There appears to be many comments here, arguing that authoring web content in markdown is nothing new, and correctly so.
But this (along with md-page and mdwiki mentioned in other comments) is actually an interesting small twist on it. Regularly the conversion is done on the server side, and everything is published in html.
Here, you both author and publish in markdown.
What this library does, if I'm reading it correctly, it acts as polyfill that lets legacy evergreen browsers to consume the markdown files that you serve.
You can publish your content in a bit more simpler, yet still declarative format, without any javascript, and still make it accessible, in a properly rendered format, for evergreen browsers.
(Yes, you can still add javascript to markdown files, but it is relatively easy for the agent to just discard any javascript or html.)
The markdown is the source of truth here. No need for rendering everything twice for serving, once for html and once for markdown, and creating a point where their content might diverge.
It's straight out of gemini's playbook.
I think this is a wonderful idea, and if developed a bit further, and adopted more widely, could help push markdown to be a properly supported format in modern browsers.
The next question is, how would you get the second layer of github flavored markdown fluff (latex, mermaid, etc), that is generally not standardized, to be supported in browsers as well?
I think the largest barrier for FOSS is still that the greater public doesn't know about FOSS, at all, and even less at the concept level. Because FOSS largely is still not on the daily political agenda, there's no actual talk among the wider masses about the reasons why FOSS is important, or what it actually means. Without wider discussion it's harder for it to gain foothold, as it is very much a political question, when it comes to use of FOSS in government.
Although, this seems to be slowly changing. In Finland, YLE (the national broadcasting company) has recently been systematically bringing up the open source nature of the national Covid app in their reporting.
I think there's a larger cultural revolution waiting for its turn, behind the current open source revolution that has been happening so far mostly in the software field.
In its core, open source is a cultural thing, and maybe a political one, one that due to reasons that were, did found rooting and cultivation initially in the field of software. Regardless of its origins, it's a wider movement that could disrupt every aspect of content creation, if realized as such. E.g. the same discussion that is being had in this thread and in the original article, about FOSS in government, largely applies to a wide field of other types of content created by governments.
One of the larger, self created obstacles for open source lies in the definition itself. Open source is still being defined primarily in the realm of software, and through software. Names and definitions such as FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) reprise this problem by anchoring the concept to the world of software, and in this case, it happens already in the name. Instead of FOSS, maybe we should be talking about FOS software?
I think the world could do well with a concept of open source that could be unleashed on all types of content created [1]. FOSS could probably do well, with the larger umbrella concept of FOS hitting daily discussion.
Interestingly, open source as a term doesn't have this package, as source can mean more than just source code.
[1] Creative commons already exists, but that's mainly a license, to be used in certain fields of content creation, not a wider definition for the concept.
I'm reading those comments just as a sign that people feel strongly about climate.
There's a lot of talk about the need to do things for the environment, but not much visible work done.
This service is that kind of meta level service, which could in theory create a lot of possibilities for individual people to change the world for better on the grass root level [1].
I think these commenters just created their accounts because they wanted to take part in discussion, due to the subject being special enough for them to make the move from the stance of passive reading to contributing to the discussion.
I think there are valid points.
Then again, maybe I'm just naive.
[1] The change can only happen through the system, and for that, the right people need to be doing the right decisions. It's highly unlikely that we could just scrap the current work and go full tesla on all fields of life. (Not that tesla would be environmentally sound in itself.)
In addition to the service itself looking good, the single act of making environment the central point of the service, works as agenda setting [1]. Because it's the central point of the service, the jobs are viewed through the lens of their impact on environment.
There's a bigger influence, from doing this kind of smaller things en masse that affects the wider discussion in great proportions.
Just a FYI, that all talk about important things, like environment, is more than needed.
[1] Wikipedia describes agenda setting as something only the big media does, but it is something that happens naturally when we discuss about things. Things that are brought up in discussion are implicitly considered important, as they are worth discussing in the first place. Basically agenda setting theory says that by mentioning important things in discussion, and by reminding the participants of the existence of those things, can help change the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory
I think this is a marvellous idea. Environment and climate change is definitely something many of us would want to be able to affect in our daily jobs.
On a more universal level, a service like this, not just for climate work, but in more general terms helping people find a position matching their passion would do a great service to the world [1].
Frankly, a lot of us have just wound up in our current positions. If that position happens to be our vocation, it's probably just a happy accident, or then that specific field was very precise, and finding a position matching the passion was easy. In general case, it's not that easy to match these two, due to the work and timing required.
The problem is, a lot of people are doing jobs they are not the best match from the point of view of the larger community. They might be good and efficient at their jobs, but if they don't know the full power of their positions, and don't have the passion to push for the change, in the limits of their positions, they might not be the best people for that job.
To make the case even more problematic, a lot of positions, ones that people would consider as meaningless, especially in public sector, but also related to environment, actually could offer a lot of power in the right hands, with proper passion.
World is filled with wasted opportunities, but a service like this could help remedy some of the pain points.
That being said, like mentioned in a comment by
mlthoughts2018 [2], this is not an easy problem to solve, given for one that positions might not match their descriptions.
But things have to start somewhere, and I think this is a great start.
[1] As a side note, IMHO, I'd like to think this mismatch between a passion and a position being the missing puzzle piece for making things such as public sector competitive over private sector.
It's a different product, with a slight difference in spelling.
Tictoc used to be a visual news feed created by Bloomsberg, aimed for millenials. It came out around the same time or just before Tiktok landed in west.
I think bloomberg's tictoc, in it's earlier incarnation, was doing something very similar. It seems to be now renamed, redesigned and merged with some other project.
Their version was heavily based on video. I might remember it wrong, but I think video was also their core problem. I tried it once but didn't really get it, as I hadn't used Snapchat nor Instagram.
Because Tictoc was a sort of old school, video first solution, they were missing the crucial "would you like to know more" step. You could just consume it, but not on your own terms, which kind of makes all the difference.
1) Given that you have clear categories available, it might be worth it to show the name of the category on the reel as well. Sometimes headlines are very broad, and they might not clearly imply the category. I tried a few categories, and in the end forgot which one I was currently watching. -> By showing category indicator you would give additional context for the watcher, on why a specific story is important. I get there's background color doing more or less the same thing, but only if a picture is missing. Color is great for seasoned users (additional pattern would be great for color blind people), new users would probably need clearer information.
2) after the reel ends, you might want to show a final screen, before jumping to the home screen. This way, people could still tap the prev button, if they wanted to recheck some headlines that they missed.
There are certain open questions with Radar style localized template based news.
Mainly it's about automatization, changing the way things are done. New skillsets are needed, while old ones are out of the door.
There's the existential problem this kind of centralized local news creation has on smaller desks, mentioned in the article, but then again the trend appears to be that owners are running the small, unprofitable ones down anyways, regardless of Radar.
There's also the question whether this style of localization, but not personalization, of news, is the best way to serve readers. Could these same local news be served in some other way?
IMO, the way Radar works, mainly happens the way it does, as there exists a need from small papers, for quality journalism that they don't have their own resources to conduct. Of course, nothing is stopping Radar of doing something different in the future.
Then there's also the hypotetical (?) threat on press diversity. Basically a multitude of superficially distinct voices are repeating the same liturgy. This zerg of articles on a specific topic, might appear to a news consumer, as many credible sources supporting a specific view or point.
There's similarity with Reuters et al in this problem, and clearly Reuters hasn't destroyed news. But with Reuters, the text is most of the time identical in all the places where it is published. In the case of localized templates, it might not be clear to the reader that all the different versions are instances of the same master template, with same bias from a single writer, if the template is well enough written.
The headline is kind of misleading. It makes it sound like a machine would be churning out these news, out of thin air, and that's not really the case. The article itself isn't helping much with all the hype.
The article isn't really about bots writing news. It's also far from OpenAI's GPT-2. It's about regular reporters writing massively localized stories with some fine tools. It's pretty cool stuff actually.
What radar is doing is definitely shaping the media landscape, but it is not news created by bots. It's news generated from templates, which are written by humans:
> One of six human journalists working at Radar will write a story “template” with wording for each of the various possible scenarios — for example, a boom, modest rise or sharp fall in violent crime. Then, at the click of a mouse, versions of the story are created for each of the UK’s 391 local authority areas, pulling in the statistics specific to that region.
They are basically doing what Reuters does, except Radar only provides a handful of stories a week instead of hundreds of stories. But the trick is that while stories by Reuters are static, the articles provided by Radar are localized for each region, based on the data used. (All the localizations are written into the template, from which the program picks the best fitting pieces based on the data per region.)
> The UK’s most prolific reporter churns out thousands of stories a month for hundreds of publications across the country — a superhuman effort, were it not for the fact the journalist is not fully human.
The numbers in the previous quote mean that Radar generates hundreds of different, localized versions from these dozen or so weekly article templates.
The cool thing here isn't that a model would create these articles, but that it's possible to create good quality local reporting, from data and a well written master template, by non-local reporters.
Basically, as news publishers are sunsetting their local papers, Radar has shown that it is still possible to serve local news to smaller regions.
And all this can be done by more or less regular reporters. There's some programming involved, but nothing complicated - AFAIK, the programming for the templates is similar to writing scripts in Excel.
> Gary Rogers, Radar’s editor-in-chief, estimates that half of its stories that appear in print are added to by local reporters. However, that drops to just 20 per cent for stories republished by online news sites.
Like mentioned in the quote, half of the time, for stories that are going to be published in physical papers, local journalists add their own reporting to the stories. Again, these stories don't magically enter the front page. They are selected to be placed there by the editors, and in many cases, local journalists add their knowledge to the articles. But still, the language in them is good enough to be used on prime estate.
In web and mobile, it appears, the rim is lower, and it goes more often faster to the site, without modifications. But then again, the rules in internet are different.
Plenty of the problems that people have had with previous template-based robot journalist writings, has been with repetitive textual structures. With Radar's model that is not as big a problem, as the master template is only used once per story. If a reader reads the story from one magazine, it's less likely that she will also read the same story in another paper. Compare this to sport robots where you see the same structure repeating in every story.
I've understood that Radar isn't the first in this place, but they have shown a business model for template based news that manages to avoid the biggest problems with repetitive structures.
In summary, Radar is doing something cool by automating local news, although the article isn't the most clearest on what the cool thing is.
There's plenty of ambiguity in stories about Radar, so my guess is this is partly due to their press release lingo / hype.
> I try to not read that much news and instead try to read books.
This is pretty much it: it's better to avoid reading news as a habit, and instead use the limited resources on finding quality information, regardless of the medium.
That is, don't stop following news. Instead, try to control, what news, where, when and on how often you consume. Prefer quality over quantity.
The biggest confusion regarding news stems from the semantics. Even though the name would imply that there is, or needs to be, something new in news, as in something fresh related to today's events that should be read the same day it was published. That's rarely the case. News is a medium of information delivery. It doesn't really matter when you consume it, or how often. News don't really get stale, if you read them a day later.
For a large part, news are already old the time they are published. They depict things that have taken place possibly days earlier, or have been published way before in other mediums, or don't actually matter whether they are published or read today or tomorrow.
That being said, there are cases when news deliver breaking information relevant to events taking place at the very same time, just in time to affect outcomes.
Many times, reading about these things the same day is not relevant for average person. This kind of information is primarily important for the greater public discussion. It is relevant for specialists, whether that's people or organisations, which in their position need to stay up to date with live events, or need to follow chronological order of information on events.
For an average reader, majority of news are not day specific. It's okay to read about them on a later date, or even from different sources, other than the ones initially breaking the news, with possibly additional commentary that provides greater insight on the topic.
It's totally okay to follow news non-daily. Weekly is still a plenty regular.
If you get depressed on a specific type of news, read less of them, take pauses, air your thoughts, and try to vary your news sources.
There's a great many interesting and important things taking place daily. It's totally okay to know about some of them a bit later.
It's definitely a great question. Even if the articles separately would be considered mere reporting, is the creation of the tool part of the journalistic process?
Another good one might be whether there's an inherent gain in machine-generated news to play by the same rules and constraints as regular human generated news? Is a traditional news article the correct format for a machine generated news, or if some of the constraints of traditional articles are due to human limitations. Basically, which of the rules of traditional articles are due to the creator and which are there to make it easier to consume the information for the reader.
Is there a gain in creating 1 000 articles of company earnings versus condensing or distributing the same (roughly) information in another manner. Mainly, would the reader be able to gain more from news created in another format or medium.
What happens here, is it similar to when newspapers moved from print to web? Initially staying in almost the same format as they had been for hundred years?
When we talk about tools and intermediate forms in relation to journalism and journalistic process, there's also the question of transparency. Is only the end product journalism, or is the end product only a medium for the message? For example, The Correspondent has been a vanguard in this front in traditional journalism, opening up the intermediate forms of the process to the public.
Should we consider for example the aforementioned "thousands of articles on company earnings reports from each quarter" as a intermediate form, rather than the journalistic end product - just a transparent intermediate form? If so, through that lens, is article as a format still the best means for sharing this information?
> “I hope we’ll see A.I. tools become a productivity tool in the practice of reporting and finding clues,” said Hilary Mason, the general manager for machine learning at Cloudera, a data management software company. “When you do data analysis, you can see anomalies and patterns using A.I. And a human journalist is the right person to understand and figure out.”
While there's been a lot of great stuff happening on the front of machine-generated news for a while now, data analysis is definitely another great target, with perhaps some more immediate gains, when it comes to AI / general automation in journalism.
Rich Hickey has a good point in his Rails Conf 2012 "Simplicity Matters" talk[0] - json is just more simple than xml, as it clearly states which parts are maps and which are sequences. Xml has an inherent, implicit order in everything, due to its history as a document markup language.
If you think xml through the lens of jsx pragma style transformation, xml element and it's attributes are more or less a (typed) map. Similarly element's children is an (ordered) sequence. Where as in json you can have maps inside maps, in xml you always have to wrap maps inside an ordered sequence, as maps can only be passed to element as its children.
You can totally use xml without paying attention to the order, but the order is still there, complicating things.
But this (along with md-page and mdwiki mentioned in other comments) is actually an interesting small twist on it. Regularly the conversion is done on the server side, and everything is published in html.
Here, you both author and publish in markdown.
What this library does, if I'm reading it correctly, it acts as polyfill that lets legacy evergreen browsers to consume the markdown files that you serve.
You can publish your content in a bit more simpler, yet still declarative format, without any javascript, and still make it accessible, in a properly rendered format, for evergreen browsers.
(Yes, you can still add javascript to markdown files, but it is relatively easy for the agent to just discard any javascript or html.)
The markdown is the source of truth here. No need for rendering everything twice for serving, once for html and once for markdown, and creating a point where their content might diverge.
It's straight out of gemini's playbook.
I think this is a wonderful idea, and if developed a bit further, and adopted more widely, could help push markdown to be a properly supported format in modern browsers.
The next question is, how would you get the second layer of github flavored markdown fluff (latex, mermaid, etc), that is generally not standardized, to be supported in browsers as well?