This is someone’s idea of a revolutionary rapid transport that’s supposed to beat the traffic. Sure, it’s currently only a prototype, just a showcase of an idea, but it looks very much as if the future of transport is a Disneyland ride or a glorified Uber pool. Other cities have much more efficient and safer versions called a bus route, a metro, or MRT.
You may have read about last year’s Tesla jam in the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop so there’s no question that it can happen again.
South Korea’s cyber security landscape is a nightmare
I’ve always known that South Korea has a weird fetish with Internet Explorer and that they were forced to scramble for solutions when other browsers became more popular and IE was losing support from Microsoft. I had no idea that a convoluted layer of security applications was behind the fetish.
Banks in the country apparently require their customers to have multiple “security” apps just to be able to use online banking because they don’t want to use established digital security resources.
Nowadays, a typical Korean banking website will require five security applications to be installed before you are allowed to log in. One more application is suggested to manage this application zoo. And since different websites require different sets of applications, a typical computer in South Korea probably runs a dozen different applications from half a dozen different vendors. Just to be able to use the web.
I’ve got a blog at another place that I doesn’t support RSS so I’ve been thinking of importing them here or to Medium, but Medium looks too serious and sophisticated for something like my blog. I also thought about reviving my Blogger account but too much time has passed and it’s just a whole different vibe now, so I guess Tumblr wins (or lose).
Initially I was going to have different content on different platforms but it would be too impractical and inconvenient. I’ll be going through one site looking for stuff I may have posted somewhere else and waste too much time.
The plan is to post all of the entries here as is and then backdate them so they appear in the correct order.
I haven’t used Tumblr from the web for a long time, been almost exclusively on the mobile app for years. Turns out the web interface is just so much more elaborate and lets you do so many more things, like backdating a post.
Calls for the return of personal blogs are getting louder
I restarted blogging a month and a half ago here on this channel having taken time out away from Twitter and since then I’ve seen more and more people either returning to blogging or calling for the return of personal blogging.
A few days ago I saw this site by Ash Huang and Ryan Putnam, Bring Back Blog, looking for people to join their movement. Their reasons are the same as why I started blogging again, the Internet community was much better when people posted longer, more complete thoughts for the public to read instead of easy to twist bits and pieces, and the responses being equally thoughtful and on their own spaces as well.
Launching your newsreader in the morning and going through the feeds was a shared experience among internet users way back when but the web culture seems to have kind of moved on from there. We’re supposed to reduce the layers between publishing and public conversation and it seems the incorporation of the social web would be a fundamental part of it.
Twitter was ideal for information exchange, entertainment, and quick conversations but turns out it’s terrible for legitimate exchange of thoughts and ideas even if it’s taken 16 years for many people, myself included, to finally shake it off.
The rise of Mastodon shines the spotlight on ActivityPub and other social protocols like it which means we could be on the verge of a new internet era especially as Automattic and Flickr are considering its integration to their products.
A second piece I saw was this post from The Verge, asking for the same thing with the same reasons with the added point of being able to control your own content and presence. I’ll just repost her argument that drives home the point of personal blogging.
Buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn’t. This is your creation. It’s your expression. It should reflect you.
*[update] I’d be remissto not mention this post by Ernie Smith, formerly of shortformblog, from 2019, about reviving blogs. Have a read through it.
I think I’m pretty happy that one of the major things that came out of 2022 was the implosion of Twitter which opened up a whole range of other destinations for the social web that may have always been there but saw little attention.
The social space is exciting again with people flocking to places like Mastodon, Post, and Tumblr and the federated space is getting far more attention than ever.
In a lot of ways it seemed to have brought back some of the web development energy of the 2000s as people began to rethink what’s possible.
Much of the development back then was fueled by VC money which ultimately halted many innovations in pursuit of growth and dominance so it remains to be seen how this new energy is going to be funded. I have doubts that crowdfunding will be able to generate the necessary resources without being supported by other forms.
What that would be I guess is something that we’ll eventually find out in the coming years if the stance against capitulating to VC demands becomes more widely adopted.
Movie studios could be liable for releasing misleading trailers
Two Ana de Armas fans successfully sued Universal for not featuring the actress in the movie Yesterday despite being part of the trailers, after they rented the movie to watch at home.
This is dangerous territory. Trailers come out months before the final cut of the movie gets approved and often there are rewrites and reshoots.
The judge said the ruling is limited to whether an actor or actress and scenes are in the movie. Teasers and trailers are made and released based on what’s available to the trailer editors at the time which does not include decisions to alter the movie down the line.
One of the most obvious examples is Rogue One which had an extensive third act rewrite and therefore reshoots after several trailers were released. Tony Gilroy, who took over from Gareth Edwards, made substantial changes to the movie that several footage from the trailers didn’t make it to the movie. Promoted scenes were dropped.
The American legal scene is crazy enough that based on this ruling someone can sue Disney for not including the train station scene from the trailer in the movie.
If a trailer is actually deceptively released, with a “malicious” intent of lying to the audience about aspects of the movie, sure, you can claim false advertising but you have to prove intent.
I feel like we’re going to hear much more about this sooner than later. Like how Universal’s undoubtedly expensive lawyers failed to make convincing arguments.
If you’re going to watch a movie at home, especially one that supposedly features your favorite actress, I feel like you should have the time to at least look it up on IMDb or read reviews. The movie had been out for months, reviews had been published, and her being dropped from the movie was widely known by the time it made the home release. Ignorance shouldn’t be a reason for winning lawsuits.
Unless this ruling gets thrown out on appeal, it could change how studios promote movies. Trailers would have to be crafted around potential lawsuits from late changes to the movie.
Despite the apparent mass migration of Twitter users to Mastodon in the past several weeks, I don’t feel that this network has experienced anything like the 2009 Hudson River moment when a plane landed in the water and its pilot, Captain Sully, became sort of a household name after Twitter users began sharing photos of the plane and the rescue/evacuation attempt that followed.
In Indonesia that moment was the 2009 twin bombing in Kuningan, Jakarta. It thrusted Twitter to national prominence when terrorists bombed the Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels and a survivor live tweeted the entire moment starting from the explosions near the coffee shops of both hotels.
I’ve read people describe the vibe of Mastodon being like Twitter circa 2010 but to me it still feels a little earlier than that. On the other hand maybe it doesn’t need a moment like that because people already understood how it works in general.
Mastodon is a network that, while technically different to Twitter, serves similar functions, which means unless there are more migration level events or perceived existential threats to Twitter, the general public won’t fly the coop.
The appeal of the elephant site right now is the ability to fully isolate undesirables and to be where people like Elon Musk have no control but if you and your community aren’t affected by their shenanigans (not necessarily due to political leanings or social views but because for you it’s like looking at foreign news on TV), there’s no reason to move because everything still works just fine. Moving there means doing the same thing at a different place which has slightly different features but with more technical barriers.
Yes, the technical barriers exist and not just from the need to choose servers but things like finding out who to follow (because people’s followings are limited), posts not being carried over when moving servers, inconsistent display of metrics, having to follow accounts before you can add them to lists, etc.
It certainly doesn’t work as a 1:1 replacement and people looking for that won’t see the appeal. Mastodon’s pull factor has to be something else and the reasons will be different from one person or community to the next.
One thing’s for sure, both sites are about the communities, without which, they won’t survive, let alone thrive. A social network is its people, not the features or the platform.
Mastodon’s features and platform may help support a healthier community but as long as the community leads, public figures, or thought leaders haven’t moved over, the majority of the population won’t either.
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AuliaSays 