Tabs for August 25th 2023
Musk admits "X might fail". I suppose on one hand it's better to have tried and failed than to have never have tried at all. On the other, the amount of equity thrown into a fire as a result of this endeavour is globally impactful in a negative way and should probably cause us to assess tech company behaviour.
White noise podcasts are costing Spotify $38m/yr. I had no idea what this was until now. Surely white noise, or any audio at any frequency, can be classified as art and thus earn revenue?
Russia's first lunar mission in almost 50 years smashes into the moon
Irish farmers looking at Mars for research into crop growing. A country famed for a famine looking at hostile environments to grow potatoes.
Tenerife wildfires. Close to my heart as we've many fond memories of Tenerife. Not least our wedding.
The Creator trailer. This somehow skipped me but we're a few weeks out from the release of an actual big-budget, original sci-fi movie!
Google exec turnover as company finds new identify. Maybe time to revisit the 'not being evil' thing?
Goalscoring women's world cup winner learns of father's passing after match. Heartbreaking.
Jen Psaki says Trump's new behaviour is a sign of his concern
Twitter deletes user media from Arab Spring era. Wonder where the $44bn came from?
Remarkable New Yorker takedown of Musk. His weird fanboys are calling the article biased based on the publisher's dislike for Musk, rather than pointing to any evidence contrary to what's brought up here.
A Dublin metro?. I wish.
Fake Steve Jobs was pre-dated by Fake Bill Gates. I remember hearing rumours of this, so this is fascinating. I loved the Fake Steve content. But quickly disliked it as I aged because the author turned out to write a book about $former_employer, where he very actively pointed at individuals and derided them on a huge platform of his. At a time when $former_employer was a small, but growing tech company. It was just far too personal.
404 media. A new outfit by some of the best journos from Motherboard.
Paul K calls out Eamon Ryan on domestic energy prices. They've not fallen anywhere near as much as corporate energy prices have. Fuck this government.
Why we need corporate pride. As in, LGBT+ pride.
Execs don't seem to care that viagra could be a silver bullet for period cramps. This jives with the story a week or two ago about the scandalous lack of research into period products.
Petition against French laws to limit browser freedoms. These morons want the browser tech to be a sensor for them.
Dublin most expensive in Europe for electricity. It's a genuine joke that wholesale prices have dropped, corporate rates have dropped and yet, people have to take on the burden themselves. Neoliberalism gone wild.
Armed Gards to hit the streets. Fuck sake.
Mob comes for Harvard MBA lecturer. I did a course of hers and thought she was insightful and came across well. So this is mad.
Google's AI Bots Tout 'Benefits' of Genocide, Slavery, Fascism, Other Evils
As far as I'm concerned, if you really can't figure out which political party or which politician to vote for, just ask if they're on the side of libraries. Are they voting to fund their libraries? Are they voting to keep them free? Then vote for those guys. They're probably the good guys. And by the same token, the book burners, the book banners, they're probably the bad guys. It's a good way to bet.
Crypto botnet on Musk's site is powered by GPT. I feel like this was an obvious use-case I called out a few months ago. But also hilarious that Musk went to court to reduce his costs on Twitter's purchase because of bots. Yet here we are.
I love the aesthetic of this coffee shop on Orchard Rd., Singapore. I also want to revisit SG.
Transport hubs as architectural marvels. I wish Dublin would get it's act together when it comes to public space utilisation.
Who says there aren't innovative solutions to the housing crisis?
Inside an AI porn marketplace. Again, inevitable but so strange.