ryansingel

ryansingel, 2 months ago to random

I still think the most under-reported, most holy shit tech story of the last 5+ years is how good e-bikes have gotten and how much more affordable a decent e-bike has become.

E-cars and trucks are a nice change but mostly meh. E-bikes, tho? They are magic.

They deserve subsidies and way more press attention.

ryansingel, 5 months ago to random

If you publish via #Substack and are looking to move to an indie platform, our publishers cooperative Outpost.pub can help.

We help power sites like 404 Media, Tangle, and The Lever.

We support sites using Ghost, an open source CMS.

Drop a note at support@outpost.pub for details

ryansingel, 7 months ago to random

The Dutch are using AI to street shame the rest of the world

https://dutchcyclinglifestyle.com/

Here's a stretch of Telegraph in Oakland that's perfect for getting that treatment

Try it yourself

ryansingel, 5 months ago to random

Indie creators ditching one VC-funded company for another one thinking it'll be different this time. It won't be. The incentives remain the same.

LiveJournal was a trap
Medium was a trap
Patreon is a trap
Substack is a trap
Etsy became a trap
Beehiiv...

The difference this time is that there are real indie alternatives

Ghost
WordPress
Transistor.fm
Fediverse
Outpost.pub (self plug)
Buttondown
And more

The hacienda must be built

#SubstackMigration #Substack

ryansingel, 4 months ago to random

Almost every day, I think about this story about Brown University throwing out dorm air filters en masse into a dumpster

Wanting a pandemic to be over so hard that you throw out clean air machines and paper towels. Could not even bother to donate them

#covid #AirQuality

Want to reduce household illness? Get a decent air filter.

Having people over to your house? Use a decent air filter.

Have a classroom full of kids? Use an air filter.

They work and are cheap.

https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2023/10/inconvenient-wasteful-frustrating-students-react-to-removal-of-paper-towels-air-purifiers-from-on-campus-housing

ryansingel, 10 months ago to random

Seems a good time to introduce/remind folks of the Barbie Liberation Organization from early 1980s that hacked the media by switching out the computer chips between Barbie and GI Joe dolls, so that Barbie got to say Vengeance is Mine, while GI Joe dolls said stuff like Math is Hard

https://youtu.be/eMHMf9y-27w

#barbie

ryansingel, 4 months ago to random

This is always what #Substack has been.

Marc Andreesen pouring $85M in funding to Substack was the original Musk buying Twitter. It was an extension of his idea to build his own publication because he hated tech media.

It’s always been a grievance play, funded by white guy VC grievers, and run by a white guy griever.

ryansingel, 9 months ago to random

Indie media news! Joseph Cox, Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg and Samantha Cole, all formerly of Motherboard at Vice, where they did stellar tech coverage, have struck out on their own at 404 Media. Indie, no VC $$.

https://www.404media.co/

Give them a paid subscribe or just sign up for their newsletter!

Covered by the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/22/business/media/404-media-vice-motherboard.html

ryansingel, 5 months ago to random

Friends don't let friends publish via Substack, which defends hosts Nazis and hate dealers

Lots of options:

Ghost (open source): self hosted or via Ghost(Pro) is the gold standard. The WordPress of membership-driven publishing. The co-op I founded, Outpost, adds power features for serious pubs.

Buttondown - Indie and great for smaller newsletters

Beehiiv - VC-funded, all-in-one. Beware VC incentives.

Patreon - don't do it. It's a trap

WordPress - Not a good idea. Spaghetti of plugins

ryansingel, 2 months ago to random

Just got a notice in the mail that my Philips CPAP machine had a data breach thanks to its “cloud service” connected to the secret wireless modem in the CPAP that spies on users.

I have no idea why Philips has patient’s dates of birth, email addresses and phone numbers just so it could send CPAP breathing data to a healthcare provider.

A simple unique ID generated by the healthcare provider would be enough

ryansingel, 9 months ago to random

In the late aughts, Wired.com (the online news side NOT the magazine side) experimented by launching multiple standalone blogs with a lot of editorial independence: Danger Room, Threat Level, Gadget Lab, Wired Science and more

When the mag staff got final site control, they dumped all of the blogs, despite their success and reader loyalty

Katie Drummond wrote for Danger Room

Today she got named worldwide Wired EIC

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/business/media/wired-katie-drummond.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

Hoping she brings that model back

ryansingel, 2 months ago to random

The latest news site dark pattern is hijacking the back button or left swipe to show you chumbox ads

Here's @arstechnica doing it

The amount of damage Outbrain/Taboola (and other scuzzy tactics) did to the news industry hasn't ever been reckoned with.

News sites turned themselves into adversaries you have to fight to get a nugget of info. Worst video games ever.

ryansingel, 9 months ago to random

Your occasional reminder you'll probably never need a REAL ID driver's license to fly in the U.S., so skip going to the DMV with docs

For many people there are easier federal options, including a passport card. If you already have a passport, all you do is pay $35 and they mail it to you. It's a great ID w/o your address on it and isn't easily scannable for personal info at bars or restaurants.

And passports/cards are now not trans/non-binary hostile (finally)

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/selecting-your-gender-marker.html

#RealID

ryansingel, 1 month ago to random

VMWare is one of those companies that is too big to be competent.

They bought Pivotal Tracker, a tool for managing software projects, and then recently decided to boot off all the paying customers that weren’t enterprise.

I just found an email in my spam folder. DKIM and SPF is apparently being too difficult for them to figure out. The email said I had cancelled my paid plan.

No, VMWare you decided you no longer wanted me to pay you.

ryansingel, 5 months ago to random

My non tech savvy neighbor has his dell get fried and it was too old to be worth repairing. He replaced it with some new HP computer and printer.

He thought would make setup easy.

Friends, it was not. Pretty sure I turned down at least 10 SaaS offers and had to create a new email address just to get past the Microsoft registration screen.

I couldn't quite make him understand too that he's going to have to pay 70 bucks a year to use Microsoft word.

I feel like throwing some rocks right now

ryansingel, 7 months ago to random

I appreciate the Washington Post story from Michael Coren on how to replace a car with an e-bike, but it's still stuck in car-centric thinking.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/10/17/electric-bikes-cars-cost-testing/

E-bikes are electric vehicles.

E-bikes are the most popular electric vehicles.

E-bikes are the most revolutionary electric vehicles.

E-bikes rarely get subsidized, unlike giant e-cars and trucks, because lawmakers think of them as toys, not vehicles.

E-bikes are electric vehicles.

ryansingel, 8 months ago to random

In re the FDA announcement that the crappy cold medicine on the shelves doesn’t actually work (hopefully most everyone already knew).

https://apnews.com/article/sudafed-decongestants-phenylephrine-pseudoephedrine-fda-0f140bafae9a500c5fba05fe764ecb66

We only had the crappy ones on the shelves because Sen. Dianne Feinstein wanted a law putting the stuff that actually works (pseudoephedrine + ibuprofen/acetaminophen) behind a counter, available by only by showing ID and getting put in a fed database to limit how often you buy it.

Because the war on drugs

2006: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=7929ff4f-7e9c-9af9-770b-68728b8208b9

ryansingel, 9 months ago to random

Google announced it’s creating an LLM-based article summarizer for its new search experience. The tools will just summarize a post or news story for you, so you don’t have to actually read a pesky news story or blog post.

Publishers who don’t want their stories summarized can apparently opt out by incorrectly labeling their posts as paywalled, thus demoting themselves in search.

The future is gonna be LLMs summarizing LLM junk, all the way down.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/15/googles-ai-search-experience-adds-ai-powered-summaries-definitions-and-coding-improvements/

ryansingel, 1 month ago to random

The FCC just voted to restore its authority over broadband providers and restore #netneutrality.

States largely get to enforce their laws as well.

It's a good win, with the caveat that the devil is in details and final order not released until next week. ISPs fought hard to aerate the order with loopholes.

I'm really looking forward to the FCC forcing mobile ISPs to stop their video throttling of everyone not on the most expensive plan.

ryansingel, 6 months ago to OpenAI

#openai #SamAltman

ryansingel, 5 months ago to random

At the radiology clinic in Kaiser in Oakland. Only one tech because all the rest are sick. Staff not masking. Patients, including those clearly sick and coughing, not masking either.

Love being "post-pandemic".

Even if you don't wear a mask anywhere else, my god, put one on in a hospital full of sick people.

ryansingel, 10 months ago to random

One of my favorite Google News searches is TKTK.

A good reminder that shit happens.

image/jpeg

ryansingel, 4 months ago to random

@caseynewton is moving Platformer to the open-source Ghost membership CMS from Substack over its awful moderation

Glad to see more folks moving to an indie platform.

I founded Outpost.pub 2.5 years on the belief Ghost (open source, non-profit) is the future for membership-driven publishing, and that our co-op model for power services for Ghost publishers would succeed where VC $ floundered.

Still a long way to go but sticking with this bet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/11/substack-platformer-nazis/

ryansingel, 3 months ago to random

Today could be your lucky day.

There’s a non-zero chance that if you buy an annual subscription to a great indie publication or newsletter on today Feb 29, the leap year day, that their tech won’t charge you again for four years.

Go subscribe today and see if you hit the date and time jackpot.