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Jay Hoffmann

I work at Reaktiv. I write at The History of the Web.

New newsletter: We wonder often if what is created by AI has any value, and at what cost to artists and creators. These are important considerations. But we need to also wonder what AI is taking from what has already been created.

https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/what-happens-to-what-weve-already-created/

Posted to Mastodon

This future AI is generating is risking not just the slop it spits out, but what's already been created.

https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/what-happens-to-what-weve-already-created/

Posted to Mastodon

Thankful for @mmasnick who's out here sounding the alarm.

And remember this for the critics.

...the cultists will argue that the public supports them, but they’re increasingly trapped in a shrinking snowglobe of propaganda, desperately denying the reality that more and more Americans are seeing this mess for what it is.

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/10/no-the-people-didnt-vote-for-this/

Posted to Mastodon

Hixie's Natural Log: When complaints are a good sign

I can't imagine a more healthy outlook on the importance of complaints, and what they really tell you. Feels like this applies to a bit more than just product development too.

The worst thing to do, when you receive such complaints, is take them to heart and try to fix them. This is because by definition you wanted these complaints. They are a sign that the thing you built is built as you wanted to build it. The people complaining want something different, they don't want your thing. It's just that your thing is so good that it's the thing they're compelled towards even though it doesn't prioritize the things they care about most.

Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government, And It’s Even More Dangerous

What makes Elon the clear and present danger is that it is, at all times, unclear if he is being willfully destructive in service of a devotion to a nihilistic or autocratic ideology, or if he's being accidentally destructive because of a bullish confidence coupled with a deep, deep ineptitude. The result is always the same of course, destruction. But it makes him hard to track and to predict, even as he goes on with his bull in a china shop impression he's doing right now.

But there are smart ways to do it and then there’s this: which is just utter destruction while looking over his shoulder to see if the nihilistic kids who worship his every move are finding it entertaining.

There’s a crucial lesson here about thoughtful reform versus destruction: Musk’s approach to institutions resembles a toddler “fixing” a grandfather clock by removing its pendulum. Yes, the clock needed maintenance — but now it can’t tell time at all. The federal government absolutely needs reform, but what we’re seeing isn’t reform — it’s vandalism dressed up as innovation. And unlike Twitter, where users could move to Mastodon or Bluesky (or just log off entirely), there’s no backup government waiting in the wings when Musk’s wrecking ball finishes swinging.

The End of News

Lastly, I just have to put in a word for the end of objectivity. I think that the main problem of where we are right now when it comes to trust is this idea that we have to be pure and neutral and have no thoughts, but just be receptacles for facts. The more that we can transparently bring our expertise and intelligence to the task, the better it will be for everyone.

EVERYTHING Notion Launched in 2024 (MASSIVE UPDATES!) - YouTube

Things I think are most useful here:

  • Options for customizing Notion Websites
  • Notion forms that can trigger tasks
  • Buttons inside of databases. For instance you can imagine a button that "moves a task to QA". You can also trigger formulas
  • Much better task management
  • Home view has some potential
  • Pinned tab
  • Automations that can trigger all sorts of different workflows, like setting different properties based on others
  • Suggested edits
  • Comments inside of database properties

Insecure billionares. "If there was a playbook for how to be a jackass in 2025, I’m pretty sure we would see all of it... in Zuckerberg’s behaviour, and he would also have a good chance to appear on the book cover, wearing his dumb Aut Zuck aut nihil shirt."

https://thejollyteapot.com/2025/01/12/the-age-of-insecure-billionaires/

Posted to Mastodon

The age of insecure billionaires

Hasan Minhaj and Ronnie Chieng both had a segment in their recent comedy specials about 30 - 40 somethings falling trap to algorithmically pushed alpha male content that makes men question their place in the world and reframes equity initiatives as a zero sum game that they are losing out on. There is something about our time and our generation that make us vulnerable, and I'd be willing to bet that most American men have noticed the shift, or even seen it turned to themselves. Something about the way the world has moved on, or begin to loosen the grip, and men feeling like they are left behind, true or not.

And even if you are a billionaire, it seems, you are just as vulnerable to that type of thinking and that turn into this toxic blend of nihilism, misguided self-improvement, and surface level skepticism that's little better than our parents refrain, "you can't say anything anymore". Just look at Zuck.

If there was a playbook for how to be a jackass in 2025, I’m pretty sure we would see all of its chapters at play in Zuckerberg’s behaviour, and he would also have a good chance to appear on the book cover, wearing his dumb Aut Zuck aut nihil shirt.

The ideal day

I heard some advice that you should map out your ideal day. This is mine.

"Netflix’s movies don’t have to abide by any of the norms established over the history of cinema: they don’t have to be profitable, pretty, sexy, intelligent, funny, well-made... Netflix’s audiences[..] aren’t even watching."

Netflix killed a legacy

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-49/essays/casual-viewing

Posted to Mastodon

My latest newsletter is about the development of progressive enhancement, and the work of the people that made it possible

https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/the-inclusive-web-of-progressive-enhancement/

Posted to Mastodon

Zucks only real superpower is to be so devoid of any guiding ideology that he will shamelessly pursue whatever provides him with the most immediate wealth and power, almost always with borrowed and stale ideas.

https://kottke.org/25/01/metas-free-speech-grift

Posted to Mastodon