Hey folks,
I'm going to lead with an opinion piece about Threads today because I think there's a lot of mis-estimating what's going on there. And I think enough of you are interested in my take that it's worth putting it out there. But I'll also give the top takeaway on Intel's new chips and highlight an interesting bit of research out of Stanford showing the effects of ChatGPT on student cheating.
Free folks get all three of those! Paid users get the rest of my takes on the tech news today as well. And thanks to every single one of you for being interested. I hope this helps yo understand tech better!
Tom
Big Story
"Threads launches for nearly half a billion more users in Europe - The Verge"
"Meta starts testing Threads integration with ActivityPub | TechCrunch"
Threads has launched in the European Union, adding 448 million people to its potential market. Europe adds to the more than 100 countries who can access Instagram's Twitter-like service. EU users will not need to sign up for Instagram in order to use Threads, though they can use an Instagram account for Threads if they wish. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also posted that Threads is testing its first ActivityPub integration, which lets you follow some Threads accounts on federated services like Mastodon. So far the integration is limited and one way.
I think a lot of people got Threads wrong when it launched. It was never going to immediately take over Twitter. But it did have some big advantages that would allow it to become bigger. And it is taking those advantages. So rather than follow the horse race of user engagement and usage from day to day, I find it more instructive to watch for a cadence of important moves to increase usefulness. That has happened. We've seen new features released at a decent pace, like its not-hashtags take on hashtags, that have brought people back to the platform regularly. The addition of the EU is a huge boost as it will bring a lot of new folks in who were missed, margin the platform more global. Of course that will also bring the problems of moderation that wide open platforms like this carry.
That's one of the reasons I've preferred federated systems like Mastodon or BlueSky. They can allow subcultures with community moderation to flourish. That's one of the reasons Reddit has been successful. And Threads integrating with ActivityPub is a great way to foster both worlds. If you want the wide open Twitter-like platform, Threads is willing to offer it and you will be able to still view it from your local Mastodon community, if you want.
If that happens, I suspect ActivityPub will win out over Bluesky's AT Protocol, and it's possible BlueSky might decide to interoperate at some point too. That's a long way off but something I'm keeping in mind. But we're starting to see the outline of a series of events that would bring mainstream awareness to the fediverse, via Threads, with the benefits of a preserved federated system. Yes. There are lots of ways meta can and likely will be tempted to ruing that. I won't be shocked if that happens wither. But it's not a foregone conclusion and it's certainly one of the most interesting slow-motion confluence of change I've seen in social media in years.
Other Stories
"Intel’s Core Ultra CPUs are here — and they all come with silicon dedicated to AI - The Verge"
"Intel intros first Meteor Lake chips with faster GPUs and worse single-core speed | Ars Technica"
Intel announced details for its new line of laptop Core Ultra processors, part of its Meteor Lake lineup. These are the first made by TSMC for Intel and the first on the Intel 4 process. The Core Ultra 7 165H promises up to 11 percent improvement in multi-threading performance against AMD, Qualcomm and Apple's latest chips but benchmarks ahead of the release indicate slightly reduced single-core performance. The integrated ARC GPU showed significant improvements and Intel also promsises improved power efficiency. But Intel focused on its first Neural Processing Unit which can handle things like background blur, eye tracking and picture framing. Most of the Meteor Lake chips are now launched with the exception of the top-of-the line Core Ultra 7 185H. MSI, Asus, Acer and Lenovo all announced laptops with the new chips.
The 165H is the best you can get today, and it promises 25 percent power reduction compared to the previous Core i7 and 79% more efficient than the Ryzen 7 7840U. But it's not the flagship. That's the Core Ultra 9 185H which can boost clock speeds up to 5.1GHz and includes a built-in Arc GPU with eight Xe cores running at up to 2.35GHz.
The takeaway? Intel continues its practice of putting out very good chips that aren't going to damage the marketshare of its competitors but will also keep it from sliding back. And you have great choices for processors when you shop for a laptop.
"What do AI chatbots really mean for students and cheating? | Stanford Graduate School of Education"
A lot of people assume that chatbots like ChatGPT make it easier for students to cheat on test and homework. Stanford education scholars Victor Lee and Denise Pope have been investigating the issue of cheating for years and so far have not found a measurable effect of AI tools on cheating. The level of cheating in schools has remained steady for the past few years, even after the introduction of ChatGPT. In fact Pope says if there's any change at all, it decreased slightly in 2023. Lee notes this may change as students become more familiar with the tech, but so far it does not appear to affect things. Their work also found that most students believes its wrong to use chatbot to write an entire paper for example. The two suggest the best way to deal with the rise of chatbots is to add them tot he existing discussion of ethics of cheating already in place. Lee says, "I think of AI literacy as being akin to driver’s ed: We’ve got a powerful tool that can be a great asset, but it can also be dangerous. We want students to learn how to use it responsibly."
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