How to break obsolete data models that drag down AI. Today’s telcos are hawks among sparrows, armed with futuristic AI technology held back by networking infrastructure built for a prior era. My latest on Fierce Network.
"Hawk Among the Sparrows"
I read this story when I was a little kid — it blew my mind.
My cousin Barry let me borrow a whole stack of Analog magazines from 1968-72, which included this issue, and I devoured them voraciously. That stack of magazines is a big part of my origin story as a science fiction fan.
That stack of magazines is a big part of my origin story as a science fiction fan.
And Barry never expressed much interest in having the magazines back, so I hung on to them. They may be somewhere in my house right now, 50+ years and 2,500 miles from where they started.
Those magazines were how I was introduced to Joe Haldeman — they included several of his early stories, including “Hero,” which became the opening of “The Forever War.” In much later life, Joe and his delightful wife Gay became friends.
Great cover, isn’t it?
How the Attention Economy Is Devouring Gen Z -- and the Rest of Us
I loved this Ezra Klein interview with Kyla Scanlon, a newsletter writer who focuses on the attention economy. The discussion complements one of my greatest fears about the U.S. (and maybe the whole West) — that the economy, politics and society are now built on attention and virality, rather than things that matter — manufacturing, science, infrastructure, etc. It’s all about the retweets.
We’re doing ok now, coasting on past accomplishments, like wealthy spendthrifts living off the wealth of past generations. But it’s coming apart fast.
Donald Trump is, of course, the ringmaster of this circus.
Crypto is the apotheosis of the U.S. economy built on social media virality. Gilded Age robber barons were monsters, but they built railroads, coal and steel mines and factories. They built urban infrastructure. The U.S economy and society today are built on conspiracy theories and digital beanie babies.
This sounds dire — but we can stop this. People and societies have free will. It’ll take a while to dig out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into. I probably won’t live to see the end of this process. But we need to get started.
My latest on Fierce Network: AI looks like magic, but the real trick is infrastructure — AI requires massive investment in cloud infrastructure, skills, and compliance strategies. Enterprises are balancing performance, cost, and risk as they deploy AI across cloud and on-premises environments. Our new Fierce Network Research report covers how successful enterprises are deploying infrastructure for AI. And get the report here.
What’s the most NSFW thing you saw someone doing at work and still got away with it? : r/AskReddit. I’m not in a hurry to go to Waffle House.
Businesses are hiring copywriters and web designers to fix problems caused by AI (Suzanne Bearne at BBC) — AI is great at helping with work but don’t expect it to do the work, because people will point at you and laugh.
Gmail’s new subscription management is here to declutter your inbox (Ryan Whitwam at Ars Technica) — This looks like a great feature.
JD Vance: Some Americans Are More American Than Others
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:
“Identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence – that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time,” Vance said.
He explained that such a definition “would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree” with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, dubbing it “the logic of America as a purely Creole nation.”
By the opposite token, Vance said, conceiving of American citizenship “purely as an idea” would “reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War,” he said, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that was founded to combat antisemitism and that, among other activities, tracks far-right groups.
“I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” he concluded.
My ancestors did not serve in the Civil War. My grandparents immigrated around 1905. I suspect that by Vance’s bullshit standards I don’t qualify as a real American, even though I and both my parents were born here.
It’s a strawman argument to suggest that anybody believes that simply agreeing with the ideals of the Declaration makes a person American. There’s more to it than that. But Vance’s blood-and-soil patriotism is both wrong and traitorous, and it’s particularly shameful that he gave his talk on Independence Day weekend.
The New York Times worked with a racist to generate a fake scandal about Zohran Mamdani
Shockingly, Mamdani, who was born in Uganada to parents of Indian descent, checked both the “Asian” and “Black or African-American” boxes on his Columbia University application in 2009. Supposedly, this was wrong of him to do, even though he is, in fact, both Asian and African-American.
Where’s the lie? Did Uganda move? Is it not in Africa anymore? Are we really going to pretend that America’s racial categories, designed primarily for descendants of American slavery, map perfectly onto the global complexity of human identity?
Also:
But here’s what kills me: they could have written a fascinating story about how a network of racist activists was trying to weaponize hacked university data that revealed nothing particularly interesting to attack a Muslim mayoral candidate. They could have exposed the whole operation. Instead, they decided to become part of it. It’s like if Woodward and Bernstein, upon discovering Watergate, had decided to focus their expose on how the security at the Watergate Hotel was top notch, with an anonymous quote from G. Gordon Liddy.
The Double Standard is Glaring
The Times' decision becomes even more indefensible when you consider their recent editorial choices. They refused to publish hacked materials about JD Vance during the 2024 election and declined to explain why. But when a racist hands them a hacked college application from 2009 that reveals nothing of public interest, suddenly those ethical concerns disappear.
The paper also famously decided not to endorse candidates in local elections–except when it came to Mamdani, whom they specifically urged voters not to rank at all on their ballots. Interestingly, they didn’t issue similar “please don’t vote for this person” guidance about Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who resigned over sexual harassment allegations and has been plagued with scandals from his mismanagement during the pandemic. Apparently checking the objectively accurate box on a college application is more disqualifying than a pattern of sexual misconduct and mismanagement.
Manufacturing Controversy To Justify Bad Journalism
Perhaps most galling is the Times' response to criticism. When readers and media critics pointed out how absurd this story was, an anonymous Times source told Semafor that the controversy proved they were right to publish this:
“The fact that this story engendered all the conversation and debate that it has feels like all the evidence you need that this was a legit line of reporting,” one senior reporter told Semafor.
But that’s not how any of this works. At all. Sometimes the “conversation and debate” is about how you should have known better.
The Times mostly does solid journalism. I subscribe and read it most days. But it also regularly kowtows to racist Republican interests.