AuliaSays

Artifact at some point added social elements but people just didn’t see it that way because it’s a news reader first and foremost. It also let you publish your own takes of the news linking to them, making it a blog platform. This part I enjoyed a lot. I didn’t post too many times but enough to keep me writing my thoughts on things that bugged me.

They said Artifact will remain up until til the end of February. I’ll be spending some time to republish those posts here and backdating them accordingly.

Ultimately for a blogger it all comes back to running your own space if you want to keep your published thoughts available to read on the web. Maybe one day I’ll eventually decide to have my own self hosted blog and social web instance like it’s always meant to be and move everything to that because platforms like there, including Medium and Tumblr, may one day shut down if they can’t justify keeping them around whether through lack of revenue or something else.

For my daily news reading there’s always Flipboard which I also still use regularly but I’m going to miss Artifact.

This Twitter thread shows how far along artificial voices have come. For those who are familiar with Steve Jobs’ voice, the voice in these recordings is almost indistinguishable from the original. When you listen to them, you can be forgiven to think that it’s actually Steve Jobs saying these words, never mind that he’s been gone for more than a decade.

The only catch is that because the training set must have been taken from the many recordings of his Apple keynote speeches and product announcements, they all sound like he’s reading from a script or making announcements. None of the sentences sound natural the way someone would speak if they were having a regular conversation or answering questions but that’s not too difficult to overcome. The tools to make adjustments to AI generated voices to sound more natural already exists.

Here’s another example. The YouTube channel Star Wars Comics have started to experiment with using generated voices to narrate some storyline’s from the Star Wars comic books to keep their audience up to date with what’s happening in the comics. In one video, they used James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader voice to say the lines in the pages of the comic book. Their latest video voiced a conversation between Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader from another issue in the recent Darth Vader comic book series, both using the generated voices of their real actors.

As many in the comments noted, while their voices sound indistinguishable from the original, the speech patterns make it obvious that these were generated. That’s because the voices weren’t adjusted to the way a person would speak in a proper conversation given in the situation. Again, these are relatively trivial changes that one could make using their AI voice generators.

While these may be little more than fun projects for the curious minds, the day when someone can create entirely fabricated recordings to manipulate the public is already here. You can already create fake videos of a person saying things that they never actually said, now the voices sound even closer to the original.

When deepfake videos started popping up in 2020, people knew that this was going to be a significant problem. People are already easily fooled by fabricated articles or stories and this is just going to make it far more challenging for people to fact check and verify the validity of recordings.

Anwar is probably the first regional leader to implicitly admit its irrelevance while Indonesia has always been a champion of ASEAN’s appearance of a united front made up of human rights violators and corrupt governments who are careful not to offend each other out of fear that their own dirty laundry become exposed and openly addressed.

It’s always upsetting seeing a StarTrek show ending whether by its own accord or by executive order but when it’s ordered, it doesn’t get to conclude on its own terms no matter how much time they give it. 

Discovery hasn’t been the best among all Treks and even breaks the mold of what a Trek show is especially given how frequently it’s centered and dependent on Michael Burnham saving the day. What it does have though, are some of the boldest story tellings in the franchise and really going to new places and opening up far more possibilities. 

With all this talk of a 15" MacBook Air I have one small concern that the screen resolution might stay the same as for the 13.6" version at 2560x1664 or thereabouts. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but it’s not like they haven’t done it before.

It’s a long time ago and an entirely different executive team, but when Apple introduced the 14" iBook G4 they kept the screen resolution at 1024x768, the same as the 12" iBook and the 12" PowerBook G4. Those who bought the 14" iBook didn’t get any more work space than those who bought the 12" version.

The larger iBook had a bigger screen size, bigger hard drive, a SuperDrive that burns DVDs and CDs instead of a Combo Drive that can read DVDs but only burns CDs, and 450 grams heavier, and a higher price.

Apple didn’t want to cannibalize the slightly more expensive 12" PowerBook G4 which had almost identical specs and they certainly didn’t want the iBook to encroach on the Pro Mac space, so they couldn’t give the 14" iBook a higher screen resolution.

There’s little chance that someone would pick the 13" M2 MacBook Pro if Apple makes a 15" Air available, because frankly, why would you? Even the 13" M2 MacBook Air is a slightly better machine overall and with a slightly lower price.

Weeks after someone saw code inside the Instagram app referring to paid verification, Meta today formally announced their latest copycat feature, the paid blue checkmark. 

Like pretty much every major product that Meta offers, the blue checkmark originally came from somewhere else, in this case, Twitter. Now that Twitter is charging for it, Meta can’t resist doing the same but they added their own twist.

Just like Twitter’s version, you’ll get the all important blue badge, increased visibility and reach, and exclusive features, but you’ll also get personal customer support, something that Twitter can’t offer because Elon fired everyone already.

Meta’s checkmarks are more expensive than Twitter’s. Even more expensive than paying for Netflix, Disney+, or HBO GO. One month of Meta Verification costs the same as Disney+ Hotstar for one entire year. Think about that. 

Twitter charges US$11 per month from mobile apps and $8 from the web, while Meta charges $15 from mobile apps and $11 from the web. 

Meta’s paid checkmarks are available only in Australia and New Zealand for now, though, so they make you crave for it with the oh so good FOMO and envy brewing up inside of you.

But my favorite one, though, is Tumblr. For a one time payment of $8 you get not one but two badges all at once and if that’s not enough, you can buy and display up to 12 pairs of badges! They now come in all rainbow colors too, not just blue, so it’s so much fancier and cooler because you can pick and choose which colors you want. You pay once and you keep it forever. Or until you delete your account. Love those guys.

Talk about being overwhelmed. Had to hunt and peck each button and feature and search online for tips on how to do certain things.

Never got my parents to help me with any of those as a kid because they didn’t grow up or worked with computers and to this day they still don’t know how to operate one beyond using browsers and WhatsApp. Had to figure things out myself and it was practically troubleshooting which got me into tech support before journalism kicked in.

As someone who lived through his entire life surrounded by tech products and devices and worked as tech support for a significant period, this was kind of embarrassing but also challenging and humbling. It took much longer to complete than it ought to but got it done eventually.

I’ve shared my thoughts about microblogs vs proper blogs a few times over the years but even after more than 20 years of blogging and more than 15 years of microblogging I still haven’t landed on a definitive position.

It’s evident that the era of Twitter has rendered blogs almost exclusively for more niche segments. The ability of microblogs to deliver almost instant readership and feedback to a piece of writing gives their authors relentless dopamine shots that keeps them around for much longer periods. 

Blogs allow for more verbose and nuanced posts but when microblogs allow for that to happen as well, that makes you question the necessity of blogs other than the more obvious ones such as easier indexing, categorization, search, and discovery. 

I guess it’s a matter of choosing between delivering more complete thoughts on a faster conversational platform and putting them down on your own space that you can have better control over.