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Here’s the Elon Musk interview that got Don Lemon’s show canceled

Don Lemon and Elon Musk sat down for an hour-long interview about hate speech, content moderation, and more — but Musk became increasingly irritated by the end.

Why Figma CEO Dylan Field is optimistic about AI and the future of design

The leader of design toolmaker Figma on life after the failed Adobe deal and what comes next in a live interview from SXSW.

Google Drive on the web goes to the dark (mode) side.

You may find that your Google Drive account has Dark mode on the web now — I have it on just one of mine, so far.

If Google has blessed you with the update, you’ll get a “New! Dark mode” prompt at login. After, the option lives under the gear icon > Settings > General > Appearance. Check the gallery below for more.


A screenshot of the Google Drive Dark mode notification.

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Be careful when you Drive in the dark.
Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
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Twitter
Would you like to play a game?

Screenshots posted by App researcher Nima Owji show that LinkedIn is testing games, with companies ranked on how well their employees do. TechCrunch published some official screenshots supplied by LinkedIn, which confirmed the games.

Pour one out for the first team that gets berated by their boss over their company’s Crossclimb score.


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Bad news for Cohost.

The Twitter/X alternative’s latest financial update is dire: it may run out of money in April after losing contact with a single person who’s provided its funding so far. While the operators lay out backup plans like crowdfunding, the site’s future seems uncertain to say the least.


March 2024 Financial Update

[cohost dot org on cohost]

How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka

The author of Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture discusses how we might be able to cultivate our own tastes once more.

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Google seems to be aggressively de-listing spammy search results.

Search VP Pandu Nayak told me the other day Google is dead serious about enforcing its policies against content designed to game search results. Looks like that’s already happening:

Many SEOs and site owners are saying their sites are no longer showing in the Google Search index, even for a site command, after receiving the manual actions.

Google helped make the web a mess. Now it has to fix it.


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Major porn sites aren’t taking the EU’s new moderation rules lying down.

Pornhub and Xvideos, two porn sites designated as “very large online platforms” last December, are challenging their Digital Services Act obligations, Politico reports. Pornhub isn’t happy about its VLOP status, and it and Xvideos are asking for a pause on rules requiring them to publish a library of the ads on their services. The DSA is focused on content moderation, and fighting illegal and harmful content.


Guest host Hank Green makes Nilay Patel explain why websites have a future

On this special episode of Decoder, Complexly co-founder and YouTuber Hank Green turns the tables on Nilay Patel.

From ChatGPT to Gemini: how AI is rewriting the internet

How we use the internet is changing fast thanks to the advancement of AI-powered chatbots that can find information and redeliver it as a simple conversation.

How much electricity does AI consume?

It’s not easy to calculate the watts and joules that go into a single Balenciaga pope. But we’re not completely in the dark about the true energy cost of AI.

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Good news for Trump’s Twitter clone.

The Washington Post reports that Truth Social has the Securities and Exchange Commission’s go-ahead to complete its SPAC merger, taking the company public and unlocking around $300 million after years of uncertainty. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of drama:

A federal prosecution of three early Digital World investors, who investigators said made tens of millions of dollars in insider trades related to the merger deal, is also scheduled to go to trial in April. In a superseding indictment filed last week in federal court, prosecutors added a charge of money laundering to one investor, Michael Shvartsman, saying he used some of his profits to buy a $14 million luxury yacht he later renamed “Provocateur.”


In defense of busywork

Thanks to AI, rote tasks are ripe for automation. But is that really a good thing?

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The BBC explores pushing further into the fediverse.

Six months after kicking off an initial Mastodon trial that saw it launch its own instance on the federated platform, the UK’s public broadcaster is not just extending the experiment by another six months, it’s also “planning to start some technical work into investigating ways to publish BBC content more widely using ActivityPub.”

It feels like a promising sign for the future of the fediverse.


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AI at Work

How AI can make history

Large language models can do a lot of things. But can they write like an 18th-century fur trader?

Filed under:

AI at Work

The text file that runs the internet

For decades, robots.txt governed the behavior of web crawlers. But as unscrupulous AI companies seek out more and more data, the basic social contract of the web is falling apart. 

AI at Work

In a short span of time, artificial intelligence has gone from a pipe dream to a ubiquitous feature. What does that mean for industries, workers, and consumers?

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AI at Work

The return of the (robot) travel agent

A bride, a groom, a honeymoon — and ChatGPT.

Gregory Barber

When a death is clickbait

AI-generated obituaries litter search results, turning the deaths of private individuals into clunky, repetitive content.

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Notion is acquiring privacy-focused Skiff platform.

Skiff’s privacy-centric Google Workspace alternative is coming under the Notion umbrella as it moves further into the productivity space with things like AI features, and the recent launch of Notion Calendar.


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Squarespace gets a Martin Scorsese film under its belt.

How will we notice aliens hovering overhead when we’re all too busy scrolling? They’ll make a Squarespace website, obviously.

That’s the goofy premise, anyway, of Hello Down There, a Scorsese-directed Squarespace Super Bowl commercial.