@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

ryansingel

@ryansingel@writing.exchange

Building Outpost.pub to help build an indie publishing ecosystem. Also Contextly, Stanford and formerly journalist at Wired.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

Automattic and Reddit selling training data to LLMs.

Biden banning data sales to China.

Your mobile ISP? Hold my beer, we got data on everything our customers do and we gonna be BARONS!

"AI applications can only be as successful as the completeness, longevity and accuracy of their underlying data. For the mobile industry, this includes the full and complete profile of the wireless subscriber. That history consists of communications, location, and device activity"

https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/will-telcos-be-the-railroad-tycoons-of-the-ai-age-

dangillmor, (edited ) to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

What a disappointment that Mehdi Hasan is joining forces with Substack for his new media company. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/mehdi-hasan-zeteo-msnbc-1235838100/

I might have subscribed to something like this if it was hosted by people with better ethics.

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@dangillmor
If anyone knows how to contact him, I'd love to pitch him on something better

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@dangillmor
Moving off Substack is easy. Just depends on whether he signed a deal getting paid by them, and what the terms were

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@evan
@dangillmor

BRAG LOUDLY!

And then say that you know my private and unlisted email address ryan@outpost.pub and for them to say Evan sent you which will get them hooked up (truth!)

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

Airplane the movie is best understood as a Ralph Naderish take on how dangerous in-flight meal service is.

To its credit, the airline industry reacted by ending the potentially fatal habit of feeding passengers

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

Hunter Biden hiring Abbe Lowell as his defense attorney may have just saved the country from Trump being re-elected.

Lowell blew up the Special Counsel David Weiss’s prosecution of Hunter by forcing Weiss to indict his lead witness, blew up the Comer impeachment, and may well just unravel all the Bill Barr and DoJ/IRS shenanigans around Hunter’s “laptop”, Guliani’s Russian dirt backchannels and illegal leaks of Hunter’s tax returns.

Follow along at @emptywheel

ernie, to random
@ernie@writing.exchange avatar

It’s confirmed. The Vice website is shutting down.

My God.

via @willsommer

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@ernie @willsommer

Vice and 404Media should trade names

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

Once you back out of your driveway, you can safely take off your seatbelt

mathowie, to random
@mathowie@xoxo.zone avatar

I did not sit through two hours of Red Dawn (1984) in a mall cineplex to have republicans today try and say “Russian aggression is good, actually”

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

Ronald Reagan now all like

harry dean Stanton in red dawn, behind a chain link fence where he's imprisoned by the Soviets, yelling to his sons "AVENGE ME"

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@dougmasson
The 70s and 80s were weird.

Also still odd to me Lea Thompson was in that movie

dangillmor, to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

I am not a fan of Julian Assange, but some of his work over the years has been hugely important.

He is being persecuted -- that is the precise word -- by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.

His case is a clear and direct threat to ALL journalists, even though they refuse to see it in most cases.

Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Guardian, implores us to understand reality: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/64791/enough-is-enoughits-time-to-set-julian-assange-free

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@dangillmor
The Espionage Act charges are disturbing, but Assange is also being charged with a set of hacking charges that are based in fact and that no journalist would ever engage in.

I'm all for protesting the Espionage charges but his defenders refuse to even acknowledge the other charges.

Nor have I seen any media or press freedom org offer a mea culpa for continuing to support Assange when it became clear he was a sociopath and a political actor in league with Russia

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

I spent a good 30 minutes today trying to figure out why no videos would play for longer than 2 seconds on the Android. Closed apps, restarted phone, cleared caches, made sacrifices to tech deities both major and minor.

Finally disconnected Google Buds Pro from Bluetooth and that was it. The "transparency" setting on those headphones is so sensitive the tiniest noise was stopping video playback

I feel both dumb and angry. Which is about right for Gen X

Thank you for coming to my anti-TED Talk

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

1/

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@pluralistic
This is made worse by the fact you can no longer get a debit card that isn't ALSO a VISA card.

I only want to use my bank card to withdraw cash using a PIN but I'm given a card, which if lost or phished, can be used to make merchant payments that come directly out of my accounts.

It's even worse if you have "overdraft protection" which means your account can go worse than zero.

There's literally no way not to get this extremely dangerous card if you want the ability to use an ATM

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@lou
@pluralistic

Not at my bank. I can get alerted but can't block

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

Flaming Hydra Issue #1 dropped TODAY.

https://flaminghydra.com/issue-1/

60 great writers;
one co-op from the Brickhouse folks;
a daily email newsletter with 2 pieces in each

only $36 bucks a year, revenue shared between writers.

https://flaminghydra.com/about/

You signed up before you got to this line, right?

Right?

@flaminghydra

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

I am an expert prompt engineer

(This genuinely worked)

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@simon
Remind me not to apply for a job at datasette

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

This is always what #Substack has been.

Marc Andreesen pouring $85M in funding to Substack was the original Musk buying Twitter. It was an extension of his idea to build his own publication because he hated tech media.

It’s always been a grievance play, funded by white guy VC grievers, and run by a white guy griever.

ben, to journalism
@ben@werd.social avatar

It's feeling more and more like Substack will be toast if they don't significantly walk back their policy on Nazis. And perhaps even if they do. https://www.platformer.news/p/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack?utm_source=werd.io&utm_campaign=mastodon&utm_channel=mastodon

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@ben
So many right-wing folks on their platform would revolt and this is who they've always been.

I do feel badly for all the people Substack suckered into crowdfunding them millions of dollars for like 1/3 of 1 percent ownership

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@caseynewton is moving Platformer to the open-source Ghost membership CMS from Substack over its awful moderation

Glad to see more folks moving to an indie platform.

I founded Outpost.pub 2.5 years on the belief Ghost (open source, non-profit) is the future for membership-driven publishing, and that our co-op model for power services for Ghost publishers would succeed where VC $ floundered.

Still a long way to go but sticking with this bet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/11/substack-platformer-nazis/

ernie, to random
@ernie@writing.exchange avatar

Zapier, a year ago: We’re raising our prices and charging you three times as much

Zapier, today: Oops, we realize we made a bunch of people cancel! Better roll back our unpopular price increases!

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@ernie
Contextly (content recommendations that charges by page view tiers) bakes a one month grace period in. So if you have a surge from a popular post, no worries

Outpost charges by members and doesn't meter the integrations we do so no surprise charges a la zapier. API calls are cheap.

All that said, pricing is hard

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@ernie
Yup. Pricing is hard but being flexible is not. Definite red flag there

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

Almost every day, I think about this story about Brown University throwing out dorm air filters en masse into a dumpster

Wanting a pandemic to be over so hard that you throw out clean air machines and paper towels. Could not even bother to donate them

Want to reduce household illness? Get a decent air filter.

Having people over to your house? Use a decent air filter.

Have a classroom full of kids? Use an air filter.

They work and are cheap.

https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2023/10/inconvenient-wasteful-frustrating-students-react-to-removal-of-paper-towels-air-purifiers-from-on-campus-housing

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

A Walking Dead spinoff where characters realize that bikes actually work post-apocalypse

parismarx, to random
@parismarx@mastodon.online avatar

Nobody should be presenting Substack choosing to remove 5 Nazi publications from its platform as a win. Platformer alone says it’s reviewed dozens spreading those ideas, and really the Nazi stuff is just the tip of the iceberg.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/8/24030756/substack-nazi-newsletter-content-moderation

ryansingel,
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

@parismarx
@lkanies

If you are looking to move your membership/newsletter site to something independent, happy to chat.

We (outpost.pub) are a co-op that helps power the biggest publishers on Ghost (open source, non-profit). Members include 404media, The Lever, The Atlantic and more

ryansingel, to random
@ryansingel@writing.exchange avatar

Indie creators ditching one VC-funded company for another one thinking it'll be different this time. It won't be. The incentives remain the same.

LiveJournal was a trap
Medium was a trap
Patreon is a trap
Substack is a trap
Etsy became a trap
Beehiiv...

The difference this time is that there are real indie alternatives

Ghost
WordPress
Transistor.fm
Fediverse
Outpost.pub (self plug)
Buttondown
And more

The hacienda must be built

#SubstackMigration #Substack

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