Leftovers

• James G ☛ The next decade of the web

  I started to wonder if things could be different. I wondered if rather than being subjected to social media where there were endless discussions going on every day and where I felt in limited control to curate my experience, there could be another way. That's when I found a community of people who wrote on their blogs: the IndieWeb. The IndieWeb, started before I had began high school, was founded on the proposition that the web could be different. That people could be first. That we could build our own experience.

• Tracy Durnell ☛ Social norms of the IndieWeb: followup from Homebrew Website Club

  If our personal websites draw in people from multiple communities — and different platforms by pulling in comments from POSSEd posts — we’re potentially creating a muddle of social norms and expectations for readers. What seems appropriate on one platform may be out of bounds on another, but by drawing back in those comments we’re mingling those slightly different cultures. (Are our websites the port cities of the [Internet]? 😂) One way I’ve seen people try to address the risk of context collapse from work being shared broadly is through stating assumed audiences — can this also cue readers to the appropriate social norms to follow (by helping new readers especially position the writer in the appropriate shared community)?

• Jack Baty ☛ File Management Fatigue

  It’s possible that I’m losing my willingness to constantly deal with naming, organizing, managing, and backing up hundreds or thousands of files. I think what’s happening is that I’m suffering from File Management Fatigue.

• Science

  • New York Times ☛ Ed Dwight Goes to Space 63 Years After Training as 1st Black Astronaut

    Edward Dwight was among the first pilots that the United States was training to send to space in 1961, but he was passed over. On Sunday, he finally made it on a Blue Origin flight.

  • New York Times ☛ Comet Fragment Explodes in Dark Skies Over Spain and Portugal

    A brilliant flash of blue, green and white on Saturday night came from a shard of an as yet unidentified comet that was moving around 100,000 miles per hour, experts said.

  • Science Alert ☛ Radical Quantum Breakthrough Could Charge Batteries in a Snap

    Powered by Schrödinger’s cat.

  • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious Code in Ancient Assyrian Temples Can Finally Be Explained

    The meaning has long been debated.

  • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious 'Anomaly' Buried Near Giza Pyramids Baffles Archaeologists

    What could it be?

• Education

  • Barry Hess ☛ Gettin’ Reps

    Repetition, y’all, that’s where it’s at. Wanna get better at something? Do the reps. Wanna form a new habit? Do the reps.

    What have I been repeating lately?

  • James G ☛ Free Library

    With that said, the web satisfies a different part of my curiosity than libraries. I use the web when I am actively working on something. I publish on the web to document what I have learned. I find new ideas through the web (among other methods). I feel awe when I see new projects that excite me. Yet, this awe is only one form: the kind of awe evoked by knowledge and one's mind being opened to the notion that I can do this.

  • Robin Rendle ☛ Design interviews

    I’ve been doing a lot of interviews for designers lately so here’s a list of all the questions I’m asking along the way and maybe this helps someone out there looking for a design gig.

    Beware though! I have “failed” ten thousand design interviews and screeners and portfolio reviews. But like Dave, I’ve been frustrated by not getting feedback about what I did wrong and what I could’ve done better during these interviews. So here goes.

  • Terence Eden ☛ An adult gap year?

    What would happen if I took a gap year? A sabbatical? A full year of not working?

• Hardware

  • The Verge ☛ Two students find security bug that could let millions do laundry for free

    The two students, Alexander Sherbrooke and Iakov Taranenko, apparently exploited an API for the machines’ app to do things like remotely command them to work without payment and update a laundry account to show it had millions of dollars in it. The company that owns the machines, CSC ServiceWorks, claims to have more than a million laundry and vending machines in service at colleges, multi-housing communities, laundromats, and more in the US, Canada, and Europe.

  • Andreas ☛ 82MHz

    I recently got an old Compaq Evo 410c Laptop from 2001, which is actually a very nice laptop for the time, but it is suffering from the same problem all old laptops are suffering from: its battery died a long time ago. So I started thinking about what to do about this.

  • VOA News ☛ Companies trying to attract more smartphone users across Africa, but there are risks

    Despite growing mobile [Internet] coverage on the continent of 1.3 billion people, just 25% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa have access to it, according to Claire Sibthorpe, head of digital inclusion at the U.K.-based mobile phone lobbying group GSMA. Expense is the main barrier. The cheapest smartphone costs up to 95% of the monthly salary for the poorest 20% of the region's population, Sibthorpe said.

    Literacy rates that are below the global average, and lack of services in many African languages — some 2,000 are spoken across the continent, according to The African Language Program at Harvard University — are other reasons why a smartphone isn't a compelling investment for some.

  • Michał Sapka ☛ Audio gear: my new old CD player

    I’ve bought the CD, ripped it to flack and listened to it from computer. But, I thought, why not listen to the disc in its natural habitant? And so my journey has a side quest: an old-school stereo system.

  • RTL ☛ Acetate film: Hollywood battles aging -- in film reels

    The introduction of acetate film in the 1950s was a cause for celebration among movie executives and cinemas alike; a material that allowed directors to capture images in life-like resolution without the danger of it catching fire.

    The problem is that it doesn't age well, and -- if not looked after properly -- in as little as 15 years it can turn into an unusable reel of plastic that reeks of vinegar.

  • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ Robert Dennard, IBM Inventor Whose Chip Changed Computing, Dies at 91

    In 1966, Mr. Dennard invented a way to store one digital bit on one transistor — a technology called dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, which holds the information as an electrical charge that slowly fades over time and must be refreshed periodically.

    His discovery opened the door to previously unimaginable improvement in data capacity, with lower costs and higher speeds all using tiny silicon chips.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ Whooping Cough Is Surging in The UK, And This Could Be Why

    It's not the first time we've seen this.

  • CBC ☛ The solar storm knocked out GPS equipment on farms — and it could happen again

    Like many farmers, Borsa pays for a premium GPS satellite signal to ensure accuracy and efficiency when he's planting seeds and spraying pesticide and fertilizer. When that signal went out on Friday night, he called his provider.

    "They basically told me that it's a solar flare [and] there's nothing they can do about it," Borsa said. "They didn't really have an estimate on how severe or how long lasting the impact would be."

  • VOA News ☛ Illness took away her voice. AI created a replica she carries in her phone

    In April, the 21-year-old got her old voice back. Not the real one, but a voice clone generated by artificial intelligence that she can summon from a phone app. Trained on a 15-second time capsule of her teenage voice — sourced from a cooking demonstration video she recorded for a high school project — her synthetic but remarkably real-sounding AI voice can now say almost anything she wants.

  • Michal Zelazny ☛ Social presence

    What’s worse, I realized that every time I publish something, I check the service more often. This blog doesn’t have analytics because I decided that I don’t want to see how many people read it, because I know that’s healthier for me. I know, this is my third blog, the very first one, years ago, had analytics. It wasn’t a good idea then, it’s still not a good idea to have metrics now. Every like, every boost, every comment causes the same dopamine rush.This blog has no metrics or analytics to help me avoid that feeling, to help me write what I want to write, not what people like. I don’t want that either.

    Maybe it’s just me, maybe others don’t have these symptoms, but I do and I don’t want to have them. It’s not healthy for me.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Microsoft Shuts Down Center in Lagos, Leaving Hundreds in the Lurch

    A Microsoft development center is shutting down in Lagos, where hundreds of staffers had nursed high hopes for training opportunities and the prospect of a good job in the high-tech industry.

    Just two years ago, the Development Center was opened with much fanfare. It was the company’s first of engineering offices in Africa in Lagos and Nairobi.

    Some $70 million was invested in Kings Tower—a business icon in Ikoyi, Lagos. Two years later it was just a dream deferred. But why would the company so quickly pull the plug?

    The answer was a muddle. “We will continue to operate in Nigeria, and we remain committed to Nigeria’s transformation objectives…As such, we will continue to invest in our business and key growth areas in the region,” Microsoft explained.

    In a telephone call with Bloomberg News, Microsoft explained that organizational and workforce adjustments were a necessary and regular part of managing their business. In addition, Nigeria had been battling a currency crisis, dollar shortages and high inflation.

  • Time ☛ The Unexpected Impact of RTO Mandates on Senior Workers

    We look at these three companies: Microsoft, Apple, and SpaceX. They were early movers in returning to the office. When they did that, it was before the big wave of layoffs hit the tech sector, which means we could clearly disentangle the effects of those two policies. If a company implements a return to office and then a few months later does a big layoff, you might say, ‘Oh, people are leaving the company, but it’s all due to the layoffs.’ For these three companies, we could do it cleanly.

    [...]

  • Drew Breunig ☛ A Plea for Sober AI | Drew Breunig

    We got drunk on big claims and now we’re sobering up to the reality of the products.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Spam, junk … slop? The latest wave of AI behind the ‘zombie [Internet]’

    Your email inbox is full of spam. Your letterbox is full of junk mail. Now, your web browser has its own affliction: slop.

    “Slop” is what you get when you shove artificial intelligence-generated material up on the web for anyone to view.

    Unlike a chatbot, the slop isn’t interactive, and is rarely intended to actually answer readers’ questions or serve their needs.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ The three dots that "prove" macOS could never work on a touch screen

    Tap this icon and you get a menu with some options that should be familiar to macOS users: [...]

  • India Times ☛ Can we rid artificial intelligence of bias?

    Artificial intelligence built on mountains of potentially biased information has created a real risk of automating discrimination, but is there any way to re-educate the machines?

  • Nikola Kotur ☛ My Windows 11 Experience — Journal from Kotnik

    After spending almost 4 hours on this tasks I ended up disgusted and horrified, eventually installing #Fedora. What follows is what I found out in this short time.

  • Windows TCO

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Idle Windows XP and 2000 machines get infected with viruses within minutes of being exposed online — legacy OSes compromised by just connecting to the Internet

      YouTuber Eric Parker demonstrated in a recent video how dangerous it is to connect classic Windows operating systems, such as Windows XP, to the [Internet] in 2024 without any form of security (including firewalls or routers). The YouTuber set up a Windows XP virtual machine with an utterly unsecured [Internet] connection to see how many viruses it would attract. Within minutes, the OS was already under attack from several viruses.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • India Times ☛ Some AI companies face a new accusation: 'Openwashing'

      Proponents of open source AI models say they're more equitable and safer for society, while detractors say they are more likely to be abused for malicious intent. One big hiccup in the debate? There's no agreed-upon definition of what open source AI actually means. And some are accusing AI companies of "openwashing" -- using the "open source" term disingenuously to make themselves look good. (Accusations of openwashing have previously been aimed at coding projects that used the open source label too loosely.)

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Vox ☛ Is it ever okay to film strangers in public?

      Thanks to these responses and a handful of watchdog accounts, a major backlash against public filming has been brewing: Outlets from the Guardian to The Verge to Vice have issued pleas to quit filming strangers, while BuzzFeed christened the unsettling genre with an equally unsettling name: “panopticontent.” Ask pretty much anyone in the world if they’d like to have someone film them without their permission and post it on the [Internet], and it’s difficult to imagine a normal person saying yes.

    • [Old] The University of Illinois ☛ Study shows challenges to protecting privacy of library users

      Nearly all the libraries offered basic protections such as the secure disposal of sensitive data. While two-thirds of the respondents said their libraries provide privacy training to employees, 21% of those said the training was not mandatory and less than one-third had received training in the past year. Two-thirds of the participating libraries did not publish any information for patrons on how to protect their privacy, and more than two-thirds had no documented plan for handling data breaches.

      Even more alarming to Bashir: For some libraries, particularly smaller ones, their only online presence is through social media rather than their own website.

      “That is very troubling. Facebook collects a lot of data – everything that someone might be reading and looking at. That is not a good practice for public libraries,” she said.

      Additionally, the U.S. doesn’t have a comprehensive law or set of privacy protections such as the European Union has, Bashir said.

    • [Old] The University of Chicago Press ☛ Patron Privacy Protections in Public Libraries. The Library Quarterly: Vol 93, No 3

      Public libraries are an invaluable institution in the United States, and the digital revolution has posed many challenges for them. With the American Library Association’s updated “Library Bill of Rights” and public library services increasingly moving online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the protection of patron privacy in public libraries is an important and timely topic of study. However, there is a lack of empirical data regarding privacy practices and the challenges that public libraries face. To fill this gap, we conducted an online survey that was sent to more than 12,500 public librarians across the country to study the state of patron privacy practices and challenges in public libraries. This study is the first of its kind on this topic. Our results show that patron privacy protections vary drastically depending on the library’s size and service area. This study provides essential knowledge for administrators and policy makers in public libraries.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ ‘We’ll See You at Your House’: How Fear and Menace Are Transforming Politics

    Mr. Raskin was far from the only government official staring down the uglier side of public service in America in recent weeks. Since late March, bomb threats closed libraries in Durham, N.C.; Reading, Mass.; and Lancaster, Pa., and suspended operations at a courthouse in Franklin County, Pa. In Bakersfield, Calif., an activist protesting the war in Gaza was arrested after telling City Council members: “We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”

  • teleSUR ☛ Several Countries Offer Help To Find Iranian Presidential Helicopter

    "Russia is ready to offer all the necessary help in the search for the missing helicopter," Maria Zajárova.

  • New York Times ☛ Monday Briefing: Iran’s President Is Missing After a Helicopter Crash

    Also, Russian troops moved closer to Kharkiv.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • The Strategist ☛ Defining success in Ukraine

      Three months ago, I wrote a column titled ‘Will Ukraine Survive?’

    • JURIST ☛ Ukraine president signs bill allowing convicts to enlist in army

      Ukrainian President Zelensky signed a convict mobilization bill into law on Friday that allows incarcerated people to enlist in the arm for parole. The signed bill also enables foreigners and stateless people to join the Ukrainian army under the sixth part of Article 1. The bill contains exclusionary provisions prohibiting certain prisoners from service.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Strikes Kill At Least 11 Civilians In Ukraine's Eastern Kharkiv Region

      Russia said it came under a massive missile and drone attack on May 19 while Ukraine said it was against targeted by deadly drone strikes amid Russia’s renewed offensive in Ukraine's northeast.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia and Ukraine Engage in Dueling Air Assaults Behind the Front Lines

      Both sides have been looking for ways to inflict damage beyond the battlefield, targeting military logistics hubs and urban centers.

    • New York Times ☛ U.S. and Europe Move Closer to Using Russian Assets to Help Ukraine

      Finance ministers from the G7 nations are hoping to finalize a plan ahead of the group’s leaders meeting next month.

    • New York Times ☛ Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk Becomes World’s Undisputed Heavyweight Champion

      The Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk became the world’s undisputed heavyweight champion on Sunday. The victory has lifted morale in a country struggling to contain Russian advances on the battlefield.

    • JURIST ☛ UK court denies British-Afghan man’s appeal of revoked citizenship

      The UK’s Special Immigration Appeals commission denied an Afghan-born man his appeal to keep his British citizenship after it was rerevoked due to allegations that he is a Russian spy, in a judgment handed down on Friday. The appellant, known as C2, was born in Afghanistan but moved to Russia briefly to avoid being drafted.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Unauthorized Disclosure: Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright

• Environment

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Delhi sizzles at 44.4°C as parts of city log heatwave

    The maximum at Safdarjung was only 0.5°C shy of officially being a day with a heatwave, a classification when the maximum temperature is over 40°C, and 4.5°C above normal or when the actual maximum temperature reaches 45°C or more for two consecutive days.

    In some areas, the temperature surpassed the 47-degree mark in the Capital, including Najafgarh, southwest Delhi, which logged a maximum temperature of 47.8°C.

  • Greece ☛ Heat in Crete hits 38.6 C

    The record temperature, 38.6C (101.5F) was recorded at the Toplou Monastery, near the eastern extremity of the island of Crete.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ This election will be powered by digital infrastructure - now let it power the economy

      The telecoms sector spent R76-billion over 2022 and 2023 on solutions to make the digital infrastructure of the country resilient to load shedding to keep the economy going when the power is out, yet our calls for a rebate extension have fallen on deaf ears.

      This expenditure has come at a time of severely stressed consumer spending, which has impacted operators’ incomes, and at a pivotal point at which 4G/LTE and 5G infrastructure roll-out is required following the R14.4-billion paid to the fiscus in 2022 to acquire these spectrum licences.

      The current breather from load shedding is unlikely to be permanent and power supply stresses will return as economic activity improves, leaving operators to continue to foot the bill alone for network availability again. Consideration also needs to be given for the significant “sunk costs” which have already been incurred to ensure network reliability.

    • Idiomdrottning ☛ Wishful thinkers on the right of me, hopeful fools on the left, here I am stuck in the middle with you

      We had the toolbox for it back in the seventies: energy rationing. Let’s get that going again.

• Finance

  • The Scotsman ☛ Taylor Swift is an economic phenomenon. And she's about to hit Scotland – Alexandra Colalillo

    If we take a look at the US, the tour has already contributed an estimated $5 billion to America’s economy and up to almost $10 billion when factoring in indirect spending by consumers who didn’t necessarily attend concerts, but joined in on parallel Swift festivities. A report by Barclays has estimated the Eras Tour will provide the UK economy with a £997 million boost. Scotland will undoubtedly witness its share of these positive ripple effects on growth with three sold-out concerts taking place at Murrayfield Stadium next month.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • CBS ☛ Pope Francis tells 60 Minutes in rare interview: "the globalization of indifference is a very ugly disease"

    Pope Francis (In Spanish/English translation): You used an adjective, "conservative." That is, conservative is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude. Because one thing is to take tradition into account, to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box.

  • El País ☛ Apple enters the generative AI race

    Analysts seem to be in agreement that Apple’s entry into the generative AI race will not be geared towards directly competing with OpenAI and Google, but rather, that the iPhone manufacturer could break the current tie between the two by choosing one of them to work with its chatbots and other AI services. According to the latest leaks, Apple may be on the verge of signing a deal with ChatGPT to integrate it into the iPhone: although the same sources note that talks with Google are still in progress over using its Gemini technology. For both competitors, having such privileged access to a billion-plus iPhone users would be a key goal in their fierce rivalry.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Global AI Compliance - Distant truth or wishful thinking?

    The EU AI Act was the first step in this direction, and hopefully, China and the USA will do more to maintain the delicate balance of AI and ethics. The need of the hour is to compartmentalize the AI revolution in two dimensions: AI for all, i.e., the good of AI should not be the monopoly of a single company or country, and Global Regulation to safeguard against the risks of AI.

    It’s not common for the whole world to agree on something, but like climate change, AI should have global regulations where the powerhouses take the responsibility of making AI beneficial for all and safeguarding society from its ripple effects.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ Are Those Mimes Spying on Us? In Pakistan, It’s Not a Strange Question.

      Suspicion has become so universal that wild tales take root after almost every news event. In the wake of catastrophic floods in 2010, people asserted that they had been caused by C.I.A. weather-controlling technology. Media pundits claimed that an American “think tank” was behind a failed car bombing by a Pakistani American in Times Square that year, and that Osama bin Laden was actually Jewish.

    • India Times ☛ EU demands clarity from Microsoft on AI risks in Bing

      The European Commission could fine Microsoft if it doesn't provide adequate information on risks stemming from generative AI features in search engine Bing by May 27.

      The Commission said on Friday that it is worried about the dissemination of deep fakes and automated manipulation of services that can mislead voters.

    • RFERL ☛ I Worked For The 'Mushroom Machine': Inside Bulgaria's Cash-For-Disinformation Network

      I was joining the so-called Mushroom Site Machine, a network of websites that malevolent actors use to spread misleading stories, disinformation, and propaganda.

      Crucially, there's no need for recruits to have any ideological stake in what they're peddling. By using a cash-for-clicks model, small-time profit-seekers are enlisted in the spread of disinformation by setting up websites known as "mushrooms."

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • New York Times ☛ Julian Assange’s Extradition Appeal Hearing: What Could Happen?

    A hearing on Monday will determine whether Julian Assange has any more recourse in the British courts to appeal his extradition to the United States.

  • JURIST ☛ Georgia president vetoes 'foreign agents' law

    President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili on Friday vetoed a controversial “foreign agents” law that has been decried as “Russian-style” legislation and has sparked massive protests in the country.

  • RFERL ☛ EU's Michel Says Georgian President's Veto Of 'Foreign Agent' Bill Offers 'Moment Of Reflection'

    "This law is a Russian law in essence and spirit, which contradicts our constitution and all European standards. Thus, it represents an obstacle on our European path," she said. "This veto is completely legal and will be delivered to the parliament today."

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Scheerpost ☛ I’m a Former Surgeon General and I Couldn’t Believe My $10k Medical Bill

    Everyone must be able to access necessary care without fear of financial ruin

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Walmart Is Still Putting Ebenezer Scrooge to Shame

    Infamous for its starvation wages, Walmart just posted staggering first-quarter profits. The surge is a result of its strategic shift toward catering to affluent shoppers while its full-time workers continue to rely on Medicaid and food stamps.

  • The Verge ☛ Tesla, BYD, and VW use EV battery minerals with a history of human rights abuse allegations

    An electric vehicle requires about six times as many minerals as a typical gas-guzzling car. Demand for critical minerals used in EVs and battery storage for renewable energy could grow tenfold by 2040, under a conservative estimate by the International Energy Agency. Scrambling to secure all those minerals without taking the time to make sure they’re mined humanely is where problems arise.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • CS Monitor ☛ Elon Musk launches Starlink satellite in Indonesia

    He also signed an agreement on enhancing connectivity in the country’s health and education sectors. Details about the agreement between the Indonesian government and Mr. Musk’s SpaceX, the aerospace company that operates Starlink services, were not provided.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Indonesia: Starlink launch to give millions Internet access

    For the trial, Starlink's services will be activated in Nusantara, the city set to become Indonesia's new capital in place of Jakarta this year. Nusantara is located on the island of Borneo.

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk, Indonesian health minister, launch Starlink for health sector

    Communications Minister Budi Arie Setiadi, who also attended the Bali launch, said Starlink was now available commercially, but the government would focus its services first for outer and underdeveloped regions.

  • VOA News ☛ Musk, Indonesian health minister, launch Starlink for health sector 

    SpaceX's Starlink, which owns around 60% of the roughly 7,500 satellites orbiting earth, is dominant in the satellite [Internet] sphere.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Viking IPTV Defendant Avoids Immediate Prison But Faces Millions in Damages

    Sweden's Patent and Market Court sentenced a man on Friday for his part in the operations of popular pirate IPTV service, Viking IPTV. Long suspected of being the operator of the platform, the man was found guilty of violating copyright law and was handed a suspended prison sentence. In addition to payment of a fine, the man must also pay damages, with claims from movie and TV companies said to reach $1.8m.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Linux distros ban 'tainted' AI-generated code — NetBSD and Gentoo lead the charge on forbidding AI-written code

    Meanwhile, Gentoo Linux is more direct about banning AI tools altogether while contributing to the Gentoo project. The Gentoo team directly cites copyright, quality, and ethical concerns behind their reasoning for not allowing LLM-generated code into their operating system. In particular, their ethical concerns emphasize that commercial AI projects "are frequently indulging in blatant copyright violation to train their models," their use of natural resources may be too severe, and that LLMs have been used to empower scammers.

  • [Repeat] Slate ☛ How DeviantArt died: A.I. and greed turned a once-thriving community into a ghost town.

    Not only did DeviantArt lose users and revenue opportunities to the bigger social platforms, but it lost the kingmaking clout it had gained from its early web presence. So it missed out on potentially sizable revenue streams. “It become another one of those places that served more ads and made you pay for a ‘premium’ service, which I did for several years,” the Canadian artist said. The site-building company Wix acquired DeviantArt in 2017 and “relaunched” it two years later with a new design called Eclipse, even though Deviants made clear they’d much preferred the earlier iteration.

  • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Delete your Slack workspace

    You can opt out but they make it nice and cumbersome by opting everyone in and requiring that you send an email to a feedback address. Good luck!