies at once, the truth is more likely that SpaceX and Tesla have survived his tenure as CEO rather than thrived under his leadership.
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When given absolute power and the world’s undivided attention, Elon Musk has managed to economically destroy his company, publicly (and repeatedly) humiliate himself, ostracize most of Silicon Valley’s engineering talent, and dispel any belief that he is a Tier 1 Genius Operator.
Honestly, read the entire article.
This sounds frightfully Trumpian:
In a tweet Thursday evening, Musk said: “The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried.”
Source: Hundreds of Twitter employees resign after Elon Musk’s ‘hardcore’ ultimatum - The Verge
Twitter Circling the Bowl as Employees Leave
Elon Musk walked into Twitter HQ carrying a sink; in hindsight it should have been a toilet, because Twitter is now circling the bowl.
Elon Musk eases return-to-office order - The Washington Post
One Twitter staff member said the numbers of employees seeking to leave had alarmed Twitter’s managers, who had formed “war rooms” to determine which employees should be asked to stay on.
Resignations and departures were already taking a toll on Twitter’s service, employees said. “Breakages are already happening slowly and accumulating,” one said. “If you want to export your tweets, do it now.”
Hate speech and other abuse was also likely to spike, employees said. Most of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team, consisting of up to 40 people, was expected to resign.
Is it surprising that engineers are opting to leave and take a 3-month severance package, as opposed to staying where they have to work extensive hours for a mercurial owner, without the joy of working with colleagues?
Musk really doesn’t seem to understand that employment is a two-way street. These people are not indentured servants. If the deal isn’t good, they can/should/will walk.
Last one out, please switch off the lights.
What’s the bet that in a couple of months, Twitter is employing remote-work engineers working out of India?
Twitter News: Don't Criticise the Owner (But the Owner can Criticise You)
Musk fires Twitter engineers after critical posts on Twitter and Slack:
Musk had already tweeted Monday that he had fired at least one engineer who publicly criticized him on Twitter. The latest terminations come in the wake of Musk’s decision to let go of about half of all Twitter employees in a bid to cut costs.
Some Twitter employees confirmed the layoffs on their verified accounts.
“Looks like i just got fired for s—posting too ✌️” one wrote in response to another person who said they had been let go.
It’s never smart to criticise your employer in public, although some of this criticism was published on an internal Slack. A mature manager would probably look at the recent unrest and seek to counsel their employees. Not Elon, who has shown not maturity to date and continues to exhibit none. He fired the complainers, and gloated about it publicly afterwards:
“I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses,” he (Musk) wrote on Twitter. “Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.”
Good to see he can criticise those individuals publicly without recourse, hey?
Own Your Content (A Reprise)
Precisely two years ago today, I wrote this, in the context of Instagram.
Blog of Drew - Own Your Content:
A personal website and domain name remains the most reliable way to avoid your content serving as feed stock for a commercial enterprise.
Today, it holds up in the context of Twitter.
The more things change…
Sorry, Crypto Bros
Molly White, reporting on her brilliant site tracking all the happenings in the crypto/NFT world.
FTX files for bankruptcy, Sam Bankman-Fried resigns:
Aaaand there it goes.
FTX announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO.
I wonder how all the Diamond Hands crypto HODL bros are feeling.
There’s only one thing worse than a Ponzi scheme, and that is being the one holding the “asset” when the music stops and there is no next fool in line.
You Get a Checkmark, and You Get a Checkmark!
Update, 10 November: Now the official checkmark has been unrolled out. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Twitter’s solution for ruining verification is another check mark - The Verge:
Twitter is rolling out another type of check mark to help distinguish accounts that users actually need to know are real. Although you can pay $7.99 per month for a blue check mark with the new version of Twitter Blue, select accounts for governments, companies, or public figures will get a gray “Official” check mark
Twitter is on the pathway to full farce. it reminds me of this clip from The Late Show:
Business Basics and Twitter Acquisitions
Can Elon Musk Make the Math Work on Owning Twitter? It’s Dicey. - The New York Times:
Last year, Twitter’s interest expense was about $50 million. With the new debt taken on in the deal, that will now balloon to about $1 billion a year. Yet the company’s operations last year generated about $630 million in cash flow to meet its financial obligations.
That means that Twitter is generating less money per year than what it owes its lenders.
In my paid employment I often take time to explain to companies who do not benefit from the largesse of venture capital that the number one priority must be to keep revenue ahead of expenses, and avoid saddling their firm with debt.
Musk has ignored these basic tenets of business because the culture of tech bros is that the rules don’t apply to them. In a falling market, however, other people’s money becomes less accessible. At some point, the music stops, and the debtors knock on the door.
Guest Appearance: Throwback Hoops Episode 46
I was welcomed as a guest on the podcast/YouTube show “Throwback Hoops” Episode 46 to talk Australian basketball. We covered women’s world, cup, NBL Round 1, and gave our predictions for the league’s awards. 🏀 🎙
Like You – A Mindfulness Podcast for Kids
If you have kids, you and they might enjoy the wonderful Like You – A Mindfulness Podcast for Kids. I’ve been a Patreon supporter for almost as long as Noah Glenn has been producing it. My kids fall asleep listening to Noah almost every night.
Like You is a mindfulness podcast for kids. We use breathing, affirmations, music, and imagination to explore feelings, relieve anxiety, encourage self-esteem, and grow empathy, all while having fun!
Noah is basically another member of our family at this point.
3D Impression of Tokyo's Subway System
This 3D Version of Tokyo's Subway System Looks Like a Labyrinth of Roller Coasters:
…by creating a 3D model of Tokyo’s tangled subway system, one which has brightly colored tubes swooping up and down, running over and around each other like the tracks of one of the craziest roller coasters ever.
I’ve appreciated the scheduling efficiency of the Tokyo subway system in the past, but this 3D impression of how all the lines interact is something else.
macOS Content Caching Fails to Propogate Security Updates
Last Week on My Mac: Security updates are down again – The Eclectic Light Company:
Howard Oakley is doing an amazing job at diagnosing and bringing to light (pardon the pun) issues involving macOS Content Caching Server:
Over the last three months, of the nine security updates to XProtect pushed by Apple, only one has been delivered and installed correctly through my Monterey Content Caching server, that on 4 August. The other eight security updates to XProtect and its new companion XProtect ‘Remediator’ all downloaded correctly from my local server, but then failed to install.
After reviewing Howard’s articles on the topic, and using his impressive apps to identify whether I had an issue, I discovered that all three of my Macs behind a Mac mini server running content caching had failed to receive critical security updates. I’ve now disabled the caching server. If it can’t be trusted to deliver security updates it doesn’t matter how much internet bandwidth I can save, nor how much faster I can update machines. Security is more important than that.
Apple needs to do better. Maybe they need to rewrite the Content Caching Server in Swift? 🥁
Logging into Agenda.app with Shortcuts
I’ve been getting back into Agenda as a work diary and daily tracker.
The app is brought to a new level of usefulness thanks to the ingenuity of Shortcuts developer Scotty Jackson.
This is all about my Rapid Log Shortcut, for use with the Agenda app … and my Agenda Daily Log Shortcut. The basic conceit of this Shortcut is that it appends provided input to note in Agenda.
Scotty works wonders with Shortcuts. This is a new version of his Rapid Logger that ties in with his also new Daily Log shortcut.
Check them out, they’re excellent examples of the power of Shortcuts as a programming application.
Console Games are Fun; Mobile Ones Aren't
Matt Birchler writing on his blog makes a succinct point.
Mobile games are a shit industry with shit companies making shit games that don’t exist to entertain, they exist to extract as much money as possible from a few whales who will spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
Fun is not the point.
Matt nails it. This is why I enjoy playing games on Xbox and Switch, and get nothing from mobile gaming.
Great Writing About a Not Great President
Maureen Dowd: Donald Trump, American Monster
Shelley’s monster, unlike ours, has self-awareness and a reason to wreak havoc. He knows how to feel guilty and when to leave the stage. Our monster’s malignity stems from pure narcissistic psychopathy — and he refuses to leave the stage or cease his vile mendacity.
Maureen Dowd truly is a great writer. I would love to be able to craft words in such a way.
— Link to this article found via Rob Fahrni
Can we Have Some Modern Software as Well?
Riccardo Mori really nailed it with his latest post, Raw power alone is not enough where he talks about how Apple has left its software to wither, while it has been busy beefing up its hardware offering. The article is full of juicy content, but I’ve pulled out the parts that resonated with me:
Without innovation in software, all we’re doing with these new powerful machines is essentially the same we were doing 20 years ago on PowerPC G4 and G5 computers, but faster and more conveniently.
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So, again, we have absurdly powerful machines like the Mac Studio and soon we’ll have the even more mind-boggling Apple silicon Mac Pro, and what kind of software will they run? A handful of professional apps which hopefully will take advantage of these machines’ capabilities to make the same things professional Macs did twenty years ago, ten years ago, but better and faster.
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This is the personal beef I have with tech innovation today, which I feel still revolving around the concept of ‘reinventing the wheel and making it spin faster’.
I’ve had a number of generations of Apple hardware pass through my hands, but I essentially work in the same way, with a few small workflow changes around the edges. I don’t do video, but I would love some revolutionary ways to leverage all the power of the M-series chips.
Software today still comes with much more friction than it should have, given the context of general technological advancement that has happened for the past 40 years or so.
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Without innovation in software, all we’re doing with these new powerful machines is essentially the same we were doing 20 years ago on PowerPC G4 and G5 computers, but faster and more conveniently.
None of Apple’s software (or much software across the industry) has become easier. Actually, much of it has become harder as a result of either feature-bloat leading to design complexity, or fashionable UI changes making things less discernible, HIG be damned.
I would love for their to be some great workflow/project-management software that was integral with macOS. I don’t want to have to jump out to some third-party web service, or use a mishmash of Hook, OmniFocus, Finder and Devonthink to manage project files. Finder is too small-minded with the combination of apps and services and files. But Apple doesn’t seem to care about innovating in any of the hard spaces, or creating new interaction models for existing hardware.
I don’t make video, but I’m a professional user of a Mac. I’d like some thought given to my workflows too.
Can we have a Blog-only Search Engine?
Search Engines and SEO Spam - Initial Charge:
What I think I want is a search engine that only gave me results from small, independent weblogs.
More often than not I just want to find information from a normal person that’s writing about something because they care deeply about it. And that’s very difficult to find in search engines today.
I want the same thing that Mike Rockwell at Initial Charge wants: a search engine focused on nerds who blog about stuff they love. Topics could be far and wide: sport, IT, doll collecting… I don’t care about the topic, but I want to be able to find stuff only from people who are passionate about the topic - not trying to sell something.
Facebook’s Role in Capitol Attacks
Instead of using technology and starting to flag downright criminal behavior, the company hums, and haws. They don’t need an oversight committee — they need a moral compass.
Am I being silly to suggest that Facebook and Purdue Pharma have much in common?
Deleting Social Media
Colin Devroe is quitting social media:
I also spend an inordinate amount of time scrolling tweets, clicking links, reading threads, and darting between subjects like a kitten chasing a laser.
I love this analogy.
I think the cumulative effect on my brain since 2006 has been that my ability to focus has been effected. Not that I can’t focus. I can sit down and get into flow on a programming project more often than not. But when I’m still, when I’m idle, when I feel like I could be bored at any moment I grab my phone and scroll through Twitter which sends my mind into overdrive on a million topics, timelines, thoughts, and emotions.
I don’t think this is good for the human brain. I know it isn’t good for my brain.
My only social media now is Twitter, and that is curated to deliver NBL basketball and little else. I deleted Facebook and Instagram ages ago, and do not miss it.
Focus is a superpower. Best not to give it away easily.
Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew - The New York Times
Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew - The New York Times:
But Facebook’s research tells a clear story, and it’s not a happy one. Its younger users are flocking to Snapchat and TikTok, and its older users are posting anti-vaccine memes and arguing about politics. Some Facebook products are actively shrinking, while others are merely making their users angry or self-conscious.
It’s hard to feel sorry for Facebook.
Actually, I don’t feel sorry for them at all.
YNAB LaunchBar Actions
I’m a huge YNAB fan and a LaunchBar user. I often get jealous of Alfred users because the system of “workflows” in Alfred seems to have caught on better than LaunchBar’s “Actions”.
Righting that wrong has appeared @ptujec on Github. He has a number of LaunchBar Actions, notably two built for YNAB.
I found a bug in the script, raised an issue on Github and it’s already been fixed. Thanks!
My wife will be jumping off a building in November!
The WA Minister for Mines & Petroleum; Energy; Corrective Services was kind enough to draw attention to this fact in Parliament today:
It’s all for a good cause though. Hannah is participating in the Central Park Plunge 2021 in support of Guide Dogs WA.
If you’d like to support the effort, this is Hannah’s fundraising page.
OmniFocus vs. Things
I’m thinking about a transition from OmniFocus to Things. I’ve used OF since launch, so this is no trivial matter.
This line from a post by micro.blog user @40Tech resonates:
OmniFocus almost begs you to add projects and contexts.
I never seem to gain value from contexts/tags, but I add them every time, because nature abhors a vacuum.
My main area of doubt is templating. I’ve got a nice Drafts template built that populates a standardised OmniFocus project. Does Things offer any form of similar automation?
BBEdit 14.0
I barely scratch the surface with my use of BBEdit. I’m not a coder. I use it for a bit of Markdown text editing (when I’m not using one of the other myriad Markdown apps I own) and for doing other small pieces of text manipulation.
So when I saw that v14 was released, I figured I could skip the upgrade. Reading through the features, I was sure I could skip the upgrade.
Then I read this tidbit from Jason Snell at Six Colo(u)rs:
But there are some new Markdown features, regardless! Dragging an HTML file or an image into BBEdit will now generate appropriately formatted Markdown. Markdown footnotes are now properly syntax colored, for those monsters who put footnotes in their Markdown.
Also, a new feature that I inspired makes its debut: BBEdit now lets you attach a script in order to provide control over the text generated when you drop an image file into a BBEdit editing view. In short, I have modified the AppleScript script that I use to upload images to Six Colors so that if I drag an image into my story in BBEdit, the image is automatically resized, uploaded, and the proper HTML is inserted at that point in the document. (It’s magical.)
Hmm, so I might have to upgrade after all.