How Meta is paving the way for synthetic social networks

Casey Newton [platformer.news]:

The first era of Facebook was for talking with friends and family. The second, TikTok-influenced era of the company is more focused on content from creators and other people you don’t know.

This week, we got a glimpse of the era yet to come: one where we interact regularly with both people and bots – perhaps not even always knowing, or caring, which one we are talking to.

I started on social media just to talk with other people. Some of these were actual friends and family; others came to be friends through long interactions online. We were all at the same level.

Then I started following celebrities. We occasionally interacted, but mostly I just consumed what they produced. And that’s cool. Like everybody reading this, I grew up having what’s come to be called “parasocial relationships” with fictional characters and the actors who played them.

Now I’m supposedly going to have parasocial relationships with AIs? I’m skeptical.

Some ways I find ChatGPT and generative AI useful today

  • Generating questions for interviews. ChatGPT is surprisingly great at that.
  • Generating images.
  • Occasionally writing draft introductions to articles, as well as conclusions, descriptions and summaries. I’ve always had trouble writing that kind of thing. I don’t use the version ChatGPT generates—I tear that up and write my own—but ChatGPT gets me started. I don’t do this often, but I’m grateful when I do.
  • Casual low-stakes queries, when I remember to use ChatGPT for that. “What was the name of the movie that was set in a boarding house for actresses that starred Katherine Hepburn?” “Stage Door.” “Was Lucille Ball in that one too?” “Yes.” “Was that Katherine Hepburn’s first movie?” “No.” And ChatGPT provided some additional information. I probably could have gotten that information from Google, but ChatGPT was faster.
  • I find otter.ai extremely useful for transcriptions, likewise Grammarly for proofreading. Those applications use AI, but do they use GenAI? I don’t know.

My big problem, and the reason I don’t us ChatGPT more, is that ChatGPT lies. Not only that, but it lies convincingly. A convincing liar is even worse than a liar. I don’t have much use for an information source that I can’t trust. I don’t see an obvious way to solve this problem.

Tempest in a teapot And by “teapot” I mean massage parlor

Lloyd Evans, theater critic for the British magazine The Spectator, writes about how he attended a lecture by a woman political philosopher and found her so attractive that he was distracted, so he went to a business that we in the US would call a “rub and tug” and had sexual relations with a prostitute.

“My (surprisingly) decent proposal” The Spectator

I’ve seen a few disparaging comments on social media about Evans’ article, so I found it and read it, and it was … fine. It was a certain type of humor that isn’t for everyone. I enjoyed it, though I would not say I enjoyed it a lot. The author makes himself look like a pathetic loser, but that is the point of that type of humor.

My only quibble with the article was that the author should not have named the lecturer. But the lecturer herself seems to be taking the incident in good humor so there was possibly no harm there either.

“Spectator Writer Faces Backlash Over ‘Grotesque’ Article As Named Lecturer Speaks Out” mediaite.com

The Spectator is apparently a conservative magazine, so this has become a minor football in the culture wars. Focus, people! Don’t get worked up about a slight, ephemeral article. There is far more important work to be done.

A member of Delta’s Diamond top-tier frequent flyer program is getting backlash for habitual snitching on flight attendants who violate company policy by using their personal smartphones during flights. Ironically, the snitch is herself violating company policy. [onemileatatime.com]

Meta’s battle with ChatGPT begins now [theverge.com] —  Meta is putting its AI assistant across Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook and the company’s next major AI model, Llama 3, is here.

Is Apple Universal Control unreliable?

I just set it up yesterday between two Macs located about three feet from each other, and find it’s flaky. I can move my mouse pointer and keyboard control between Macs about half the time. Other times, the mouse pointer stops at the screen edge.

The Macs are on Wi-Fi. Maybe it’d work better if I connected them with a USB-C cable?

They are a 2024 MacBook Air and 2024 MacBook Pro.

A San Diego state senator's bill would ban the plastic bags you buy when you forget yours

“The bill would tighten standards for reusable bags and require stores to provide 100% recycled paper bags or let consumers use reusable bags.” [nbcsandiego.com]

If I’m reading this right, the plastic bag ban actually increased plastic bag waste, as grocery stores started charging customers nominally for heavier so-called “reusable” bags.

We buy those bags and reuse them once or twice until they get too dirty. We haven’t gone in on cloth bags.

‘Intentional’ AT&T cable cut takes down Sacramento airport comms — The Sacramento Sheriff’s Office is reportedly investigating a cable cut that snarled check-ins at Sacramento International Airport. [fierce-network.com]. Something I wrote with Liz Coyne.

A rule I try to live by: Why do old men wear white athletic socks with sandals? Because they don’t care what other people think about how they look.

And another: People spend far less energy thinking about us than we think they do. People barely notice us at all. (Unless we are Taylor Swift.)

I just looked up “fuggedaboutit” in the dictionary to make sure I’m spelling it right.

Our new coffee machine makes 12 cups so I feel the need to make 12 cups even though I normally drink less. I’m sure this will not end up with my being awake at 3:30 in the morning scrubbing the bathroom grout with a toothbrush.

A history of disco in America–not so much the music as the cultural movement. I lived through it and learned some things while listening to this podcast. [The Rest Is History]

It’s Still Alive — “Frankenstein” is often presented as a warning against new technology run amok, but historian Jill Lepore argues there’s a lot more going on in that book.

Now I think I need to re-read “Frankenstein.” And Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr might find that interesting too.

Something I saw while walking the dog: This house has a lot going on–a model train set in the front yard, and signage on the driveway gate. Note random cactus

Sign on a driveway gate reads 'No Soliciting: Charity, food/menus, estimates, petitions, politics, religion, salesman, magazines—NO EXCEPTIONS' House with a model train layout in the front yard Another view of the front-yard model train layout

I’ve been abstaining from posting political content, news headlines, and speculation about the current global crisis

I don’t feel like I have anything to contribute to the discussion. My contribution might, in fact, be harmful; I’d basically be like one of those guys on Twitter who suddenly became epidemiology experts in 2020 on the basis of watching a bunch of YouTube videos and knowing how to use Excel. Also, I have other things I want to do with my time. And I mostly don’t like reading that kind of thing on social media, so why should I push it on other people?

I do keep up and have strong opinions, and I have been known to rant about them at length face-to-face or on the phone. I used to be more opinionated on social media, but I don’t do that here anymore—not much, at least.

I do have one or two social media friends who have no training in foreign policy or politics, but who post knowledgeably about those subjects. I do enjoy reading their posts, and find them insightful. And I enjoy discussions with them—on their timelines. Not so much here.

📷 The scrap of cloth in Minnie’s mouth was once a toy duck. It was one of the first toys we got for her when we brought her home as a pup 11 years ago.

Close-up face photo of the most adorable big-brown-eyed dog in the world. She is holding a tattered scrap of yellow cloth in her mouth.

What signal do I send when I’m walking the dog and I wave to a neighbor with a full poop bag in my hand?

“A tendency to the lurid.” Reading the November, 1932 Astounding Stories

I am reading the November, 1932 issue of Astounding Stories, starting with “The Cavern of the Shining Ones,” by Hal K. Wells. The magazine is on archive.org.

Archive.org has a library of pulps and other popular magazines, going back more than 100 years. At a glance, the most recent pulps seem to date to the 1990s.

Months ago, I chatted with a gentleman at a local community association meeting who makes a hobby out of browsing the pulp archive. He likes dark fantasy magazines from the 1920s and 1930s. He said he occasionally finds a gem from someone who only ever wrote one to three stories, and who is completely forgotten.

“The Cavern of the Shining Ones” isn’t a gem, but it’s not bad. It has a Lovecraft vibe. A party of men, recruited from Los Angeles’s homeless population by a mysterious scientist who wears goggles day and night, is searching for something in the desert. I’m only partway through the story, but I believe they will find the thing, and it will not go well for them.

Here’s the author’s biography, just one paragraph on the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

He was born in 1899 in Little Hocking, Ohio, and died in 1979 in Torrance, California. He saw active service in World War I and published “The Brass Key” in Weird Tales in 1929. Another title: “Zehru of Xollar” (1932). His work had “a tendency to the lurid.” I’ll just bet it did.

Archive.org offers downloadable PDFs of old magazines. (Other formats too.) I downloaded the PDF, loaded it onto my iPhone and can easily read it there. Even after being on the Internet for more than 30 years, sometimes it strikes me with awe.

I used a 😊 when I should’ve used a 🙁 in a business email, so my making a good first impression in the first week of my new job is ruined.

I've been hired!

The eclipse isn’t the only cosmic event happening today. I’m pleased to say that I’ve joined the new website Fierce Network full-time as executive editor for reports, helping to launch its new research arm, contributing regularly to the site and authoring our new line of industry research focused on AI, cloud, open RAN, broadband and more.

Fierce Network launched Friday. Editor-in-chief Liz Miller has more about the new site here—tl;dr it’s a roll-up of Silverlinings, Fierce Telecom and Fierce Wireless.

Credit to Liz for the bit about the eclipse. It’s my first day on the new job and I figure it’s a great idea to get things going by ripping off the boss.

NYC’s AI chatbot was caught telling businesses to break the law. The city isn’t taking it down [apnews.com] — “Asked if a restaurant could serve cheese nibbled on by a rodent, [the bot] responded: ‘Yes, you can still serve the cheese to customers if it has rat bites,’ before adding that it was important to assess the ‘the extent of the damage caused by the rat’ and to ‘inform customers about the situation.’”

Crying Myself to Sleep on the Icon of the Seas [theatlantic.com] — Curmudgeonly travel writer Gary Shteyngart takes a luxury cruise on the world’s largest cruise ship:

The maiden voyage of the Titanic (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise….

📷 Something I saw while walking the dog: This osprey, on a platform on a pole about 50 feet above a footpath around Lake Murray. I shot the photo on the 5x setting on the iPhone and then cropped it heavily, which is why it’s pixelated.

Hawk-like bird standing with wings folded on a pole sticking out from a platform, with the bird's next on the platform. Plumage is dark gray from this distance, with a white head and chest.

Anyone who fears that we may be wiped out by artificial intelligence should just buy a robot vacuum cleaner and watch the unshakable determination with which it returns, over and over again, to the one corner of the room where it gets stuck every time.

A realistic “Terminator" movie would consist of two hours of well-meaning humans patiently disentangling the T-800 from the rug or dragging it out from under the bookshelf while it beeps pathetically for assistance.

Star Trek: Future Astronauts Having Feelings

I want to like “Star Trek: Discovery” more than I do. The characters all seem to be having big emotions and I’m supposed to share those big emotions, but I do not. The show is about Future Astronauts Having Feelings. The show seems to be popular among Millennial and Gen Z LGBTQ+ people, and that’s fine.

In general, the entire Trek franchise seems to be a warm nostalgia bath. And I don’t mean that in a good way. They’ve got a whole Galaxy to play with and they keep coming back to the same characters, races, species and tropes. It’s 1,000 years in the future and hey look there’s a shout-out to Jean-Luc Picard.

Also, why doesn’t the franchise bring back Shatner and Takei? They barely used Walter Koenig and Wil Wheaton. What’s up with that?

I thought yesterday was Thursday and I thought today was Thursday. Eventually, I will be right.

The best Stephen King novels chosen by you: NPR readers share their favorites. [npr.org] — I have read all but one of these and can confirm they’re terrific.

We watched the pilot episode of “Law and Order,” which first aired in 1990. Only 495 episodes remaining.

If ActivityPub support remains off by default for Threads, fewer than 1% of Threads users will activate it. They have more important and interesting things to do than to understand the fediverse.

Suicide Mission: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

John “Swampy” Barnett, a 26-year quality manager at Boeing, tried unsuccessfully to stop management from destroying the company for the benefit of vulture investors. He died of apparent suicide recently, but his former colleagues don’t believe his death was self-inflicted. By Maureen Tkacik. [prospect.org]

Cory Doctorow notes that whether or not Boeing assassinated Barnett, company CEO Jim McNerny and its leadership killed hundreds of people on crashed 737s through willful incompetence. McNerney was proudly contemptuous of competence, publicy calling senior engineers “phenomenally talented assholes" and rewarding managers who forced them out of the company. [pluralistic.net]

How the Atlantic Went From Broke to Profitable in Three Years. Rather than chasing clicks and breaking news, the 167-year-old magazine, co-founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson, raised subscription prices and hired top talent; “we make something worth buying.” [wsj.com]

Here’s something I saw while walking the dog.

Orange vintage Volkswagen Beetle, viewed side-on, nicely centered in the photo, parked in front of and between two suburban houses.

I can envision myself starting to learn Photoshop soon. I look at this photo and think how much it could be improved if we just removed that darn green trash bin.

Lately, it feels like I have to tie myself up in a pretzel to make Obsidian do what I need and want it to do. Today, I’m experimenting with going back to DevonThink. If I get unhappy with that, maybe I’ll just use documents in the Finder.

I rarely use Venmo, and when I do I’m always startled by its news feed. It seems like such a bad idea to broadcast records of payments. I’m not particularly concerned about privacy here—it just seems like a lot of noise. Why on Earth did someone think this was interesting information?

For the past two nights, I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to induce lucid dreaming

This started with my listening to a podcast episode about lucid dreaming on Inner Cosmos, hosted by Stanford University neuroscientist David Eagleman, with guest Jonathan Berent. I can’t find out much about Berent’s background; according to this website, he’s an “entrepreneur” and “lucid dream expert,” and he’s selling an app. Which, tbh, all sounds kind of sketchy. But he seemed reasonable in the interview, and I respect Eagleman so onward.

The podcast advises three techniques to induce lucid dreaming:

Keep a dream journal. Look for common factors in your dreams that can indicate you are dreaming. Berent says he grew up in Indiana, and though he now lives elsewhere, most of his dreams occur in Indiana. So when he finds himself doing something in Indiana, he assumes he’s dreaming. (Must be awkward on family visits.)

I forgot the second thing. Maybe review the dream journal?

Test yourself throughout the day to determine whether you are dreaming. Tap your teeth. Flick a lightswitch on and off. Push one finger against the palm of your other hand. Look at a clock or some text, then look away, and instantly look back.

We know what happens with those things in wakefulness; the behavior will be unexpected and weird in a dream. For example, your finger might push through your palm. The clock or text might change drastically when you look back at it. Your teeth might float away. If any of these things happen, you’ll know you’re dreaming.

I’ve been doing the reality testing several times a day; I set an alarm on my phone to remind me.

I haven’t done well at dream journaling. Ideally, you should wake yourself up after 5-6 hours and journal at that moment. But I have chronic insomnia—difficulty returning to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night, sometimes three or four nights a week—and so I do not want to mess around if I’m getting a good night’s sleep. I did wake up once last night and got out of bed (for the normal reason one awakens and leaves bed—more common in middle-aged prostate-havers and pregnant people) and brought my phone with me and dictated a recap of my most recent dream. I haven’t listened to that recording; it may just be a minute of mumbling, a stream of water hitting water, followed by a toilet flushing.

I woke up many times in the night and was aware of having many dreams, but I could not tell you details of any of them—other than the one I journaled. I remember that one with a fair amount of detail.

From my listening to Eagleman’s podcasts and other reading about sleep, my failure to remember dreams is unsurprising. When we sleep, the part of our brains that records working memories—short-term memory—is switched off. Without recording short-term memory, nothing can get saved to long-term memory. Dreams are forgotten within seconds of awakening.

I said earlier that Berent sounded reasonable on the podcast, and that’s only 99% true. When Eagleman talked about “reality” and “dreaming,” Berent talked about “consensus reality” and “dream reality”—that they’re both equal somehow. This is bullshit. There is only one reality. Anybody who’s ever kicked a coffee table while barefoot knows that.

No, I will not take your customer satisfaction survey. Not now, not ever.

I’m doing more writing for Silverlinings and the upcoming Fierce Network site and looking for news, feature and trend ideas related to cloud infrastructure and platform, networking and AI for the enterprise. Hit me with your pitches and ideas at mitch@mitchwagner.com.

Do you do lucid dreaming? If so, do you find it beneficial? Harmful?

Whenever I talk with someone with a New York/Jewish accent, I start reflecting it back to them. One minute I’m just a regular middle American dude, and the next minute I’m Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Here's why AI search engines really can't kill Google

AI search tools are improving but they don’t match how we use search. [David Pierce / theverge.com]

Search can be divided into three types, says Pierce: People primarily use search just to find websites.

… my favorite fact of all: … a vast number of people every year go to Google and type “google” into the search box.

People also use search for specific facts, such as who won last night’s big game.

And the third type is the “exploration query.”

These are questions that don’t have a single answer, that are instead the beginning of a learning process. On the most popular list, things like “how to tie a tie,” “why were chainsaws invented,” and “what is tiktok” count as explorational queries. If you ever Googled the name of a musician you just heard about, or have looked up things like “stuff to do in Helena Montana” or “NASA history,” you’re exploring.

I needed to get my glasses repaired, but I couldn’t remember what you call the person who does that. I came up with “optimist.”

📷 Good morning! Here’s something I see on my walk every day.

She says she has been a good dog and would like a treat now.

Black buff-colored dog with a long nose, looking at the camera from the end of a leash. The dog is wearing a safety-yellow harness. Black buff-colored dog with a long nose, looking away from the camera and making a squinty face. The dog is wearing a safety-yellow harness. Black buff-colored dog with a long nose, coming in to boop the camera.

Overheard: “My teacher told me years ago not to worry about spelling because in the future there will be autocorrect. And for that I am eternally grapefruit.”

Death and typos: Writer/musician David Safran describes his six strange years screening online obituary comments. His job was overwhelming and rich in errors. And it drove home one message: we’re always on the clock. [theguardian.com]

Elon Musk has fully bought into the ‘great replacement.’ Musk thinks Democrats are using immigration to bolster a favorable voting demographic. But that’s not how immigration works. [theverge.com] — It is, at most, a short step from “great replacement” to “The Jews will not replace us.”

Margaret Atwood on Stephen King’s “Carrie,” which turns 50 and is still relevant today. Like much of King, it’s about the white underlcass in America. [nytimes.com]

First impressions of my new MacBook Air, after using it just a few minutes

  • Holy cow, this thing is fast compared with my 2018 MacBook Pro. I did a thing where I open 30+ tabs simultaneously. Took a couple of minutes on the MBP, but is virtually instantaneous on the MBA.
  • Migration Assistant seems to have worked flawlessly. I had to authenticate and give permission for a few things, but that only took about a minute.
  • Unexpected benefit: With a 15" built-in display, I now have a usable second display for my desk. My previous 13" display wasn’t usable when the MBP was on my desktop attached to the external Cinema Display, keyboard and trackball, except under limited circumstances. I hadn’t considered that when I decided on 15".
  • Hmmm… I hope this thing fits into my favorite computer bag. If not—MOAR shopping!
  • I can switch back to Safari from Vivaldi now, but I don’t know if I will. I’ve come to like Vivaldi.

Before upgrading to my new MacBook Air, I am being responsible, updating the operating systems and making sure my backups are all up-to-date. But really I just want to hold-my-beer this bitch and let Migration Assistant rip.