The US really went and did it. Bytedance faces an ultimatum: sell TikTok - or see it banned in the US.
Now we’ll find out how important the app is to China’s influence operations.
🍿🍿🍿
The last post for Post News: a potential Twitter successor that tried to cosy up to the news industry is shutting down.
The field is thinning… I suspect it’ll come down to X, Threads & Mastodon, and Bluesky.
But can Bluesky find its audience in that context, or is the future all ActivityPub?
The one cost of AI we don’t talk about nearly enough: it’s seriously energy hungry at a time when we’re both trying together to decarbonise and increase our energy security.
New solutions needed…
The new CEO of Vimeo gets ready to sell your content to the AI companies:
Over the next few weeks, we will be gathering input via a survey and community outreach to understand the types of controls our creative community wants with respect to AI. We will be asking your opinions about your use of AI, the training you’re comfortable with, the opt-in and opt-out models you prefer, and how you want us to treat your public, private, and freely distributed videos.
So much “nope”.
spewing mediocrity is a pretty strong sweet spot for AI
📷 #mbApr Day 21
The Cairngorms in early 1989.
For day 21 of the April Photoblogging Challenge: mountain, suggested by David, aka @dejus.
Littlehampton harbour, with gulls.
I have a courtesy car while my own car is in the coach works. But, oh sweet happiness, much to my surprise, it has CarPlay. Once you’ve had CarPlay, there’s no going back.
This is awesome.
A couple of months ago, researchers found a huge area of ancient seaweed off the Cornish coast. What’s the significance of 900 rugby pitches of maerl? It could be a valuable blue carbon store:
Blue carbon is carbon that is captured and stored in marine habitats, and is considered by some scientists to be vital in helping balance climate change.
Day 17: transcendence, suggested by Drew, aka @drewbelf. #mbapr
A rare image of my long-gone fencing days. I’m the one on the right.
The political problems around TikTok will only get worse if it keeps behaving like this.
Advice to make sure you never create anything.
I feel very seen by this post from @havn.
AI is speedrunning the financial boom and bust cycle says John Naughton, in The Observer.
📷 #mbApr Day 15: small, suggested by James, aka @jmanes.
Micro adventures at one of our local nature reserves: an afternoon at RSPB Pulborough Brooks.
Birds and trees and bluebells.
A sobering find in my Mum’s negatives. This is the original Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, taken in 1989. The bridge was destroyed in the Croat-Bosniak war four years later. The bridge there now is a recreation.
Just found and followed @duncanhart and @ton, thanks to this conversation about micro.blog over at Euan Semple’s blog.
Started reading: The Best British Travel Writing of the 21st Century by Jessica Vincent 📚
OK, why did nobody warn me that Inside Out is such a harrowing watch for a parent?
Cetacean Corner. Videos of our watery mammal friends. Not for the easily offended.
Starbucks quietly pretends it never fell for the NFT hype.
I think that bubble is well and truly burst now.
It’s really hard to find a theme for most of the big blogging platforms that supports the old-style “all of the last few posts on the homepage” approach to blogging.
They all seem to assume that every post will have a title, a lead image, and that people will click through to read everything.
I’m glad micro.blog still supports that approach.
I’m having one of those days where good news in the journalism/tech/publishing space is remarkably hard to find.