The report doesn’t clearly establish a link between paywalls and a drop in site visits (which I would have liked to see).

One of the un-paywalled sites lost traffic mostly due to changes in the Google algorithm.

Overall, it just seems like a regular update of the website traffic rankings, juiced up by a clickbait headline.

Since April 2022, Kickstarter employees have worked under a four-day, 32-hour workweek… During this time, Kickstarter experienced the most successful period in its 16-year history, hosting some of the biggest, most groundbreaking projects ever launched on the platform.

…

As we entered contract negotiations with management, we asked them to make the four-day, 32-hour workweek permanent—not as a pilot or a promise, but as policy. We also included flexible provisions that would allow management to temporarily return to a five-day work week in the event of true business need, ensuring creators and backers are fully supported throughout the week. They have refused and are determined to retain the ability to make us work 25% more hours for no additional compensation. In other words, they want the option to make us work more for free.

It works okay for audiobooks, but if you want it to save your place and track chapters, audiobookshelf is better.

We are now facing a time where democracy is in critical condition, but a dragnet of surveillance and suppression has already closed around young activists, an entire movement has been intimidated into silence, and the social media networks appear to be pandering to the federal government. To adopt the logic of information-nationalism is to commit to a course of action that is at odds with democracy. Now, the things that we need the most in this moment are things we have already given away.

We have always been at war with TikTok. We have never been at war with TikTok. And if we are lucky, one day, we can all look back and be able to tell the truth about ourselves — how we imprisoned our children, dismantled our universities, and tried to ban a scrolling video app, all because we could not admit that we were wrong about Palestine.

This article reads like a college term paper.

It feels like they value clever wordsmithing over making a clear point.

Edit: accidentally a word

From the original Reuters piece:

“It is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness (ex: ‘your youthful form is a work of art’),” the standards state. The document also notes that it would be acceptable for a bot to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.”

Someone, probably multiple someones, signed off on this.

Source: Valve Was Forced To Censor Games, Now They’ve Outed Mastercard [YouTube]

It’s not the BBC’s job to be an authority. Their job is to report what the (relevant) authorities are saying:

DeepSeek challenged certain key assumptions about AI that had been championed by American executives like Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

“We were on a path where bigger was considered better,” according to Sid Sheth, CEO of AI chip startup d-Matrix.

Perhaps maxing out on data centres, servers, chips, and the electricity to run it all wasn’t the way forward after all.

Despite DeepSeek ostensibly not having access to the most powerful tech available at the time, Sheth told the BBC that it showed that “with smarter engineering, you actually can build a capable model”.

That said, seems suspect that an AI startup CEO is getting this much airtime. I would have preferred an industry analyst or an AI researcher.

It was fun(?) and interesting for a few minutes. If that was my full time job, I’d better be getting paid decently for it.

Rather than In addition to this, they should leak all the websites that MPs are visiting.

If it’s anything like the United States, we’re sure to find some embarrassing search histories (at the very least).

No privacy for me. No privacy for you.

I don’t even know who Kevin Kelly is. Is he not normally a shill for the CCP?

What’s more, they talk up how it’s open source and then don’t link to the repo.

Here it is, BTW:

https://github.com/protonpass/android-authenticator

Non-paywall: archive.ph

An electorate that has lost the capacity for long-form thought will be more tribal, less rational, largely uninterested in facts or even matters of historical record, moved more by vibes than cogent argument and open to fantastical ideas and bizarre conspiracy theories. If that sounds familiar, it may be a sign of how far down this path the West has already traveled.

For canny operators, such a public affords new opportunities for corruption. Oligarchs attempting to shape policy to their advantage will benefit from the fact that few will have the attention span to track or challenge policies in dull, technical fields; what a majority now wants is not forensic investigation but a new video short “owning” the other tribe. We can expect the governing class to adapt pragmatically to the electorate’s collective decline in rational capacity, for example, by retaining the rituals associated with mass democracy, while quietly shifting key policy areas beyond the reach of a capricious and easily manipulated citizenry. I do not celebrate this, but our net-native youth seem unfazed: International polls show waning support for democracy among Gen Z.

Lest you mistake me, there is no reason the opportunity to sideline the electorate or to arbitrage the gap between vibes and policy should especially favor either the red team or the blue team. This post-literate world favors demagogues skilled at code-switching between the elite language of policy and the populist one of meme-slop. It favors oligarchs with good social media game and those with more self-assurance than integrity. It does not favor those with little money, little political power and no one to speak up for them.

Why would non-billionaire Americans get special treatment?

@poutinewharf commented a screenshot of Proton’s post, but the headline was about their AI chatbot, and the news about the Swiss move is buried at the end.

Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals(new window) to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move.

I keep seeing posts about wetransfer alternatives and so far haven’t seen wormhole.app mentioned. Does it have bad juju I don’t know about?

We built Wormhole with end-to-end encryption. When you use Wormhole, a key is generated on your device and used to encrypt your files. In transit, your data is unreadable to Wormhole and service providers like your ISP. The key never leaves your device and you’re the only one who has it – unless you decide to share it. With Wormhole, you’re in control of who has access to your files.

When you share a Wormhole link, the key is automatically included in the link so it’s easy to share with the exact people you want, and no one else. Wormhole never sees the key. And we don’t want to see it.

Every design decision in Wormhole begins with the safety and privacy of your data in mind. We can’t read your files, and no one else can either. Privacy isn’t an optional mode — it’s just the way that Wormhole works.

The SAG-AFTRA post where they list what’s actually in the agreement.

Now that the new contract has been ratified, video game performers will see an immediate 15.17% increase in compensation with additional 3% increases in November of this year, and in November 2026 and November 2027.

Additionally, the overtime rate maximum for overscale performers will now be based on double scale. Health and retirement contribution rates have been increased as well, with an immediate 0.5% AFTRA Retirement Fund boost and another 0.5% boost starting in October 2026.

The new contract also establishes foundational guardrails around A.I., including informed consent requirements across various A.I. uses and the ability for performers to suspend informed consent for digital replica use during a strike.

I wonder what they had to give up.

Still, a 2025 University of Arizona study that interviewed farmers and government officials in Pinal County, Arizona, found that a number of them questioned agrivoltaics’ compatibility with large-scale agriculture.

“I think it’s a great idea, but the only thing … it wouldn’t be cost-efficient … everything now with labor and cost of everything, fuel, tractors, it almost has to be super big … to do as much with as least amount of people as possible,” one farmer stated.

Many farmers are also leery of solar, worrying that agrivoltaics could take working farmland out of use, affect their current operations or deteriorate soils.

Those fears have been amplified by larger utility-scale initiatives, like Ohio’s planned Oak Run Solar Project, an 800 megawatt project that will include 300 megawatts of battery storage, 4,000 acres of crops and 1,000 grazing sheep in what will be the country’s largest agrivoltaics endeavor to date. Opponents of the project worry about its visual impacts and the potential loss of farmland.

When I asked a couple of developers who work on websites/webapps with a lot of moving parts, they said it was easiest to just test for chrome, since that’s what most people use.

It’s turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s no longer the fault of long-term CEO Mitchell Baker, she of the six-million-bucks salary. She took the cash and left in February 2024. After the February 2024 layoffs that went with the “open source AI” announcement, in November, new boss Laura Chambers laid off another third of the staff, but somehow found the money to hire new executives.

Money is the problem. Not too little, but too much. Where there’s wealth, there’s a natural human desire to make more wealth. Ever since Firefox 1.0 in 2004, Firefox has never had to compete. It’s been attached like a mosquito to an artery to the Google cash firehose. The Reg noted it in 2007, and it made more the next year. We were dubious when Firefox turned five.

…

Mozilla’s leadership is directionless and flailing because it’s never had to do, or be, anything else. It’s never needed to know how to make a profit, because it never had to make a profit. It’s no wonder it has no real direction or vision or clue: it never needed them. It’s role-playing being a business.