TechTakes

Bob Dylan has responded to a Bitcoin Groyper account

Ah, so apparently Google has found a new way to make Youtube comments worse.

sammy boi is giving up on the pretense that any of this was about enriching lives, and is now only focusing on the eyegrab (archive)

anyone wanna take bets on how much pearlclutching surprisedpikachu we'll see

A quick update: @ai_shame is quitting Twitter, and Musk using posts for AI training is the reason why:

here’s the latest on the wordpress situation thanks to 404media:

New alignment offer: I guess some people were sad they missed the last window. Some have been leaking to the press and ex-employees. That's water under the bridge. Maybe the last offer needed to be higher. People have said they want a new window, so this is my attempt. Here's a new one: You have until 00:00 UTC Oct 17 (-4 hours) to DM me the words, ‘I resign and would like to take the 9-month buy-out offer’ You don't have to say any reason, or anything else. I will reply ‘Thank you.’ Automattic will accept your resignation, you can keep you [sic] office stuff and work laptop; you will lose access to Automattic and Wong (no slack, user accounts, etc). HR will be in touch to wrap up details in the coming days, including your 9 months of compensation, they have a lot on their plates right now. You have my word this deal will be honored. We will try to keep this quiet, so it won't be used against us, but I still wanted to give Automatticians another window.

there’s a (mid) joke here about how a boy who’s obsessed with photography really should understand more about optics

and who wouldn’t trust their livelihood in a difficult job market to a promise from a very stable genius like matt, who will destroy you financially if he thinks you talked to the press:

After an exodus of employees at Automattic who disagreed with CEO Matt Mullenweg’s recently divisive legal battle with WP Engine, he’s upped the ante with another buyout offer—and a threat that employees speaking to the press should “exit gracefully, or be fired tomorrow with no severance.”

New piece from The Atlantic: The AI Boom Has an Expiration Date

The full piece is worth a read, but the conclusion's pretty damn good, so I'm copy-pasting it here:

All of this financial and technological speculation has, however, created something a bit more solid: self-imposed deadlines. In 2026, 2030, or a few thousand days, it will be time to check in with all the AI messiahs. Generative AI—boom or bubble—finally has an expiration date.

apparently those qualcomm NPUs (the "AI assist" chips in the copilot(?) laptops) aren't very good

Molly White reports on Kamala Harris's recent remarks about Cryptocurrency being a cool opportunity for black men.

VP Harris's press release (someone remind me to archive this once internet archive is up). Most of the rest of it is reasonable, but it paints cryptocurrency in a cautiously positive light.

Supporting a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets so Black men who invest in and own these assets are protected

[...]

Enabling Black men who hold digital assets to benefit from financial innovation.

More than 20% of Black Americans own or have owned cryptocurrency assets. Vice President Harris appreciates the ways in which new technologies can broaden access to banking and financial services. She will make sure owners of and investors in digital assets benefit from a regulatory framework so that Black men and others who participate in this market are protected.

Overall there has been a lot of cryptocurrency money in this US election on both sides of the aisle, which Molly White has also reported extensively on. I kind of hate it.

"regulation" here is left (deliberately) vague. Regulation should start with calling out all the scammers, shutting down cryptocurrency ATMs, prohibiting noise pollution, and going from there; but we clearly don't live in a sensible world.

Not a sneer, but an unsurprising development: Bluesky's seeing a surge in users:

Presented, without comment, this book cover:

(found on the social medias, the books' website)

In other news, Elon actually did it

He actually went and crippled blocking

fig. 1: how awful.systems works