28 Jul 2024

links for 28 Jul 2024

Kamala Harris’ $7M support from LinkedIn founder comes with a request: Fire Lina Khan (Today’s IT industry big shots are used to the level of respect that they got from the Blackberry generation of politicians, but that was back when the industry was doing transformative innovation. Now that the industry has pivoted to rent-seeking and crime to keep the numbers going up, they’re not going to get the same treatment. Bonus link: The FTC Orders Companies To Disclose Info On “Surveillance Pricing”)

California Forges Ahead With Social Media Rules Despite Legal Barriers (More First Amendement questions on how recommendation algorithms work. It seems like requiring a Parental Control Protocol and a content-neutral surveillance licensing system would be more likely to hold up in court.)

End Single Family Zoning by Overturning Euclid V Ambler Cities around the country and around the world mix land uses, building heights, and lot sizes with no ill effects on health or safety. Indeed, mixed use cities may have improve health and safety by reducing driving and putting empty lots to use which reduces crime. (icmyi: “You Don’t Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail)

The CrowdStrike Outage and Market-Driven Brittleness Read the whole thing. Today’s internet systems are too complex to hope that if we are smart and build each piece correctly the sum total will work right. We have to deliberately break things and keep breaking them. This repeated process of breaking and fixing will make these systems reliable.

The sentiment disconnect on ‘AI’ between tech and the public To many, “AI” seems to have become a tech asshole signifier: the tech asshole is a person who works in tech, only cares about bullshit tech trends, and doesn’t care about the larger consequences of their work or their industry. Or, even worse, aspires to become a person who gets rich from working in a harmful industry. (related: Does AI increase productivity at work? New study suggests otherwise, The average AI criticism has gotten lazy, and that’s dangerous)

Some coverage of the Google Chrome third-party cookies news:

(As a gatekeeper company, they’re not going to be able to get away with a setting that turns off third-party cookies but not tracking/personalization on Google Search or YouTube.)

And finally some random good reads.

California Grid Breezes Through Heat Wave due to Renewables, Batteries

Congress Accidentally Legalized Weed Six Years Ago

Costco in Cancún

Not Lost In Translation: How Barbarian Books Laid the Foundation for Japan’s Industrial Revoluton

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