One of my favourite people on social media is Darth. Darth takes an annual hibernation, in which time they do not post or, presumably, read.
I’d love to say that I have not posted anything for months with the same level of intention, but alas not. It just… happened. And now I am un-happening it.
1. Is the pope a bear? Does he shit in the woods?
In the long history of the papacy, it’s not uncommon for people to accuse His Holiness of all kinds of things. Collaboration with Nazis. Presiding over the systematic abuse of children. Being a reptilian alien. But then again, who amongst us has not been accused of that last one?
There’s also a long strand of accusations that the Pope is in league with communists, of course. Or, in the case of John XXIII, was secretly both a communist and a freemason. It’s probably connected to that whole “looking after the poor” and “seeking peace” thing.
This kind of thing is usually confined to the lunatic fringe of the internet, so of course our dear friend Peter Thiel wants in on it. Apparently, Pope Leo XIV is in league with the Chinese communists, after His Holiness called for international regulation of AI. Because absolutely nothing must get in the way of Thiel’s dream.
All of which leads me to ask: were lead toys legal where Thiel grew up? Or does being rich, white and terminally online really rot your brain that much?
2. The power of owning a platform
It’s sometimes difficult for Americans to understand quite how much WhatsApp dominates messaging in Europe. It’s the de facto standard, and – of course – completely closed, and owned by Meta.
M. G. Siegler, of course, knows. He knows because (1) he lives over here and (2) his Instagram account got banned for reasons unknown. Which, of course, because all roads lead to Meta, also took out his WhatsApp account.
Because he’s a connected kind of guy, M.G. managed to get it restored, after a massive hoo-hah. And then got banned again. And then reinstated. And then banned. And… you get the idea.
Normal people can appeal, but if you stay banned, in Europe, a big chunk of your ability to communicate is gone. This is the level of power that Meta has, with virtually no legal oversight.
3. Jason Calacanis goes all in (on corporate fascism)
One of the biggest mistakes that people make about billionaires is the idea they are “techbros”. Sure, they have their origins in businesses which made money from technology, but what they are really about is simply business. And, in fact, not even really about that: they’re about making money.
Had their lives gone in a different direction they might have been Tony Soprano, or, more likely, Davie Scatino. Legally, illegally, whatever.
Everyone’s favourite gimp for billionaires Jason Calacanis isn’t (of course) super-rich himself, but he’s been toadying around men who are for long enough to know how they think. And what they think is if they have to give Trump gold in order to gain favour, they will do it. As Mike Masnick notes, this is essential Mussolini-style corporate fascism, a system based on bribing Il Duce for the right to get what you want in business.
And that, of course, is a problem for the US long term. While Il Duce’s life did not end well, corruption as a way of life continued. Will any post-Trump president be different? Perhaps. But also: perhaps not.
4. Keeping the lights off
Ahh, data centres. Part mythical beast, part solution to all our prayers. But mainly just a blight on any community in which they decide to plonk themselves. Because while they guzzle fossil fuel-derived electricity like it’s cheap shots in an Essex club on Saturday night, local people get told to turn the lights off and turn down their aircon in a heatwave.
5. Whatever they accuse others of, that’s what they do
One of the favoured tactics of the alt-tech-right is to claim that no, really, they are the victims. While simultaneously embarking on exactly the kind of bullying behaviour that they accuse others of.
Enter Palantir, everyone’s favourite surveillance-plus-violence company which is, apparently, trustworthy enough to be given the keys to British health data. Not content with publishing a “manifesto” which sounds like something cooked up on USENET in the 90s by a kid with too much time and an Ayn Rand novel, it attempted to bully a small Swiss publisher into giving it a “right to reply” over a mildly critical story.
Of course, it lost – while Swiss law gives a right to reply, this isn’t a free pass at forcing someone to publish a press release whenever they mention you. But the point was made: anyone who publishes stuff they don’t like will get chased through the courts, Trump-style.
6. Lighter than air
I generally try and avoid Chromium-based browsers. I use Vivaldi quite a lot, because I’m keen to encourage European-based development and because (especially in its latest release) it’s super-customisable. But I’ve found something else, and it may become the Chromium-based browser of choice for me.
It’s Helium, and it’s about as stripped back as you can imagine. There’s no password manager, because you should be bringing a secure one of your own. There’s no mail client, AI integration, crazy sidebars… and of course, no Google.
But what there is is a light, clean browser which comes out of the box with support for uBlock Origin, still the best blocking software and – completely coincidentally I’m sure – an extension that can’t be run in browsers which stick to Google’s Chromium source code. Helium’s developers have said they are going to keep supporting it as long as humanly possible, and I believe them.
The only downside? There’s no way of syncing your settings across devices, and no mobile app. But given how clean and fast it is, I’m prepared to live like a barbarian and set up my own extensions.
7. I've seen the future and I don't like it very much
I don't think anyone seriously believes that AI isn't going to result in a much more dangerous world online. Agents are only at the earliest stages of their evolution -- in fact, they have barely had any truly evolutionary pressure applied to them.
Already, malware creators are building agents which act much more like human hackers than simple bots. It's only going to get worse.
8. Oh, Apple!
It's very difficult to summon up the energy to care when one huge tech company sues another huge tech company. But I'll spare a few joules for Apple getting out the litigation stick and slamming it straight into OpenAI's face.
It was perhaps inevitable. When one company starts to mass-recruit another company's employees, especially under the guidance of one of the most lauded senior executives in tech history, the lawyers lick their lips and plan what kind of private island they will buy with the fees.
By complete coincidence, I'm currently reading Geoffrey Cain's Steve Jobs In Exile, a retelling of the origin story of NeXT. And of course, it features the details of how Jobs took with him what he described as "a handful of low-level employees" when he left Apple. They were, of course, some of the most senior and capable people around, and Apple promptly sued.
The suit was baseless, but it still tied up NeXT for a while. And of course, a decade later Apple was paying a large sum of money to buy back Jobs, his employees and NextStep -- which is today's Mac. As it was then, so it is now.
9. Apple's slide into advertising needs to stop
A thoughtful and must-read long post from John Gruber on Apple's slide into advertising, which -- even if it doesn't violate the company's position on privacy -- gives the impression that it does.
Look, I understand ARPU as much as the next person. But once a company gets deeply into the weeds of squeezing as much revenue as possible out of their users on a monthly basis, it takes an awful lot to stop things going down the toilet for their users.
There's no advertising in Apple Mail. Will that line hold? At what point would the company, say, use some kind of so-called "private compute" to say that your email is staying private even when you're getting peppered with ads?
"Just one more bite" is what a services focus on ARPU does to a business. I would very much appreciate it if John Ternus takes Apple back to "make good products that people will pay for."
10. Starlog resurrected
I was mildly overexcited that Starlog was coming back. That it's coming back and the wonderful Annalee Newitz is editor in chief is even better news.