feels appropriate for the new head of vogue magazine to defend being a nepo baby
i criticize the tech industry šļø @techwontsave.us š¬ https://disconnect.blog š https://roadtonowherebook.com
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feels appropriate for the new head of vogue magazine to defend being a nepo baby
The inevitable has happened: Disconnect is back on Ghost after trying Substack again. I didnāt just ditch another US tech platform; I learned the Substack network isnāt as helpful as it used to be, and certainly doesnāt justify putting up with the platformās support for Nazis.
The infallible free market has allocated all its eggs into one basket, historically the safest and most profitable way to store eggs
Amazon is ācharging NZ firms and government agencies hundreds of millions for ālocalā storage that it hasnāt built. And last year it paid just $4.9m tax on $435m revenues ā while sending nearly $307m offshore to in ācloud feesā to its sister company.ā
Yay
Funny to see New Zealandās prime minister try to take credit for a plan announced four years ago then delayed by Amazon. I find it hard to believe Amazonās figures, but even more than that itās wild to see the fanfare over greater dependence on US cloud firms in light of Trump and the CLOUD Act.
After a 9-month experiment on Substack, @parismarx.com returns to Ghost, writing he "...simply couldnāt stomach being on that Nazi-infested platform any longer and came back to the friendly terrain I was used to." disconnect.blog/ghosting-sub...
it was honestly very easy. ghost has detailed guides on their website, and if you buy a year of ghost pro their concierge service will help with whatever you need.
i could even see how the import and subscriber migration tools have gotten a lot better
This is the right move.
thank you wired for this essential clarification lol
Nice š
oh man, sorry to miss that experience!
Great episode
Everyone should be doing this
i think iāve already found my holiday sweater for this year but youāll have to wait for the tech wonāt save us year-end livestream to see it!
So thereās a thing Iāve noticed repeatedly from people who are still on X, The Everything App - theyāre constantly making weird accusations about Bluesky that donāt make any sense if youāre on here, and I think itās a sign theyāre deeply insecure about posting to X, The Everything App.
Welcome back to Ghost, @parismarx.com ! Iāve never regretted ditching Substack. In these times, my tolerance for Nazis, authoritarians, and white supremacists is set to āzero.ā
Thanks Taras!
āIt probably came at a good time too, because there are troubling signs Substack is trying to limit what was once one of its biggest selling points: that writers could always take their subscribers and move wherever they wanted. ā I moved to Ghost, Marx moved to Ghost, why not you?
āIn a major U-turn, more U.S. residents drove into Canada in June and July than Canadians making the reverse trip ā¦ It was the first time that happened in nearly two decades with the exception of two months during the pandemic.ā
Iāve toyed around with putting together a guide to moving. Itās honestly pretty straightforward, but if people are interested, let me know and Iāll think about it.
Platform. I figured self-hosted would be a bit too much of a hassle.
Growth was slow; figured it would help. Didnāt help as much as I expected or that would justify keeping it there, so I moved it back to Ghost and plan to subscribe to Outpost too this time.
If you appreciate my analysis of the tech industry, and particularly my recent focus on the geopolitics of tech, becoming a paid subscriber is a huge help to ensuring I can keep doing this work. You can sign up here:
The inevitable has happened: Disconnect is back on Ghost after trying Substack again. I didnāt just ditch another US tech platform; I learned the Substack network isnāt as helpful as it used to be, and certainly doesnāt justify putting up with the platformās support for Nazis.
always love their videos
Norway's government has a new tourism ad out, and it's refreshingly honest By @thejuicemedia.bsky.social!!!!
I think bans are a reasonable short-term response to corrosive technology products but ultimately the long-term response should be rewiring education to train students to treat technology with hostility, criticism and skepticism, and going back to values like critical thinking and research skills
SpaceX sued the National Labor Relations Board, arguing its structure was unconstitutional. It won, dealing a huge blow to US labor rights.
I think I will sleep on it
once iām back home i think iām finally getting a library card to browse the blu-ray collection and hopefully take another step away from streaming services
And yeah, I was definitely talking more about business model, how news funds itself.
I think thatās a fair point, though Iād say weāve seen in other markets Facebook has been downranking news even if links are not outright banned, so again I think thereās a deeper problem than the Act and repealing it wouldnāt really solve it.
i think this is also an extremely important consideration, when discussing if kids need phones in class for safety reasons
Seems most educators are in favor of banning smartphones in school: "A 2024 National Education Association (NEA) poll found that 90 percent of teachers support prohibiting student cellphone use during instructional hours. Seventy-five percent favor extending restrictions to the entire school day."
Talked to @mattdpearce.com about some of this stuff over on the pod. Media should use that $100 million/year for 5 years to figure out a new business model that doesnāt rely so heavily on social and search traffic stat. (The government should also follow through on its promise CBC budget increase.)
If you repealed the Online News Act today, news publishers would not get the same benefit from Facebook as they had before because the nature of the platform has changed. Meanwhile Google and other platforms are actively directing users to chatbots; discouraging clicking through to websites.
Critics say Canadaās Online News Act was terrible for media because they lost Facebook traffic. Seeing how things have developed, Iād say it gave Canadian media a head start on where tech platforms are going (particularly since genAI). The question is whether publishers used that time effectively.
"everyone does it" you are still effectively taking out a gun and firing random shots off when you do this, if you don't treat your car like a lethal weapon you are a bad person
As I listened to this, I kept thinking, I wonder what the effect of say, a 10% drop in oil consumption by China (which seems likely! it might be still more!) will be on the price of oil, and therefore on the Albertan economy. And China is just the leading edge of this.
The European Union has to retaliate against the US and its tech companies. The FTC is telling major tech firms not to implement the Digital Services Act if it violates the āfreedom of expressionā of US citizens. These companies must be ejected from our markets if they wonāt comply with our laws.
so fucking grim
Mark Zuckerberg lobbied Donald Trump to challenge digital services taxes, just days before he threatened countries around the world with tariffs if they continued taxing and regulating US tech companies.
donald trump might get some short-term wins out of his trade war and aggressive foreign policy, but in the long-term heās accelerating the decline of the US empire
I always loved the concept of the Scooby Snack because I donāt think Scooby is in-universe famous enough to have a brand so itās just a dog food biscuit or cookie they bake and meticulously package to bribe their dog and one extremely high friend.
oh i think that played a huge role, though the people iām talking about would deny they fell for it
i think there are a lot of progressives post-covid whoād advocate for public pharma but still mistrust the effectiveness of vaccines (especially the covid vaccine)
i mistrust private pharma companies, so i advocate for public pharma. but that doesnāt mean i think all pharma is a deception, conveniently at the same time the extreme right is trying to get people to stop trusting vaccines
they used the latter to unjustly justify the former
At some point we need to talk about how a ton of progressives came out of the pandemic not as anti-vaxxers, but still mistrusting the science behind vaccines.
Deaths averted by vaccination since the 1970ās
Your A.I. avatar of your real face isnāt flattering or cool, you have the vibes of a character on the Silicon Valley tv show and not one of the sympathetic ones
its adherents claim to be a counter to the extreme right, but in practice they cement right-wing power by defending the structures that enable it. some really believe it or fall into it because of the pervasiveness of certain right-wing ideas, but others know itās a career-building compromise.
thereās left politics, and then thereās the form of left politics that takes on certain right-wing elements to become appealing and profitable in a right-wing (social) media landscape
says a lot about the supposed democracy index that the united states ranked higher than canada before trump returned to power despite its shambles of a democratic system where corruption is legal and political parties openly draw the districts so they win. canada isnāt perfect, but come on.
i agree, we must rebuild the newfie bullet
itās such a good book
taylor dismisses a lot of the harm of phones and social media, and sees age restrictions as an inherently socially conservative policy, refusing to believe that outside the US people might have other motivations to start cracking down the tech dystopia silicon valley has foisted on us
if itās not obvious, the blacked out word is a slur for jews. at a certain point, if youāre always calling out leftists as the bad guys, maybe you need to take stock of where you really stand.
i endorse this proposal! some canadian provinces have already started the school phone bans. it took effect in mine at the start of the year.
taylor is well and truly off the deep end, and canāt seem to stop herself from digging even further
it is so profoundly weird, yet in character, that sheās decided to die on the hill of ānot letting kids scroll TikTok brain rot in math classā
āWhen I hear the best minds of my generation rhapsodize about intelligence explosions while devoting their own prodigious intellects to ketamine binges, mixed martial arts, and Hellenistic fashion design, I canāt help but wonder whether more intelligence is really a good thing.ā
book friends :D
Great to see my book among friends at Elliot Bay Books in Seattle! @parismarx.com @bcmerchant.bsky.social
The real boom industry is whatever legal infrastructure is put in place to allow me to stop this from ever happening to me
This week's comic, inspired by a study showing that AI summaries on top of search results are dramatically cutting traffic to websites.
bad news for countries still hitching their carts to expanding fossil fuel production
i saw people campaigning to move the UN to montreal. i would support that idea.
i was getting along just fine having forgotten she existed, then i had to see this
mark carneyās first project of national interest should be the high-speed rail line
thinking about the fast, efficient driverless cars we shouldāve had decades ago
how would you ever think to buy one otherwise?!
This is what I mean when I talk about how Google is actively deciding to bake energy-intensive text generation into the basic infrastructure of the internet. They are *choosing* to make the digital world absurdly, eye-wateringly more energy hungry whether you request it or not. And it'll get worse
Gen AI challenges the idea that tech under capitalism means increased productivity, so trade unions should demand a greater share of the benefits. It reveals instead the underlying truth of an all out attack on workers and planet, and a lust for for power at any cost.
iām convinced the only way those alternatives have any chance is by first crippling the ones that dominate now. there will be an uncomfortable in-between moment.
bringing to mind when twitter staff almost called in a wellness check on musk
things are moving fast on the elon-ai psychosis front
if the united states wants to remain mired in the cesspool of social media and what itās doing to society, thatās their decision. but they should have no say in how other countries choose to govern platforms that are causing so much social harm.
there are undoubtedly positive aspects to social media, but there are also a lot of drawbacks. for a time the benefits might have outweighed the drawbacks, but imo the cons surpassed the pros ages ago and that gulf only grows with every passing year. itās long past time we got it under control.
i can understand why right-wing grifters who want abhorrent ideas to spread or influencers whose bread is buttered by the ācreator economyā would be hostile to crackdowns on social media and algorithmic amplification of harmful and sensationalist content, but that doesnāt mean we stop those efforts
coming back to a big blue check
Que mico a Europa voltando para lamber as bolas do Trump toda vez e elas cada vez mais podres e insalubres
Western leaders have appeased Donald Trump since he returned to power, only to be hit with new demands after every concession. On Tuesday, Trump declared economic war on countries that regulate its tech companies. Itās time for the world to break from the US and aggressively target Silicon Valley.
China is prioritizing electrification not so much because of climate change, but to enhance its sovereignty. Now more of the Global South is following in its footsteps. It was great to chat with @katemac.bsky.social and @70sbachchan.bsky.social to get their insights on these important developments!
yo this guy is cooking
This story is batshit and makes it pretty clear without outright saying it that Tesla deliberately lied to hide data showing its autopilot drove a car into a couple of people www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera says the bloc must be ācourageousā in response to threats from the US president and āto avoid the temptation of being subordinated to othersā interests.ā
ššš
itās unfortunately quite tricky to get hold of (thank you, interlibrary loan) but this book is fascinating both as a historical snapshot and as a deeper interrogation of what it means for computers to mediate power. really good conversation about it here, too: techwontsave.us/episode/182_...
It's so frustrating to watch. Instead of bowing to the dumbass tariffs, countries should be coordinating a stoppage on the most valuable (in terms of use-value) exports to the US and crippling them.
natasha lyonne is dead to me
WSJ: ChatGPT fueled a 56-year-old tech industry veteranās paranoia, encouraging his suspicions that his mother was plotting against him.... On Aug. 5, Greenwich police discovered that Soelberg killed his mother and himself in the $2.7 million Dutch colonial-style home where they lived together.
my takeaway from the time 100 ai list is that if you push ai slop on people, you get to call yourself an āØinnovatorāØ now
I just check and I donāt think thatās right, at least for the US
Oops, probably canāt claim itās only a lack of FSD keeping down sales in certain foreign markets.