McFilter

Interesting Things on the Internet: January 27th 2025 Edition

• The end of the playground. "By mandating which services have to be funded while simultaneously capping the taxes that pay for them, Westminster has decided to cut or halt funding to an array of other services and pretend that this is the choice of local councils, which of course it isn’t." The legacy from the Tories, which Labour seem to be doing little to address (I know, it's hard, but doubling-down on "hard choices" that only seem to apply to the least able to bear the cost doesn't scream "we're running a more equitable Government" to me), and meanwhile Reform go from nowhere to 11% of the vote in last week's council by-election. The easy way out is to demonize those voters, but I think Tim Bray's suggestion (see "In The Minority" below) is better; along with continuing the quotidian work of finding small ways to meet and connect with them.
• Dual Power Supply: Snapshot. I'm a fan of both this research project looking to develop open-source hardware flow batteries, and how open they are about sharing their research journey. These are the sort of weeknotes I should be finding time to write.
• In The Minority.

  Basically, in Modern Capitalism, whenever, and I mean whenever without exception, whenever someone offers you an “opportunity”, they’re trying to take advantage of you. This is appallingly tone-deaf, and apparently nobody inside that campaign asked themselves the simple question “Would I actually use this language in talking to someone I care about?” Because they wouldn’t.

  Be blunt. Call theft theft. Call lies lies. Call violence violence. Call ignorance ignorance. Call stupidity stupidity.

  Also, talk about money a lot. Because billionaires are unpopular.

• Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01. Long but interesting investigation on AI, self-driving cars, etc. from someone who's been deep in that area or research and academia for many years. It's rather less "rah, rah, it's all going to be amazing" than the "AI" techbros or the politicians. I didn't find much I could pick holes in.
• A Rant About “Technology”. This is excellent. "I don’t know how to build and power a refrigerator, or program a computer, but I don’t know how to make a fishhook or a pair of shoes, either. I could learn. We all can learn. That’s the neat thing about technologies. They’re what we can learn to do."