onfocus

Google killed Reader in 2013, shutting down its RSS reader after years of neglect. Now, the team that built it reflects on what they made and how the web has changed in the decade since.

Well now I’m mad all over again. Reader was probably good because it was neglected by management not in spite of it. The community sharing and notes are what made it good—not very different from what I'm still doing here.

Update: See also: Chris Coyier on Social RSS.

People joining the Fediverse are those looking for freedom. If people are not ready or are not looking for freedom, that’s fine. They have the right to stay on proprietary platforms. We should not force them into the Fediverse. We should not try to include as many people as we can at all cost. We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.

Yes, some tough decisions ahead for Mastodon moderators with Facebook starting to pay attention to the Fediverse. I don't think people should prescribe how other people should use social media. I also think Facebook has a long track record of enshittifying everything it touches so it makes sense for people to try to keep Facebook as far away from their social media experience as possible. I hope as long we have and use open protocols and promote the idea that we should control our data, people will find a balance that works for them.

Everett's post says that "the site will continue to operate as it was before, with all editorial coverage and site features remaining the same, and all historical content accessible." The availability of that historical content was a major concern for many readers—high-end cameras have a long shelf life, and DPReview was an important content repository for people trying to navigate the used camera market. Everett did note that DPReview user accounts had been transferred to Gear Patrol and would be subject to Gear Patrol's terms of service going forward.

Oh good, we can have nice things again. I read their gear reviews all the time, glad it's going to survive after all.

Recently I remembered a thing that existed when I was younger: “person who does not wear a watch.” The wearing (or not) of watches wasn’t a neutral characteristic, like having blond or brown hair. The not wearing a watch was a fact that might be stated in, say, the profile of an important person or celebrity, that signified bemusement and reverence for a certain characteristic: they are unbound by time; they don’t have much concern about when they get places, or when other things happen.

Excellent thoughts by Casey Johnston on becoming less tethered by sitting with thoughts and anxieties as they come up instead of reaching for screens. Reminds me of Pema Chodron’s explanation of shenpa which I’ve found helpful.

Our findings reveal that these detectors consistently misclassify non-native English writing samples as AI-generated, whereas native writing samples are accurately identified. Furthermore, we demonstrate that simple prompting strategies can not only mitigate this bias but also effectively bypass GPT detectors, suggesting that GPT detectors may unintentionally penalize writers with constrained linguistic expressions.

Interesting look at the effectiveness of GPT detectors universities are using to find cheating. Especially this bit:

While detectors were initially effective, a second-round self-edit prompt (“Elevate the provided text by employing literary language”) applied to ChatGPT-3.5 significantly reduced detection rates from 100% to 13%...

Ouch, not sure how these services can get away with charging money for AI detection if it's that easy to bypass.

YouTube provided no evidence for its assertion that hosting and promoting 2020 election lies would not “meaningfully” increase the risk of harm. It seems curious, given the events of January 6, the ongoing threats to election workers, and the fact that about half of Americans didn’t think votes in the the midterm elections would be counted properly.

aka: this profitable, engaged audience segment is only profitable if you can feed them engaging monetized content. Eroding democracy and encouraging political violence are externalities.

Most of the subreddits have pledged to go private — preventing outside access — for 48 hours, though some, like the 26 million-member community r/videos, have said they’ll remain private indefinitely.

Volunteer labor isn’t an infinite resource. Reddit needs to maintain that resource with an imminent IPO, but it sounds like the current CEO doesn’t think it’s necessary.

See also: this summary by Cyber Yuki (click Show More).

“Treasurer Read and I believe that Fox’s board of directors breached its fiduciary duties by allowing Fox News to broadcast false claims that Dominion and Smartmatic rigged the 2020 presidential election,” said Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum in a statement. “We hope to hold the board accountable and protect the long-term value of Oregon’s investment in Fox Corp.”

In related news, the State of Oregon is in hot water today for investing public servant pension money in known hucksters Fox Corp.

In a press release, the FTC said that "Ring deceived its customers by failing to restrict employees' and contractors' access to its customers' videos, using customer videos to train algorithms, among other purposes, without consent, and failing to implement security safeguards." In one case, an employee "viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that surveilled intimate spaces in their homes such as their bathrooms or bedrooms," the FTC said.

This is awful and why I try not to buy surveillance devices. It’s difficult not to send data out of your house but I hope not being connected to the Internet becomes a selling point for electronics eventually.

To Chung, the Republicans’ defiance is symptomatic not just of an aversion to reproductive and LGBTQ rights, but of a larger anti-democratic rot in our politics. “There’s no way that the Republican senators can win by actually engaging in our democratic processes, and so it very much appears they’re willing to, basically, burn everything down … I don’t know what winning is when you burn everything down.”

Best summary of the Republican "platform" I’ve seen. They win by threatening and ensuring the existing system fails.

Rather than needing tens of thousands of machines and millions of dollars to train a new model, an existing model can now be customized on a mid-priced laptop in a few hours. This fosters rapid innovation.

Nice summary of how innovation in AI might move out of the largest few companies.