15 Jun 2024

links for 15 June 2024

Just some reading material, more later. I did mess with the CSS on this blog a little, so pages with code on them should look a little better on small screens even if you have to scroll horizontally to see the code.

The Eclipse of the Russian Arms Market China is entering the market for traditional Russian products.

‘Devastating’ potential impact of Google AI Overviews on publisher visibility revealed (This is strange. Right at the time Google needs all the support they can get for their unpopular privacy and antitrust positions, they’re taking action against everyone else on the web. Not sure what the plan is here.)

Which top sites block AI crawlers? All in all, most sites I looked at don’t care to have their content used to train AI. (IMHO this will be a big issue with the Fediverse—currently the only way to pass a noai signal is to defederate. I made a FEP (fep-5e53) so will see what happens.)

Why First Party Data May Not Save Digital Advertising (This is why it’s going to be better to get real consent, later, from fewer people than bogus consent based on zero information about the brand or publisher.)

AI won’t kill ad agencies. Here’s why. Why? Because an agency can amortize the cost of expertise across multiple different paying clients.

United Airlines wants to show you personalized seatback ads: Here’s how to opt out (Meanwhile, other airlines are getting rid of heavy seatback entertainment systems to save fuel, since passengers are bringing devices with better screens anyway.)

“Your personal information is very important to us.” (XScreenSaver for Android has a privacy policy now.)

Economic Termites Are Everywhere [E]conomic termites…are instances of monopolization big enough to make investors a huge amount of money, but not noticeable enough for most of us. An individual termite isn’t big enough to matter, but the existence of a termite is extremely bad news, because it means there are others. Add enough of them up, and you get our modern economic experience.

Tesla may be in trouble, but other EVs are selling just fine (How much of this is the brand personality and how much is the problem that Teslas are expensive to insure? I think every car I have ever owned ended up costing a lot more in car insurance than its price.)

Facebook’s Taylor Swift Fan Pages Taken Over by Animal Abuse, Porn, and Scams (Moderation is the hard part of running any online forum, and AI moderators are the new self-driving cars.)

You Can Still Die From World War I Dangers in France’s Red Zones (This is why Europe has an AI Act. They have more important problems than building robots to take people’s art. Putting limits on luxury and counterproductive uses of AI will free up money and developer time for the stuff they really need. Before people in the USA get mad about this, remember we did it too. There’s no such thing as a 1943 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.)

We need to rewild the internet For California residents, GPC automates the request to “accept” or “reject” sales of your data, such as cookie-based tracking, on its websites. However, it isn’t yet supported by major default browsers like Chrome and Safari. Broad adoption will take time, but it’s a small step in changing real-world outcomes by driving antimonopoly practices deep into the standards stack — and it’s already being adopted elsewhere.

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