David Rosenthal

Aging tech bro. Oyster Farmer. Dog dad.

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

Happy 20

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

Fox news defence analyst job application was just accidentally posted to my timeline

[Dan Crenshaw @DanCrenshawTX]

For all the pearl-clutching from the media and the Democrats trying to poke holes in the notion of “imminent threat” posed by Iran: Let’s have a quick lesson on intelligence analysis, geopolitics, and common sense.

THREAD.

[Chris Dehghanpoor @chrisd9r]

I've had a gnarly cold the last week so it's been hard for me to collect my thoughts through the haze of meds but — Wednesday was my last day as an investigative reporter for The Washington Post.

I happened to accept an offer last week, so I'll be landing on my feet, but many of my immensely talented colleagues are not as fortunate.

I will be forever grateful to my teammates and editors for taking a chance and hiring an infosec engineer with 0 past reporting experience.

I got to experience firsthand what it's like to work in a big newsroom and it's wild how far public perception is from reality, so I'd like to help set the record straight —

To the people who think the Post is too far left or too far to the center or too far right or too far from your chosen worldview, I've got bad news for you: the newsroom was the most apolitical job I've ever held.

We held power to account. Period.

Not once did I hear anyone bring up personal politics when discussing a story, and I know if anyone did, they would have been met with a healthy dose of side-eye. We cared about only one thing: the truth. If the truth upsets you because it's incongruent with your worldview...good. It should. The truth should illuminate and infuriate. If you're looking to live in the safe confines of an echo chamber that won't hurt your feelings, then there are a few billionaires with hypertuned algorithms that would love for you to spend hours mainlining hopium while you live safely in your bubble.

To those who are still willing to share an objective reality, but think you're sending a message to people like Bezos by canceling your subscriptions — what message do you think you're sending, and to whom? Because I promise you that Jeff was not laying awake at night fretting over the subscriber figures.

But I don't blame readers — most people don't realize that editorial (opinions) and news are completely different sections. They operate independently. Opinions are subjective — the truth is not. A strong newsroom leader would have gotten out in front of all the backlash and helped educate people, helped reassure the public that regardless of the very stupid decisions of a few, there were many more people in the newsroom dedicated to reporting the truth. Instead the newsroom was hung out to dry while Will Lewis was...doing whatever the fuck he's been doing the last few years.

I will never forget my time at The Washington Post. I have never worked harder in my life with people that are so dedicated to what they do, and to ensuring that they do it with the utmost care and attention. Whether or not you read the Post, I promise you that the decimation of that newsroom is a net negative for society and reality.

[Brendan Fraser Crane @bf_crane]

The Summer Olympic village is a Dionysian paradise, with flushed flesh and Mediterranean congeniality. The Winter Olympic village is just Scandinavians rutting joylessly, trying to steal a little frictional heat from a cold and empty universe.

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

@RTunes68 @MELANIAJTRUMP Undocumented sex worker.

[jawn didion @tinndfishmonger]

You don’t need bread and milk for a snowstorm… you need a giant batch of soup and a good bottle of red wine and ingredients to bake an ambitious amount of cookies

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

@AGPamBondi @FBI @Underworld_Pod

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

THE BIG REGRESSION

My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby.

It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet. It’s amped up with state of the art systems. The ones with touchscreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and interfaces that try too hard.

And it’s terrible. What a regression.

The lights are powered by Control4. And require a demo to understand how to use the switches, understand which ones control what, and to be sure not to hit THAT ONE because it’ll turn off all the lights in the house when you didn’t mean to. Worse.

The TV is the latest Samsung which has a baffling UI just to watch CNN. My parents aren’t idiots, but definitely feel like they’re missing something obvious. They aren’t — TVs have simply gotten worse. You don’t turn them on anymore, you boot them up.

The Miele dishwasher is hidden flush with the counters. That part is fine, but here’s what isn’t: It wouldn’t even operate the first time without connecting it to an app. This meant another call to the house manager to have them install an app they didn’t know they needed either. An app to clean some peanut butter off a plate? For serious? Worse.

Thermostats... Nest would have been an upgrade, but these other propriety ones from some other company trying to be nest-like are baffling. Round touchscreens that take you into a dark labyrinth of options just to be sure it’s set at 68. Or is it 68 now? Or is that what we want it at, but it’s at 72? Wait... What? Which number is this? Worse.

The alarm system is essentially a 10” iPad bolted to the wall that has the fucking weather forecast on it. And it’s bright! I’m sure there’s a way to turn that off, but then the screen would be so barren that it would be filled with the news instead. Why can’t the alarm panel just be an alarm panel? Worse.

And the lag. Lag everywhere. Everything feels a beat or two behind. Everything. Lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little. Real-time must be the hardest problem.

Now look... I’m no luddite. But this experience is close to conversion therapy. Tech can make things better, but I simply can’t see in these cases. I’ve heard the pitches too — you can set up scenes and one button can change EVERYTHING. Not buying it. It actually feels primitive, like we haven’t figured out how to make things easy yet. That some breakthrough will eventually come when you can simply knock a switch up or down and it’ll all makes sense. But that's at least 20 years down the road.

It’s really the contrast that makes it alarming. We just got back from a vacation in Montana. Rented a house there. They did have a fancy TV — seems those can’t be avoided these days — but everything else was old school and clear. Physical up/down light switches in the right places. Appliances without the internet. Buttons with depth and physically-confirmed state change rather than surfaces that don’t obviously register your choice. More traditional round rotating Honeywell thermostats that are just clear and obvious. No tours, no instructions, no questions, no fearing you’re going to do something wrong, no wondering how something works. Useful and universally clear. That’s human, that’s modern.

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

This Barbarians at the Gate sequel is gonna be dumber than gossip girls

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

Same

[VentureBeat @VentureBeat]

LLMs generate 'fluent nonsense' when reasoning outside their training zone https://t.co/yNOdBBigrA

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

@TownsUsa @RTunes68

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

Google Beam: Our AI-first 3D video communication platform @google https://t.co/w4qYSkfN8v

[Jesse Nowlin🎙Google Developer Expert @jessenowlin]

Project Starline is now Google Beam!

[Jim Lundy @JimLundy]

New @Google Beam - 3D Video - coming soon in partnership with @HP #GoogleIO

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

Check out Google’s new demo of Beam, a 3D imaging platform to try and make teleconferencing as realistic as possible, via #GoogleIO 👀

[Google @Google]

What if you could take a 2D video call and make it feel like you’re really there?

Google Beam, our new AI-first video communication platform, does just that — using a state-of-the-art AI video model to transform 2D video streams into a realistic 3D experience. #GoogleIO

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

@caitlincz Super interesting but I wonder wonder if the overall market for music is unchanged and money is just moving from purchase media to live shows because of Spotify and YouTube.

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

@PressSec uh-oh spaghetti-oh Dates, time, strike package is pretty clearly a "war plan", especially when it actually happens

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

@RTunes68 @JoJoFromJerz Just here because this thr ad needs more NJ

[David Rosenthal @drosenthaltweet]

@NateSilver538 The last time i felt this much explosion potential energy was in 2001, waiting for The Strokes to break up