- "And beyond my selfish curiosity there’s also the Fedorovist ancestor simulation angle: if you die and are not cryopreserved, how else are you going to make it to the other side of the intelligence explosion? Every tweet, blog post, Git commit, journal entry, keystroke, mouse click, every one of these things is a tomographic cut of the mind that created it."
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Historians pour over this sort of stuff. If a historically interesting figure wrote a letter to their neighbour to complain about a noisy dog, it's been carefully preserved and obsessively analyzed. Historians want to get inside their subjects' heads and figure out what they were thinking when they did that big, important thing, and every scrap of remaining written material helps.
We live in a period that is going to be real tough on historians studying it. Over the last few decades, physical correspondence (i.e. letters, etc.) has mostly died out. A lot of people still journal, but on their computer. Will that folder of old journal entries be found by whoever inherits your house full of junk or will it be tossed? A dead-tree diary is pretty easy to recognize for what it is. A computer's contents are comparatively easy to overlook.
Most people who have lived over the last few decades have had multiple email addresses that, at first, they eagerly used for personal interactions and then, over time, more and more only for professional/commercial correspondence. At the same time, people started writing for fun and passion under anonymous pseudonyms in a variety of online forums. Some remain online and still operating. Some have been curated and remain online. Some are archived. Some are just gone. Then came social media and texting. A huge proportion of people's most intimate interactions are in texts now, but for how much longer? We seem to be on a novelty treadmill when it comes to personal interaction mediums. Yesterday's source of joy is today's chore.
Imagine that you do something really significant in a decade or so, and some historian a hundred years from now is trying to figure out why you did it. Getting access to as much of your written output as remains and correctly associating the anonymous stuff with you is going to be a tough problem. How much of what is online today will remains? How much of it will be possible to associate with you, and not a pseudonym? Even if they speak your native tongue, they'll have to learn how to interpret your slang and texting shorthand. This sounds almost impossible today, but what kind of tools might they have in a century?
My suspicion is that history is going to remain remarkably unchanged in a very specific way: For some historical figures we'll have mountains of material. Others, despite their importance, will be complete enigmas.
- The judicial branch is violating a decree of the legislative branch in order to cover up the crimes of the executive branch's leader... who is ultimately responsible for enforcement of the legislative branch's decrees.
Wild. As a Canadian, I'd snap us off from the continent and start paddling North if it were possible.
- It's almost like there's something happening on Friday that is so scary that there's a need for a full-on "Wag the Dog" shooting war.
- Looks like I was a little out of date.
https://itsfoss.com/news/mozilla-lifeline-is-safe/
Google pays Mozilla, basically to make Google the default search engine for everything in Firefox. Previously, it looked like an antitrust case was going to force them to stop doing that, but it didn't turn out that way.
Mozilla is still getting most of their money from Google and they shouldn't need to kneecap themselves to pay the rent. Still, you can't help but wonder what might happen if Firefox starts eating too much of Chrome's market share. Mozilla should be trying to branch out, but in a user friendly way.
- The current pattern in software is, sadly:
1. Innovate
2. Dominate
3. Enshitify to cash in.
You can't skip step #2.
Right now, Firefox's market share is a rounding error compared to Chrome. Users are starting to switch away from Chrome because it's currently in step 3 (in spades). That trend will not continue if Firefox beats Chrome to the bottom of the pig-pen. Firefox's current focus on AI is concerning enough, but mirroring Chrome's shift to Manifest v3 (i.e. What killed full-blooded ad blocking in Chrome) would be outright suicide.
Mozilla needs to listen to their users. Most don't particularly want "let me run that through an AI for you" popups everywhere. Practically nobody running Firefox wants to be cut off from effective ad blocking.
Monetization is hard, for Mozilla in particular. It was always weird that most of their funding came from Google. Now that Google is yanking it, Mozilla needs to find alternative sources of filthy lucre. However, if they destroy their product's only competitive advantages, there will be nothing left to monetize. If Firefox remains a browser that can provide decent privacy and ad-blocking then Mozilla has a chance to find alternative revenue streams. If, instead, Mozilla throws those advantages away to make a quick buck, that's the last buck they'll ever make.
- "We see both sides – genuine infrastructure expansion alongside financing gymnastics that recall the 2000 telecom bust. The boom may yet prove productive, but only if revenue catches up before credit tightens. When does healthy strain become systemic risk?"
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This was quoted in the article and it says something really important very succinctly. Was the internet transformative? Absolutely. A lot of companies had solid ideas, spent big, and went tits up waiting for the money to roll in.
AI can be both "real deal" and "bubble" simultaneously.
- This one makes automatic site-specific masking slightly easier. You can just click a button as opposed to writing an entry in settings. Good find!
- >The changes come as critics say Apple, once a tech leader, is behind in the next big wave: artificial intelligence.
It might pay off to be a contrarian on AI or, at least, to appear that way.
MS is currently facing significant user backlash against the AI components of Windows 11. Some of their own engineers have ripped management for forcing AI that's in a very poor state into every pore of the company's products while fixing that AI is verboten to all MS employees but the AI dept.[1]. Google is featuring frequently wrong AI summaries at the top of every search result. Elon Musk is using Grok to create his own version of reality in the form of Grokipedia, making billionaires everywhere look that much more like moustache-twirling villains.
Even if you think LLM's have some solid applications and potential for growth, the way it's being pushed on average users is truly cringe-worthy. To make matters worse, there is broad public perception that AI is putting people out of work, ripping off artists, etc.. It might actually benefit a company like Apple to not feature AI prominently in their products, even if they do spend the resources to catch up.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Apple fanboy trying to recast Apple being behind in AI into genius. I parted ways with Apple products over a decade ago due to bad experiences that I don't care to repeat. I'm just saying there could be an emerging niche for them to exploit. Being the one and only mainstream PC company that doesn't shove AI down people's throats could be a real competitive edge in 2026 and beyond.
[1]https://jonready.com/blog/posts/everyone-in-seattle-hates-ai...
- There's nothing too unexpected in this post. Firefox + uBlock is pretty much standard now. It's been impossible to recommend Chrome ever since Google moved to manifest v3, which can only be described as deliberate anti-privacy enshittification. The recaptcha solver is starting to become niche, since cloudflare has really taken over (for better or worse).
I would add one more useful tool though: A user-agent switcher[1]. There are still some websites that insist you must use Chrome (or sometimes Edge). They will block you if you try to use them with Firefox, even though they work perfectly well and sometimes even better on Firefox than they do on Chrome. A user-agent switcher gives you the option to simply uninstall Chrome for good.
e.g. My ISP provides a website for streaming live TV (e.g. sports) that claims to be incompatible with Firefox, but actually runs better (i.e. fewer glitches) on it than it does on Chrome. However, it refuses to load on Firefox unless you use a user-agent switcher.
Why do people write websites that refuse to run based on user-agent checks? By all means, warn users that you couldn't be arsed to test things on more than one browser, but why go that extra mile to brick your site when other browsers probably support it quite well?
[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...
- This feels very much like "United Stats vs Paramount Pictures: The Sequel"[1].
Vertical integration was the key problem back then. Major studios owned major cinema chains. They made it hard for independent cinemas to show the films people wanted, and they made it very hard for independent filmmakers to get their films shown anywhere. It was highly anti-competitive.
I wouldn't expect the U.S. government to step in this time around though. It's very clear that competition and benefiting consumers are no longer priorities.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
- The full quote from that section is worth repeating here.
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"If you could classify your project as "AI," you were safe and prestigious. If you couldn't, you were nobody. Overnight, most engineers got rebranded as "not AI talent." And then came the final insult: everyone was forced to use Microsoft's AI tools whether they worked or not.
Copilot for Word. Copilot for PowerPoint. Copilot for email. Copilot for code. Worse than the tools they replaced. Worse than competitors' tools. Sometimes worse than doing the work manually.
But you weren't allowed to fix them—that was the AI org's turf. You were supposed to use them, fail to see productivity gains, and keep quiet.
Meanwhile, AI teams became a protected class. Everyone else saw comp stagnate, stock refreshers evaporate, and performance reviews tank. And if your team failed to meet expectations? Clearly you weren't "embracing AI." "
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On the one hand, if you were going to bet big on AI, there are aspects of this approach that make sense. e.g. Force everyone to use the company's no-good AI tools so that they become good. However, not permitting employees outside of the "AI org" to fix things neatly nixes the gains you might see while incurring the full cost.
It sounds like MS's management, the same as many other tech corp's, has become caught up in a conceptual bubble of "AI as panacea". If that bubble doesn't pop soon, MS's products could wind up in a very bad place. There are some very real threats to some of MS's core incumbencies right now (e.g. from Valve).
- The distributed nature of Wiki's makes them hard to "shut down", but they can be blocked and the editors/contributors can be harassed, arrested, deported, etc..
Is it paranoid to think this might happen in the U.S.? Now? No, I think it's become depressingly plausible. As I said, consider what might have happened if Musk had stayed in Trump's good graces. If you don't think such a thing is plausible for this administration, then what about the next, or the one after it? One that's a little bit more competent in making use of all the power that's just seems to continue being concentrated in the executive branch?
- Musk has previously called for Wikipedia to be defunded and boycotted[1].
The linked reference is from January, just after Musk bought an election and when he was plugged directly into U.S. presidential authority. If he'd had the self-control to manage his interactions with Trump in a way that didn't rapidly lead to breakdown, things could be looking very grim for Wikipedia by now.
As with so many other aspects of the Trump administration, what's going on illustrates weaknesses in the U.S. system of government that could lead to things that are far worse than what we are currently seeing if the people involved were just a little bit more competent.
Grokipedia is far more than just the anti-Wikipedia. It's a sign of things to come if we don't start hardening the systems, governmental or otherwise, that keep Wikipedia available to the public.
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[1]https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/01/29/why-elon...
- I left Facebook very early on because it was too intrusive and didn't respect my privacy. Some people want to share every aspect of their lives on social media. I don't. I'm from the generation that uses codenames online wherever possible.
On reddit, I first limited what subs I frequented and then stopped posting entirely. It's been almost 1 year since my last post on Reddit. These were conscious choices that took some effort to follow through on.
I left political subs years ago due to endless flamewars and bad moderation. Bad moderation tended to enforce dominant views in political subs, making honest discussion with diverse people (formerly the main draw of message boards) virtually impossible. Either everyone agreed with you or you were the literal Antichrist. It was also hard to tell just who the moderators were, who they represented, or just how much they were doing to control discourse. Sorting by new revealed a lot, but not all, of what was going on. To make matters worse, as subs became echo chambers, users themselves began to expect to never have their views challenged. They'd self-sort into subs that matched their views and then circlejerk endlessly, often becoming more extreme as time passed. I didn't want to see that happen to me, so I swore off political subs entirely.
After the Canada-U.S. tradewar broke out early this year, I made a passing historical joke about the war of 1812 that was perfectly in keeping with the norms of the sub I was in. I was temporarily banned (24 hours or something like that) by the main reddit admins, who appeared to be using AI to blanket ban people saying anything remotely anti-Trump. I appealed and the response denied this was AI moderation, but showed no understanding of a very obvious joke that any American or Canadian would get. (i.e. They misconstrued a tongue-in-cheek comment about burning the white house again as a real threat of violence).
This was the final straw for me. The overall feeling I was left with was that, by posting and voting on Reddit, I was volunteering my time to support a pro-Trump American corporation that didn't respect me or my country. I still search/read reddit for specific things due to a lack of alternatives, but I can't wait for the platform to die and the users to move onto something better. I no longer contribute to Reddit, even by reporting spam.
Hacker News is the last remnant of social media I participate in. We'll see how much longer that lasts. I suspect I am subconsciously trying to quit social media entirely. Doing so really does free up your time for far better things.
- I've seen a fair number of articles suggesting that the finances of AI companies have lost touch with reality and that the AI sector is now well within bubble territory.
If AI companies continue to scale up and buy massive amounts of memory as prices spike, how much will that intensify the spike? Could feedback of this nature cause a price shock sufficient to pop the AI bubble earlier than it might have otherwise? How soon might that happen?
- 1. A lot of archaeology is "rescue" archaeology. i.e. Either natural processes (e.g. rivers shifting) have threatened a site or the decision has been made to build, but there is a legal requirement to have the site surveyed and dug (if warranted). If you have an issue with this, then it must be with rivers shifting or people building. Rescue archaeology merely rescues the past from otherwise certain destruction.
2. Archaeologists are keenly aware that digging is a destructive act. There are countless examples of sites that were dug with unsophisticated techniques (e.g. bulldozers and dynamite) in the past that could have taught us far more were they dug with even slightly more modern (and careful) techniques. This is why, outside of rescue archaeology, excavations are done with careful deliberation. It's also standard practice to excavate sites only partially, leaving some of it intact for future archaeologists to dig with more advanced technology and techniques.
3. Rest assured, there yet remains vast quantities of history buried in the ground, waiting to be discovered. e.g. We have discovered cuneiform records referring to entire cities that remain buried and unknown. Other cities of the past are under modern settlements and are, at present, mostly inaccessible to archaeologists. It may seem like the world has been exhaustively explored, but there are still huge surprises waiting underground.
- As for dating apps...
The great thing about the dating app biz is that the competition is universally awful at providing good matches that lead to long term relationships. The same goes for pro match-makers, speed-dating events, etc.. It's a hard problem to predict what makes two people click together, even if you get them to meet face to face.
These companies aren't enshittifying their products to make money. They were just never good to begin with. Dating success still boils down to the shotgun approach. So, it becomes a question about who can fool the most users with false claims and reach the critical mass required to load buckshot in everybody's blunderbusses.
- Make product worse, get money, go out of business.
It's interesting that this article uses the restaurant industry as an example, because it is rife with examples of restaurants that debut to acclaim, enshittify their offerings, and then go out of business as their clientele evaporates. How many software products have gone the same route? How many were initially good, bolted on too many unwanted features, ignored their core audience, and ultimately lost their users to the next big thing?
It seems like something is missing in this fellows theory, and the answer is fair competition. Pizzaria's don't sell cardboard discs for $300 precisely because they become the worst pizza in town long before reaching that point. Restaurants that stay in business long-term are forced to limit their impulse to seek greater profits. They must maintain a level of quality that lets them remain competitive. That's a hard limit imposed by the market. Many choose to dance around on the boundaries of this limit. It's profitable, but risky. If you go too far and consumers abandon you, you can't just improve your product a little and expect them to flock back.
This is why big tech companies love to buy out, lobby against, and otherwise disrupt or obliterate their competitors. Competition is what places limits on profit-seeking enshitification. If you can establish a monopoly then you can enshittify to your heart's content. e.g. Google.
- It's directly analogous to China issuing export bans. They tried this with critical minerals. Critical minerals aren't actually all that uncommon. They just weren't being actively extracted in most places. Now many extraction projects are starting to roll around the globe because it has become clear China was willing to use access to them as leverage.
My guess is that China will be highly reluctant to restrict exports of manufactured goods going forward. Doing so would directly threaten their own power base, just as the Trump administration's actions are currently taking a sledge hammer to the U.S.'s power base.
Ultimately, this kind of power is illusory. If you ever use it, you lose it.
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World silver production during the 16th century was around 23 thousand tons[1]. Silver was closer in value to gold back then too, at around one tenth the value per weight. The economic impact of new world gold was a rounding error compared to the impact of silver.
If you have a mental image of Spanish conquistadors sparking global inflation purely by looting Inca gold, erase it. The real culprit was silver extracted from Potosi and a few other New world mines.
[1]https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc40312/m2/1/...