Well the new account was for the new streaming service which replaced the old one. And since that’s a different company… different TOS, obviously.

It was mildly annoying, but at least it means I can still use the radio I bought.

It’s really in the tech sector’s best interest to do that anyway. Because as a consumer, I’m now quite hesitant to buy a thing without knowing if it’s going to be properly supported.

We’ve all been burned before. My Sonos webradio lost functionality for a while after some backend streaming service was defunct. They did manage to fix that but it meant installing a new app, new account that sort of thing. It’s annoying- but at least the manufacturer did the right thing to keep it working. I can only imagine how frustrating it would’ve been if the entire thing stopped working with no support…

Basically, that experience is why I’m no longer willing to buy things that wholly depend on outside servers and the like to keep working. There’s too much risk of ending up with an expensive paperweight.

Exactly. I can’t control where other people find news, and if they choose poor sources, well, that’s on them. All I can do is be the best, most reliable source for them if they choose to read our news.

Our newspaper community is smaller than you might think. People frequently move around from company to company. I’ve worked in radio, TV news as well as newspapers for the past 20 years. I have a lot of former colleagues who work at other companies within our regional media. And us journalists are a gossipy bunch, as you can imagine. If someone actively tries to undermine my trust, they wouldn’t just be blackballed from the dozen or so regional newspapers that we publish, but also the larger national conglomerate that runs about 40. We take pride in good sources. Undermine that, and you’re not working for us.

The point I’m making isn’t really about the ability to fake specific angles or the tech side of it. It’s about levels of trust and independent sources.

It’s certainly possible for people to put up some fake accounts and tweet some fake images of seperate angles. But I’m not trusting random accounts on Twitter for that. We look at sources like AP, Reuters, AFP… if they all have the same news images from different angles, it’s trustworthy enough for me. On a smaller scale, we look at people and sources we trust and have vetted personally. People with longstanding relationships. It really does boil down to a ‘circle of trust’: if I don’t know a particular photographer, I’ll talk to someone who can vouch for them based on past experiences.

And if all else fails and it’s just too juicy not to run? We’d slap a big 'ole ‘this image has not been verified’ on it. Which we’ve never had to do so far, because we’re careful with our sources.

I can’t control where people find their information, that’s a fact. If people choose to find their news on unreliable, fake, agenda-driven, bot-infested social media, there’s very little I can do to stop that.

All I can do is be the best possible source for people who choose to find their news with us.

The ‘death of newspapers’ has been a theme throughout the decades. Radio is faster, it’s going to kill papers. TV is faster, it’s going to kill papers. The internet is faster, it’s going to kill newspapers… and yet, there’s still newspapers. And we’re evolving too. We’re not just a printed product, we also ARE an internet news source. The printed medium isn’t as fast, sure, but that’s also something that our actual readers like. The ability to sit down and read a properly sourced, well written story at a time and place of their choosing. A lot of them still prefer to read their paper saturday morning over a nice breakfast. Like any business, we adapt to the changing needs of consumers. Printed papers might not be as big as they once were, but they won’t be dying out any time soon.

Well again, multiple, independent sources that each have a level of trust go pretty far.

From my personal experience with AI though… I found it difficult to get it to generate consistent images. So if I’d ask it for different angles of the same thing, details on it would change. Can it be done? Sure. With good systems and a bit of photoshopping you could likely fake multiple angles of it.

But for the images we run? It wouldn’t really be worth the effort I imagine. We’re not talking iconic shots like the ones mentioned in the article.

I work at a newspaper as both a writer and photographer. I deal with images all day.

Photo manipulation has been around as long as the medium itself. And throughout the decades, people have worried about the veracity of images. When PhotoShop became popular, some decried it as the end of truthful photography. And now here’s AI, making things up entirely.

So, as a professional, am I worried? Not really. Because at the end of the day, it all comes down to ‘trust and verify when possible’. We generally receive our images from people who are wholly reliable. They have no reason to deceive us and know that burning that bridge will hurt their organisation and career. It’s not worth it.

If someone was to send us an image that’s ‘too interesting’, we’d obviously try to verify it through other sources. If a bunch of people photographed that same incident from different angles, clearly it’s real. If we can’t verify it, well, we either trust the source and run it, or we don’t.

When I worked in radio production, basically everything was formatted like YYYY-MM-DD. Which means stuff is really to find and properly in chronological order.

I still use the MM-DD format for my own file formatting, even though DD-MM is the Dutch standard.

YYYY-MM-DD is god’s perfect date notation as far as I’m concerned.

To be clear: I’m not in the community as such, but I fully support them and have a fair few gay friends. And guess what? I feel represented by the original flag too. Because it represents good values. From an interview with Gilbert Baker:

Each color of the rainbow flag stands for something. “Pink is for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sun,” Baker told ABC7 News. “Green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for serenity and purple for the spirit. I like to think of those elements as in every person, everyone shares that.”

Nowhere does it mention things like race. Or even a particular sexuality! As a white, heterosexual dude, that flag represents me just fine. It also represents someone black, brown and by golly, those blue people from Avatar if we ever discover them.

I definitely agree that most pride flags aren’t very good. I understand peoples enthousiasm to have their own flag, but some are just terrible.

You might be familiar with that old XKCD comic about competing standards. I imagine any attempt to make a new, better flag just results in one more getting added to the mix :D

If I was organising something, I’d just stick with the 1979 six color and call it a day. It’s iconic and it represents everyone, whether they like it or not.

We had our Amsterdam Pride event earlier this month. Flags were a big issue of contention within the community. Not just whether or not flags like Israel or Palestinian would be welcome, but also regarding the rainbow flag itself.

There’s two schools of thought: the people who see the original rainbow flag as inclusive enough, and the people who want a flag that they feel represents their niche specifically. That one being the ‘Progress’ flag that you’re referring to.

The argument is: by adding more and more of that ‘social awareness’ stuff to it, the overarching message of it gets lost. Basically, people want pride to be about pride and not have it hijacked by other social issues. Which of course leads to animosity with people who do want to protest for social issues.

Personally, I’m a big fan of vexillology and I feel the original flag is still the best, most representative and least devise symbol.

Refreshing indeed. Harris at least looks like she can answer the ‘what year is it and do you know who the current president is?’ questions without needing a ten minute nap prior to answering.

Heck, she might even have a good idea as to the price of a gallon of milk! The US might just end up with something resembling actual leadership for the next four years.

Ever seen the movie Black Hawk Down? There’s a scene where a convoy of hummvees takes heavy fire while trying to get out of Mogadishu.

Detroit is like Mogadishu. You don’t stop for anything and try not to engage the locals as much as possible.

It gets even wilder when you tell younger people that PC’s didn’t even come with storage drives in the early days. One of the earliest I used had to have software loaded through cassette tape. That was certainly a bit annoying, as it took quite a while and was error prone.

These days I somewhat collect old hardware. I love things like my Macintosh Plus where you need to juggle disks in order to load software in the memory so you can use it. Nowadays a single text e-mail outweighs the entire OS for a system like that.

Our first family PC had a 1,3 gigabyte drive. That had Win ‘95 on it, productivity apps, bunch of games, etc. This was a time when you could actually still run games off CD-ROM’s without needing installs.

These days, my phone has over 200 times the memory. It’s still amazing to me.

Same thing with SD cards. When I started with digital photography, a 32 MB card was big. My current camera takes images that are too large to fit on it! Early cameras even had floppy disk storage, if you can imagine…

Behind the Bastards just did a four part podcast on him. Let’s just say: this likely wasn’t the weirdest thing that he was involved in that week.

When it had issues immediately post-launch, there were a LOT of Boeing-defenders: “oh no, keeping it there is a precaution, there’s nothing seriously wrong with it. They’re definitely not stuck on the station…”

Yeah. When this fucking death trap was launched WHILE HAVING ISSUES, I knew it wasn’t going to be a quick round trip. Frankly, I’d be amazed if those astronauts up there would be willing to take the return trip on it. NASA has a poor track record in that regard.

I absolutely love spaceflight and whole heartedly support programs. But Boeing needs to not be making spacecraft that humans fly on.

Could be, but I think a seat heating malfunction is more likely. Looks like an older vehicle so there’s all sorts of things that could break down.

The driver also might’ve just parked it in the exact right spot to catch problematic sun reflections. There’s been a few buildings that are known to cause issues. People who parked around the ‘Walkie Talkie’ building in London had melted body panels, mirrors, burns in their interior, etc. They had to install screens on the building to stop this ‘death ray’ effect.

Yeah, definitely can relate :D I was downright ecstatic when my supermarket got self-checkout. I absolutely hate waiting in lines, small talk, etc. With self-checkout I’m done in 30 seconds.

The few times I used ordering kiosks at McD’s or Burger King, I actually preferred them over ordering at the counter. At least with the kiosk, I can take my time, look at options and order without feeling pressured by the line behind me. I’ve got a visual disability , and it’s much easier for me to use than to read a menu that’s posted behind the counter.

And you know at least the order went through correctly, as opposed to dealing with some stoned teen who barely speaks the language and is liable to mess it up.

The kiosks definitely aren’t why I don’t go to MC’s. It’s the insane prices.

Honestly, I’m amazed people still go there to eat. The food was never really good, but at least it used to be fast and cheap. But these days, it’s neither anymore. McDonald’s is now more expensive than the gourmet burger places in my city; that feels insane.