Show Notes

Poised for Data Dominance

Episode: 7Published: 05/03/2022

Look I don’t know how much of this AI-enhanced microwave called Magnetron story is true, and how much is theatre. And frankly, I don’t give a damn. Go feed your eyeballs and top up your mirth meter.

Stories

Google AMP sucks, and a LOT of people are trying to ditch it

NED: Good god man, I thought you told me no one reads the show notes. Why did you put so many links?

CHRIS: Because Bratwurst.

NED: Bratwurst? What the? How does..? OH. I GET IT. LINKS.

CHRIS: Any more stupid questions?

NED: [SIGH] No.

CHRIS: Then get back to scrubbing.

Links:

• 2015 was the prime time to do it, as average phone data speeds around that time were abysmal
• A 16-state lawsuit claiming antitrust violations by google
• A number of web content producers including Vox and BuzzFeed are thinking of ditching AMP completely
• Brave put out a blog post that said AMP is “harmful to privacy”
• In 2020 Brave threw a complaint into the EU���s court
• Google getting sued for stacking the deck in favor of it���s own Google Shopping product
• DuckDuckGo browser apps will convert any AMP links to the original publisher���s webpage before being displayed
• Also it���s worth noting that DDG has a privacy plugin
• Google is working on a new user tracking system called FLoC
• FLoC is so hip, it even has a github page
• There is significant concern around FLoC, as the EFF helpfully points out
• The famous example of Target knowing the state of a pregnancy based only on purchase patterns alone
• Mozilla evaluated FLoC when it was announced, and determined it was wanting
• Web sites have rejected access to applications based on the browser being used
• There is a humorous history of the user-agent string

Lightning Round

• Speaking of terrible browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer is still a thing, until June 15
• Atlassian Provides Exhaustive Summary of Incident
• VMWare clarifies the ESXi boot-from-SD card situation for the millionth time
• Couldn���t have happened to a nicer fella
• Pixel watch prototype ���found��� by review site. It seems .. fine?
• Istio to join the CNCF (finally!)
  • Part of the trademark conversation was driven by AWS��� creation of Elasticsearch and the perceived infringement on Elastic���s trademarks

The Elon Addendum

Elon continues to be a very silly man who has no idea what he���s talking about, but cannot seem to stop talking. Perhaps if he did, he���d actually have to think about what his words mean. And therein lies madness. Tech Crunch continues on their streak of calling out Elon���s bullshit.

Intro and outro music by James Bellavance