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kottke_org_feedLeaving Neverland director Dan Reed on the Michael biopic out in theaters right now: “How can you tell an authentic story about Michael Jackson without ever mentioning the fact that he was seriously accused of being a child molester?”
kottke_org_feedTwin Peaks × LCD Soundsystem: a video mashup of Dance Yrself Clean and the Twin Peaks theme music. Perfect. A damn fine cup of coffee, even.
daringfireball_feedRuss Choma, reporting for Mother Jones:
Devin Nunes was not an obvious choice to run a fledgling social media network, but after $1.1 billion in losses, the former dairy farmer and congressman is out as the head of Truth Social.
Donald Trump Jr., a board member at Trump Media + Technology, the parent company of Truth Social, said on Tuesday night that Nunes would be replaced by another executive who formerly worked at Hulu. Nunes confirmed the move in a Truth Social post of his own.
The company, which is majority owned by Donald Trump, has seen its stock plummet 84 percent under Nunes’ leadership, from its debut price of $58 back in 2024. The current share price of around $9.80 is arguably still optimistic for a company that has lost $1.1 billion since it went public, and recorded just over $10.6 million in revenue in the same time.
Like a well-oiled Atlantic City casino.
When Trump Media was first announced as a concept, the Trump family said it would include: Truth Social, streaming television services to rival Netflix and Amazon and web-hosting that would rival Amazon’s AWS business. And all of it would be devoted to fighting the “woke” media and corporate culture that Trump said had blacklisted him following Jan. 6. Truth Social would be a redoubt for freedom of speech, the streaming services would have wholesome non-“woke” content that America craved and the web-hosting would provide a home for any company that dared to challenge Amazon’s alleged anti-free speech motivations.
I’m sure the rest of that has merely been delayed, temporarily, while Trump Media’s best and brightest minds continue working on the cell phone they started selling last summer but still haven’t shipped.
kottke_org_feedProPublica explores what a future without vaccines would look like in the US. Hundreds of thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of children paralyzed, and many other children stricken with serious but easily preventable health issues.
kottke_org_feedThe earliest-known recordings of whale songs (from 1949) were recently discovered in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s archive. The scientists who recorded the audio didn’t even know what they were listening to.
daringfireball_feedNilay Patel, in a terrific essay (and Decoder one-sider) at The Verge:
In fact, the polling on this is so strong, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people hate AI, and that Gen Z in particular seems to hate AI more and more as they encounter it. There’s that NBC News poll showing AI with worse favorability than ICE and only a little bit above the war in Iran and the Democrats generally. That’s with nearly two thirds of respondents saying they used ChatGPT or Copilot in the last month. Quinnipiac just found that over half of Americans think AI will do more harm than good, while more than 80 percent of people were either very concerned or somewhat concerned about the technology. Only 35 percent of people were excited about it.
Poll after poll shows that Gen Z uses AI the most and has the most negative feelings about it. A recent Gallup poll found that only 18 percent of Gen Z was hopeful about AI, down from an already-bad 27 percent last year. At the same time, anger is growing: 31 percent of those Gen Z respondents said they feel angry about AI, up from 22 percent last year.
A good friend texted me a few weeks ago that “the phrase ‘software is eating the world’ sure hits differently now” than when Marc Andreessen coined the term back in 2011. (Patel, in fact, references Andreessen’s seminal essay.) That same friend texted me a link to this piece by Patel this morning.
Something is profoundly off in the computer industry when it comes to software broadly and AI specifically. It’s up for debate what exactly is off and what should be done about it, but the undeniable proof that something is profoundly off is the deep unpopularity surrounding everything related to AI. You can’t argue that the public always turns against groundbreaking technology. The last two epoch-defining shifts in technology were the smartphone in the 2000s, and the Internet/web in the 1990s. Neither of those moments generated this sort of mainstream popular backlash. I’d say in both of those cases, regular people were optimistically curious. The single most distinctive thing about “AI” today is the vociferous public opposition to it and deeply pessimistic expectations about what it’s going to do.
You can’t advertise people out of reacting to their own experiences. This is a fundamental disconnect between how tech people with software brains see the world and how regular people are living their lives.
So what is software brain? The simplest definition I’ve come up with is that it’s when you see the whole world as a series of databases that can be controlled with the structured language of software code. Like I said, this is a powerful way of seeing things. So much of our lives run through databases, and a bunch of important companies have been built around maintaining those databases and providing access to them.
Zillow is a database of houses. Uber is a database of cars and riders. YouTube is a database of videos. The Verge’s website is a database of stories. You can go on and on and on. Once you start seeing the world as a bunch of databases, it’s a small jump to feeling like you can control everything if you can just control the data.
But that doesn’t always work.
“Software brain” is a good term — a tidy two-word encapsulation of a sprawling worldview that is currently very much in vogue. Take some time to read Patel’s whole piece carefully. It feels important, and it’s really well considered.
waxy_feeddaringfireball_feedSpeaking of Chris Espinosa, this is pretty neat:
On September 1 I’ll join the elite club (members Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Mike Markkula, and Bill Fernandez) who have worked under a number of Apple CEOs ≥ our employee number:
Woz: 1 (Scott)
Jobs: 2 (Scott, Markkula)
Markkula: 3 (Scott, Sculley, Spindler)
Fernandez: 4 (Scott, Markkula, Sculley, Spindler)
Espinosa: 8 (Scott, Markkula, Sculley, Spindler, Amelio, Jobs, Cook, Ternus)
kottke_org_feed
I’ve never seen anything like these photos before. In October 2024, Rachel Moore had a close encounter with a humpback whale in French Polynesia and took these photos of the whale’s eye. Moore wrote of the experience:
This moment of eye contact was beyond my wildest dreams. I’ve never encountered a whale like this one, and it was the most profoundly beautiful experience of my life.
Tragically, just a few days later, the whale was dead; she drowned after being struck by a boat. Moore’s photos and experience galvanized an effort to regulate a slow zone for large boats in French Polynesia during whale migration season, which became law late last year:
French Polynesia has just passed new speed regulations to better protect humpbacks during their migration. Vessels over 12 meters must now travel at 10 knots (12 knots max) within 1 nautical mile of the islands, helping prevent the kind of tragedy we never want to see again.
(via moss & fog)
Tags: photography · Rachel Moore · whales
daringfireball_feedTom Warren, The Verge (gift link):
“Many of these employees have spent years, and in some cases, decades, shaping Microsoft into what it is today,” says Microsoft’s HR chief Amy Coleman in a memo seen by The Verge. “For those who may be considering their next chapter, we’re offering a one‑time Voluntary Retirement Program.” Microsoft says it applies to only a “small percentage of our US employees.”
US employees whose combined years of service added to their age totals 70 or more will be eligible for voluntary retirement, and Coleman says this will include “generous company support.” It’s not clear if this is a precursor to more layoffs at Microsoft, but it certainly looks like a method to avoid a bigger round of layoffs ahead of Microsoft’s new financial year in July.
70 combined years? My god, when did Microsoft get so, well, soft? I just read about a guy at Apple whose age plus years of employment will hit something like 114 later this year. If I weren’t so lazy I’d double check the exact number with a calculator, but whatever it’s up to today, he hit 70 combined years back around the time the first iMac came out.
askamanager_feedA reader writes:
I have recently made it to the second round of interviews for a role I’m very interested in. The conversation is with the person who is leaving the role I’m interviewing for.
I’ve never interviewed with the person who is currently in the job in question, but I take that to mean that she’s leaving the organization on good terms and for her own reasons, and that they trust her to make a recommendation on who will succeed her. Would you agree with that take on the situation, and if so what kinds of questions do you think I should ask or expect? How do I sell myself for the role without coming across as “I’m going to be better at this than you were,” which I’m sure would be a turn-off?
There are two possibilities:
1. The interview is primarily for her to evaluate you as a candidate and, while you’ll still have the opportunity to ask your own questions, it’ll be more or less like any other interview and you should approach it that way.
2.. Or, the main purpose of this meeting is for you to be able to talk to the person who’s currently doing the job and get your own questions about the role answered. In this scenario, she will likely still provide feedback to the hiring manager about you and other candidates, but it’s not the primary purpose of the conversation.
Have they said anything to indicate which it is? Sometimes an employer will say something like, “We’d like to give you some time to talk with the person who’s doing the job now so she can tell you about the work with more nuance” — and that’s a sign that it’s more likely to be #2 (or at least mostly #2). Or they might not say anything like that in advance, but when you sit down with her she’ll make it clear that that’s the bulk of the agenda.
Either way, you should prepare for both scenarios — meaning that you should come into it expecting #1, but be ready with a lot of your own questions if it tuns out to be #2. (You should be ready with a lot of your own questions regardless — because in either scenario it’s an opportunity to hear firsthand from the person who’s doing the job now — but if it turns out to be #2, you don’t want the conversation to stall because you only prepared a couple of questions.)
Questions you can ask the person who’s doing the job you’re interviewing for include things like the best things about the job, the most challenging things about the job, the manager’s management style, secrets to success for doing well in the role, and whether there’s anything she was surprised by or wished she’d known before she started. You should also ask about workload, what the busiest times of the year are, and what those look like, because you might get a more accurate/honest answer than you will from others. And depending on the job, you might ask technical questions too, like what software they’re using for X, or how they’re handling a particular known challenge with that software, etc.
As for selling yourself without coming across like you think you’ll be better at the job than she was … I’d argue you should never really be coming across that way in an interview, even when you’re not talking to the person you’d be replacing, since you can’t possibly know from the outside if it’s true! Good interviews don’t feel like sales pitches; the best ones feel like a conversation between two potential colleagues trying to figure out if a collaboration between them would make sense — and that’s how you should approach this too. Listen to what they’re looking for, talk about how you might be able to help with that, pull out things from your professional history that relate to what they need, and — while they’re assessing you — ask the questions that will help you assess them back.
The post how do I interview with the person I would be replacing? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
daringfireball_feedRachel Metz, reporting for Bloomberg:
A small group of unauthorized users have accessed Anthropic PBC’s new Mythos AI model, a technology that the company says is so powerful it can enable dangerous cyberattacks, according to a person familiar with the matter and documentation viewed by Bloomberg News.
A handful of users in a private online forum gained access to Mythos on the same day that Anthropic first announced a plan to release the model to a limited number of companies for testing purposes, said the person, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. The group has been using Mythos regularly since then, though not for cybersecurity purposes, said the person, who corroborated the account with screenshots and a live demonstration of the model.
Jess Weatherbed, at The Verge (gift link):
The model was reportedly accessed illicitly on April 7th, the same day that Anthropic announced it was releasing Mythos to a limited number of companies for testing. The group that gained the unauthorized access has not been publicly identified, though Bloomberg reports that its members are part of a Discord channel that seeks out information about unreleased AI models. [...] Other unreleased Anthropic AI models have also been accessed by the group, according to Bloomberg.
So on the one hand, Anthropic itself is the one describing Mythos as a dangerous national security threat. On the other hand, their own security is so sloppy that rando hooligans on Discord have had access to Mythos since the day it was announced, and regularly access other unreleased Claude models. This, just weeks after Anthropic screwed up and accidentally exposed the entire source code to Claude Code.
If Mythos is as dangerous as Anthropic (including CEO Dario Amodei) claims, this is a colossal screw up. If a Discord group of AI enthusiasts has unauthorized access, why should we not assume that Chinese, Russian, North Korean, and Iranian intelligence agencies do too? And if this is no big deal, then Anthropic (and Amodei) are full of shit about how dangerous Mythos is. One way or the other it looks like a total clown show over there.
kottke_org_feedWorried About Teens Today? So Were Adults in the 1920s. “A century ago, new technology and mobility reshaped what it meant to be young, linking rural life more closely to the city.”
askamanager_feedHere’s some coverage of Ask a Manager in the media recently:
I talked to Time about communication habits that are annoying your coworkers.
I talked to Bloomberg about how managers should discuss pay with employees.
I helped MarketWatch advise a letter-writer whose employee told her boss the writer was judgmental and belittling for giving feedback.
Huffington Post quoted me about what to say if a coworker is staring at your chest.
Also…
We’ve had a rash of ads auto-playing sound recently and are trying to get them all blocked, but if you encounter one (or any kind of problematic ad), the best way to report it is: look for the PubNation logo (“PN”) beneath the ad, click it, and a window will open with a report form to fill out, which will make it much, much easier for us to locate the and block it. Thank you!
The post Ask a Manager in the media … and how to report problem ads appeared first on Ask a Manager.
unsung_feedAn interesting 10-minute video from gruz about Super Mario Bros. Remastered, a modern Super Mario fan remake with surprising depth that puts Nintendo’s own efforts to shame:
What I liked about it is that it’s wrestling with the idea “How do you improve on something considered perfect?” and touches upon the important area we cover occasionally here on this blog: when is software finished?
There is also another interesting angle. Even though the game requires original game ROMs to work, it’s still in a very, very gray area:
[…] Once you strip it down, this thing is built around Nintendo’s world: the Super Mario Bros. name, the characters, the visual identity, the level concepts, the branding, the whole presentation. And the more ambitious it gets, the riskier it feels. Once a fan project starts offering not just a remake, but extra modes, editor tools, custom-level browsing, ratings, and a growing user-generated content scene, it stops looking like a small tribute and starts looking like something operating in Nintendo’s lane.
(I didn’t expect to see the original Super Mario game to come up so often on this blog – I just added a tag for it – especially since I don’t have any personal reverence for it. But it seems it’s Super Mario and Doom specifically that became timeless pieces of software that keep being resurrected, revisited, and remixed, over and over again.)
#games #piracy #software evolution #super mario bros #youtube
unsung_feedAn interesting flavour of a molly guard that can only happen in onscreen interfaces is “occasionally moving things out of the way to mess with the user.”
The messing-with-the-user part is, ostensibly, for their benefit. Making something not appear in the usual position, or not behave the usual way, becomes a speed bump, cancels out motor memory, and forces a conscious reaction rather than flying through the interface on autopilot.
The simplest example is dialogs that ask about dangerous actions suspending the “default action happens when you press Enter” behaviour:
(There is a way to continue the dialog on the right using the keyboard alone – but it’s only via ⌘R and not the default, breezy Enter.)
Another version is swapping buttons or showing them in an otherwise unusual order:
But remember when I said “can only happen in onscreen interfaces?” Well. The apotheosis of this very idea, spotted in a New York alley, proves otherwise:
It’s a Hirsch ScramblePad, inconsistent very much by design, a login mechanism where every time the digits get put in a different place.
The idea is meant to help with two problems:
I understand “ScramblePad” was the original product (here’s the patent with some nice illustrations), and the name got genericized since. Here’s competition, MIWA Random Tenkey – once probably so much more futuristic, today equally quaint:
One can occasionally see more modern versions today:
But back to our beloved screens, where some banking web apps copied the idea:
And even recently, Motorola touted it as a feature on their phones:
I’m not a security expert, so I won’t try to opine how effective those things are. I tried to research whether forcing a password out of motor memory – which these will accomplish – is ultimately better or worse, but a lot of the papers I found were inconclusive. (As always, some of the theoretically good ideas for security bounce off of human limitations and convenience: Forcing someone to remember a password might mean they will write it down somewhere, effectively making things worse.)
kottke_org_feed
I got the chance to go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden with friends recently and it was magical, otherworldly, lovely. I think we hit peak blossom down to the second. It was cold and gray and windy, which kept the crowds down, provided the perfect photographic contrast, and made for an enchanting petal-fall.
Tags: photography
askamanager_feedIt’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes:
I have a question that might be suitable for “ask the readers.” When has someone reached out to you with a request to network that was compelling and made you actually want to respond?
I’ve seen a lot of stories of bad networking on here — people asking vague questions, not seeming to know what they want, or reaching out with a request to “network” that’s obviously a veiled inquiry about a job. What does genuinely good networking look like?
I’d love to hear from readers about requests they were happy to respond to or people who actually impressed them in a networking conversation. It’s especially helpful to hear examples of good networkers who were entry-level in their fields.
Readers?
The post what does good networking actually look like? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
kottke_org_feedIf you want to surf elsewhere in the galaxy, it doesn’t actually look that promising. “Surfing on Titan would likely be a surreal, slow-motion, and tenebrous experience.” Or there’s also a planet with a sulfuric acid ocean?
