| The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics |
https://davidoks.blog/p/ai-is-killing-the-cheap-smartphone |
David Oks provides the clearest explanation I've seen yet of why consumer products that use memory are likely to get significantly more expensive over the next few years.
The short version is that memory manufacturers - of which there are just three remaining large companies - have a fixed capacity in terms of how many wafers they can process at any one time. This fixed wafer capacity is then split between DDR - used in desktops and servers, LPDDR - used in mobile phones and low-energy devices, and HBM - used with GPUs.
Until recently, HBM got just 2% of that wafer allocation. The enormous growth in AI data centers has pushed that up to an expected 20% by the end of 2026, and "a single gigabyte of HBM consumes more than three times the wafer capacity that a gigabyte of DDR or LPDDR does".
Memory companies have learned from the extinction of their rivals that you should always under-provision rather than over-provision your fabricator capacity. The profit margins and demand for HBM (high-bandwidth memory) will constrain the production of consumer-device RAM for several years.
This is already being felt in the sub-$100 smartphone market, which is particularly important to markets like Africa and South Asia.
(The original title of the piece was "AI is killing the cheap smartphone" but I'm using the Hacker News rephrased title, which I think does more justice to the content.) |
2026-05-22 22:01:31+00:00 |
| FTC to Require Cox Media Group, Two Other Firms to Pay Nearly $1 Million to Settle Charges They Deceived Customers About “Active Listening” AI-Powered Marketing Service |
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/05/ftc-require-cox-media-group-two-other-firms-pay-nearly-1-million-settle-charges-they-deceived |
Back in 2024 Cox Media Group were caught trying to sell advertisers packages based on "active listening", with [this deck](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25051283-cmg-pitch-deck-on-voice-data-advertising-active-listening/) which claimed:
> - Smart devices capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations
> - Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers
I wrote about this [in September 2024](https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/2/facebook-cmg/). My theory:
> I think **active listening** is the term that the team came up with for “something that sounds fancy but really just means the way ad targeting platforms work already”. Then they got over-excited about the new metaphor and added that first couple of slides that talk about “voice data”, without really understanding how the tech works or what kind of a shitstorm that could kick off when people who DID understand technology started paying attention to their marketing.
This FTC press release appears to confirm that's pretty much what happened:
> CMG, MindSift and 1010 Digital Works claimed their “Active Listening” branded marketing service listened in on consumers’ conversations overheard by smart devices, in real time, to target advertising [...]
>
> According to the complaints, this service did not, in fact, listen in on consumers’ conversations or use voice data at all—nor did the service accurately place ads in customers’ desired locations. Instead, the service the companies provided consisted of reselling—at a significant markup—email lists obtained from other data brokers.
The FTC also clarify that hiding an "opt-in" to using voice data in terms of service would not be acceptable, as tricks like that do not constitute "adequate consent":
> The FTC also alleged that all three companies deceived potential customers by claiming that consumers had opted into the Active Listening service. The company, however, did not seek or obtain consumers’ consent, according to the complaints. Instead, the companies claimed that consumers had “opted in” by agreeing to the terms of service that people have to accept when downloading and using apps. Clicking through mandatory terms of service does not constitute “opt-in consent” for such an invasive service or for use of consumers’ voice data from inside their homes. If the Active Listening service had functioned as advertised, this collection and use of consumers’ voice data without adequate consent would itself violate Section 5 of the FTC Act.
Attempting to myth bust [the conspiracy theory](https://simonwillison.net/tags/microphone-ads-conspiracy/) that our mobile devices target ads to us based on spying through the microphones continues to be my least rewarding niche online hobby. It's nice to have a new piece of ammunition. |
2026-05-22 04:48:32+00:00 |
| How fast is 10 tokens per second really? |
https://mikeveerman.github.io/tokenspeed/ |
Neat little HTML app by Mike Veerman ([source code here](https://github.com/MikeVeerman/tokenspeed/blob/master/index.html)) which simulates LLM token output speeds from 5/second to 800/second.
Useful if you see a model advertised as "30 tokens/second" and want to get a feel for what that actually looks like. |
2026-05-20 17:57:45+00:00 |
| GDS weighs in on the NHS's decision to retreat from Open Source |
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/gds-weighs-in-on-the-nhss-decision-to-retreat-from-open-source/ |
Terence Eden continues his coverage of the NHS' [poorly considered decision](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/) to close down access to their open source repositories in response to vulnerabilities reported to them as part of [Project Glasswing](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/7/project-glasswing/).
Now the Government Digital Service have joined the conversation with [AI, open code and vulnerability risk in the public sector](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ai-open-code-and-vulnerability-risk-in-the-public-sector), published May 14th. Their key recommendation:
> Keep open by default. Making everything private adds additional delivery and policy costs, and can reduce reuse and scrutiny. Openness should remain the default posture, with closure used sparingly and deliberately.
While they don't mention the NHS by name, Terence speaks the language of the civil service and interprets this as a major escalation:
> Within the UK's Civil Service you occasionally hear the expression "being invited to a meeting *without biscuits*". It implies a rather frosty discussion without any of the polite niceties of a normal meeting. In general though, even when people have severe disagreements, it is rare for tempers to fray. It is even rarer for those internal disagreements to spill over into public. |
2026-05-17 15:59:41+00:00 |
| Welcome to the Datasette blog |
https://datasette.io/blog/2026/new-blog/ |
We have a bunch of neat Datasette announcements in the pipeline so we decided it was time the project grew an official blog.
I built this using OpenAI Codex desktop, which turns out to have the Markdown session transcript export feature I've always wanted. Here's [the session that built the blog](https://gist.github.com/simonw/885b11eee46822622b8031a1f4e5f3a3). See also [issue 179](https://github.com/simonw/datasette.io/issues/179). |
2026-05-13 23:59:39+00:00 |
| GitLab Act 2 |
https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-act-2/ |
There's a lot going on in this announcement from GitLab about the "workforce reduction" and "structural and strategic decisions" they are making with respect to the agentic era.
- They're "planning to reduce the number of countries by up to 30% where we have small teams". One of the most interesting things about GitLab is that they have employees spread across a large number of countries - 18 are listed [in their public employee handbook](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook/-/blob/7ce61c4be88b04061f9ad9ab5eb64db91ce89d2a/content/handbook/people-group/employment-solutions.md) but this post says they are "operating in nearly 60 countries". That handbook used to document their payroll workflows for those countries too - they stopped publishing that in 2023 but [the last public version](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook/-/blob/82ad50d380b11751645eedc733f7d663cf908d1f/content/handbook/finance/payroll.md) (hooray for version control) remains a fascinating read. Since we don't know which of those 60 countries have small teams, we can't calculate how many countries that 30% applies to.
- "We're planning to flatten the organization, removing up to three layers of management in some functions so leaders are closer to the work." - this isn't the first announcement of this type I've seen that's trimming management. Coinbase [recently announced](https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/2051616759145185723) a much more aggressive version of this: they were "flattening our org structure to 5 layers max below" and "No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches".
- In terms of team structure: "We're re-organizing R&D to create roughly 60 smaller, more empowered teams with end-to-end ownership, nearly doubling the number of independent teams." I've always loved the idea of individual teams that can ship features unblocked by other teams, and it makes sense to me that agentic engineering can increase the capability of such teams. The 37signals public employee handbook used to have a section on working [In self-sufficient, independent teams](https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/9504494a6daa555837ee2cc2d9134ca43ab36301/how-we-work.md#in-self-sufficient-independent-teams) which perfectly captured this for me, I'm sad to see they [removed that detail](https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/commit/1db14f83913163f4e2e72130524269ae6ba3d757) in January 2024!
- Tucked away towards the bottom: "*We will be retiring CREDIT as our values framework*" - that's the values framework [described on this page](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook/-/blob/7ce61c4be88b04061f9ad9ab5eb64db91ce89d2a/content/handbook/values/_index.md): "Collaboration, Results for Customers, Efficiency, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, Iteration, and Transparency". The new values are "Speed with Quality, Ownership Mindset, Customer Outcomes". The fact that "Diversity" is no longer in there is likely to attract a whole lot of attention, so it's worth noting that a sub-bullet under Customer Outcomes reads "Interpersonal excellence: individuals who are good humans, embrace diversity, inclusion and belonging, assume good intent and treat everyone with respect".
Here's the part of their new strategy that most resonated with me:
> **The agentic era multiplies demand for software**. Software has been the force multiplier behind nearly every business transformation of the last two decades. The constraint was the cost and time of producing and managing it. That constraint is collapsing. As the cost of producing software collapses, demand for it will expand. Last year, the developer platform market used to be measured in tens of dollars per user per month, this year it is hundreds/user/month and headed to thousands. *Not only is the value of software for builders increasing, but we believe there will be more software and builders than ever, and we will serve an increasing volume of both*.
That very much encapsulates my own optimistic, [Jevons-paradox](https://simonwillison.net/tags/jevons-paradox/)-inspired hope for how this will all work out.
Their opinion on this does need to be taken with a big grain of salt though. GitLab's stock price was ~$52 a year ago and is ~$26 today, and it's plausible that the drop corresponds to uncertainty about GitLab's continued growth as agentic engineering eats its way through their core market.
If your entire business depends on software engineering growing as a field and producing larger volumes of more lucrative seats, you have a strong incentive to believe that agents will have that effect! |
2026-05-11 23:58:55+00:00 |
| Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain |
https://www.404media.co/your-ai-use-is-breaking-my-brain/ |
Excellent, angry piece by Jason Koebler on how AI writing online is becoming impossible to avoid, filtering it is mentally exhausting and it's even starting to distort regular human writing styles.
I particularly liked his use of the term "Zombie Internet" to define a different, more insidious alternative to the "Dead Internet" (which is just bots talking to each other):
> I called it the Zombie Internet because the truth is that large parts of the internet are not just bots talking to bots or bots talking to people. It’s people talking to bots, people talking to people, people creating “AI agents” and then instructing them to interact with people. It’s people using AI talking to people who are not using AI, and it’s people using AI talking to other people who are using AI. It’s influencer hustlebros who are teaching each other how to make AI influencers and have spun up automated YouTube channels and blogs and social media accounts that are spamming the internet for the sole purpose of making money. It is whatever the fuck “Moltbook” is and whatever the fuck X and LinkedIn have become. It’s AI summaries of real books being sold as the book itself and inspirational Reddit posts and comment threads in which people give heartfelt advice to some account that’s actually being run by a marketing firm. [...] |
2026-05-11 19:21:27+00:00 |
| Learning on the Shop floor |
https://twitter.com/tobi/status/2053121182044451016 |
Tobias Lütke describes Shopify's internal coding agent tool, River, which operates entirely in public on their Slack:
> River does not respond to direct messages. She politely declines and suggests to create a public channel for you and her to start working in. I myself work with river in `#tobi_river` channel and many followed this pattern. Every conversation is therefore searchable. Anyone at Shopify can jump in. In my own channel, there are over 100 people who, react to threads, add color and add context, pick up the torch, help with the reviews, remind me how rusty I am, and importantly, learn from watching. [...]
>
> As so often with German, there is a word for the kind of environment: *Lehrwerkstatt*. Literally: **A teaching workshop**. The whole shop floor is the classroom. You learn by being near the work. Being a constant learner is one of the core values of the firm.
>
> Shopify wants to be a Lehrwerkstatt at scale and River has now gotten us closer to this ideal than ever. It’s *osmosis learning*, because it does not require a curriculum, a training plan, or a manager. It just requires everyone's work to be visible to the maximum extent possible. Everyone learns from each other.
I'm reminded of how Midjourney spent its first few years with the primary interface being public Discord channels, forcing users to share their prompts and learn from each other's experiments. I continue to believe that the early success of Midjourney was tied to this mechanism, helping to compensate for how weird and finicky text-to-image prompting is. |
2026-05-11 15:46:36+00:00 |
| Mythical Man Month |
https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MythicalManMonth.html |
Martin Fowler highlights this key idea from The Mythical Man-Month (Fred Brooks, 1975, still impressively relevant 50 years later):
> I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas.
**Conceptual integrity** is exactly the missing piece I've been trying to nail down in understanding why being able to spit out new features so quickly offers new challenges when working with coding agents. |
2026-05-10 15:36:19+00:00 |
| Mythical Man Month |
https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MythicalManMonth.html |
Martin Fowler highlights this key idea from The Mythical Man-Month (Fred Brooks, 1975, still impressively relevant 50 years later):
> I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas.
**Conceptual integrity** is exactly the missing piece I've been trying to nail down in understanding why being able to spit out new features so quickly offers new challenges when working with coding agents. |
2026-05-10 15:31:32+00:00 |