Notices by Ian Betteridge (ianbetteridge@writing.exchange), page 5

This picture captures one thing that's gone wrong with British politics so well. The three people on the right were PM for a total of 20 years. The five people on the left cover just ten years. I think we should have taken chaos with Ed Milliband.

There is a certain irony in calling a march calling for a ceasefire of a bloody conflict "disrespectful" on a day which remembers a ceasefire which ended a very bloody conflict.

OK this is very very very cool.

https://www.macstories.net/stories/obsidians-importer-plugin-lets-you-move-your-apple-notes-to-any-note-taking-app-that-supports-markdown/

Marc Andreessen's manifesto: https://technovia.co.uk/2023/10/16/marc-andreessens-manifesto.html

Do you think that when Marc Andreessen quotes the Futurist Manisfto he's also aware that Maranetti, who wrote it, was a fascist?

This just seems fucking pointless to me. Spray painting a university library just means working class people have to clean it up, the government doesn't give a shit, and the money comes out of university budgets – and universities are already so skint they're laying people off.

It's protest as fapping.

https://juststopoil.org/students/

I kept saying this yesterday – the government *did not* remove clauses requiring companies to spy on E2EE communications. The situation remains exactly the same, it intends to get access to all encrypted communications in the UK. This was NOT a victory. All that happened was a minister pointed out that Ofcom could not issue an order to do something which wasn’t technically possible.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/09/07/uk-tries-to-claim-it-hasnt-backed-down-on-encryption-at-all?utm_medium=rss

It's long past time for Apple to stop advertising on Twitter: https://ianbetteridge.micro.blog/2023/09/04/its-long-past.html

@kravietz I find it so fascinating. If I had more time, I could see myself getting really deep into studying German cultural and political history and the way it all intertwines.

It’s always worth reminding yourself about the entwining of the far right with “natural” foods, a back-to-the-land approach, traditional crafting etc.

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-bio-nazis-go-green-natural-farming-right-wing-extremism/

This is still one of the greatest ever put downs of Mastodon, to be fair.

Hmmm, now what's the phrase I'm looking for? Oh yeah – the record labels are parasites on creative people and should go to hell.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/music-labels-sue-internet-archive-over-digitized-record-collection-2023-08-12/

@aral LLOLLOLOLLOLOLLLLLLL

(Literally laughed out loud at that one!)

Disappointing to see people trot out Meta’s “antithetical to the open web” talking point re Canada’s so-called link tax. We do not have an open web. We have a web which is controlled by large monopolies. Canada’s law is a reaction to that.
Now is it the right approach? I don’t think it is. But the key question is how to break Meta and Google’s monopoly power, not pretending that reactions against monopoly power are breaking something which doesn’t exist.

When companies like Disney and Apple buy ads on Twitter, they are funding actual nazis.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/13/twitter-creators-payments-right-wing/

The “town square” analogy for social media is another one of those crap ones that somehow got traction. No one actually wants a town square. They want a cafe at the edge of the town square where they can chat to their mates and watch the world go by. They don’t want some bloke with an amplifier in the middle of the square screaming about how Jesus saves.

This from @Onmyom sums up why Netflix has gone from "required' to "really I can probably cancel that now". An endless sea of shit content which does nothing but clutter up the programme guide.

https://om.co/2023/06/24/arnolds-docuseries-a-case-study-in-online-content-pollution/

@ChrisPirillo If Apple was smart it would include the ability to have weird bulging cartoon eyes instead of your real ones

Had a random thought today that LLMs might do to writing what the invention of the camera did to painting: push it in new directions away from simple reproduction of life.

The whole “blue bubbles” thing is weird, driven by US tech journalists with a total lack of understanding that no one outside the US actually uses SMS, iMessage, or Google’s owned extensions to RCS. https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/31/top-reason-android-users-switch-to-iphone/