In the past two weeks, a Project Sail publicity brochure has begun appearing in mailboxes. Featuring images of families in clothing emblazoned with the American flag, the mailing appeared to be an attempt to appeal to the conservative-leaning county’s sense of patriotism.

That’s so blatant.

Probably the only reason it isn’t working is that the company behind it is based in Silicon Valley.

They’re going to have to find someone “from around here”. (And go behind their backs to pay off city leadership.)

Can it hurry up and ruin the AI hype, too?

Leeds told Ars that the RSL standard doesn’t just benefit publishers, though. It also solves a problem for AI companies, which have complained in litigation over AI scraping that there is no effective way to license content across the web.

"If they’re using it, they pay for it, and if they’re not using it, they don’t pay for it.

…

But AI companies know that they need a constant stream of fresh content to keep their tools relevant and to continually innovate, Leeds suggested. In that way, the RSL standard “supports what supports them,” Leeds said, “and it creates the appropriate incentive system” to create sustainable royalty streams for creators and ensure that human creativity doesn’t wane as AI evolves.

This article tries to slip in the idea that creators will benefit from this arrangement. Just like with Spotify and Getty Images, it’s the publisher that’s getting paid.

Then they decide how much they’ll let trickle down to creators.

Sincere question: Why was there a separate mobile domain in the first place?

“I pay for access to music I get access to music.” And with ChatGPT, you pay for access to an LLM, and you get access to an LLM.

Just because you personally don’t value that as a service doesn’t inherently invalidate it as a business model, now or in the future.

Netflix lost subscribers in 2011 and 2022, that didn’t kill the company. Uber stock tumbled during the pandemic and again in 2022. In 2023, Wired was writing about how “despite its popularity… [Spotify] has long struggled to turn consistent profits.”

This is a whole wave of companies where the survivors seem financially stable now, but had a long history of being propped up by venture capital and having an unclear path to profitability.

The only thing you’ve successfully shown is different so far is that you don’t think it’s a real service.

I generally agree, but I still don’t see anything that differentiates its trajectory from the Spotifys, Ubers, and Netflixes of the world.

What are you talking about? ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. all have “subscription fees generating recurring revenue” and are famously “exploiting a gap in regulations to undercut an existing market.”

Uber took 15 years to become profitable, and Spotify took 18 years.

Again, I’m not defending any of them (they all exploit the people who make their service work), but so far AI seems to be going down the same road.

Isn’t that the case with a lot of modern tech?

I vaguely recall Spotify and Uber being criticized relying on the “get big first and figure out how to monetize later” model.

(Not defending them, just wondering what’s different about AI.)

WKUK: It’s Illegal To Say

13.5%, slipping to about 12%

I know that 1.5% could mean hundreds of businesses, but this still seems like such a nothing burger.

Seems untenable.

If I live in Europe and run a mastodon instance open to anyone, it’s not like I or my server fall under a Mississippi law.

What are they going to do, sue my Serbian ass? Serve a restraining order to my Norwegian server?

Israeli leadership is treating Gaza like a war crime buffet at this point.

“I mean, if genocide’s on the menu, why not sprinkle in a little murder-children-by-starvation and robot warfare? It’s my cheat day year and a half, after all.”

users are left with far fewer community options

Where is the fediverse in this analysis?

Edit: The article references Bluesky fleeing Mississippi due to risk of fines. Do admins running fediverse instances run similar risks?

Bluesky was the first platform to make the announcement. In a public blogpost, Bluesky condemned H.B. 1126’s broad scope, barriers to innovation, and privacy implications, explaining that the law forces platforms to “make every Mississippi Bluesky user hand over sensitive personal information and undergo age checks to access the site—or risk massive fines.” As Bluesky noted, “This dynamic entrenches existing big tech platforms while stifling the innovation and competition that benefits users.” Instead, Bluesky made the decision to cut off Mississippians entirely until the courts consider whether to overturn the law.

The first half of the book is great.

The second half has ads that take up more and more of the page until you reach a page that is just ads and a QR code.

When you scan the code, it takes you to a page asking you to pay a subscription for the remaining pages.

(If you rate five stars, they send a 10% discount code to your email and add you to a newsletter list without an unsubscribe button.)

I look forward to seeing these people suffer exactly zero consequences in the coming years. /s

I’m not sure it’s a one-to-one fit.

It’s not a community; it just hosts images. There’s no comment section, for example.

Image storage platform, like imgur.

Why do it, then?

Is this a proof of concept/MVP build, so they can iterate more efficient versions? A vanity project? A mistake?

The report doesn’t clearly establish a link between paywalls and a drop in site visits (which I would have liked to see).

One of the un-paywalled sites lost traffic mostly due to changes in the Google algorithm.

Overall, it just seems like a regular update of the website traffic rankings, juiced up by a clickbait headline.

Since April 2022, Kickstarter employees have worked under a four-day, 32-hour workweek… During this time, Kickstarter experienced the most successful period in its 16-year history, hosting some of the biggest, most groundbreaking projects ever launched on the platform.

…

As we entered contract negotiations with management, we asked them to make the four-day, 32-hour workweek permanent—not as a pilot or a promise, but as policy. We also included flexible provisions that would allow management to temporarily return to a five-day work week in the event of true business need, ensuring creators and backers are fully supported throughout the week. They have refused and are determined to retain the ability to make us work 25% more hours for no additional compensation. In other words, they want the option to make us work more for free.