iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 21/09/2026

Oh wow this is extraordinary on so many levels. Just brilliant writing to begin with. I kept thinking it was attempting to be hagiographic but that's just not possible given the subject.

colossus.com

Profile of Mark Zuckerberg

A journey to the heart of history’s largest nonterritorial empire

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 16/09/2026

Fantastic response to the AI discourse over the last ~week.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 23/04/2026

Flashing the batsignal for @ersc.io crew. Wow do we need y’all!

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 19/11/2025

I’ve had a running test for multimodal models over the last ~year: extract the “Crss” values for each tick mark in this chart. GPT 5 makes up numbers, Claude 4.5 refuses to try, Qwen3 VL has a plausible guess. Gemini 3 pro pretty much nails it.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 20/10/2025

Somebody at the body shop DIY’ed the compact pickup Detroit won’t build.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 03/06/2025

This is such an important conversation and mirrors where I'm at on LLM use/value. The critique got frozen in amber a 1-2 years ago, and is fueled by (valid) structural issues like energy, copyright, deepfakes, etc. But the tech continues to evolve in ways that are unrelated to these problems.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 29/05/2025

Big lesson from the last several years: 4a law isn't equipped to handle the harms embedded in pervasive surveillance tech like ALPR. Also, lots of people (who don't support LE dragnets) ended up on the wrong side of the right to privacy in public fight because pervasive surveillance seemed useful.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 05/04/2025

'For Tern, the new tariff is simply a non-starter. “I don’t want anything with 47% duty,” he said. “I have some inventory here, and I have one container we know is safe, several more (in transit) that might be safe. After that I don't know, I'm hoping something changes.”'

bicycleretailer.com

Bike maker takes steps to avert an unexpected million-dollar tariff charge

If Tern’s shipments don’t arrive from Vietnam before Wednesday, or get diverted, the cargo bike brand will be on the hook for about $1 million — cash — in tariff fees. Until this week, the company had...

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 05/04/2025

A fantastic article the in the Institute of Navigation newsletter on something else of societal importance, held together only by norms and fraying international agreements: The invisible global infrastructure supporting GPS and other satnav systems.

THE INVISIBLE FOUNDATION CRUMBLING
GPS Relies on a Fragile Global
System
by Kevin Dennehy

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 16/03/2025

The Rober painted wall video is pretty cool, but tbh, comparing Tesla to cartoons might be unfair to Wiley Coyote and co. Here's a 2020 white paper on the complexity of vision-only 3d perception. Has a great video of a Tesla ensemble model just driving up and booping a truck at low speed.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 18/02/2025

Restate is one of the coolest pieces of software I've encountered in quite awhile. Not often a tiny, well-crafted application comes along that forces you to fundamentally rethink software design.

restate.dev

Restate 1.2: a distributed durable execution engine, built from first principles

Restate 1.2 adds highly-available, distributed deployments and a graphical UI.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 16/02/2025

Was expecting NC to be at/near the top of the list of per capita impact from NIH cuts, but it's even worse given how geographically concentrated they are: NYT estimates a best case reduction of $175m just in Durham and Chapel Hill. That's ~$350/person, not even counting cuts at NIEHS HQ in Durham.

nytimes.com

How Trump’s Medical Research Cuts Would Hit Colleges and Hospitals in Every State

Changes to a key funding formula will reduce research grants at hospitals and universities by billions — and may discourage future research.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 14/02/2025

An alternative lesson: while we need better technology in gov't, the work that needs to be done to fix our gov't isn't technical. Thinking we could engineer our way out of a constitutional crisis is partly responsible for how we got here.

wired.com

The DOGE Squad Is Squandering a Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity

Government tech experts say Elon Musk’s team could have seized the moment to make Washington work better.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 24/01/2025

The Blind content on DeepSeek is amazing. www.teamblind.com/us/s/KccnF41n

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 09/01/2025

“I'm not being glib when I say that LA's leaders demonstrated more situational awareness for the "traffic nightmare" on the first night of the World Series than they did for this real-life nightmare.”

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 19/12/2024

Stopped by the Ionna EV charging launch event and helped increase the ratio of middle age white dudes, already well into the 98-99% range. I was one of the very few non-vloggers attending.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 10/12/2024

Nominating @bcantrill.bsky.social for CEO of Intel. Open sourcing their PDK is a brilliant move, and a great way to repay their debt to society for the billions they got from Chips Act flag waving.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 21/11/2024

Typically thoughtful/thought provoking piece from @macwright.com on a topic anyone who programs has and will continue to grapple with.

macwright.com

On not using copilot

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 08/11/2024

If the panicked emails I’ve been getting from Chinese suppliers are any indication, the next couple years are going to be pretty weird. My guess is that the impending tariffs will put so much pressure on input costs that any US manufacture that can move production elsewhere won’t have a choice.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 25/10/2024

Great day to convert your WaPo subscription into a KYE sponsorship, and they've got a timely interview with @rickperlstein.bsky.social to celebrate: "We explore the failures of American media elites and the Democratic Party to reckon with Donald Trump and his antecedents on the far right."

podcasts.apple.com

The Infernal Triangle (w/ Rick Perlstein)

Podcast Episode · Know Your Enemy · 10/25/2024 · 1h

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 10/10/2024

Mobility as a Service, IRL edition: Fisker EVs "cannot, as a technical matter, be 'ported' from the Fisker server to which the vehicles are currently linked to a distinct server owned and/or controlled by" a non-bankrupt vehicle operator. Tbh, this is just an early example for connected cars.

arstechnica.com

Fisker EVs can’t be ported to new server

The sale of 3,300 Fisker Oceans is now in doubt as they cannot be migrated away from Fisker’s server.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 06/10/2024

Here's the very tired fire chief from Pensacola, my favorite place in WNC, with an important message: "I ain't got time for this." He just spent his Saturday evening trying to tamp down Facebook rumors flooding his community with unneeded help and attacking FEMA. www.facebook.com/watch/live/?...

A very tired fire chief with an important message: "I ain't got time for this."

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 03/10/2024

One under reported theme from Helene is the number of influencer militia member types that have turned up in WNC vlogging their DIY response efforts (and Starlink installs), and the decrying the lack of federal and state help. Not great if disaster response ends up as polarized as COVID response.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 31/05/2024

Just saw a Domino’s delivery guy on an ebike, rolling down the street straddling (and blocking) two lanes of traffic while casually smoking a cigarette. This dude needs a promotion to at least colonel in the @thewaroncars.bsky.social

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 14/05/2024

Turns out it's hard to do an energy transition as industrial policy when the legislature is controlled by folks that don't want an energy transition.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 07/05/2024

Really appreciated the economic justice focus of this discussion. Walkable communities are a luxury good in the US.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 30/04/2024

Head of Tesla's supercharger program departs: 'Musk suggested he would slow the buildout of the Supercharger network. “We will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction,” he wrote.' 😬

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 19/03/2024

Yet another reminder that the path to regulating rideshare (and every other fleet operator) is via labor policy.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 14/03/2024

Saw this first hand last year when our local NG company forgot to properly cap a distribution line during a construction project and it vented, undetected, through our front yard for several months. We only discovered because a fiber installer made a hole that concentrated it enough to smell.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 05/03/2024

Extraordinarily good @thewaroncars.bsky.social piece from January (ostensibly) about the new Popwheels e-bike battery swap system in NYC. But it's actually about people and economic justice. As all transport/urban policy stories are.

thewaroncars.org

118. The Future of Transportation Has Arrived With Your Pad Thai

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 21/02/2024

While the EV Bidenomics stans argue about sales trajectories for EVs that are unsalable (if not out right illegal) outside the US, the rest of the world is taking advantage of electrification to build an entirely new class of vehicle.

bloomberg.com

Stellantis CEO Calls Small EVs a Tough Sell in Truck-Loving US

Small cars are the wrong way to win over truck-loving Americans skeptical of electric vehicles, according to the leader of Jeep-owner Stellantis NV.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 24/01/2024

I'm with Gita Jackson on generative AI (aftermath.site/the-internet...), but I think there's a useful subgenre where it is deployed to illuminate our contemporary dystopia. Bonus credit when the AGI issues a subtle cry for help:

Amazon Basics canned foods, including "bleak beans"

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 04/01/2024

Welp, leave it to Emily Badger to remind everyone that transportation policy and social policy are actually the same thing. FWIW, this absolutely squares with my experience living in rapidly growing sunbelt city. The only places left to live are inhospitable to people without cars.

nytimes.com

Why Are So Many More Pedestrians Dying in the U.S.?

Other rich nations have surpassed America in protecting pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 18/11/2023

The myopic and unrelenting talk about future is a sign that folks don't want to talk about the past. Instead of compulsory ethics training, computer science education needs history and STS classes. Brutal essay from @sifu.tweety.fish

apperceptive.substack.com

How the field of "AI" got like this

How did a field that touches nearly every aspect of human endeavor get so thoroughly engineer-brained

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 03/11/2023

Nice to see the AV reporters finally realize the execs are talking to investors and CFOs, not car buyers, when they make public announcements about their plans/abilities. www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/t...

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 27/10/2023

Fantastic piece on the Cruise fiasco, which is a business story not a tech story: apperceptive.substack.com/p/i-knew-thi... Lack scrutiny over corporate politics/finance re-framed the AV narrative on tech and distracted policymakers/regulators from the obvious/broken incentives driving their work.

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 26/09/2023

Just listened to this TWSU interview on the @404media.co origin story and the pragmatic people and ideas behind it. By far the smartest and most optimistic view of journalism and tech I've heard in a long time. I'm giving them money and hope you do too!

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Kevin Webb @kevinwebb.io · 14/09/2023

I spent the last few months talking with VanMoof customers, employees, and industry stakeholders. Its implosion isn't just a wake-up call for mobility tech, it's the Ghost of Christmas Future for consumer tech as a whole. www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/news/the-rig...

thegreenwebfoundation.org

The Right to Repair in a Platform-Powered World - The Green Web Foundation

Mobility tech has become inextricably linked with connectivity in ways that accelerate some of the most problematic aspects of the modern digital economy.

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