Canned Dragons - Tech

Jokes From Truth

Bluesky CEO, Tony Schneider, was interviewed by Nilay Patel on a recent episode of The Decoder podcast. I like Patel’s interview style and thought he brought a good selection of questions to the discussion.

After much business strategy and technical discussion, Patel asked Schneider about the common perception that the network is full of left-leaning users. Schneider acknowledged that as an issue and mentioned several times that he wanted to expand the user base. It’s certainly true that the social network is home to many emotionally dysregulated political progressives. I know several people who don’t use it primarily for that reason.

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→ 6:00 PM, Aug 6

Jay Peters reports for The Verge about the year-over-year rise in the number of CDs being purchased.

The data suggests that “the CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an affordable collectible,” Luminate says. “This behavior underscores that for younger generations, the act of buying physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for the artist as it is listening to the music on the product itself.”

The surprise here is that approximately half of the Gen Z and millennials buying CDs don’t even own a device on which to play them. It’s still about that connection, though. I admitted the other day that I sometimes listen to a CD even when I could just as easily (more easily even) stream the album.

→ 8:53 PM, Jul 17

Bandcamp Downsizing

Details are scarce, but a Bluesky post has people once again wondering about the fate of Bandcamp.

my 13 years at bandcamp are coming to an end - i’ve been laid off along with most of the remaining engineers. best job i’ve ever had, working with the best people you could ever work with. unceremonious end to quite a ride.

drew https://bsky.app/profile/grmnygrmny.bsky.social/post/3mpgvo7l2v22t

Some are speculating that Bandcamp’s owner, Songtradr, has enough engineers to fill in the gaps and keep the service running. I would not be surprised if that were the case, and I don’t think this piece of news is necessarily an indicator that the service is shutting down, but nevertheless, it’s not a good thing.

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→ 11:54 AM, Jul 3

Fade To Blue

Naz Hamid has redone his website. The impetus seems to have been changing from a color palette that has been adopted as the de facto standard among LLMs. He worried that his visitors would think it was something coded on vibes. So he switched to blues.

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→ 8:05 PM, Jun 25

I’ve been getting car sick when trying to read in a vehicle in motion since I was a kid. Little did I know, my favorite computer manufacturer has a solution for that, which was brought to my attention by this piece in The Verge. The technology is called Vehicle Motion Cues.

According to big-S Science, this type of vehicle motion sickness is caused by the eyes staring at a static display while the inner ear feels the car turning, braking, and accelerating. Motion Cues solve this by placing dots around the periphery of the display that move in harmony with the motion of the car. When the car turns right, the dots sweep across the screen to the left; when the car brakes the dots slide forward.

I can’t wait to try this out, especially on a long trip.

→ 7:17 PM, Jun 17

Datatapes

Louie Mantia offers some new drive icons based on the datatapes from Star Wars, and they’re pretty fun.

The Imperial data vault on Scarif contained thousands of datatapes, one of them being the plans for the Death Star. After the plans were broadcast to the Rebel fleet, they were transferred to a small datacard.

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→ 7:08 PM, Jun 16

Kupajo warns us to beware of black butterflies.

Male grayling butterflies prefer to mate with darker female graylings. When caged with a female grayling and a cardboard cutout of a grayling painted black, the male will choose the cardboard cutout over the female. Beyond being an example of bro falling for an unrealistic standard of beauty, such a preference reveals that even in matters fundamental to survival and reproduction, these creatures can be seduced by artificial models they’d never encounter in nature.

The analogy holds up when you read about people falling in love with LLMs and being rewired by impossible standards of beauty. Basic humanity is now subordinate to machine slick simulacrums.

→ 10:35 PM, May 25

The Intelligence Is Still Artificial

The opinions on AI that you find on the internet tend to fall in the extremes of the other side. Either AI is the downfall of humanity or its savior. My thoughts on the subject, as on many others, ride in the middle of the road.

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→ 11:00 PM, May 6

Web Ads

Not many people profess a love of advertisements on the internet. Among people I follow, particularly on the indie web, few really like Instagram, either. There’s a distaste for big web companies like Meta who make their money on data harvesting and targeted ads.

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→ 3:44 PM, Dec 13

Tangled Up In Chaos

A few days ago, I received a plea in my usual email from the media outlet Tangle.

The last six months have been a difficult time for media outlets. Overwhelmed by the news, many readers and listeners are tuning out. Those who are staying up to date are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence round-ups to get their news, which has caused website traffic to fall.

I feel bad about the situation that Isaac Saul, who founded Tangle, and his crew find themselves in. They have a publication that does a wonderful job balancing perspectives on the news of the day. They are trustworthy and thorough. Yet, I find myself deciding again and again not to upgrade to a paid subscription when I consider the option.

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→ 6:52 PM, Aug 24