Notes for May 11th 2024

Song of the week:

Notes

• This week's big tech scare was Apple getting social media assaulted over it's new advert for the new iPad. It's powered by a mega powerful M4 chip and despite that, it's the slimmest iPad ever. It looks genuinely stunning. I'd love one. But iPadOS is just not good enough for what I need so my M1 MacBook Pro will suffice for now. I would genuinely hand this Mac to my wife if the iPad wasn't constrained by a shitty OS.
  • But the controversy (listed below with media followup) surrounded not the device itself, but the marketing advert Apple released to celebrate it's new, thin bit of kit. In order to demonstrate how thin it is, they setup musical equipment, toys and media devices under an industrial press and squished them down. I get how you would come up with that concept. But I can't fathom how Apple, of all companies, decided that an alegory for the wanton destruction of creative tools was a good one to run with. Especially given Apple's history as an enthusiastic celebrant of all things creative. Most consumers don't seem to know this but Apple is a top dog in professional media creation; notably music production (Logic) and movie editing (less so these days, granted). And they were the stubborn "music should cost money" platform with iTunes when the tide was turning to Napster and similar.
  • TLDR; what is Joz and his team up to? Schiller is still active so how did he tick the box that says this is good, too?
• Jack Dorsey did a pretty wide interview this week (linked below). He makes some fairly standard strange-for-him claims. Including the claim that he stood down from the Bluesky board because it was attempting to build moderation and 'social media' tools into it's platform. He wants to run an AWS-for-social media, in my mind. Not an actual platform for social media to operate. Which boggles the mind.
• I was in NYC this week and while it was dominated by work, I managed to get up early on Tuesday to get over to DUMBO (yes, that bit where the bridge is) to photowalk back to my hotel. It was 6.30am and beautiful, bright and fresh out. By the time I got to the other side of the Manhattan bridge, it was being jammed by cyclists not using the cycle lane, optimistic runners (or people who just want to be seen as going for a run?) and an enormous amount of social media fake influencer types. And while I snapped some wonderful photos that I'm delighted with, I came home on Friday to find that evening gifting us a very strong aurora across the island of Ireland.

Tabs

• Starlink disrupted by solar storm. I didn't realise Starlink accounted for about 60% of all satellites in the sky. How is that not regulated?
• Israeli whistleblowers getting treated poorly. This is the country that, on stage at the UN, shredded the UN charter. This is obvious, clear and ridiculous genocide.
• I Saw The TV Glow. I'm probably late to this movie's existence but spotted the soundtrack being great this week and need to check it out.
• Going deep on Japanese Acid Folk
• Female cllrs refusing to run for re-election
• Poland under attack from Russian hackers
• Mackelmore releases a song in aid of Gaza
  • And he dares more to do the same
• Apple apologises for it's shit ad
  • Even Gruber is on the train
• 'Deus ex machina' in Ancient Greek Tragedy: Its Impact and Purpose
• Another week, another Boeing shits the bed
• China is taking Tesla's secrets and murdering the car industry with them. Musk's insane naivety strikes again.
• Flipper cloning a hotel key
• Trump promised rewards to oil barons in exchange for $1bn
• An interview with Jack Dorsey. Super interesting one.
• Why are algorithms called algorithms? A brief history of the Persian polymath you’ve likely never heard of
• A desire for a loud car with a modified muffler is predicted by being a man and higher scores on psychopathy and sadism
• Stack Overflow Bans Users for Protesting Against It Selling Their Answers to OpenAI as Training Data. They kinda lost the room a while ago, but they've cleared the building out with this stuff.
• Rabbit R1 team attempted crypto nonsense a year ago. The odd one here is Teenage Engineering, who designed the hardware. They look piss poor for being on this project.
• Proton Mail Discloses User Data Leading to Arrest in Spain
• A look at astrophotography
• How much influence do the super rich have?. Too fucking much.
• Merlin Mann - Part 1: The Lorax Rebellion, Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, and More
• AI isn't useless, but is it worth it?. The brilliant Molly White on AI from a while back, but it surfaced this week as I pondered AI vs ML vs actual usability.
• Solar PV dash. My system is weird, older and from a Chinese/Dutch company so hooking it up to anything fun is almost impossible sadly.
• Legacy typeface resurrected from the Thames
• The newsroom isn't safe
• Heat death of the internet
• The world has gone mad if students are the enemy. If a sniper was sent in to point a weapon at my kids who were protesting against genocide, I would remove my kids from said school and stop paying it.
• Thomas Dambo artwork
• How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future. Prof G lays it bare.
• The scaling back of Saudi Arabia’s proposed urban mega-project sends a clear warning to other would-be utopias
• Decaf is made with poison
• A clock in the forest