Author: Aulia Masna

Former tech journo, used to write for Macworld, DailySocial, e27. Ex , ran a national startup initiative program in Indonesia. Very much into the news.

What if we reintroduce the old social network model?

Twitter isn’t worse today just because its owner is an attention seeking manbaby with no self control or maturity of mind when he tweets, Twitter is worse because its owner allows, enables, empowers, and creates targets for malicious individuals to attack and harass, based on misconceptions, misperceptions, and misunderstanding of what matters. 

On top of that, he is part of the malicious individuals himself. People often talk about those who want to watch the world burn, this guy is the mascot and leader of that group.

People used to have to post their content on their own websites or blogs and often they include a blog roll or links to other blogs or sites they like to help with discovery. 

Social media made all that so much easier but it also enables malicious individuals and content to roam much more freely. Reintroducing that control over what people are willing to see and deal with in a much more deliberate and comprehensive way may be the necessary element to reduce the amount of toxicity that’s being spread around.

Mastodon’s federated nature gives people that level of control. If you’re savvy enough you can host and manage your own server/instance/domain, but if you’re not, there are thousands of servers managed by various kinds of people, many of whom may share the same views and interests with you. You can choose to be an island or be in a city or town or your choosing. Your level of interaction is up to you.

Or you can return to old school blogging.

Nice, France

I just can’t leave this alone. Detik grabbed a list of cities that exceed tourist expectations as well as those that underwhelm. The lists are supposed to have been taken from TripAdvisor and Escape but I can’t find the original.

What I can’t believe is how they translated Nice, France, into Bagus, Prancis. NICE. THAT FRENCH CITY, NICE. COME ON, THAT’S NOT NICE!

Not only did the Detik article made it past the editor(s?) if they even have one, the Popsi IG account didn’t even do their own fact check to catch the problem.

I just told ChatGPT to write a poem about TikTok in the style of Chairil Anwar. It’s definitely a poem.

Transformers Rise of the Beasts trailer is out

I’m a huge fan of Beast Wars. That 3D animated Transformers series from the mid 90s where everyone is an animal was more than just a fresh take on the concept. Never mind that even back then it looked kind of cheesy, but the writing was superb, it had strong characters, substantial storylines, all of which made the series a prime example that a reboot or sequel can equal or surpass the original.

In this trailer (people these days make such a huge fuss about the difference between teasers and trailers, this is a trailer being headlined by a truck) you see both Optimus Prime and Optimus Primal meet for the first time and eventually work together to fight a common enemy. Primal’s Maximals get introduced and we get a glimpse of the Predacons. 

Best part, we get to see G1 Prime again as the Freightliner truck instead of the newer Peterbilt one.

When the CEO of multiple major companies failed to understand corporate communications and resort to inciting public outrage 

Just a couple of days ago Elon Musk was threatening a war with Apple after the Cupertino company’s App Review team sent feedback about an update to the Twitter app with standard fare language that failure to comply with content moderation guidelines and expectations may lead to app updates being withheld and the app being potentially removed from the store.

Twitter had been down this road before as the company’s former head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth acknowledged as much in his NY Times opinion article recently.

Like any experienced and reasonable company executive, Apple CEO Tim Cook invited Elon to Cupertino for a chat. That angry canine quickly reverted to a pup and deleted the tweet about going to war with Apple

Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer is very likely accurate in her assessment.

San Francisco’s robot dogs won’t be equipped with guns after all. They may have explosives instead

The other day we saw news reports of San Francisco police being given authorization to deploy killer robot dogs. The city’s board of supervisors voted 8-3 in favor of the motion despite heated debates about safety and potential abuse.

The police denied claims that they will arm their robot dogs with guns but according to AP, they could be armed with explosives. How is that any better? 

the department could deploy robots equipped with explosive charges “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect” when lives are at stake, SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie said in a statement.

At least they said the use will be limited to extreme situations and require authorization from high ranking officers.  We know how restraint police officers of all ranks can be in the United States, don’t we?

Supervisors amended the proposal Tuesday to specify that officers could use robots only after using alternative force or de-escalation tactics, or concluding they would not be able to subdue the suspect through those alternative means. Only a limited number of high-ranking officers could authorize use of robots as a deadly force option.

San Francisco’s authorities can’t seem to restrain themselves from being swept  along by the American trend of increased militarization of their law enforcement forces. From military grade weapons, armor, vehicles, and now exploding robot dogs.

Meanwhile across the bay in Oakland, the city’s police department backed down from a similar proposal after a massive public backlash.

That Black Mirror episode, Metalhead, from season 4, immediately comes to mind.

Whales, dolphins, and orcas share the same ancestors as cows

We’ve all be taught that life began in the water before they got curious about land. Turns out some them went back to the sea hundreds of millions of years later and became the creatures we know as whales, dolphins, and porpoises. They share the same ancestors as cows, pigs, and camels.

Generational DNA mutations and alterations due to lifestyle and environment changes were inevitable.

Whales are ocean cows.

The Indonesian production of Jonathan Larson’s Rent 

I first saw Rent in Melbourne in 1999 which featured Aussie talents Christine Anu and Rodger Corser. It blew my mind and left a lasting impression even after all these years, so when I found out on Thursday night that there was going to be a production in Jakarta this weekend I snapped the tickets right away for their first show on Friday night. I wasn’t disappointed. Mostly.

I think the cast did very well in presenting the show for the local audience –they snuck in a couple of local references which were cute but I kinda wish they didn’t, took me out of the scenes – and they sang great. Although I love the addition of the impromptu Saman dance in the cafe scene. In the Melbourne show Angel was my highlight of the performance but in this one it’s Maureen who stole the show.

That the songs and the lyrics came rushing back and filled my head and got me to sing along throughout the entire show after not having listened to the tracks for a little while shows how much of a mark it left on me. I just wish the stage wasn’t so brightly lit, it took away the focus from the main performances vs the chorus or background.

PS: In one scene Angel hit Mimi in the face with a stick, I think it was an accident because it was quite a swing. The whole cast paused for a few seconds and I could feel the shock from the stage. She apologized and they all continued with Mimi holding her cheek.

Post.News is being hailed as the saner Twitter for news folks but has no resources to run it properly

The news social network was founded by former Waze CEO Noam Bardin shortly after he left the company in early 2021. The startup is being thrusted to the surface and forced itself to launch far earlier than expected thanks to Twitter’s dismantling from within, so it’s reasonable to expect many things not working, not available, or looked patched up.

NYU Professor and podcasting celebrity Scott Galloway is an investor on the site and has managed to get his podcasting partner Kara Swisher and plenty other Twitter big names to not only join but also promote the site.

However, there are concerns over the fundamentals of the site, which may or may not change in the future, but may alarm people regardless. The Washington Post’s Engineering Lead for Privacy and Security Compliance Aram Zucker-Scharff ran up quite a thread of the ones he’s come across.

Post.News makes publishers syndicate their stories to the site or publish directly there for them to be able to receive payments for articles. This means they don’t (yet?) actually act as a paywall partner with publishers and don’t direct traffic to the original site. 

I’m on the fence about creating placeholder accounts for the actual news publishers but it’s incredible that you currently have to pay to read your own article that you publish there and they’re charging for wire stories that are freely accessible on the publisher’s website. 

Aram said Post.News gives him similar vibes to Medium. There are several differences, though. Medium started with the blogging angle and charges a monthly subscription fee while Post started with the Twitter angle and charges fees per article.

Veteran tech journalist Dan Gillmor isn’t vibing with Post.News. He said, 

Major Twitter influencers are pushing a supposed replacement called Post. It may be great (I’m not allowed to use it so far) but it’s yet another proprietary, closed (in terms of interoperability), centralized social network. 

 Great for the A list and vCs. Not great for me.

If I leave Twitter, which is plainly feeling the effects of too little engineering and too much right-wing poison, it will be for something like Mastodon (I’m http://mastodon.social/@dangillmor there).  It will NOT be yet another centralized place where, someday, a sociopath CEO rules.

Of course he is guilty of the very thing he accused someone of

He lied about the death of his son for clout and got called out by his ex on his own social network. Does that mean he has no mercy for himself?