Doc Searls's Blog, page 12

Today’s Tabs

Overheard: "AI is bullshit's superpower."

Big topic at IIW last week: What MCP’s Rise Really Shows: A Tale of Two Ecosystems. This may also relate:  AI Agents x Law Initiative—A New Stanford and Industry Initiative Launched Yesterday.

The best take on Adolescence I've seen so far. HT Dave Winer.

My photos from Day One and Day Two of last week's IIW are up. Should have Day Three up soon. VRM Day too.

BBC: "The Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data watchdog, said online targeted advertising should be considered direct marketing." This is what Don Marti told me back in 2011, when he helped me with research toward The Intention Economy. it's also why, in Separating Advertising's Wheat and Chaff, I wrote this: "So how did direct response marketing get to be called advertising ? By looking the same. Online it’s hard to tell the difference between a wheat ad and a chaff one. Remember the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers?” (Or the remake by the same name?) Same thing here. Madison Avenue fell asleep, direct response marketing ate its brain, and it woke up as an alien replica of itself."

Guess I'll be archiving and deleting all my data with 23andMe.

Bloomberg busts Apple for privacy liberties Bloomberg also takes.

Essential reading from Adrian Gropper: The value of AI is limited by privacy.

Differences

Watch others follow. Harvard did the right thing.

All errands today here in Pasadena, which is one of my favorite places in SoCal. Or hell, the world. Check out City Hall. Looks like the capital city of some country on the Mediterranian. Sure, it's chock full of cars and traffic, but that's an American thnig. Right now I'm at the Arroyo-Calif Car Wash (what it says on the sign), which is the best around. There is nothing like it in Indiana, which is a car state as well. For $34 they give your car the best cleaning it can get, short of a full detailing. And they do that too. Next is Toyota Pasadena, with which my experience has been nothing short of exceptional. 

The end is nearer. 5G to eat some over-the-air TV stations. That's the idea, anyway

Days

And then they did. There comes a time in high-stakes basketball games when a team melts. That's what happened to Duke. You could see it in the players' body language, all through the closing half. They were playing not to lose. Houston was playing to win, with wicked, committed defense. Duke got so lame that players were dribbling off their legs and failing to inbound the ball. As a fan, it was hard to watch. I hate to say I had no faith that Cooper Flagg's heroic final shot would go in. But I didn't. I kept saying to my wife, "Shit, they're going to lose."

More the next three days at IIW. VRM Day was good. Very packed with good info about who's working on what, especially around MyTerms.

Sunny Vinny Afternoon

The family (well, in-laws’) vineyard in San Martin, California

I’m here (a short drive south of San Jose) for the afternoon, if any local friends feel like stopping by.

Tomorrow it’s VRM Day. Tuesday to Thursday, it’s IIW.

See you theres.

Hear in Near L.A.

Just loving the hang time we got yesterday with Tony after two long flights and one short drive from LAX.

Fry Day

Subscription economy suckage. Just made my annual call to The New Yorker, to get a better subscription deal than what they offer with automatic renewal. So, instead of paying $169.99, I'm getting a new subscriber promotional rate of $99.99. I've been a new subscriber every year since the 1960s. Bonus link from 10 years ago.

All good. Writings by Katalin Bártfai-Walcott: Digital Locusts, Digital Void, We Optimized Everything But Ourselves, The Great Fork: An Anthropological Retrospective on Homo Intentus and Homo Modelus, Exploring the First Principles of AI, The False Intention Economy: How AI Systems Are Replacing Human Will with Modeled Behavior.

What-Happenedings

Though it may take longer. Usually does. I say some stuff I trust will eventually prove true in Pew's Imagining the Digital Future report on being human ten years from now.

Be theres. In The False Intention Economy: How AI Systems Are Replacing Human Will with Modeled Behavior, Katalin Bártfai-Walcott lays out the battlefield between the real Intention Economy and the fake one that surveillance creeps are talking about. We'll be working on the real one next week at VRM Day and IIW. VRM Day (on Monday) is free, and IIW is cheap as conferences go. (Among other good things, I hope that this by Dazza Greenwood comes up.)

It's not about identity on the Internet. It's about the better system that replaces it. As Jamie Smith explains, Steve (Lockstep) Wilson does a great job explaining verifiable credentials.

Answers are in the comments. Oddly, among my most-visited (and presumably linked-to) blog posts is What are the balls on Prague’s spires called??

In case you didn't know already. Mark Hurst: AI is creating a frictionless surveillance state.

Movements

Really. Click on it. This is scary. Via Wndy.com. Windy’s views are the best. Watch the storm activity here:

I suggest rocketing his ashes into space. I’m still shocked and sad to know Dave Täht has died, but I only have one source of information so far, and it says nothing about where and how he died. Or if there will be somewhere the customary celebration of his life.

It will never die. Phil Windley says Long Live RSS.

Department of Political Correction. Wired: The DOGE Axe Comes for Libraries and Museums.

Maybe. Tornado?

Turns out this was bullshit. Marcus Smart is still with the Wizards.

Remembering Dave Taht

Dave Taht on FLOSS Weekly

I just learned here that Dave Täht died today, at just 59. I don’t know how or where. I do know he was one of the world’s great human beings, as well as a brilliant and generous producer of tech and wisdom about it.

Example: if you know about (and no longer have a network that suffers from) bufferbloat, thank Dave.

I’ve lost count of how often Dave has been a guest on one of my podcasts. He was always reliably informative, good-humored, and a source of music and songs. Behind him in the screen grab above is the guitar he carried everywhere. The sticker says, “This guitar kills Vogons.”

Here are some links I’ll be watching for more news. Feel free to contribute more:

Google searchWikipediaLibreQoS’ page remembering DaveDave’s XitterSearch for Dave on BlueSky

 

 

 

Pictures

Still miss him. Just found a photo of Aaron Swartz from the time I recruited him for a panel at Comdex in 2002. He was a kid, but rocked it.

I suppose it's one of these. The photo at the top of this story is of the Linden Cogeneration Plant in New Jersey, which I shot while flying in or out of Newark sometime. 

Here's a shot I took fling in or out of Salt Lake City. 

But if you need one, there are 123 others in this collection here. They didn't use my best shot of The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern in this Martha's Vineyard Times story a few days ago.