1. Put your Mars dreams back in the toy box, boys
Via Phil comes this wonderful beat down on the idea that humans can colonise Mars. Outside of science fiction -- and more on that shortly -- Mars just is not a place amenable to any kind of multicellular life, let alone mammals. And turning it into somewhere that might be would involve so much effort that could be better focused on, you know, just keeping the one planet we know is habitable working as intended.
2. The outward urge
It's no surprise that Mars colonisation appeals to the same bunch of internet-native rich bores that are obsessed by everything from AGI to life extension. Cory Doctorow has reviewed Adam Becker's book on them and their ideas, and it sounds like an insta-buy to me.
3. I have no mouth, but I must testify before congress
Any article which starts by mentioning Harlan Ellison's second-best story is always going to get my attention, but one which also skewers some specific stupidity or our tech overlords is definitely worth a read. This time it's Eric "grown up in the room" Schmidt who gets the kicking. Schmidt appeared before Congress and sombrely informed them that within a few years AI would be soaking up 99% of all current power generation and, therefore, the US should be racing to build power capacity though "renewable, non-renewable, whatever. It needs to be there, and it needs to be there quickly."
Of course, the AI that Schmidt talks about had better be good at writing its own prompts, because increasing energy generation that much in that short an amount of time would require enough non-renewables to come online to cook the planet. But hey, think of how fast it could generate memes.
4. Even the best things are getting worse
I'm not a home SAN kind of guy, but those who are tell me that Synology has always been the best choice for anyone wanting to store a lot of stuff locally rather than leaning too much into the cloud. So when I saw that the company is now insisting that customers should be using its own-brand and approved disks rather than anything they want to use, I let out a big sigh. Why can't we have nice things? Oh yeah, capitalism.
5. Always good when a company trusts its staff
Big golf clap to Automattic, the company that has managed to burn away more goodwill thanks to the antics of its CEO than any other bar Tesla. This time, it’s not attempting to betray the spirit of open source software, or using arbitrary systems to control competitors. No, it’s just watermarking documents in an attempt to find who has been leaking stuff to the press.
Here’s a tip to Matt Mullenweg: if you don’t want people to leak, perhaps you should shut up occasionally yourself?
6. What is the internet for?
This is a great article about the internet of slop, but this sentence sums up so much of what’s wrong: “Today’s internet isn’t really designed for us, but rather to elicit certain responses from us, responses which are hostile to human flourishing”
7. The pirate is to err, and to err is human
Who could possibly have imagined that there would be a thriving market in hacked internet devices which allow you to stream subscription sports (and other channels) without paying? Apart from everyone who has ever read any cyberpunk novel?
In the UK, this is apparently now so common that the police aren’t even going after low-lever sellers – they’re making the usual song and dance about “going after the big fish” and “connections to organised crime” (hint for plod: sooner or later, all crime has “links to organised crime”)
8. Blast from the past: There’s being wrong, and being wrong
And boy, was Henry Blodget wrong. Nowadays, he’s reduced to making up fake people for attention.
9. Smart devices get dumber and dumber
I have to confess that not so long ago I was a little obsessed with smart devices. That’s why virtually every bulb in my house is smart. Look! I can turn them off and on without leaving the sofa! From my PHONE!
And then one day you wake up and you realise that your bedroom light is coming on randomly at 4am and you can’t work out which of the many doohickies in the house or cloud are doing it.
And then the next day, you realise that your thermostat has stopped working despite only being eleven years old, because Google has decided to not bother with it anymore.
And that is why I no longer buy smart anything.