Coffee drinkers ditch coffee as price rises continue to bite

Showing all posts tagged: trends

Coffee drinkers ditch coffee as price rises continue to bite

13 September 2024

Australian food critic Terry Durack, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Coffee’s changing. The cost of beans continues to rise, and everyone is on the lookout for alternatives. Old-fashioned espresso coffee is in danger of being shouldered aside, just as cow’s milk is making way for oat, almond and soy.

With coffee prices rising, people are apparently looking for alternatives to coffee-based brews, and maybe I don’t blame them.

A month or so ago, I bought a small cappuccino after stopping by a place in Redfern — one of the inner suburbs of Sydney — for five dollars. That’s about what I usually pay, for a large drink, but this was a small serve. A super small serve. The cup must’ve been two-thirds the size of the usual sized small/regular takeaway coffee cups. The alternatives to cow’s milk I get. But now I see why some people are keen to try alternatives to their once daily caffeine fix.

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coffee, economics, trends

Facebook has been scraping the pages of Australians since 2007

12 September 2024

Jake Evans, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to refuse consent.

For sure, Facebook operates a little differently in Australia. According to information provided by Melinda Claybaugh, Meta’s global privacy director, who was speaking at an Australian parliamentary inquiry into AI adoption, the social network has been collecting user data since 2007.

Only Facebook members who set their profiles to private, were spared. Australians, unlike residents of the European Union who are protected by strong privacy laws, also do not have the option to opt-out of having their data collected, if they elect to make their Facebook page publicly visible.

One can only wonder what sense Meta’s AI technologies made of the content posted by Australians to their Facebook pages, and what conclusions they drew about us.

Indie Web, small web, social web, whatever web, my web

4 September 2024

There’s been a bit of a surge in discussion recently about Indie Web, and seemingly what it means to be a true adherent. This time the focus appears to be about what I’m going to call technical proficiency. From what I can gather, having your own website, with your own domain name, and your own content, isn’t quite making the Indie Web grade, in certain quarters.

Some people, who have the website, the domain, and the content, say they feel excluded because they’re apparently not doing more. Not doing more technical stuff. And I’d be in that category. It’s strange talk really. After all, Indie Web is many things to many people. There’s no Indie Web head office, dictating what we must, or must not do. But here, thankfully, is the sort of clarity we need:

Use wordpress if you want. Use Blogger. Hell, use Frontpage 98 if you want. Or learn some HTML And CSS and type it all up in notepad.exe. Or just HTML, don’t even bother with the CSS. Just make it yours.

Just make it yours. This was the web I always knew. I just came here to self-publish. To speak to whoever would listen to me. I started out with static HTML pages, on Notepad. Then I started adding CSS. I eventually arrived, ten years later, where I still am today, with WordPress.

Of course there were cashed up, corporate, players around in the late 1990’s trying to turn a profit on the web. But we, the personal, non-commercial, website people, who later became known as bloggers, co-existed quite harmoniously with this big-end of the web. We did our thing; they did theirs. And both parties, from what I saw, seemed to prosper in their own ways.

But that was back in the good old days.

Indie Web to me — and the definition seems to be subjective to some (quite some) degree — is a foil to what the web has become today, twenty to twenty-five years later. This despite the founding of the IndieWeb group in 2011. Indie Web, at its essence is our own place away from the corporate web, the social media behemoths, and the algorithms preventing us from finding the content we really seek.

I’ll admit to be being somewhat befuddled by the likes of webmentions, micro-formats, and ActivityPub protocol (which actually baffles me fully at present). Clearly these technologies serve a purpose, but in reality they don’t help me much with my primary objective here, which is to write.

If I’m not Indie Web enough then for someone, they can go somewhere else. But, with an attitude like that, I don’t know how much more “Indie Web” I could be. Well maybe. Thing is, I’ve never quite considered myself to be naturally Indie Web. Not one-hundred percent, as much as I like the general concept. Instead, I’ve often seen myself has being independent.

I’ve written as much on my about page:

The word disassociated has a number of meanings, but in this context it means to do my own thing, to go my own way, to have my own gig, to be independent.

So perhaps, independent web is a more suitable moniker in my case.

Hell, use Frontpage 98 if you want.

Perhaps though we could leave FrontPage out of this. I too had an ill-fated, though infinitesimally brief, run-in with the Microsoft (MS) product, many moons ago. FrontPage was a WYSIWYG website design editor with all good intentions, but terrible execution. What on earth, for example, were those server extensions that MS kept banging on about?

By 1998, the web was picking up momentum. People just wanted to get a website, usually a personal/family affair, online. And they wanted to do so pronto. They didn’t have the time or patience to learn about HTML, CSS, and FTP, let alone propriety server extensions. Too many, FrontPage must have seemed like the answer to their prayers. Until they opened the box*.

But look, if FrontPage is how you Indie Web, or just web, then don’t let me stop you. But please don’t come asking me for any help with those server extensions.

* this in the days when software apps literally arrived in a box.

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blogs, IndieWeb, technology, trends

Brazilians flock to Bluesky after authorities block X

2 September 2024

Brazilians are turning to Bluesky — the microblogging platform founded by then Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey — in droves, following a ban on X in the South American country. The surge in signups however has prompted warnings from Bluesky that the service may experience outages, as a result.

But that seems like a good sort of problem for Bluesky. Things, meanwhile, seem to go from bad to worse for the X platform, now owned by Elon Musk. Late week, a Brazilian Supreme Court judge ordered local ISPs to block the platform, after the company refused to appoint a new legal representative there. Under Brazilian law, major social networks are required to have a legal representative based in the country.

It’s a sad state of affairs for the platform once known as Twitter. I joined in 2007, and made a number of acquaintances there, both in Australia, and elsewhere. Some people are predicting X will not see out the next two years. I’m not so sure of that, but there’s no doubting that the microblogging service is but a shadow of its former self.

The photorealistic AI-generation revolution is here

29 August 2024

Chris Welch, a writer for The Verge, on the new “reimagine” feature, that shipped with Google’s recently launched Pixel 9 smartphones. Long story short, “reimagine” allows someone to edit/enhance any photo, anyway they choose:

With a simple prompt, you can add things to photos that were never there. And the company’s Gemini AI makes it look astonishingly realistic. This all happens right from the phone’s default photo editor app. In about five seconds.

That’s quite the leap for generative artificial intelligence, one that’s going to leave the rest of us wondering if what’s depicted in a photo is actual or not.

Arthur C Clarke predicts some of the future in 1964

29 August 2024

Speaking in 1964, the late British author and futurist made numerous predictions, mainly relating to advances in technology, many of which were prescient. Clarke called artificial intelligence (no surprise there, coming from the co-writer of the 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey). He also foresaw the internet, working from home, and a favourite of mine, the concept of RSS.

The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic so if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable then I’ll fail completely only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable having any chance of visualizing the future as it really will happen.

He was off the mark with some ideas. The demise of cities for one. But, give it time — perhaps centuries — and maybe he’ll be proved right. When Clarke’s comments were recorded in 1964, sixty years ago, the world was, of course, a vastly different place. That might explain the, let’s say, patriarchal lens, with which he viewed the future. It seemed to be all about men. Men will do this. Men will do that. No mention of women. No hedging of his bets, so to speak, by saying people even.

No futurist is ever going to predict exactly what will happen, but Clarke’s choice of words regarding gender do highlight how some things have changed for the better in sixty years.

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Arthur C Clarke, technology, trends

Facebook operates a little differently in Australia

28 August 2024

David Swan, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Rampant celebrity cryptocurrency scam ads are as Australian as Tim Tams, koalas or the Great Barrier Reef, according to American Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who says the tech giant’s lack of focus on Australia has let scams run wild on its platform compared with other markets.

It’s always nice to be treated differently, particularly by the world’s largest social network.

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social networks, technology, trends

The first six months of Vision Pro by Michael Ball

27 August 2024

Matthew Ball, writing about the first six-months of Apple’s spatial computing, and — whether Apple likes it or not — virtual reality headset, Vision Pro:

The Vision Pro is clearly the most ambitious of their product launches since the iPhone, the first to be wholly developed under the purview of CEO Tim Cook (though various head-mounted display prototypes were underway as early as 2006), and reporting suggests that its viability was controversial internally (with some employees arguing that Head-Mounted Displays (“HMDs”) impart harm by isolating its wearers from other people and, ultimately, the world around them).

People have commented on this. Vision Pro might be an incredible device, but the experience while using it could only be described as immersive. Of course Apple did not spend almost a decade, and billions of dollars, developing Vision Pro, without that occurring to them.

There has also been discussion about less than impressive sales numbers. But the Vision Pro is a niche device. The cheapest models in Australia presently start at six thousand dollars, so no one, including Apple, will ever be expecting them to fly off the shelves. At least not in the same way as the iPhone. But if Vision Pro is of interest to you, Ball’s deep-dive article is well worth reading.

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technology, trends

The asterism: the proposed new symbol for the fediverse. So say we

26 August 2024

The asterism, ⁂, a typographic symbol made up three stars, is being proposed as the new symbol for the fediverse. If the fediverse needs a symbol, it’s not half bad. Does the web have a symbol? I’m not even sure. But for those who came in late, the fediverse can be defined thusly:

The fediverse (commonly abbreviated to fedi) is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other (formally known as federation) using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term fediverse is a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”.

If you have either a Masterdon account, a Threads page, or maybe a WordPress blog, then you’re part of the fediverse. Or, as Manton Reece prefers: the social web. To me though, the fediverse is really just a specific part of the web you can choose to go.

An asterism, as you can see in the first sentence, is actually three asterisks. In astronomy, asterisms are groupings of stars. Asterisms should not be confused with constellations though. Not a half bad representation of the fediverse then:

We suggest that it’s a very fitting symbol for the fediverse, a galaxy of interconnected spaces which is decentralised and has an astronomically-themed name. It represents several stars coming together, connecting but each their own, without a centre.

The asterism is not the first symbol for the fediverse though. That was a rainbow coloured pentagram, designed in 2018. An asterism, being a typographic symbol, is certainly easier to make use of. And if you are a Threads member, you may have seen Meta’s fediverse symbol. It is made up of a small inner circle, with a broken outer circle and two dots, placed opposite each other. When seen with a Threads post, it denotes that the same post has been shared to the fediverse.

But Meta’s use of this symbol has raised the ire of the fediverse.info crew:

This other icon was created by Meta in 2024 to represent the fediverse within their product Threads. It incorrectly depicts a centralised network, with a big planet in the middle and the rest around it. We also don’t believe that a large corporation that is joining in as late should be the one defining the iconography for the fediverse.

I’m not a fan of big corporates such as Meta attempting to impose their will upon the rest of us. But I also wonder whether these fediverse.info people — or “we”— as they often refer to themselves, are likewise placed to do the same. The about page at fediverse.info offers next to no information as to who they are, certainly nothing in-depth, and really only states their objective.

Their fediverse symbol proposal seems to have been, from what I can see, well received though.

New Threads micro-blogging features, badge number Easter egg

19 August 2024

Coming soon to Threads on the website: the facility to save post drafts, and schedule posts. Post insights, similar I imagine, to those on Instagram, are also on the way, according to a recent thread by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Scheduling posts and saving drafts — at least if using Threads through the website — is going to be a bonus, especially for those who prefer to use the micro-blogging platform as their main web presence. I found the option useful when I used to be more active on X/Twitter.

And for those who like such things, there’s also a fun Easter-egg feature to check out, on the app, which I’ve seen a few people writing about. Tap on the name of a Threads member on their bio, and a popup will appear at the bottom of the screen.

This shows the member’s join date, and Threads badge number. Tap again near the bottom of that, and a full screen animation will appear, displaying the same information.

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