Lovely write-up on how Markdown achieved world domination, by Anil Dash.
I remember its announcement, am still amazed at how omnipresent it now is, but had forgotten that Aaron Swartz was involved in its creation.
Sterke column over DARVO, Flood the Zone en Grok deepfakes in de Volkskrant (betaalmuur) van Sander Schimmelpenninck:
Dit is het niveau in Nederland. Terwijl onze vijanden via sociale media en AI de wereld bedwelmen met leugens en AI-fabricages, zitten wij te kijken naar clowns die niet eens het verschil snappen tussen algoritmes en deepfakes.
Als je voetbal wel kan waarderen als ‘belangrijkste bijzaak’ in het leven is dit een heerlijke aflevering van Men in Blazers met John Oliver: www.youtube.com/watch
Insect-eating birds slowly recovering after neonicotinoids ban
The population of insect-eating birds in France is making tentative recovery, 4 years after a EU-ban on neonicontinoids, The Guardian report: Neonicotinoids are the world’s most common class of insecticides, widely used in agriculture and for flea control in pets. By 2022, four years after the European Union banned neonicotinoid use in fields, researchers observed that France’s population of insect-eating birds had increased by 2%-3%. These included blackbirds, blackcaps and chaffinches, which feed on insects as adults and as chicks.
De EU heeft plannen om de GDPR flink aan te passen om de AI-industrie meer ruimte te geven. Politico: Brussels knifes privacy to feed the AI boom
“Is this the end of data protection and privacy as we have signed it into the EU treaty and fundamental rights charter?” said German politician Jan Philipp Albrecht
Gestemd! 🗳️ Natuurlijk op een kandidaat met veel digitale ervaring. Vind je dat ook belangrijk, check dan even @bert_hubert’s Nerdvote voordat je gaat stemmen: www.nerdvote.nl
Finished reading: All Systems Red by Martha Wells 📚
In Europe Can’t Defend Democracy on US Servers, Ben Werdmuller quotes Alexandra Geese (member of the European Parliament):
“Europe needs independent European infrastructure now—especially home-grown social networks that preserve a level playing field for information, safeguard media freedom and guarantee genuine freedom of speech, including the right to access facts instead of being fed lies and propaganda.”
As Bert Hubert highlights (Dutch article), government organizations in the Netherlands are still focussed on migrating everything to US cloud infrastructure. In spite of rules being in place that don’t allow this.
There is a long road ahead…
Brought the camera with me on a stroll through a nearby forest last weekend. Amazin fall colors, and a wealth of mushrooms dotting the forest floor and fallen wood. 🍄
Finished reading: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. An entertaining heist story set in a Medieval city that resembles Amsterdam, with a dash of magic. Good fun. 📚
Fall colors
I started reading: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo 📚
Earlier this morning… 🌈 🌅
We all need to transition to this way of cooking, because clearly this is where the future is going. I expect in a few short years kitchens will be much smaller. Gone will be stoves and ovens and flat tops. Restaurant kitchens will only be a small closet with a microwave. I predict this will happen by 1955 at the latest.
I missed this one over the summer, but it’s just great. (Via onfocus.com)
Om te snappen hoe online cultuur ons leven beïnvloedt lees ik Ryan Broderick. Ook over hoe Charlie Kirk was killed by a meme:
We have let school shootings in America persist long enough that we have created a culture where kids grow up seeing them as a path towards fame and glory. Another consequence of how thoroughly the internet has flattened pop culture, politics, and real life violence. All of it now is just another meme you can participate in to go viral.
Niet dat je daar vrolijk van wordt. :(
I started reading: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine 📚
Truck-Wasch
AI gebruiken? Ethische handvatten uit de natuurfotografie
‘Moet’ je AI gebruiken? Als je influencers, Big Tech CEO’s of startup oprichters moet geloven is het antwoord: “Ja, altijd en overal”. Maar het is, behalve als je bij Shopify werkt, geen plicht maar een keuze. Thom Hogan bekijkt die vraag vanuit zijn ervaring als natuurfotograaf: I get asked a lot these days about whether or not [photographers] should use any of the AI tools we now have available to us.
Lines & clouds 📷
Went for a photo break after an early start. Just getting outside before it gets hot (35° Celsius). 📷
