SmallStack | Robin Taylor (he/him) | Substack
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Bloggers on Blogging
A quaint, nostalgic blog collecting blogposts about blogging.
The Climate Reality Check
A "Bechdel test for the environment" tracking climate change depiction in media
Blog - Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud - Apple Security Research
Explanation of how Apple guards user data and prevents their own access to it when processing for AI on their custom-built servers
Apple Intelligence is Right On Time
Summary
- Apple remains primarily a hardware company, and an AI-mediated future will still require devices, playing to Apple's strengths in design and integration.
- AI is a complement to Apple's business, not disruptive, as it makes high-performance hardware more relevant and could drive meaningful iPhone upgrade cycles.
- The smartphone is the ideal device for most computing tasks and the platform on which the future happens, solidifying the relevance of Apple's App Store ecosystem.
- Apple's partnership with OpenAI for chatbot functionality allows it to offer best-in-class capabilities without massive investments, while reducing the threat of OpenAI building a competing device.
- Building out the infrastructure for API-level AI features is a challenge for Apple, but one that is solvable given its control over the interface and integration of on-device and cloud processing.
- The only significant threat to Apple is Google, which could potentially develop differentiated AI capabilities for Android that drive switching from iPhone users, though this is uncertain.
- Microsoft's missteps with its Recall feature demonstrate the risks of pushing AI features too aggressively, validating Apple's more cautious approach.
- Apple's user-centric orientation and brand promise of privacy and security align well with the need to deliver AI features in an integrated, trustworthy manner.
When America was ‘great,’ according to data - The Washington Post
we looked at the data another way, measuring the gap between each person’s birth year and their ideal decade. The consistency of the resulting pattern delighted us: It shows that Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age.
The good old days when America was “great” aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices.
The closest-knit communities were those in our childhood, ages 4 to 7. The happiest families, most moral society and most reliable news reporting came in our early formative years — ages 8 through 11. The best economy, as well as the best radio, television and movies, happened in our early teens — ages 12 through 15.
almost without exception, if you ask an American when times were worst, the most common response will be “right now!”
This holds true even when “now” is clearly not the right answer. For example, when we ask which decade had the worst economy, the most common answer is today. The Great Depression — when, for much of a decade, unemployment exceeded the what we saw in the worst month of pandemic shutdowns — comes in a grudging second.
measure after measure, Republicans were more negative about the current decade than any other group — even low-income folks in objectively difficult situations.
Hsu and her friends spent the first part of 2024 asking 2,400 Americans where they get their information about the economy. In a new analysis, she found Republicans who listen to partisan outlets are more likely to be negative, and Democrats who listen to their own version of such news are more positive — and that Republicans are a bit more likely to follow partisan news.
Review of ‘The New Mutants’ (2020) ★★½
Alex Jones Seeks to Liquidate His Assets to Pay Damages to Sandy Hook Families
Culture Needs More Jerks | Defector
The function of criticism is and has always been to complicate our sense of beauty. Good criticism of music we love—or, occasionally, really hate—increases the dimensions and therefore the volume of feeling. It exercises that part of ourselves which responds to art, making it stronger.
The correction to critics’ failure to take pop music seriously is known as poptimism: the belief that pop music is just as worthy of critical consideration as genres like rock, rap or, god forbid, jazz. In my opinion, this correction was basically good. It’s fun and interesting to think seriously about music that is meant to be heard on the radio or danced to in clubs, the same way it is fun and interesting to think about crime novels or graphic design. For the critic, maybe more than for anyone else, it is important to remember that while a lot of great stuff is not popular, popular stuff can be great, too.
every good idea has a dumber version of itself on the internet. The dumb version of poptimism is the belief that anything sufficiently popular must be good. This idea is supported by certain structural forces, particularly the ability, through digitization, to count streams, pageviews, clicks, and other metrics so exactly that every artist and the music they release can be assigned a numerical value representing their popularity relative to everything else. The answer to the question “What do people like?” is right there on a chart, down to the ones digit, conclusively proving that, for example, Drake (74,706,786,894 lead streams) is more popular than The Weeknd (56,220,309,818 lead streams) on Spotify.
The question “What is good?” remains a matter of disagreement, but in the face of such precise numbers, how could you argue that the Weeknd was better? You would have to appeal to subjective aesthetic assessments (e.g. Drake’s combination of brand-checking and self-pity recreates neurasthenic consumer culture without transcending it) or socioeconomic context (e.g. Drake is a former child actor who raps about street life for listeners who want to romanticize black poverty without hearing from anyone actually affected by it, plus he’s Canadian) in a way that would ultimately just be your opinion. And who needs one jerk’s opinion when democracy is right there in the numbers?
This attitude is how you get criticism like “Why Normal Music Reviews No Longer Make Sense for Taylor Swift,” which cites streaming data (The Tortured Poets Department’s 314.5 million release-day streams versus Cowboy Carter’s 76.6 million) to argue that Swift is better understood not as a singer-songwriter but as an area of brand activity, along the lines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars. “The tepid music reviews often miss the fact that ‘music’ is something that Swift stopped selling long ago,” New Yorker contributor Sinéad O’Sullivan writes. “Instead, she has spent two decades building the foundation of a fan universe, filled with complex, in-sequence narratives that have been contextualized through multiple perspectives across eleven blockbuster installments. She is not creating standalone albums but, rather, a musical franchise.”
The fact that most cognitively normal adults regard these bands as children’s music is what makes their fan bases not just ticket-buyers but subcultures.
The power of the antagonist-subculture dynamic was realized by major record labels in the early 1990s, when the most popular music in America was called “alternative.”
For the person who is not into music—the person who just happens to be rapturously committed to the artists whose music you hear everywhere whether you want to or not, whose new albums are like iPhone releases and whose shows are like Disneyland—the critic is a foil.
Rank Apple
Make no mistake: this is a promotional exercise for Apple Music more than it is criticism. Sure, most lists of this type are also marketing for publications like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork and NME. Yet, for how tepid the opinions of each outlet often are, they have each given out bad reviews. We can therefore infer they have specific tastes and ideas about what separates great art from terrible art.
After Steve Jobs’ death came a river of articles questioning the internal culture he fostered, with several calling him an “asshole”. But that is mixing up a mean streak and a critical eye — Jobs, apparently, had both
It does not interrogate which albums are boring, expressionless, uncreative, derivative, inconsequential, inept, or artistically bankrupt. So why should we trust it to explain what is good? Apple’s ranking of albums lacks substance because it cannot say any of these things. Doing so would be a terrible idea for the company and for artists.
It is beyond my understanding why anyone seems to be under the impression this list is anything more than a business reminding you it operates a music streaming platform to which you can subscribe for eleven dollars per month.
Anti Trust in Tech
For years, poll after poll from around the world has found high levels of distrust in their influence, handling of private data, and new developments.
If these corporations were at all worried about this, they are not much showing it in their products — particularly the A.I. stuff they have been shipping. There has been little attempt at abating last year’s trust crisis. Google decided to launch overconfident summaries for a variety of search queries. Far from helping to sift through all that has ever been published on the web to mash together a representative summary, it was instead an embarrassing mess that made the company look ill prepared for the concept of satire. Microsoft announced a product which will record and interpret everything you do and see on your computer, but as a good thing.
why should we turn to them to fill gaps and needs in society? I certainly would not wish to indulge businesses which see themselves as entirely separate from the world.
These product introductions all look like hubris. Arrogance, really — recognition of the significant power these corporations wield and the lack of competition they face. Google can poison its search engine because where else are most people going to go? How many people would turn off Recall, something which requires foreknowledge of its existence, under Microsoft’s original rollout strategy?
There seems to be little attempt at persuasion. Instead, we are told to get on board because this rocket ship is taking off with or without us.
Apple is about to enter the world of AI and nothing will ever be the same
this isn’t just Apple’s chance to show it’s doing AI right. It’s also an opportunity to redefine the conversation about AI to make it more substantive and results-oriented–and, of course, to make Apple look better while doing it.
How British politics lost touch with reality
The UK’s election campaign is part of a wider British disease: of politics detached from policy, of arguments about politics divorced from questions about whether you can even implement the proposals at the end of the day.
Elicit: The AI Research Assistant
The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Going to College
A proposition: No one more fully embodies the nature of elite American higher education today, in all its contradictions, than a man who has spent so much time being molded by it, following its incentives and internalizing its values. But what are those values, exactly? Of course, there are the oft-cited, traditional virtues of spending several years set apart from the rest of the world, reading and thinking. You know: the chance to expand your mind, challenge your preconceptions and cultivate a passion for learning. In this vision, eager minds are called to great institutions to reach their intellectual potential, and we know these institutions can perform this function simply because they are called Harvard and Yale.
The ultimate value of college for many is the credential, guaranteeing a starting spot many rungs up the ladder of worldly success: Nothing you learn at an elite university is as important as the line on your C.V. that you’ve paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to type. And if you were feeling cynical, you could argue that the time you spend applying to college will affect the rest of your life more than anything in particular that happens while you’re there.
For young strivers of the American upper middle class, credentials and a can-do attitude are no longer sufficient for entry into the top tiers of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings. These accomplishments must be arranged into stories so compelling that they stand out from the many other compelling stories of the teenagers clamoring for admission.
Bolger devoted the meetings to teaching self-narrativization, particularly as it relates to the all-important essay component of the application. He encouraged the high-achieving Anjali to be vulnerable. “Someone who is 100 percent confident with no hesitations isn’t as compelling,” he said. “This is why there are more movies made about Batman than Superman.” With Vivian, he tried to connect her desire to become a dentist to a deeper narrative thread.
To spend any time around Bolger is to feel that you have been enrolled in a bespoke, man-shaped university, one capable of astonishing interdisciplinary leaps, and it basically all hangs together — the way that any mix of freshman electives at a top university might complement one another, might rhyme, produce its own sort of harmony. It is unclear what, exactly, is at the center. But there are gravitational forces at work nonetheless.
Bolger’s experiment has made him a wildly compelling father to a daughter who, it must be said, is exceptional. She is fluent in two languages, she is nice, she is funny, and last summer she performed Fritz Kreisler’s thorny violin piece “Sicilienne and Rigaudon” at Carnegie Hall with grace, élan and even wit. At the very least, Benjamina has on her hands the material for one of the all-time great college-admissions essays.
MemoryLane - Reminiscence Therapy
A service that generates books from user memories using AI
Niche Internet#narratives#ai#generative#storytelling#texting#books#adaptations/books#publishing#cognitionTransferscope – Synthesized Reality
An AI toy that applies visual styles to captured images in a delightfully surprising way.
Thistle Gulch by Fable Studio, frankcarey, c9iner
An AI tool for creating emergent narratives
UK’s most popular voting guide for elections, political issues, candidates, and poll data
Latens
An interesting but very alpha attempt to create navigable landscapes from text prompts using AI.
‘This Is Going to Be Painful’: How a Bold A.I. Device Flopped
Days before gadget reviewers weighed in on the Humane Ai Pin, a futuristic wearable device powered by artificial intelligence, the founders of the company gathered their employees and encouraged them to brace themselves. The reviews might be disappointing, they warned.Humane’s founders, Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri, were right. In April, reviewers brutally panned the new $699 product, which Humane had marketed for a year with ads and at glitzy events like Paris Fashion Week. The Ai Pin was “totally broken” and had “glaring flaws,” some reviewers said. One declared it “the worst product I’ve ever reviewed.”
In recent months, the company has also grappled with employee departures and changed a return policy to address canceled orders. On Wednesday, it asked customers to stop using the Ai Pin charging case because of a fire risk associated with its battery.
Its setbacks are part of a pattern of stumbles across the world of generative A.I., as companies release unpolished products. Over the past two years, Google has introduced and pared back A.I. search abilities that recommended people eat rocks, Microsoft has trumpeted a Bing chatbot that hallucinated and Samsung has added A.I. features to a smartphone that were called “excellent at times and baffling at others.”
This account of Humane is based on interviews with 23 current and former employees, advisers and investors, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter or feared retaliation.
Many current and former employees said Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno preferred positivity over criticism, leading them to disregard warnings about the Ai Pin’s poor battery life and power consumption. A senior software engineer was dismissed after raising questions about the product, they said, while others left out of frustration.
From the beginning, current and former employees said, the Ai Pin had issues, which reviewers later picked apart.One was the device’s laser display, which consumed tremendous power and would cause the pin to overheat. Before showing the gadget to prospective partners and investors, Humane executives often chilled it on ice packs so it would last longer, three people familiar with the demonstrations said. Those employees said such measures could be common early in a product development cycle.
When employees expressed concerns about the heat, they said, Humane’s founders replied that software improvements reducing power use would fix it. Mr. Chaudhri, who led design, wanted to keep the gadget’s sleek design, three people said.
Some employees tried persuading the founders not to launch the Ai Pin because it wasn’t ready, three people said. Others repeatedly asked them to hire a head of marketing. The role remained vacant before the product’s release.
a senior software engineer was let go after she questioned whether the Ai Pin would be ready by April. In a company meeting after the dismissal, Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno said the employee had violated policy by talking negatively about Humane, two attendees said.
Can Footage Like This Be Shot On an iPhone?
Can Footage Like This Be Shot On an iPhone? : r/cinematography
What’s a secret all gay men keep that straight people don’t know? : r/askgaybros
When you grow up having to navigate the world with two minds, you can at least (hopefully) bask in the absurdity of it all. It also helps numb the pain.
Growing up differently and gay oftentimes made us feel alienated, lonely, and the black sheep of our families. To figure out who we really were and to learn to navigate the world in a healthy way we were forced to do a form of work that not many straight people are confronted with. The stuff that bothers straight men I know seriously makes me laugh. You can tell they've had to never do the work to search deep within themselves to find meaning and to move past unacceptance. I seriously look at being gay as a gift now. I wouldn't change it for all the money in the world because I'm proud and grateful to be who I am. I've honestly become the systemic change in my family because I've never had to follow the cookie cutter mold and I'm not afraid to speak up and voice important opinions.
The amount of self reflection one has to go through for being gay in this world is insane.
I still in my early 20s but I've changed so much backwards thinking in my family just by being myself and challenging some of their opinions. Also when straight men talk about being lonely I always just laugh and tell them I do feel lonely but I've been lonely since I was like 12 or so, atp I don't even feel lonely I've learnt how to keep myself company due to years of introspection.
Rules matter less than people think.
We've already broken the grow up get married to a nice girl and have children rules that most of the world goes along with, so we tend to be more questioning when it comes to other rules
You can live your life however you want - not to societal expectations. Your partner is someone you likely truly get and gets you because they're also a guy - no mystery or gender related differences. No external expectations of marriage, or having babies / kids etc. Also no PMS, no biological clock ticking and putting deadlines in your life. And also added bonus, if you're similar size then you can share your clothes.
DavidtheMalcolm
•
23h ago
Oppression doesn't make us all better people. Like the narrative that feminism pushes hard is that oppression makes us kinder, nicer, more empathic than straight white men... and sometimes that's true. Sometimes there's great examples of that. But so many of us are just broken trash people who no sane person would want in their life.
Ever open up another editor's timeline and just by looking at the timeline you know it is bad?