In the past two weeks, a Project Sail publicity brochure has begun appearing in mailboxes. Featuring images of families in clothing emblazoned with the American flag, the mailing appeared to be an attempt to appeal to the conservative-leaning county’s sense of patriotism.

That’s so blatant.

Probably the only reason it isn’t working is that the company behind it is based in Silicon Valley.

They’re going to have to find someone “from around here”. (And go behind their backs to pay off city leadership.)

Can it hurry up and ruin the AI hype, too?

In a post where she signs the open letter, ActivityPub co-author Christine Lemmer-Webber summarises the changing world well:

“This is actually a really important time for that message to come across, because our communities do both face major threats which I believe we are ideologically aligned in wanting to face:

We are facing a large number of laws which appear well-intentioned and aimed to try to take on tech gatekeepers, but unintentionally build regulatory moats that allow only gatekeepers to participate, and which threaten user freedom at large.

The rise of techno-fascism and omnisurveillance affects all users. Neither ATProto nor ActivityPub, at present, are built in such a way that they can provide the levels of protections necessary to respond to the needs of activists and community members against nation-state level threats.

These are our existential threats, not each other. And we need to figure out how to work together.”

I’m reading this as “be nice to the Bluesky guys, because we have a bigger problem to deal with.”

That’s fine, I’m not inclined to be mentally ill at strangers on the internet.

But I’m also not going to call it decentralized when it’s meaningfully not, and I’m going to keep an eye on where their money comes from.

We have a common enemy in government control.

But if you’re going to be my friend, I need you to not lie to my face.

Came looking for this comment and was not disappointed.

Petition for Silksong to be considered an honorary patient gamer game, given I waited seven years to play it.

Leeds told Ars that the RSL standard doesn’t just benefit publishers, though. It also solves a problem for AI companies, which have complained in litigation over AI scraping that there is no effective way to license content across the web.

"If they’re using it, they pay for it, and if they’re not using it, they don’t pay for it.

…

But AI companies know that they need a constant stream of fresh content to keep their tools relevant and to continually innovate, Leeds suggested. In that way, the RSL standard “supports what supports them,” Leeds said, “and it creates the appropriate incentive system” to create sustainable royalty streams for creators and ensure that human creativity doesn’t wane as AI evolves.

This article tries to slip in the idea that creators will benefit from this arrangement. Just like with Spotify and Getty Images, it’s the publisher that’s getting paid.

Then they decide how much they’ll let trickle down to creators.

Sincere question: Why was there a separate mobile domain in the first place?

I don’t understand the purpose of the letter.

Bluesky is, in practice, not decentralized.

It has the potential to decentralize, but if the community stops calling bullshit when Bluesky claims to already be decentralized, it would lose the one incentive it has to actually follow through.

WKUK: It’s Illegal To Say

13.5%, slipping to about 12%

I know that 1.5% could mean hundreds of businesses, but this still seems like such a nothing burger.

Seems untenable.

If I live in Europe and run a mastodon instance open to anyone, it’s not like I or my server fall under a Mississippi law.

What are they going to do, sue my Serbian ass? Serve a restraining order to my Norwegian server?

Israeli leadership is treating Gaza like a war crime buffet at this point.

“I mean, if genocide’s on the menu, why not sprinkle in a little murder-children-by-starvation and robot warfare? It’s my cheat day year and a half, after all.”

users are left with far fewer community options

Where is the fediverse in this analysis?

Edit: The article references Bluesky fleeing Mississippi due to risk of fines. Do admins running fediverse instances run similar risks?

Bluesky was the first platform to make the announcement. In a public blogpost, Bluesky condemned H.B. 1126’s broad scope, barriers to innovation, and privacy implications, explaining that the law forces platforms to “make every Mississippi Bluesky user hand over sensitive personal information and undergo age checks to access the site—or risk massive fines.” As Bluesky noted, “This dynamic entrenches existing big tech platforms while stifling the innovation and competition that benefits users.” Instead, Bluesky made the decision to cut off Mississippians entirely until the courts consider whether to overturn the law.

I don’t mind “TikTok-like”. I just think it’d be a silly reason for the project to shutdown.

Makes sense. It was in pre-alpha.

Now that it’s in alpha, you’ll have 13.

Once it hits beta, it’ll skyrocket to an even 20.

Question: can they get sued for putting TikTok-like in the description, or does that only apply when you’re making money?

The first half of the book is great.

The second half has ads that take up more and more of the page until you reach a page that is just ads and a QR code.

When you scan the code, it takes you to a website asking you to pay a subscription for the remaining pages.

(If you rate five stars, they send a 10% discount code to your email and add you to a newsletter list without an unsubscribe button.)

I look forward to seeing these people suffer exactly zero consequences in the coming years. /s

IMO, setting it up at home is not the bar for decentralization.

That’s exactly where I set the bar.