404 Media
404 Media
Seconded. Decentralized services are the way and we should be using the networks we want to see succeed.
dansinker.com
dansinker.comThe rise of mass social platforms has been at the cost of a truly independent, truly open internet. But it's still there. You can still build anything on it, free of platforms and the overreach of monopolists and oligarchs.This is the way. The mass media is not helping right now but there is a vast network of people sharing information that you can tune into with a little work.
Krebs on Security
Krebs on Security“I don’t recall seeing an ‘NTSB Board’ being fired during the middle of a plane crash investigation,” Frost said in a recent SANS newsletter. “I can say that the attackers in the phone companies will not stop because the review board has gone away. We do need to figure out how these attacks occurred, and CISA did appear to be doing some good for the vast majority of the federal systems.”If you never investigate crimes did they really happen?
Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon Capital ChronicleTheir cancellation, first reported by STAT News, worries local researchers, doctors and patients, who fear that the Trump administration, in its drive to cut spending, may stall or even cut off vital funds that pay for research on cancer, dementia and other conditions. NIH distributes about $40 billion a year in grants, and right now in Oregon, over $500 million in funded projects are in progress, supporting more than 5,000 jobs.We're finding out what happens when people who hate this country run the government.
News Habit Updates
Heckuva week, politicswise. I am not enjoying the firehose of news and I read a couple good reminders recently: Matt Haughey's Protecting your mental health during a clown president's second term and Mike Monteiro's How to survive being online. I especially liked this bit:
Am I telling you to bury your head in the sand? Far from it. I am telling you to moderate your exposure to the bullshit. Your retweet or reskeet or repost is not going to save democracy. Your hot take on some idiot’s confirmation hearing is, at most, freaking out your friends. And if you want to remain on social media, as I will be, do your best to separate the signal from the noise.
These were a great reminder that I am in control of the information I take in. The timing, the quantity, and the sources. I can turn off notifications, unfollow accounts that post breaking news, and batch my online reading time so it happens all at once instead of in constant drips.
I definitely do not want to tune out the world. I want to know what’s happening in a way that lets me contribute effectively over the long term rather than feeling constantly defeated. Here are some changes I’ve made recently to my media habits.
Tuning my social media
I’m not on the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, or any of the ad-supported corporate social media sites. I removed those during the last Trump term and I’ve been enjoying the (soon to be nonprofit) Mastodon ever since for what I think of as big group social. However, I do follow many people who post breaking news and I’ve had to cut back on those. Mastodon has a mute feature that lets me mute accounts for a certain time period and then they’ll show up in my feed again. I’ve done a 7-day mute for about a dozen news-based accounts I follow. Now my timeline is much more social and less doom-y. I’ll see how it feels when the news shows up again. With the pull of breaking news gone, I can look at Mastodon less throughout the day and just catch up every so often.
I really like Sill for aggregating links from my Mastodon feed. It’s one of the only news sources I let into my email, but it arrives at the same time every day so it’s easy to add to a reading batch instead of consuming it as soon as it comes in.
Small group social media like private spaces, text groups, or other forums haven’t really needed any changes for me. They are super helpful for commiserating and don’t tend to turn into constant doom like big group social can. Maybe I’m just lucky on that front.
Tuning my news sources
As I mentioned in a post here the other day my window on the web is an RSS reader. I use a self-hosted, open source reader called Tiny Tiny RSS. tt-rss has an API which lets me write my own interface for consuming feeds—something I'm lucky to be able to do because I'm a web developer. But I still encourage people to look into hosted RSS readers. I read any email newsletters through RSS instead and I keep my email focused on alerts, notifications, and personal short reads. Anything longer goes into a newsreader.
I have had to remove a handful of breaking news and politics-related sources from my newsreader. So what sources do I tune into? Here are a few news-adjacent sites I keep up with regularly: Dan Gillmor's Cornerstone, Garbage Day, 404 Media, Press Watch, Vox Technology, and emptywheel. I also subscribe to weird art tumblrs, D&D blogs, music gear blogs, and a metric ton of personal blogs. I haven't needed many changes here.
Tuning my phone
Notifications are a tricky balance. My rule is that news, big group social, and most apps have alerts turned off. Small group social is ok for alerts. This has been a rule for me for a long time so nothing really changing on this front, but I remember the days when news apps were constantly grabbing my attention and it took a while for me to realize that was awful.
One big change I’m making is eliminating anything with advertising. The hardest on that front has been the Gmail email client on my phone. It includes ads in several places so I’ve been moving to Proton Mail which does not include ads. For the moment, I’m finding it a good substitute and anytime I can move something away from Gmail that feels like a good step. I think we have enough evidence to say ads are poison and will lead to constant enshittification.
Tuning my in-person interactions
I’m not a very in-person social person but I’ve been trying to change that by saying yes to more in-person social things. I think it’s important to make sure I’m not isolating myself in front of my numerous screens. Joking around and commiserating and having fun creating things with people is a nice shield against that feeling of doom. More of that in 2025 is my plan.
George Hotelling
George HotellingSome of my favorite tricks for finding RSS Feeds to followThis is a nice collection of RSS hacks. I still use a feed reader every day—it’s my primary window to the web. I can’t imagine giving up that control to someone else’s decisions.
Garbage Day
Garbage Day...the Insurrection was the first time Americans could truly see the radicalizing effects of algorithmic platforms like Facebook and YouTube that other parts of the world, particularly the Global South, had dealt with for years. A moment of political violence Silicon Valley could no longer ignore or obfuscate the way it had with similar incidents in countries like Myanmar, India, Ethiopia, or Brazil. And once faced with the cold, hard truth of what their platforms had been facilitating, companies like Google and Meta, at least internally, accepted that they would never be able to moderate them at scale. And so they just stopped.This feels very accurate to me. I think it's something we need to acknowledge so we know the hazards of using these monopoly services.
The Verge
The Verge“Simply, we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components to a new nonprofit organization,” Mastodon says in a blog post, “affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.”It’s so important to have other models of organization. We don’t have to live in a world where a few monopolies own the entire social web. Participate with the world you want to see.
n+1
n+1Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.”Practical art for modern living.
CNN
CNNWalmart, John Deere, Tractor Supply and other companies are changing or walking away from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. But Costco believes DEI helps its “treasure hunt” shopping atmosphere, and it is standing behind its efforts.This is the way. Happy to see this.
HouseFresh
HouseFreshThey’re buying magazines we love, closing their print operations, turning them into digital-only, laying off the actual journalists who made us trust in their content in the first place, and hiring third-party companies to run the affiliate arm of their sites.Trusted media brands are cashing in on search engine affiliate marketing with thin gruel content.
Ars Technica
Ars TechnicaApple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that its voice assistant Siri routinely recorded private conversations that were then shared with third parties and used for targeted ads.My guess: worth it. They probably made 20x that on advertising. It will have little to no impact on future sales. What are their customers going to do, switch to the OS that takes a screenshot of what you’re doing every five seconds?