April 29, 2025
Tuesday
Uncertain Sycophant-y Strategery
Bessent defends 'strategic uncertainty' of Trump tariffs (indiatimes.com)
"In game theory, it's called strategic uncertainty, so you're not going to tell the person on the other side of the negotiation where you're going to end up," Bessent told ABC's "This Week" news program.
"'Nobody is better at creating this leverage than President Trump,' the treasury secretary added."
Well, Bessent has a defensible point there.
Amazon apparently plans to "show how much Trump’s tariffs are adding to the price of each product" in its massive online store. (NOTE: I have not been able to verify that Amazon actually made such an announcement; the linked page appears to be the only source reporting it, and attributes it only to "a person familiar with the plan".).
The White House characterized this as a "a hostile and political act by Amazon", which I suppose makes sense when your negotiation strategy is built on the creation of strategic uncertainty.
Maybe Trump forgot to sign the Elmer Fudd Executive Order telling all of us, including Amazon: "Shhh, be vewy, vewy quiet."
Scripting News: Tuesday, April 29, 2025 (scripting.com)
Bluesky is nice, but it's fragile, and their hype says otherwise. That's why they're special. They should straighten this out so we can properly get decentralization into our networks. Bluesky could easily add a layer of RSS on top of what they have, so that news flow could survive a disaster. In 2025 this is a realistic concern, as it was in 1966. Also it would be nice if other network experts would support this, esp if they're on Bluesky.
I'm not the network expert Dave is looking for, but I agree with him on this. I'd love to see an RSS layer on top of Bluesky. I'd really love to see RSS restored to its former glory all around the web, but, realizing that likely won't happen, adding it to Bluesky would be a very satisfying consolation prize.
Photography: One Day in DC - Adam Chandler's Blog (adamchandler.me)
I woke up at 6AM, flew to DC and....
I love posts like this one from Adam Chandler. Words help, of course, but a series of photographs with a day-in-the-life perspective really lets you quickly appreciate someone else's experience. Fun. Adam's text in the post focuses on the Nationals game he attended, but the pictures show that he did so much more on that day. Love it.
Amazon is not planning to break out tariff costs online as White House attacks potential move (apnews.com)
Amazon says it’s not planning to display added tariff costs next to product prices on its site — despite a report that sparked speculation the e-commerce giant would soon show the new import charges, and the White House’s fiery comments denouncing the purported change.
I knew I smelled something fishy when I posted about this earlier today (see my note in that post). Turns out, a report from a site called Punchbowl News citing an anonymous source is...not great.
Thank you AP!
We went down to BG tonight to start the process of moving Jake home for the summer. We went out for dinner, which ended up taking a lot longer than we expected. We didn't mind...it gave us more time for conversation with Jake, which was nice. We loaded the car afterward and headed home. We'll get the rest later this week and he'll be out of the dorms by Friday. Summer is coming, quickly.
I caught a beautiful splash of sunlight across the side of this building as we left dinner in downtown BG tonight. It's available!
OpenAI rolls back ChatGPT 4o model for being too much of a suck-up (mashable.com)
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that "GPT-4o updates have made the personality too sycophant-y and annoying." And today, Altman announced on X that the company was fully rolling back the 4o update for paid and free users alike.
"too sycophant-y and annoying" — sounds like much of the Republican Party these days. Can we get a full rollback on that?
We had plenty of time to stare at this wall during dinner tonight. It seemed like everyone had the same idea as us — grab a quick dinner before lading the car to start the move home. That made for a dinner that was less than quick, of course.
(Bowling Green, Ohio)