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Brian Whitton

@noslouch.bsky.social

Computer journalism @wsj My latest: https://www.wsj.com/news/author/brian-whitton

21 Posts204 Follower70 Folgt
Mia Sato@miasato.bsky.social · last mo.

Between this and the stellar WSJ story about Polymarket's fake bettors, it really feels like we have completely given up on requiring influencers to disclose paid partnerships. It only hurts consumers.

Mia Sato@miasato.bsky.social · last mo.

This weekend DoorDash tweeted about the World Cup but repeatedly tagged T-Pain, as if they were mixing him up with NZ soccer player Tim Payne. T-Pain got in on it too, acting confused. Turns out it was all a "partnership." No ad disclosure on any of the posts. www.theverge.com/news/954145/...

T-Pain on X: "Are you all okay??? @DoorDash stop tagging me in these soccer posts." T-Pain: "I liiterally don't play soccer" quoting DoorDash saying "@TPain you gave everything out there tonight. we saw it." T-Pain: The intern is gonna shit a brick when they realize. Quoting DoorDash saying "This is when the true goats show up @tpain the game is in your hands!"
Brian Whitton@noslouch.bsky.social · 4mo ago

it's a wonderful thing when a friend does something amazing. @johnwest.bsky.social looks deeply at link rot and what it means for our lives and times. there's beauty in these words! buy it! herebelowbooks.com/978080288542...

Product – Here Below

herebelowbooks.com

John West@johnwest.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Presenting THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU, out in September from @herebelow.bsky.social, a new imprint doing awesome things. Here's the cover, a lil' excerpt, and the tagline of the press: "Books for the subversive work of being human." herebelowbooks.com/978080288542...

The cover of a book (my book): THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU.
Brian Whitton@noslouch.bsky.social · 6mo ago

@joannastern.bsky.social and @bzcohen.bsky.social vibed up an interactive article and, like many vibe coders, called in a computer guy to bring it across the finish line. I had to do surprisingly little! But I did add a couple features by request Happy to report my job is secure. For now

We Have No Idea How to Code. So We Got Claude to Code This Article for Us.

Two WSJ columnists with no formal programming background vibe coded the article you’re reading—chat bubbles, Easter eggs and all.

wsj.com

John West@johnwest.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I couldn't stop thinking about this perfect Borges idea from @marcusjmerritt.com. So I made it: internaut.club. (N.B., if you want write access, you'll have to DM me.)

Over on Bluesky, Marcus Merritt, an artist and poet (who I don’t know), proposed a fake Borges story—one he might have written had he seen the Lovecraftian face of the AI-supercharged attention economy rise out of Silicon Valley. It goes like this: A man asks AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything Like so many of the Argentine writers’ actual stories, I couldn’t get this one out of my head. A parable about compression, it plays on Borges’s map—his story about the useless horror of a map with perfect fidelity to reality. It touches on the Borges’s Library or Babel—his story about every book that could ever exist, which drives its librarians mad. It’s also just funny. And like the best Borges conceits, it has the ring of prophecy. The man at the desk is all of us now: scrolling, summarizing, consuming endless “content” whose abundance is only a disguise for its emptiness. AI slop, despite its volume, turns out to be rather thin gruel. I had a question—a bad question given that Merritt was making a pretty good joke. Why not actually make it? Enter HOMER, my piece of digital performance art masquerading as a social media platform, a microblogging platform where every hour, every post is run through AI summarization, until it can’t really be summarized much more, until all we have left to do is repeat a single word again and again, certain we finally understand. If you want access, reach out to me on Bluesky, I'm @johnwest.bsky.social.
Marcus@marcusjmerritt.com · last yr.

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything