Zuckerberg Makes Amends With Trump

January 12, 2025Facebook, MetaJenThorpe

Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement this week that Meta would pivot its moderation policies to allow for more “free expression” was widely viewed as the company’s latest effort to appease President-elect Donald Trump, CNBC News reported.

More than any of its Silicon Valley peers, Meta has taken numerous public steps to make amends with Trump since his election victory in November.

That follows a highly contentious four years between the two during Trump’s first term in office, which ended with Facebook — similar to other social media companies — banning Trump from it’s platform.

With Meta now positioning itself to be a key player in artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg recognizes the need for White House support as his company builds data center and pursues policies that will allow it to fulfill its lofty ambitions, according to people familiar with the company’s plans who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak on the matter.

Meta declined to comment for this article.

New York Post reported: Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg parked his private jet right next to Trump Force One on Friday during a visit to Palm Beach, Florida, to meet with the incoming 47th president.

Zuckerberg, 40, was dressed up in a fitted suit and tie when he was spotted boarding his Gulfstream G650 jet at Palm Beach International Airport.

The tech titan’s jet was parked in the shadows of President-elect Donald Trump’s much larger, custom Boeing 757 aircraft, which he’ll trade in for Air Force One in less than two weeks.

Earlier in the day, the billionaire Facebook founder met with Trump at his nearby Mar-a-Lago estate, a source told the Post.

It’s at least the second time Zuckerberg has convened with Trump, 78, at Mar-a-Lago since the president-elect’s landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election.

Zuckerberg, who also held at least two private phone conversations with Trump over the summer, has sought to rehabilitate his relationship with the incoming president after his social media platforms banned him in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Benzinga reported: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has much bigger fences to mend with President-elect Donald Trump than the Silicon Valley tech giants and other billionaires who have been making the trek to Mar-a-Lago since the November elections.

Friday’s visit, reported by The New York Post, was Zuckerberg’s second meeting with Trump since the 2024 election.

The Facebook founder’s relationship with Trump profoundly soured after Meta Platforms banned outgoing President Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Meta lifted the remaining restrictions on Trump’s accounts in July.

Matt Mullenweg Deactivates WordPress Accounts Of Contributors Planning A Fork

January 11, 2025wordpressJenThorpe

Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, some of whom have been spearheading a push to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project, TechCrunch reported.

While community criticism of WordPress’s governance isn’t new, the latest brouhaha kicked off back in September when Mullenweg publicly chastised WP Engine, a commercial hosting company built atop WordPress, for profiteering without giving much back. Things soon escalated, with WP Engine filing a lawsuit after it was banned from accessing key WordPress resources, and then a court ordered WordPress to restore access.

Mullenweg, for his part, has publicly supported the notion of a WordPress fork — a term that describes when someone takes the code from an open source project and creates a copy, which can take on a life of its own, with a separate community of contributors.

Earlier this week, Automattic announced it would reduce its contribution to the core WordPress open source project to align with WP Engine’s own contribution, a metric measured in weekly hours.

“I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort,” Mullenweg wrote.

Matt Mullenweg posted on WordPress:

In open source, one thing that makes it even harder to ship great software is bringing together disparate groups of contributors who may have entirely different incentives or missions or philosophies about how to make great work. Working together on a team is such a delicate balance balance, and even one person rowing in the wrong direction can throw everyone else off.

That’s why periodically I think it is very healthy for open source projects to fork, it allows for people to try out and experiment with different forms of governance, leadership, decision-making and technical approaches. As I’ve said, forking is beautiful, and forks have my full support and we’ll even link and promote them.

However, in Joost and Karim’s new project, they don’t need to follow our process or put in the hours to prove their worth within the WordPress.org ecosystem, they can just lead by example of shopping code and product to people that they can use, evaluate, and test out for themselves. If they need financial or hosting support it sounds like WP Engine wants to support their fork.

Computerworld reported: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said his decision to reduce his team’s weekly hours working on WordPress by 99%, from 400 hours to 45 hours, was designed to pressure WP Engine to drop its lawsuit against Mullenweg and Automattic.

“They don’t actually make WordPress. They just resell it,” Mullenweg told Computerworld on Friday evening. “If what they are reselling is no longer getting all the free updates, they have less stuff to sell.”

“It doesn’t make sense for Automattic to pay people to work on all of these things,” he said. “We are under attack and we are circling the wagons. Our number one goal is for WP Engine to drop their expensive lawsuits against me and Automattic.”

In my opinion, it sounds like Matt Mullenweg is unhappy about the decision some of his employees made regarding WordPress forks.

AI’s Data Dilemma: Exhausting Human Knowledge #1790

January 9, 2025InformationTodd Cochrane

Elon Musk claims AI companies have exhausted available human knowledge for training models, pushing reliance on synthetic data. While firms like Meta, Google, and OpenAI already use AI-generated data for fine-tuning, challenges such as hallucinations and diminishing returns arise. Experts warn overusing synthetic data risks “model collapse,” while copyright disputes over data usage intensify.

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Elon Musk Wants To Oust Keir Starmer As UK Prime Minister

January 9, 2025Elon Musk, PoliticsJenThorpe

Elon Musk has privately discussed with allies how Sir Keir Starmer could be removed as UK prime minister before the next general election, according to people briefed on the matter, Financial Times reported.

Musk, the world’s richest man and key confident of US president-elect Donald Trump, is probing how he and his rightwing allies can destabilize the UK Labour government beyond the aggressive posts he has issued his on his social media platform X, the people said.

“His view is that western civilization itself is threatened,” one of the people added.

Musk has sought information about whether it might be possible to build support for alternative British political movements — notably the rightwing populist Reform UK party — to force a change of prime minister before the next election, according to associates.

In the UK, parliamentary system, prime ministers wield power because they lead the party with the most MPs.

The chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who has been appointed by Trump to co-lead a project to rein in US government spending, has taken a keen interest in British politics over the past six months, and made increasingly strident criticism of Starmer’s government.

The Irish Times reported: Elon Musk has privately discussed with allies how Kier Starmer could be removed as UK prime minister before the next general election, according to people briefed on the matter.

Mr Musk, the world’s richest man and key confident of US president-elect Donald Trump, is probing how he and his right-wing allies can destabilize the UK Labour government beyond his aggressive posts, he has issued on his social media platform X, the people said.

Mr. Musk has sought information about whether it might be possible to build support for alternative British political movements — notably the rightwing populist Reform UK party – to force a change of prime minister before the next election, according to associates.

The chief executive of Tesla, SpaceX and X, who has been appointed by Mr Trump to co-lead a project to rein in US government spending, has taken a keen interest in British politics over the past six months, and made increasingly strident criticism of Mr Starmer’s government.

Fortune reported: Elon Musk’s drift to the far-right and his burgeoning clash with U.K. government is a part of a wider plan to oust prime minister Kier Starmer before the next election and plot the accession of a far-right government, a new report suggests.

Musk has reportedly discussed funding the right-wing Reform party, led by Nigel Farage, to the tune of £100 million while more recently calling for Farage to be replaced.

In my opinion, I don’t think it is a good idea to have the richest man in the world decide what happens with the U.K. government.

Influencers Versus Honey: A Fight for Fairness in Digital Revenue #1789

January 2, 2025PodcastKirk

I dive into a controversy shaking up the influencer world and online shopping landscape. A viral exposé has accused the popular browser extension, Honey, owned by PayPal, of deceptive practices that have sparked outrage among creators and consumers alike. Stay tuned as we unpack the allegations, the fallout, and the class-action lawsuit that could redefine trust in digital tools.

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The Best Mechanical Pencils? Uni Kuru Toga

January 2, 2025writingkuru toga, pencilAndrew

If you come from any kind of scientific or engineering background, I’d be fairly confident that a pencil is your writing implement of choice, specifically a mechanical or propelling pencil. For most people, it’ll be a 0.5 mm lead but if you come from a draughting background, you’ll have two, one with a 0.3 mm lead and the other with 0.7 mm. I’m kind of partial to 0.7 mm myself: the extra width gives the writing more weight, especially with a softer lead.

For those who aren’t pencil fans, you need to look again at them as writing implements. They’re some of the best tools to get emotion down on the page as the darkness of the line reflects the pressure of your hand.

Obviously pencils wear down as you write and if you hold the pencil in the same grip, the lead can become chiselled with a flat side and sharp point, which can all too easily tear into (cheap) paper. The solution to this is Uni’s Kuru Toga range of propelling pencils which have an innovative mechanism to rotate the pencil lead every time the pencil touches down onto the paper, keeping the tip of the lead in more of a dome shape that won’t rip the page. I’m a big fan.

As they’re mostly produced for the Japanese domestic market, it can be difficult to see the whole range in an English website. There’s broadly three types available; smooth, gel or knurled grips. Although there’s a wide range of pencils (and all typically costing less than US$20 / GB£20), my personal favourite is the Uni Kuru Toga Elite. It’s a tasteful silver, with a metal knurled barrel enhancing both the grip and its engineering kudos.

If you haven’t used a pencil since school, I’d suggest you pick one up and give it a whirl. Try and support your local specialist writing store if you can, otherwise they are available online.

Bluesky Is Testing A Trending Topics Feature

December 26, 2024Bluesky, Social MediaJenThorpe

Social network Bluesky said on Christmas that it is testing a trending topics view. The trending topics are visible both on the desktop and mobile apps of the social media network for users across the word, TechCrunch reported.

On the desktop, you can see trending topic on the right sidebar, and on the mobile app, you can tap on the search button to look at them.

Bluesky said trending topics are currently available only in English. Users can disable trending topics by going to Settings > Content and Media and then unchecking the “Enable trending topics” option. Bluesky is making sure content you don’t want to see will not be visible in the trending topics — muted words are carried over, so any words or phrases on your muted list won’t appear in trending topics.

The Verge reported: As a special holiday treat, on December 25th, the social media app Bluesky announced that it has added a new feature to its mobile app: a list of Trending topics that lets you know what subjects are popular among its users.

The new feature can be found by selecting the search icon (the magnifying glass), which appear at the bottom of the screen on the mobile app and on the left sidebar on the web. Lists of Trending and Recommended subjects now appear below the search bar. Tap on any topic, and you will be able to access the associated posts.

According to the announcement, the new feature is “V1” (it is marked as a Beta on the app) and “we will be iterating with your feedback.” So if you have any objections to Trends appearing under your Bluesky search bar, let them know.

Engadget reported: Social media platform Bluesky has launched Trending Topics into beta, the company announced in a post on its platform. The new feature is one of the most-requested by users and matches a function that has been on rival Threads for around nine months.

The Trending section show the top viral content on the platform, with topics like “Christmas,” “Nosferatu” and “Wikipedia” are currently on top. It can be found by clicking on search in both the desktop and mobile apps, or you can disable it altogether in the settings, Any words that you have muted won’t appear in Trending topics either.

Bluesky recently hit a big milestone with 25 million users, many of whom recently fled X following the US elections. Though still relatively small compared to Threads and X, users have remarked on the high levels of engagement along with the lack of bots and harassment compared to Elon Musk’s platform.

In my opinion, it looks like Bluesky is testing out what its users want to see – or not to see – on their platform.