Casey’s Case
I listened to a few opinions on the saga of why Platformer, Casey Newton’s tech newsletter business, is leaving the Substack platform, including the discussion on the Hard Fork podcast.
It is all too easy to make the jump to cancel culture, (big) tech censorship, liberal tech elites, or how to define alt-right, nazi, antifa, etc.
Om Malik reminded us that these platforms have investors and they want to see a growing business. The same is true for the content creators. They want to get more readers and subscribers.
all media — Old, New, Nouveau! Podcasts, Newsletters, and Streaming need growth. Organic growth is slow and measured. In our hair-trigger attention world, that is not an option. The platforms provide them an opportunity to grow fast.
Can a platform serve both masters? Perhaps. I realize that this is complicated and requires nuanced policies. I would start with the following elements:
- Welcome all opinions - Everybody is welcome to publish their opinion. I like to read different sides of a topic. Let’s allow information that covers the spectrum: both pro and contra vaccines, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, climate-alarmists, climate-deniers and all those in between. This gets platforms out of the direct censorship debate. So, yes, climate-change deniers can share their opinion on the platform.
- Free speech does have limits - There are limits to the content that can be published on the platform. These limitations are clearly published when you join the platform, including the process to report violations. The list of limitations is not absolute. Some will need to be reviewed and discussed when they happen. Some obvious limitations include incitement to violence including sharing information with the doxxing intent, violations to intellectual property law, etc.
- Promotion and amplification is about values - It is up to the platform to decide what they value. The Fox News platform and MSNBC have clearly different values. Make the values clear. “We don’t promote Nazi propaganda.” “We encourage a debate on climate change.” The implication here is that amplification algorithms are not fair and have rules defined by the owners of the platform. Also, it means that the platform may take down duplicate or similar posts.
- Provide cross polination controls - For the content that is promoted and amplified, provide controls to the user and publisher. “I am a gear head and I don’t want to read about electric vehicles” or “Don’t promote my opinion to the Elon-fan club. I can miss the online harassment that naturally ensues at the inkling of any criticism of their leader.”
So what would change in the Platformer-Substack debate?
- Substack doesn’t have to take down some of the controversial newsletters. If there isn’t any obvious free speech reason to not allow the content, keep it. And yes, Substack would still make money from those newsletters, although limited as it doesn’t amplify them.
- Substack clarifies their promotion and amplification approach. It would be clear that Nazi content would stay in a corner. Casey can then decide where he stands on them. Given what I read, he would likely move his business elsewhere anyway.
- Platformer doesn’t have to be middle person and convey the reader’s sentiments (“I hate it that I see articles about Elon next to Platformer”). The reader has some control.
I realize this write up makes it all too simple. The many folks at YouTube, Facebook, pre-X Twitter who worked on content moderation can surely chime in with the next level of nuance or complexity that comes with the field. For now, I would be happy to understand clearly the four points above from all platforms.
January 14, 2024
These Weeks in the World of Artificial Intelligence
I finally caught up with a number of AI-related newsletters. Here are a few things I learned.
One key take-away: presentations are going to be much funnier in the coming year.
- Midjourney version 6 is looking mightily amazing. I may subscribe just to liven up my presentations. Adios iStock. Hello crazy presentations.
- Lawyers are sharpening their pencils to figure out how to comply with the EU’s AI Act. Even for our simple bot, we’ll need to understand this better.
- The UK Supreme Court already settled that AI cannot be named a patent ‘Inventor’.
- AI shines when you have to remember lots of information, such as case law and medical diagnoses. Enter Nabla, a French startup, whose product lurks in the background of the doctor’s office to help the doctor. Google and Microsoft have both released models trained on medical data: MedPaLM-2 and Medprompt.
- Google NotebookLM seems interesting, especially if it could pin newsletters and websites. It would be ideal if paired with getmatter.com.
- AnyText may be the answer to eliminate the gibberish text from generated images.
- Aragon.ai is another headshot generator. However, that’s small potatoes compared to Google’s VideoPoet. ModiFy provided a flashback to the blinking websites from the early internet.
- AI will surely drive the push for more capable consumer electronics. E.g., The exciting drawww.app doesn’t run on my iPad Air as it requires more powerful Apple silicon.
- I spent this weekend understanding the options on a new Volvo sedan: Volvo S60 {B5 , T8 Recharge} {Core, Plus, Ultimate} {Dark, Black Edition}. That was easy compared to keeping track of all the LLM models: GPT 3.5, 4 or 4.5, GPT 3.5 or 4 Turbo, Gemini, Gemini Pro, DeciLM 6b and 7B, 13B, 8x7B, etc.
- New lingo: Chain of Thought (CoT) and Tree of Thought (ToT)
The Sources
January 7, 2024
Who Killed JFK?
Rob Reinier and Soledad O’Brien’s podcast has hijacked my commute for the past few days with their reporting on Who Killed JFK.
)
With the film JFK, Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner originally stoked my curiosity into what happened in Dallas on November 22 in 1963. In this podcast, we dig a little deeper. A lot deeper.
It is amazing how many errors were made during the two government investigations into what happened. The podcast does a great job going through some key issues, in 30 minutes increments (my favorite podcast length).
- Arlen Specter’s single or magic bullet theory is clearly a complete fabrication.
- The investigations were deliberately botched with key people not interviewed, reports altered, and testimonies tweaked to fit a narrative.
- Lee Harvey Oswald was, as he said himself, a patsy. He was clearly a double agent sent as a fake defector to Russia. His interest in Marx was the perfect pretext into the false flag operation detailed in Operation Northwoods.
So who did it and why? I am not going to spoil it here. Let’s just say that it started with some men in suits drinking Cuba Libres at a hotel in Miami run by some Italian fellas.
January 4, 2024
Here’s a list of tools I have been using this year to get stuff done.
- Todo lists and Tasks
- The basic interface, capabilities, and Siri integration make Apple Reminders work well for my personal todo list. Most often I think of things to do while in the car, cycling, or even in the pool. Voice integration on Apple devices is the killer feature.
- I use Obsidian for lots of things at work, including a todo file for every month. Since my Obsidian Vault is stored in Dropbox, I can access it from any device and using many different text editing tools.
- Notes and Narratives
- I’ve written by my notes system before. I continue to use Markdown with 1Writer (on iOS) and iAWriter.
- My notes are stored in two Obsidian vaults (read: notebooks). Most of my work and personal notes are in a common vault, stored in Dropbox. I can access them from any device. I also have separate vault on iCloud for notes I want to easily access on my iPhone. Although I do have a paid Obsidian license, I do not pay for their Synch capability.
- I prefer to write for work using Google Docs over Word or Confluence, primarily for its collaborative features. However, Google Docs does lack good merge capabilities.
- I journal regularly in Day One. I tried Apple Journal briefly, though still prefer the capabilities of Day One.
- Matter is my reading and read-later app. It integrates well with Obsidian to save highlights.
- Presentations
- I opt for Google Slides over PowerPoint. I gravitate to iA Presenter for impromptu presentations and presentations that I like to thinker with often.
- After trying other iOS podcasting apps, I keep going back to Apple Podcast. Combined with Apple Music and Apple Classical, there is a common interface between them.
- There are new AI-powered tools released almost weekly. I try many of them so long as a metered free version is available. I see myself go to Google Bard more often than using OpenAI ChatGPT. I also enabled the AI-capabilities in Gmail and the other Google App Suite. I tried image generation tools like Dall-E, but I don’t use them often. The initial results were less than stellar.
- There are several fitness and health related apps I use regularly: Cronometer for tracking my food, Strava and Garmin Connect for my cycling trips, runs, swims and other workouts. Apple Health aggregates a lot of the data. I am on the fence to switch from the Apple Watch to a Garmin Watch.
I am a big fan of WonderTools to learn about new capabilities and tools.
December 31, 2023
Tank, my 2005 white Volvo V70 station wagon, is nearing 200,000 miles. It is still a great car to drive to work or to load my bicycle in the trunk on the way to the group ride. There is no need to disassemble the bicycle. Open trunk, slide in the full bicycle with room to spare.
Yet, I’ve been slowly looking for a new car. I need something that I can reliably drive to Lake Tahoe or even across the Santa Cruz mountains to Half Moon Bay. In other words, “I am in the market”.
Yet, when I visit the car dealers, my experience has been the opposite of somebody looking to buy a car.
A month ago, I pulled my aging Volvo into the Audi dealership at the Fremont Automall. I figured an old car may gave the impression that its greying driver may be in for an upgrade to a new car. I was completely ignored by the sales team. Nobody came to even see us when we were checking out the Audi A4 station wagon in the showroom or when we walked the lot outside. It was a very odd experience.
At Mercedes, it was clear we were not their clientele. We lacked the bling. I wasn’t offended. It was more a badge of honor to be ignored by Mercedes.
Yesterday, at AutoNation Volvo in San Jose, AT VOLVO (!), with my entire family in tow, nobody batted an eye for us. I appreciate allowing the customer to meander. Yet, after 10 minutes, or upon entering the showroom, one expects a friendly “How are you doing today” or “Can I help you with anything?”
My theory at Audi was that few folks buy a car without their wife present. So a smart salesperson may just skip the dad and his son ogling cars. That theory didn’t hold water after our visit to Volvo with my wife and kids.
Is the car business this good these days that one can ignore the customer?
December 30, 2023
Guns in America
In a six-part Revisionist History podcast series, Canadian Malcom Gladwell, dives into the gun debate.
The way America deals with guns is absolutely bonkers
No kidding. I’ve had plenty of long discussions with my NRA card carrying and gun enthusiast neighbor. I love those conversations as they are always cordial. However, our discussions often end with “That doesn’t make any sense”.
Fourteenth century Bristol merchant John Knight is one of main characters in episode one. Right away, Gladwell lives up to the name of his podcast: history is not what you think it was. Episode one also covers one of my favorite topics, the Supreme Court, in a case New York Rifle and Pistol (the Bruen case). A double whammy.
I wont’ spoil the broth here. It is fair to say that the ending won’t surprise the regular listener of Revisionist History.
Episode 2 gets into the topic of assault weapon regulation. Also here, there is a major surprise.
The assault rifle is not the most lethal weapon in mass shootings. Sarani’s group found that more people were shot by rifles than handguns, but those differences did not translate into a higher percentage of people killed. The people most likely to die were the ones hit by handguns.
And therefor,
There shouldn’t be separate laws for rifles than for handguns. We think there should be just common laws that apply to both types of weapons.
Convictions, incarceration, and survival rates depend a lot on how far you are from a trauma center. Further, trauma centers aren’t built in poor areas as they are expensive to run and few carry insurance to pay for the services. So crime-ridden poor areas both see more gun-related crimes and are further from trauma centers. The odds are stacked against folks here. Bonkers, but no surprise.
I am glad that in season 8, Malcolm Gladwell, is back to his usual detective self. It makes for great podcasts, and surely a new book soon.
December 27, 2023
2023 Fitness Year in Review
This year I set out to cycle 2023 miles and complete the AIDS Lifecycle Ride. What a blast it was in June to cycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles with my teammates from the South Bay Blaze and a few thousand other riders. A huge thank you to my sponsors and supporters.
I ended up 2023 with over 2700 miles in the saddle, and 107250 ft climbing the California hills. I forgot to count the punctures, although switching to tubeless tires dramatically changed the number of flats.
Towards the end of the year, I switched to a more varied workout regime with lots of swimming, indoor cycling, strength exercises, and a variety of group exercise classes. I swam 23700 yards in the pool. My toughest class is Body Pump which is a varied list of weight exercises. I enjoy BodyCombat or shadow kickboxing the most. That class has so much energy.
With 166 active days, I am quite happy with my achievements in 2023.
December 27, 2023
healthyLifestyle
cycling
A Simple Corporate Presentation Template
I am a big fan of simple designs. That is also true for the design of corporate presentation templates. These templates should convey a brand, a level of professionalism (aka no comic sans), and include some necessary markers (i.e., logo, copyright). My preferred and simple corporate presentation template has:
- the company logo only on the first slide. There is no need to keep repeating it on subsequent slides. The audience didn’t forget the name of your company after slide 1.
- a copyright notice is a must on every slide. Ideally it is small, fades into the background similar to a watermark, and is out of the way. I put it on the right edge of the slide at a 90 degree angle.
- one color set. No dark and light version of the slides. It is a mess converting between them. This is especially problematic when you borrow and steal slides from other slide decks. Stick to one color scheme using corporate colors. Don’t overdo the colors.
- a simple background of singular color and no texture. I prefer a white background so that you do not need to remove the white background of pictures.
- no borders nor lines limiting the canvas. To give the author lots of options, provide them with a large unrestricted canvas. Don’t separate the title with a line. If your title requires two lines, no problem. If you need more space to put a diagram or call out, no problem.
Good design doesn’t interfere with the content. It adds to it. For a corporate presentation template this means copyright, a minimum of brand identify, and highlighting.
December 26, 2023
Google Docs Lacks a Merge Feature
Google Docs is great for collaborating on a document. Yet, once a document is released, Google Docs provides few tools to manage change. Sure there is Suggest Mode, which allows up you mark up changes to the existing document. Yet, until the changes are accepted, they do not reflect the truth. In the process, the document is all marked up and sometimes even hard to read.
To work around these limitations, I make a copy of the original document and mark it up, get it reviewed and revise it a few times. This approach has several issues. First of all, merging the changes is a cumbersome manual process. You could do a Replace All, assuming, that nobody else is taking the same approach. Yet, that approach messes up the change log of the original document. This workaround isn’t very practical.
What I really want is a Branch, Pull Request, and Merge capability. I’ll settle for Merge. Microsoft Word has the Combine feature. It has been a while since I used Word, though I seemed to recall it provided features to merge changes.
There are some add-ons to bring Merge to Google Docs. I haven’t tried them yet. Generally, I shy away for these add-ons to our company documents. It would be great to have Merge as a native Google Docs capability, wouldn’t it?
December 21, 2023
Love Is Awesome
Judd Apatow and Paul Rust’s Netflix Series, Love, is awesome. It reminds me of Reality Bites, where the dialogue is the true star. The conversation pulls you both in and repels you. You love it and get anxious. Nothing happens and something may happen. I imagine Curb Your Enthusiasm has similar qualities, although I haven’t seen more than a clip or two.
A scroll to the review headlines gives you the same vibe.
“Love - hilarious, annoying, addictive” - The Guardian
“A Dark romance about terrible people” - The Atlantic
“Liking the unlikable in Netflix’s Love”
“Netflix’s ‘Love’ is not worth your binge time”
“Netflix’s Love makes a strong case against creating TV with binge-watching in mind”
“Love takes its sweet time to get anywhere particularly interesting”
It is how I remember Reality Bites, minus the romance.
In the adorable section, please chalk up the date to the magic castle and the regular get together of Gus and his friends, writing themesongs for movies without one. That is just brilliant! It is something I wish we would have done growing up.
December 15, 2023