The Other Bubble: Why “Software as a Service” (SaaS) products - especially the enterprise-oriented offerings - often end up being so awful.

When therapy goes wrong: the problem of underqualified practitioners: Far more people should see therapists, but it is wild that there’s technically nothing to stop anyone claiming to be one.

XOXO festival 2024 playlist: Videos from the final outing of the ‘experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online’.

Who owns your shiny new Pixel 9 phone? You can’t say no to Google’s surveillance: Researchers find the Pixel 9 phone transmits “location, email address, phone number, network status, and other telemetry” to Google every 15 minutes by default.

A Personal Take on Using LLMs: Eleanor Konik’s view on when she finds it reasonable to use large language models.

The Return of the Deniers and the Revenge of Patoshi: One of the analyses that suggest that the creator of Bitcoin owns around 1.1 million of them.

Using static websites for tiny archives: What Alex does with the files that survive the decluttering.

Digital decluttering: Alex Chan’s process of deleting their less valuable files.

Revealed: International ‘race science’ network secretly funded by US tech boss: Andrew Conru previously gave >$1 million to the ‘Human Diversity Foundation’.

You should be using an RSS reader: RSS is great (& Cory Doctorow uses Newsblur for it).

Undercover police officer admits spying on Keir Starmer when he was a barrister: I’d maybe have been more actively excited about Starmer in his ‘radical barrister’ phase of life.

Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance: Arguments against the nothing-to-fear trope.

The Art of Working Loudly: Don’t hold back from talking about what you’re working on.

Armed man arrested near Trump’s California rally was plotting to kill him, police say: Are there usually quite so many assassination attempts on a US presidential candidate?

Induction chemotherapy followed by standard chemoradiotherapy versus standard chemoradiotherapy alone in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer: Research finds that a bout of chemotherapy before the standard chemoradiotherapy reduces deaths from, and recurrence of, cervical cancer.

Expensive sci-fi dreck: The title refers to Elon Musk’s latest robo-stuff of course.

Starmer’s Brexit “Reset” is Not What the Public Wants: Starmer’s transition from committed defender of our previous European freedoms to someone content to make the most minor tweaks to the relationship.

Muscle matters: the effects of medically induced weight loss on skeletal muscle: Losing large amounts of weight, whether via using pharmaceuticals or otherwise, can cause substantial muscle loss.

28 things I’ve learned: Mainly about how to treat both yourself and other people.

Pure Blogger: ‘Pure blogging’ is ‘blogging because you have something to say’.

TikTok plans mass job cuts on UK moderation and safety teams: To be replaced by a mix of offshore workers that they can treat and pay a lot worse alongside cost-cutting ‘automation’ it sounds like.

Five Reasons People Who Claim PR Will Help the Far-Right are Wrong: Rebuttal to a common claim that well-meaning opponents of proportional representation in the British electoral system make.

TikTok knows its app is harming kids, new internal documents show: All the social media companies either know full well the harms that using their product can bring or are wilfully ignorant of them.

Ribbonfarm is Retiring: The how and why of Venkatesh Rao - creator of the term ‘cozyweb’ I think - ceasing his 17 year old blog.

The future of live news online sucks: Why the TikTokization of the big social media platforms makes them ‘uniquely bad places to follow news’.