1. This is fine dot gif of the week, part the first
Cookie banners are theatre. Consent is supposed to be the point. The European Commission is now workshopping a new ending: “you consented, spiritually”. The plan hands a blank cheque to AI training with vanishing upside for Europe. Of course this benefits big American companies, but it's hard to see how it gives anything to anyone in Europe.
2. I want to shoot Bluesky just to watch it die
I love writers that can make me read a line, stop, and read it again. Sarah Kendzior is that kind of writer (just go and read this if you don’t believe me). Sarah recently got banned from Bluesky for – and I am not making this up – quote-tweeting an article about Johnny Cash and making a wordplay on “Folsom Prison Blues”. The moderators thought that the line “I want to shoot the author of this article just to watch him die” was an actual threat, rather than just pasticheing a line from the song.
Remember that if one company owns the rules, one moderator controls your voice. Tim Bray has a good overview.
3. Oh come on, you have always wanted this
Apple made a weird looking pocket for your iPhone. It’s nearly sold out, which proves two things: capitalism is undefeated, and shame is on back‑order.
4. AI data centre jobs are as mythical as AGI
Remember how every time the government talks about AI and data centres it mentions the thousands of jobs which will be created? Turns out that isn’t true. The build phase hires – and then fires – lots of workers. The run phase hums quietly with few technicians, a lot of cooling, and the kind of power use that could run thousands of houses. And those temporary jobs build something that leads to the elimination of far, far more jobs.
Interestingly, in its enthusiasm for all-things AI, the UK government seems to have forgotten that its own report from 2023Interestingly, in its enthusiasm for all things AI, the UK government seems to have forgotten that its own report from 2023 predicted that between 10% and 30% of jobs could be automated and simply vanish. It will also disproportionately affect London and the South East. Imagine 5-10% unemployment becoming the norm, rather than the exception, and without the kind of social safety net we had in the Thatcher-driven era of mass unemployment. It's going to be a wild few years.
5. Just when you thought tech bros couldn’t get any worse
They managed it. After all, nothing says “closure” like an ongoing subscription to see your loved ones again, a seance with in-app purchases. Who, I ask, could possibly think that AI-driven avatars of your dead family would be a good idea? People who read too much science fiction that the author intended to be a dystopia and thought, “hey, that sounds cool”. That’s who.
6. It might be all our fault, but we got some things done
Via Pixel Envy comes this great look at the history of Last.fm, one of the best and most long-lasting Web 2.0 projects. It didn’t need agentic, just clever tech and some actual, human friends. Remember Web 2.0? The excitement! The optimism! We had interoperability once, we just called in “links”.
7. Don’t be evil, but do collaborate with the government to deny peoples’ constitutional rights
It's been a long time since Google erased all trace of its “informal motto” from its code of conduct, presumably on the grounds that as a publicly-traded company being evil might actually be the best way to make a profit. And the company has travelled a long way down since then. But I think that instantly hosting an app designed for unconstitutionally targeted people for deportation days after removing legal apps which allow people to report sightings of ICE agents really does take the No-Prize for collaboration and hypocrisy.
8. I for one welcome our new robo-canine overlords
9. Guys, just read some better books, OK?
Another great example of how Silicon Valley is obsessed with science fiction is the influence of Iron Man’s Jarvis on the vision of artificial intelligence they have. I just wish that they would look to different kinds of visions of the future which don’t involve giant robots, egotistical men and the doom of humanity. If only they had read Le Guin instead.
10. The longevity of the MacBook Pro M1
There is a lot about the transition to ARM which has been great for Mac users. The M-series sips power and delivers the kind of performance that early versions are still performing really well today.
But.
This longevity poses something of a challenge for Apple, which would love you to upgrade every few years. In the Intel era Mac users tended to fall into two camps: power users who needed the best performance, who would upgrade every couple of years; and the rest of us who didn’t need that kind of performance, but would find that battery life dropped down to 2-3 hours after maybe five years, so would upgrade then.
Neither of these scenarios is the same in the M-series era. When your starting point for performance and battery life is as high as ARM delivers for Macs, you’re much less likely to need to upgrade. Except Apple only gives five years of upgrades for macOS, with another three years of security updates. That’s eight years – not bad, but probably not what the M-series could support.
This is why projects like Linux for M-series Macs are so important. Why consign a perfectly good computer to e-waste just because its maker no longer wants to write software for it?
If Apple was… well, not Apple, it would sponsor and support something like Asahi Linux as a way to extend the working lives of its products. A few million dollars – chump change for $4 trillion company – alongside some technical support would make a huge difference to an open source project. It would make a small difference to the sales of Macs while adding a sheen of something different to how the company is perceived.
So why not? Well remember “don’t be evil”? We are no longer in the era of Apple, or any other big tech company, really needing to care. And that era of “caring capitalism”. Isn’t going to come back.