2023s
Reddit seems to have successfully put down its moderator revolt, but is destroying the site in the process
Occasionally I like to not dress like a person who works from home and dribbles food down the front of their shirt. When I’d Google for fashion advice, I’d end often up on r/malefashionadvice. Morgan Sung reports on TechCrunch that Reddit’s menswear hub is the latest casualty of its battle with moderators.
If you follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, or Mastodon, you know that I like to share memes and vintage ads and photos, and I used to often find them on Reddit. I’m just not finding those images and videos there as much anymore, and I’m starting to check Reddit less often.
Currently reading: The Gutenberg Parenthesis by Jeff Jarvis 📚
Cory Doctorow: Verizon’s “repeated incompetence and waste on an unimaginable scale.”
“The long bezzle: Verizon can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” Verizon shutters BlueJeans, three years after buying it for $400M, the latest in a long series of failures for the company.
Techdirt: Verizon Fails Again, Shutters Attempted Zoom Alternative BlueJeans After Paying $400 Million For It:
These repeated failures by Verizon would be less of an issue if the company didn’t have such a long history of skimping on essential broadband network upgrades. Whether it’s New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, the telco has a long history of taking tax breaks, subsidies, or regulatory favors in exchange for promised DSL to fiber network upgrades that somehow never fully materialize.
EFF: Congress Amended KOSA, But It’s Still A Censorship Bill. Despite small changes, the Kids Online Safety Act “is a censorship bill that will harm the rights of both adult and minor users. We oppose it, and urge you to contact your congressperson about it today.”
To demonstrate representational bias, the London Interdiscipinary School asked the AI tool Midjourney to generate images of a typical prisoner, lawyer, nurse, drug dealer, etc. The results showed striking racial and ethnic stereotyping.
My latest: Snowflake wants to help telcos ditch silos with a blizzard of data. With its telco ambitions, is Snowflake getting over its skis? The company launched its Telco Data Cloud this year to help providers make better decisions for network planning, customer service, and growing revenue.
“This question has two parts, neither of which have anything to do with the other or the subject at hand. Also, this question has four parts.” Every Question In Every Q&A Session Ever.
Daring Fireball: “Colonel Harland Sanders, who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken, sold the company to a conglomerate in 1964, and then remained their paid spokesman for the remainder of his life, despite the fact that he despised their food and professed deep regret that he sold the chain.”
I’ve been using Zoom several times per week for three years. It’s been my go-to videoconferencing service. I need to think about whether to stay with it.
Oracle expands its hybrid cloud footprint to the enterprise. My latest: Big Red introduces Compute Cloud@Customer, a microcosm of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure that runs in the customer data center.
The dirty little secret that could bring down Big Tech. New research reveals that Silicon Valley uses predatory pricing to crush competitors and scam investors — evidence the government can use to bust up tech monopolies.
Cory Doctorow: “Private equity plunderers want to buy Simon & Schuster: From the same parasites that infected your hospital’s emergency room and sucked Toys R Us dry.”
Caleb Sasser writes about “Turn-On,” a legendary hyperactive sketch comedy show from “Laugh-In”’s creators, canceled in 1969 midway through its first episode, reportedly because it was too far ahead of its time. The show disappeared for 54 years but surfaced (possibly illegally) on YouTube. Via Waxy
Life before cellphones: The barely believable after-work activities of young people in 2002. “I never knew what time it was, so I was constantly buying watches and losing them.”