New post format: a weekly rollup of links, comments on those links, activity updates and attempts at humor. The intention is quicker hits in addition to the less frequent big posts and more timely hammering on my favorite themes. This is my primary hangout until the contours of the post-Twitter world become clear. Be sure to subscribe below and to the right to receive all my output via email.
Note that my poor, overtaxed server struggles to serve up all the images to email users at the same time, so if you don’t see images, be sure to click through. Server upgrade in the works.
The New Bond Movie Really Sucks
It is an installment with one of those incomprehensible plots having something to do with technology where the villain says things like “I realised that what I really wanted to become was an architect, to design the future of humanity” and “We will rule the world in the end.” His secret lair is in a WeWork. Two thumbs down.
Minitel, Quaero, GAIA-X, Mistral.ai?
After raising the largest seed round ever in Europe (most of which will go to NVIDIA), Mistral.ai positions itself as the European LLM champion (they don’t seem to have anything else special). Historically having French politicians backing a tech endeavor hasn’t been a great omen.
Previous: Keeping Up with the Clowns, Clown Watch
FTC Sues Amazon for Unsubscribe Flow; Is The New York Times Next?
After stalking Amazon for years, is this really the best shot they’ve got? Will they be prosecuting others for the same offense?
Previous: Living in a Glass House: The New York Times On Tech
Related: “I hope this will apply to the @nytimes…“
We Don’t Need No Stinking Ethics
Ethics it seems are amongst the many undeveloped areas of hipster antitrust doctrine.
Previous: A New Antitrust Doctrine
BREAKING: Xi Jinping Not a Dictator
Chinese government statements are often entertaining, if contorted and hyperbolic. Joe Biden was long known as Senator Gaffe (Michael Kinsley defined a gaffe as when a politician accidentally tells the truth). Biden described Xi Jinping as a dictator in passing, which led to some apoplectic Chinese foreign ministry comments. While I found their refutation uncompelling, perhaps we can send election observers to atone.
When is Peter Daszak’s Congressional Hearing?
A lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology looks more and more likely to be the origin of COVID, with the probability the virus was genetically engineered also increasing. Zeynep Tufekci persuasively calls for our government to disclose what it knows (in the pages of the New York Times no less!). Beyond the public inquiry we expect in a democracy to learn from our mishaps, it will also be fun to watch the Chinese foreign ministry completely lose its shit over this.
