{"slug": "july-4-link-dump", "title": "July 4 link dump", "summary": "A July 4 link dump by an unnamed editor compiles essays on the indie web's comeback, SoftBank's AI investments, the Slate Truck EV, and more. The collection highlights a survey finding that 60% of U.S. consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff, and discusses the shift of political power toward firms that make machines.", "body_md": "[The Internet\nneeds more You](https://arunrocks.com/the-internet-needs-more-you/) by Arun Ravindran. The indie web is slowly staging\na comeback. People are returning to personal sites, RSS readers, and\nhand-curated blogrolls — not out of nostalgia, but because the\nalgorithmic feed has failed them.\n\n[SoftBank’s\nuntitled AI goose game — eggs do not lay eggs](https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/06/26/softbanks-untitled-ai-goose-game-eggs-do-not-lay-eggs/) by David Gerard.\nSoftBank was also the main backer of WeWork, which was almost as\nstupid as OpenAI. WeWork’s 2019 stock market offering failed\nspectacularly and SoftBank’s investment went down 90%. WeWork still\nexists in 2026, but it’s a lot smaller. As well as the spectacular\nmesses, SoftBank has a pile of quietly successful portfolio companies —\nlike ARM, which designs the chips in all the phones, and makes a bundle.\nThese pay for the messes.\n\n[I\ndrove the Slate Truck — there’s more to it than EV minimalism](https://www.theverge.com/transportation/955454/slate-truck-ev-price-drive-specs-minimalism) by\nRani Molla. The vehicle runs counter to a broader trend in the auto\nindustry sometimes referred to as\n\ntrimflation\n\n— the push to\nincrease margins by bundling vehicles with more technology and luxury\nfeatures.\n\n[War\nby Other Means](https://www.palladiummag.com/2026/06/23/war-by-other-means/) by John Severini. Combined with recent and\nforthcoming improvements to industrial automation, all signs point\ntoward governments relying on a much smaller pool of human capital for\nlabor and war. Accordingly, this means that a fundamental source of\npolitical power has begun to shift from the people toward the firms that\nmake those machines.\n\n(Those firms, though, have labor forces. So the\nimportance of labor/management issues goes up, too?)\n\n[There is\nminimal downside to switching to open models](https://www.marble.onl/posts/cancel_claude.html) by Andrew Marble. (A\nthought-provoking comparison of desktop Linux to open* AI models. And\nyes, we still need open-source/Eurostack CAD.)\n\n[Sixty\npercent of US consumers say ‘AI’ in brand messaging is a turnoff, survey\nfinds](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/16/sixty-percent-of-u-s-consumers-say-ai-in-brand-messaging-is-a-turnoff-survey-finds/) by Sarah Perez. (If people knew how much “AI” investment is\nthere to implement surveillance and price discrimination/surveillance\npricing, IMHO the “AI” boom would be even less popular.)\n\n[You\nShould Make Cross Views](https://moultano.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/you-should-make-cross-views/) by Ryan Moulton. All you need is two\npictures taken from two different positions shifted\nhorizontally.\n\n[Improvements\nto Web for AI Should Benefit All Users](https://cloudfour.com/thinks/improvements-to-web-for-ai-should-benefit-all-users/) by Jason Grigsby. When a\nsite’s actions are hard for an AI agent to use, that is a gap in the\npage’s own semantics, and we should first seek to close it in the\nplatform’s shared layers (HTML and ARIA), where the user, assistive\ntechnology, and agents all benefit.\n\n[The\nCostco theory of the internet](https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-costco-theory-of-the-internet/) by JA Westenberg. (But who is left\nwho’s trusted enough to be the curator?)\n\n[The\nFuture of Everything is Lies, I Guess](https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess) by Kyle Kingsbury. (Long\nseries on how LLMs change things.)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/july-4-link-dump", "canonical_source": "https://blog.zgp.org/mlp-2026-07-04/", "published_at": "2026-07-04 00:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-01 06:00:32.872458+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["SoftBank", "WeWork", "ARM", "Slate Truck", "OpenAI"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/july-4-link-dump", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/july-4-link-dump.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/july-4-link-dump.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/july-4-link-dump.jsonld"}}