tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

Nice image from JBM. This sort of comparative perspective tends to rule out a lot of US-centric, highly contingent explanations for why things turned out as they did.

Microsoft are effectively giving up on Copilot Pro subscription ($20/month) as almost nobody paid for it.

Instead they are bundling it into Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions and inflating the renewal prices there. There’s no opt out.

Effectively allows the Copilot revenue and user numbers to be inflated.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/7/24290268/microsoft-copilot-office-features-microsoft-365

TikTok has been ordered to shutdown its offices and business in Canada by the Canadian government citing national security reasons.

The app itself is not being banned nor is access to it being blocked. This action primarily limits them from having a business entity in Canada.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/canada-orders-wind-up-tiktoks-canadian-business-app-access-continue-2024-11-06/

The year is 2026, and U.S. refugees entering the Schengen Area must swear an oath at customs professing their opposition to the Trump Regime before receiving their Good American papers. Polish freedom fighters recently sabotaged Europe's major LNG terminals, freeing EU leaders to decouple from Washington's gas grip.

I try to remember that the work before yesterday was strengthening patterns of collaboration and care and disrupting patterns of domination and separation and that our work today is no different, though the context, strategies, and obstacles may have shifted.

If you need one, here's a pallet cleanser for you

The most maddening tech discourse these days is that we need AI to figure out how to solve climate change.

We've known how to completely solve climate change for more than a decade, thanks. We just don't want to.

This Apple Intelligence ad where an executive presents a document in a meeting that they haven’t read based on AI summarized key points reminds me of the Google ad where a dad asked an AI to write a letter on behalf of his kid to their favorite artist.

These are both examples where it provides negative value for AI to perform the task instead of a human. I don’t want coworkers regurgitating ChatGPT summaries of documents instead of sharing their perspectives.

https://youtu.be/BK8bnkcT0Ng

My daughter's school added me into 3 WhatsApp groups. It was insane. I changed my phone number to leave the groups. When they asked for the new number I showed them a dead Nokia I bought off Ebay. Now, my daughter brings home paper letters.

Many amateur astronomers have built their telescopes, even grinding the mirrors. But there are so many photon choices across the electromagnetic spectrum. A new paper provides instructions for building a backyard radio telescope that can detect the emission of hydrogen in the 21 cm line. This is a specific wavelength of radio waves emitted by vast clouds of neutral hydrogen that can pass through gas and dust. You can even use this during the day or in light pollution.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00057

listen, I've had my moments, but at least I've never mansplained Margaret Atwood's book to Margaret Atwood

More evidence -- this time with audio tapes from the original experiment -- showing that the Stanford Prison Experiment was rigged to encourage terrible behavior by the guards

In Medium: https://gen.medium.com/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/K7gMN

Talking about this with my son, I was struck by how many pieces of major science/theory/culture in the mid-20th-century insisted that they "proved" humanity was inherently, natively selfish -- but turned out to be much less true

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