1. Looks like a publisher, is actually an AI content farm
I'm still hearing about publishers who think the answer to their prayers is replacing human writers with large language models. But the real issue, and the one that actually puts the whole publishing model at risk, is the ability of companies to just start up massive "news" websites, win for a few months before Google works out they are are crap, rinse and repeat. BNN was an example o this. I saw it a lot for a while, but then it vanished. Here's the story.
2. Publishers doing the right thing
Over here, a group of publishers are suing Google for rigging the ad market. I don't know, yet, which publishers, but my gut feeling would be it's mostly small ones as larger ones tend not to want to antagonise Google. This is of course a better approach than anything which relies on copyright, news taxes and so on, because it's simply true: Google and Facebook have, between them, stitched up the ad market.
3. Alexa, why does my toothbrush not work?
Things which rely on a connection to the internet to work are always vulnerable to simply being switched off by the people who made the product, and there's no better illustration of this than Oral-B "smart" toothbrush. Part of me thinks that if you bought a toothbrush you could talk to you take a little bit of the blame, but I have also been caught by products which promised to have functionality which later disappeared. So I can't blame you too much if you bought a toothbrush expecting to be able to, erm, use it to manage your smart home.
4. Garry Tan promotes antisemitism
You might not know about Garry Tan yet, but you're likely to hear more about him. He's one of those venture capitalist vultures who seem to believe that having a lot of money makes them smart, but of course he's as dumb as the next arrogant bozo. He's so dumb, in fact, that he has taken to promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories aimed at George Soros. Well, he's either dumb or just a racist. Which is it Garry?
5. Was Jack Dorsey always this awful? Reader, I am adding to this headline purely to avoid my own law, because yes, yes he was
Dorsey doesn't like plebs, doesn't want to take any responsibility for anything and has a shitty beard. That's all.
6. The Tories hate the young, but luckily the young hate the Tories
It's entirely predictable that the Tory manifesto will be full of regressive nonsense, but what they have managed to do in recent elections is dangle just enough carrots towards young people to make them, at least, not bother to vote Labour. Usually this involved some magic incantation involving the word "aspiration". Not so now! Showing once again that Sunak has no political instincts at all, he has instead adopted a "fuck you young people" approach which is likely to get people voting against him, while adding nothing significant to his popularity amongst older voters. Stupidity, he is it.
7. Things I did not realise about my home town
It basically was the place the modern version of Dracula first made his appearance. Go, Derby!
8. Speaking of the undead
Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservative Home, expects to see a poll which has Reform ahead of the Tories. I wouldn't be surprised either, and it will probably mean the Tories lurch even more to the right. But: they should also remember that they are so far behind in most polls that even adding every single Reform voter to their tally would still see them lose, comfortably. And it would probably alienate what few more moderate Tories they have left.
9. Now that's the right way to do AI
10. At last
On one hand, Apple actually building a proper password management app is a good thing. The password keychain functions are a little bit buried at the moment, which discourages people from using them -- and using a password manager is a great way to Do Better Secures. But... Apple's features can be a bit of a roach motel: you can get in, but you'll never get out again. So far, that hasn't been true of passwords, but let's hope no bright spark in Cupertino thinks that now is the time.
