jeffjarvis

jeffjarvis, 5 hours ago to random

If the story "has been hidden until now" whose failure is that? Perhaps The Times and its reporters who now tell it ... in their new book.
The Untold Story of the Network That Took Down Roe v. Wade https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/magazine/roe-v-wade-christian-network.html?smid=tw-share

jeffjarvis, 2 hours ago to random

As hedge-fund-owned newspaper chains drop the Associated Press, the AP turns to the not-for-profit, digital local outlets that are the future of news to share coverage:
AP expands local content partnerships ahead of 2024 election https://www.axios.com/2024/05/28/ap-associated-press-local-deals

jeffjarvis, 5 hours ago to random

"Experts disagree on when tech companies will reach artificial general intelligence."
No. Actual experts ridicule the macho boasts of AGI for the unfounded, cultish belief that is.
OpenAI Says It Has Begun Training a New Flagship A.I. Model https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/technology/openai-gpt4-new-model.html?smid=tw-share

jeffjarvis, 5 hours ago to random

I'm glad Ken Burns discarded his neutrality to call Trump what he is (not hard) but in the long clip I've watched, his commencement speech continues media's fallacy of binaries and symmetry. No, one "side" is fascist. To equate that with an opposite is to normalize it. That is the fallacy of "polarization".

jeffjarvis, 5 hours ago to random

Polls are poison to public discourse. Rasmussen is worse than them all and should never be quoted.
Leading pollster spreads Dominion voting machine misinformation https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/28/leading-pollster-spreads-dominion-voting-machine-misinformation/

jeffjarvis, 5 hours ago to random

This is the problem with buying the AI boys size-matters gospel. Bigger is not better; it is more damaging. As ever, I cite the Stochastic Parrots paper by @timnitGebru et al.
Behind the Curtain: AI's ominous scarcity crisis https://www.axios.com/2024/05/28/ai-power-energy-data-chips-talent

jeffjarvis, 3 hours ago to random

Great news:
The 19th receives multi-million dollar grant from Melinda French Gates, Pivotal https://19thnews.org/2024/05/melinda-french-gates-pivotal-multi-million-dollar-grant/?&utm_campaign=19th-social&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social via @19thnews

jeffjarvis, 19 hours ago to random

TIL learned that the typewriter industry operated more than once as a giant, monopolistic trust and that is how QWERTY became our standard. I admire the dogged scholarship of Koichi Yasuoka on the topic. https://yasuoka.blogspot.com/

jeffjarvis, 17 hours ago to random

Only schmucks and Saudis would invest in him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/27/business/elon-musk-xai-funding.html

jeffjarvis, 1 day ago to random

California Senate just passed a troubling AI bill that harms open-source (thus benefits huge companies: regulatory capture), based on the erroneous presumption that model makers can prevent any bad actor for doing any bad act with any program, as if Gutenberg could have prevented Luther. This is what happens when legislators listen to AI boys and doomers, not responsible researchers. Explanation at the link.
https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/california-senate-passes-sb-1047

jeffjarvis, 1 day ago to random

Former WaPo editor Cameron Barr tells Semafor burying the Alito flag story was a matter of "consensus" (as so many bad decisions are). Baron says he was unaware. Ben Smith lets them skate, saying things were different pre-Dobbs. Well, if coverage had been different, maybe there wouldn't have been a Dobbs.
https://www.semafor.com/article/05/26/2024/in-a-pre-dobbs-world-the-washington-post-deferred-to-a-supreme-court-justice?utm_medium=media&utm_campaign=bensmithandmaxtani&utm_source=newslettercta

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/22/metas-new-ai-council-is-comprised-entirely-of-white-men/

jeffjarvis, 1 day ago to random

Amen to Jennifer Rubin. Gift link:

What more need Alito do before Durbin gets off the stick? https://wapo.st/3WW5wrJ

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

RIP ICQ
ICQ is shutting down after almost 28 years https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/25/24164579/icq-shut-down-june

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

I am waiting for The Washington Post to apologize for burying the Alito flag story. But then, I am still waiting for The New York Times to apologize for #ButHerEmail and #ButHisBirthday and countless other sins against democracy. So I think I'll be waiting a long time.

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

Gee. People are misinformed about the economy and crime. Think that might be the failure of the institutions charged with informing the public: journalism? You'll never see journalists reflect on that.

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

Good Lord. The Washington Post blew this, choosing not to report on the Alitos' (plural) flag at the time, dredging it up now, masking the failure amid background paragraphs. Democracy dies in terrible, irresponsible, credulous, complicit news judgment. Shame.

Wife of Justice Alito called upside-down flag ‘signal of distress’ https://wapo.st/4dS1BCf

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

Fun read on the #Threadnought team of lawyers now suing Elon.
“In a very large sense, he broke our home.”
Gift link
How a Profane Joke on Twitter Spawned a Legal Army
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/nyregion/twitter-lawyers-threadnought-elon-musk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.u00.7mlK.Ycgit3trw0EH&smid=tw-share

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

Horrid jock says noxious things and The Times/Athletic turns his doubling down on misogyny into a credulous news story, only amplifying his horrid ideas further. And they wonder how bigotry spreads.

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

The ultimate Time Pitchbot self-own: Trump is Biden's fault.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/magazine/trump-reaction-videos-biden-campaign.html

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

The Guardian laps up the nutballs doomsterism of Max Tegmark arguing the opposite of what is true: His talk of extinction from AI is macho distraction from real and present issues. God, I wish reporters would just Google #TESCREAL before reporting on the AI boys.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/25/big-tech-existential-risk-ai-scientist-max-tegmark-regulations

jeffjarvis, 3 days ago to random

Google blew it. They could have stood back and said: "Ha! Microsoft is so desperate for hype, it is irresponsibly linking LLMs to Bing. Google instead stands for reliable search and won't do that." But instead, Google did. They knew better. They all knew better. LLMs have no sense of meaning. They should be nowhere near the expectation of credibility.

jeffjarvis, 2 days ago to random

The Missouri Granger, May 12, 1874, on the invention of the typewrtier: "All we now want is a spelling machine and a patent brain-worker, through which a man may hatch machine poetry, and the summit of human ambition will have been attained."
Guess we've made it.

jeffjarvis, 3 days ago to random

As an aside, the reason I object to moral entrepreneurs' scare phrase "surveillance capitalism" as it relates to web cookies is that it diminishes the impact of the word "surveillance" by governments such as this:
Xi Jinping’s Recipe for Total Control: An Army of Eyes and Ears https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/world/asia/china-surveillance-xi.html?smid=tw-share

jeffjarvis, 3 days ago to random

The Times and Haberman as Trump whisperer are blind to the irony of writing about "the reality that a man who spent years building an artifice about himself in the press and on TV" while doing just that for him here.
How Donald Trump Still Lives in the 1980s
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/us/politics/trump-1980s-manhattan.html?smid=tw-share