Lauren Weinstein

https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren

< Tech Systems & Policy Analysis: Internet, Privacy, plus his other sundry topics >
Los Angeles - lauren.vortex.com

Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com

Public Key

npub1lq68asmanu3etxax9hvrj8au4h585lq8zgzujmufqsewtsz85mkskknf7e

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs0sdr7cd7e7gu4nwnzmkper772m6r60sr3ypwfd7ysgvh9cpr6dmghlhu96

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub1lq68asmanu3etxax9hvrj8au4h585lq8zgzujmufqsewtsz85mkskknf7e

Show more details

Last Notes

2024-07-03 17:52:31

Greece has just moved in the opposite direction of various other countries, and enacted a 48 hour, six-day work week.
Fun fact: The USSR at one point abolished weekends in favor of a seven day work week (with workers getting days off on different days of the week). It did not end well.

2024-07-03 17:48:38

It's so nice to have the #Google Search page-by-page SERPs again, rather than that nasty continuous scroll. Now we need a way to disable AI Overviews officially in user settings.

2024-07-02 17:00:39

- reply

No.

2024-06-20 20:08:54

Renowned actor Donald Sutherland dies at 88. Peace.

2024-06-18 16:23:35

***** Drone Ban Radio Report *****
This is the script from my national radio report yesterday on the letter sent by public safety/first responder organizations to the U.S. Senate, asking them to block the House-passed ban on DJI drones, saying the ban will cost lives and do vast other damage. As always there were a few very minor wording variations from this script as I delivered the report live.
- - -
So we've previously talked about congressional efforts to ban Chinese drones especially from the market leader by far the Chinese firm DJI, and now the situation has gone into major overdrive and the public safety community in particular is so concerned, that they've banded together to tell the U.S. Senate that if the bans go ahead it's likely to cost lives and do enormous other damage as well.
Now this was triggered by the U.S. House recently passing a crucial law, the National Defense Authorization Act, that included as one of its components the "Countering CCP Drones Act" which is a ban on DJI drones in the U.S. And while there are details about timing and new purchases vs. existing drones in use, the bottom line is that apparently over 90% of public safety drone operations would be disrupted by the ban, because these public safety organizations consider them to be the best drones and the best supported and the most affordable compared to everything else available.
The letter makes it clear that they don't consider U.S.-made drones to have reached parity in terms of quality with DJI and that switching to U.S.-made drones would not only be more expensive but impractical and dangerous now, and that critical public safety operations would be disrupted, jeopardizing safety in communities across the country.
It's quite a strong letter. And of course there are all sorts of other organizations using drones for agriculture, for emergency delivery and pickup of crucial cargo in remote areas, inspection of power lines and other critical infrastructure for tampering or potential failures, all manner of really important stuff.
So the joint letter was sent some days ago to the Senate Armed Services Committee with the letter representing a vast number of police, fire, rescue, other first responder groups, agencies, and other organizations, saying that the House drone ban would be terrible for public safety, for the economy, for critical infrastructure and more. And they say look, if you have security concerns let's talk about how to deal with them, but to date there aren't really any demonstrated cases that justify those concerns, just speculation, not facts.
But the letter makes clear that the kind of ban the House passed would likely be disastrous, and it asks for the Senate not to include the ban in the Senate version of this important legislation. Remember that both the House and Senate have to pass versions of the bill, then they have to get together to work out an agreement between the two and then pass a final version in both chambers.
Overall in this situation there's a lot of suspicions that the House ban really isn't about security, after all we haven't seen a rush of other countries jumping on the ban the Chinese drones bandwagon, and that it's actually more about protectionism. Of course there's nothing wrong with wanting to help U.S. companies catch up in producing drone tech, but a ban like this clearly has the many organizations and industries that depend on DJI drones enormously concerned as this remarkable joint letter to the Senate clearly demonstrates.
These are the organizations that we entrust to maintaining public safety, and if they feel this strongly that a drone ban is going to do so much damage, it would seem wise for politicians in both parties to pay attention to what these public safety experts are saying, because this isn't a situation where politics as usual should be acceptable to any of us.
- - -
L

2024-06-17 23:50:36

- reply

Security is the claimed worry. But there are no demonstrated cases of it actually being true.

2024-06-17 18:58:31

So now the surgeon general wants warnings on social media like on cigarette packs. Nothing better to do with your time, huh?

2024-06-17 18:57:50

Apparently #Google has now managed to break a useful feature for #YouTube on TVs. A recent update implemented a rather crude "screensaver" feature that cuts in if you pause a YT video for more than a few minutes. It's quite useless. Amusingly, it moves the screensaver image around a bit presumably to avoid burn-in, but leaves the bright white YouTube logo in a fixed position. Oh well.
More to the point, once the screensaver starts, you lose voice control of the video. That is, normally you can say "Pause YouTube" to any nearby device (e.g., Google Mini) to pause the video, and then "Resume YouTube" to start it up again. But once the screensaver starts, you can no longer resume by voice, you just get "Nothing is playing". Nor is there any way I can find to disable this lame new screensaver feature.
Thanks a bunch Google. Jeez. Google, on a quest to break everything that used to work.

2024-06-17 18:38:18

- reply

Very briefly, the primary reason for the YT/G+ integration was an attempt to boost G+ uptake, that backfired dramatically.

2024-06-17 18:35:30

- reply

It's a runaway train. So many Googlers know it too, but they're helpless to stop it. It's the Sundar Express, heading toward a cliff. The only question is how long it will take to get there and how far it will fall.

2024-06-17 18:26:17

It's worth pointing out that the new #YouTube experiment to allow "notes" to be placed on videos by other users (apparently not controllable by the video creators, unlike traditional comments that can be deleted or disabled), is reminiscent of one of the darkest periods of Google/YouTube, when there was a forced integration of YouTube comments and Google Plus social media posts.
This was an absolute train wreck, and I fought against it internally at Google since I was working inside #Google during part of that time. It quickly became apparently that it was a magnet for abuse, and while the integration was eventually rescinded the damage had already been done.
Google must be a serious sadomasochist to go anywhere near this path again.

2024-06-17 17:22:26

[Totally nuts] #YouTube experimenting with letting users scribble notes on others' videos
Oh yeah, this won't be abused. Sure. Totally nuts, #Google.
You don't need a super brain AI to figure out how this one will go south.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/youtube-is-experimenting-with-notes-a-crowdsourced-feature-that-lets-users-add-context-to-videos/
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/632/641/462/390/382/original/fc9d81d394b4f516.png

2024-06-16 17:14:12

Google, Cloudflare & Cisco Will Poison DNS to Stop Piracy Block Circumvention
Of course, nothing short of actual ip address blocking would stop determined circumvention, but apparently DNS poisoning is considered to be "good enough" in this case.
https://torrentfreak.com/google-cloudflare-cisco-will-poison-dns-to-stop-piracy-block-circumvention-240613/
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/626/947/383/231/039/original/c306b236528be023.png

2024-06-15 16:14:47

CNN announces debate rules - https://www.newscaststudio.com/2024/06/15/cnn-2024-debate-rules/
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/621/051/737/217/574/original/f98efdad1eea7088.png

2024-06-15 04:06:23

I haven't really paid serious attention to "Doctor Who" since the Tom Baker days (the only real Doctor Who, and whose companion Leela is namesake of my Leela!), but I do keep an eye on television and streaming ratings numbers, and man it looks like Doctor Who's numbers have really gone downhill. I haven't watched the show in at least five years or more, but this seems to be a pretty dramatic fall.

2024-06-14 23:52:46

When I pointed out that ordinary consumers are really not usually well equipped to deal with Linux desktops because they usually don't have robust support systems, this person tries to educate me about how great Linux is and makes snide remarks. I've been using/developing UNIX/Linux since the 1970s, starting with UNIX V6 direct from Bell Labs. Probably before this guy or gal was born. What is it with people on #Mastodon? No wonder so many people come here and then are driven away.

2024-06-14 20:24:37

I'm waiting to hear Trump celebrating the Supreme Court ruling bump stocks to be legal, and blaming them on Biden, when in reality it was Trump's administration that made them illegal.

2024-06-14 19:30:41

- reply

I would have bet at the beginning that I couldn't do it. The class was taught on big manual typewriters that took a lot of pressure to type on. Every so often I check my speed and accuracy and it's still quite high, though all this typing has taken a physical toll especially since I do tend to type hard. The accuracy of course is less important now since over the decades I got *really* good at typing ^H or delete without skipping a beat. But it's all still a bit creepy because if I'm asked where a particular letter is I sometimes can't answer unless I actually think about how I would type it, if you know what I mean.

2024-06-14 19:24:29

- reply

Not worth the trouble. I just buy another cheap keyboard.

2024-06-14 19:22:24

Without a doubt, the single most valuable course I ever took in school at any level, was a Junior High School typing class. I was one of maybe two or three guys in it -- the rest were girls. I wanted to learn touch typing to make it easier to write reports and term papers on the old manual typewriter I had available.
I had absolutely no idea at the time that I'd be spending my entire damned career typing untold millions of words and maybe billions of characters into the soulless computers.

2024-06-14 19:14:59

In essence, what #Google is now saying with AI Overviews is, "You used to be able to trust us to help you find accurate information. Now it's all on you. LUSERS!"

2024-06-14 19:02:15

- reply

This is going to be a deep well of litigation as courts work through all this. My gut feeling is that it isn't going to turn out well for the firms.

2024-06-14 18:47:16

- reply

Manipulation is straightforward to demonstrate from logs. Let's pin this down even more. Most people simply do NOT understand the differences between these systems and traditional search. There's no reason to expect them to, given how (for example) Google is pushing AI Overviews to the top of SERPs. Google clearly wants users to accept AIOs as THE answers. The disclaimers are meaningless in the real world in this context, except as an attempt at legal cover for the firm. This is the standard "victim blaming" that Google and other tech firms commonly use. I don't think it's going to fly in the current regulatory and political environment, and the firms have not internalized this fact yet.

2024-06-14 18:28:33

- reply

The fundamental question is pretty simple. Let's say someone asks a generative AI system a question, it provides an inaccurate answer, and then someone is harmed or killed as a result of that answer. Who is responsible for that answer (which is original content created by that system) and the damage it caused? "Nobody" is not acceptable.

2024-06-14 18:15:15

- reply

Excel is, for all practical purposes, a calculator. Users can see all input data and how that data was used to formulate results. This is not the case for generative AI. The full scope of sources used, how those sources were used, and virtually all other aspects of the system are a black box to users. The AI firms want to create new content and then disclaim responsibility for it. Unacceptable.

2024-06-14 18:10:50

- reply

False comparison. Not even close.

2024-06-14 18:00:02

A federal law should be passed making AI firms fully responsible for any and all content disseminated from their generative AI systems. Period. No exceptions.

2024-06-14 17:29:11

- reply

That is a reason. Another big reason is that there is simply no value proposition for most people who cannot conveniently charge at home. Operating on the basis of public chargers is a nightmare.

2024-06-14 07:07:27

Suddenly reminded of the old joke. Scientists decide that they want to examine the remains of Beethoven, buried in Vienna. When they exhume the coffin, they open it and to their surprise it's filled with sheet music and what's left of Beethoven is furiously rubbing the sheets with a big eraser.
"What are you doing?" they ask.
"Decomposing," Beethoven replied.
- - -
Look, I can't give you my best joke, because it's ethnic and would likely damage what passes for a spacetime continuum in the Mastodon world. So you end up with my lower tier jokes. Sorry about that, chief.

2024-06-14 06:51:31

- reply

Keeping in mind that I've worked inside G also, my sense would be that while there is a realization that the world is shifting around them -- so triggering the panic we see -- they have not yet internalized the fact that this doesn't just trigger concerns about monetization but that the regulatory and political environments are rapidly mutating in ways that may render their new approaches highly self-destructive to the firm.

2024-06-14 06:42:05

- reply

Pretty sure Google isn't gonna see it that way.

2024-06-14 05:54:08

- reply

I'm pretty sure they're tracking use of workarounds and will act to block them as soon as they rise to a level that they care about -- especially when they begin running ads on AI Overviews.

2024-06-14 05:48:11

Part of the reason -- and a big part -- of why you see public relations disasters like #Microsoft Recall and #Google AI Overviews is that these firms typically refuse to have employees on these teams who bring skill sets that include real world experiences that go beyond the technical.
It should have been obvious to execs at Microsoft and Google (and other firms) that trying to ram projects like these (and others, like poorly designed passkey implementations) down consumers' throats would trigger major blowback and embarrassment. But either they just couldn't see the forest for the trees, or simply ignored the warning signs, treating the user community like a giant fungible planet of guinea pigs.
Either way, it's bad for them, and it's very, very bad for us.

2024-06-14 03:40:35

- reply

See my post from about 10 minutes ago.

2024-06-13 20:20:22

- reply

Of course, "There's nothing like a dame" is much more likely to be remembered.

2024-06-13 20:07:38

- reply

"Leave me alone, human."

2024-06-13 20:06:27

What #Google can do about their Search #AI Overviews mess.
Here's a good first step.
On every AI Overview answer, it can clearly say:
"This answer was created by our generative AI systems and may be partly or fully incorrect. Nonetheless, we take full responsibility for this answer."
I won't be holding my breath.

2024-06-13 19:16:20

- reply

That song, by the way, almost didn't make it in. There was enormous pressure for it to be removed.

2024-06-13 18:31:21

It's almost as if #Google has now adopted Boeing's quality control philosophy.

2024-06-12 23:52:23

I can't help but chuckle when I see people's "homemade" video countdown leaders that go down to "1" or even "0". 'Cause real ones never go down below "3" or "2", depending on the leader type.

2024-06-11 18:02:29

- reply

Looks like their online hate speech legislation in progress is a total train wreck of awfulness.

2024-06-11 17:58:02

- reply

Why should this person remain anonymous? Is this some sort of secret NDA webinar?

2024-06-11 17:56:03

- reply

So what? If he's reelected, he can do it and nobody can stop him. If he's not reelected, he can do it on the way out. You think charges of "nepotism" are going to bother him with all the horrible stuff the fascist GOP constantly claims he's done?

2024-06-11 17:50:13

Looks like Canada really needs a First Amendment of their own.

2024-06-11 17:46:53

- reply

One word: Google.

2024-06-11 17:42:24

It's worth noting that while Biden (unwisely, in my opinion) said he would not pardon Hunter, he did not as far as I know say anything about not commuting an unreasonable sentence. Just a thought.

2024-06-11 16:50:56

This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on the controversy regarding Adobe's Terms of Service changes. As always, this script may have a few minor word variations from how I presented it live on air.
- - -
So I think it's probably true that most people who use modern computers these days are likely to interact sometimes with Adobe technologies one way or another. The PDF document format traces back to Adobe in the early 90s. Photoshop is from Adobe, which really has become something of a verb as in "photoshopping an image", and goes back to the late 80's. And there are lots of other graphics and video and more where Adobe dominates the creative pipelines.
And what's happened with Adobe like with so many other firms is that they've moved from a model where you buy the software and install it on your computer and that's all you usually pay, to these "running in the cloud" models where you have to pay ongoing subscription fees for access. From a corporate profit center standpoint the attraction of the subscription model is obvious, but this hasn't always gone over well with users.
Now of course these cloud and subscription models almost always have Terms of Service agreements that users have to accept before they can use the services. And it seems commonly *accepted* that most people don't really read these in depth and of those who do most don't have the background to completely understand them given the dense legalese they're usually written in.
So what's happened with Adobe is very recently they changed their terms of service and apparently asked users to accept the new terms. And even though the changes may be *relatively* minor, the fact that they made changes drew attention to the terms of service for many users for pretty much the first time, and they really didn't like the expansive nature of the rights Adobe gives itself to access and inspect users' content.
Now in most respects what Adobe is doing isn't all that much different from what various firms with cloud-based services are doing and have in their terms of service agreements, but as users have been increasingly pushed into these cloud-based systems rather than being able to keep these applications completely local on their own computers, and now as the complexities of AI systems and what data AI has access to has entered into the mix as well, we seem to be reaching a kind of inflection point where for many people this has just all gone too far and a "we're not going to take it" blowback is being triggered from many users.
So over the last few days the Web has been flooded with articles and YouTube videos condemning Adobe, indeed using terms like "Adobe Apocalypse", "Adobe went too far", "the end of Adobe", and so on. And while obviously there's considerable emotion in play with this, there's no denying that many people are genuinely very upset and many are saying they're ending their Adobe subscriptions and moving to competing products wherever they can, even though that can cause them considerable hassles given how widely used Adobe products are for creating and exchanging work products during the creation of so much content.
Adobe has attempted to reply to this controversy but as you might guess, this seems to have just made many users even angrier at Adobe.
So I don't know how this is going to turn out with Adobe but I think it's reasonable to view this as a pretty dramatic warning to many firms, that the kinds of subscription/cloud models and terms of service that they've been pushing users into won't necessarily be widely acceptable indefinitely, and that it only takes a single misstep and a few days for large firms like these to put at risk the good will of users that took years or even decades to accumulate.
Many of the users of these firms, especially firms that dominate in particular areas, are starting to say that they feel like they're being pushed around, and we're now seeing evidence that they're unlikely to put up with this indefinitely. It seems likely that these firms can ignore this changing landscape only at their own considerable risk in the long run, with all the complex ramifications that has going forward.
Stay tuned, this is going to be interesting!
- - -
L

2024-06-11 03:19:15

BREAKING: Justice Alito's wife vows revenge for flag controversy in secret recording
Wow. -L
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4714777-justice-alitos-wife-vows-revenge-flag-controversy-secret-recording/
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/595/352/923/638/408/original/0b39746281eb1526.png

2024-06-11 03:11:30

Generally speaking, with several important exceptions, when I have a choice of accessing a service via a firm's "app" or via their ordinary web interface, I generally choose the latter. Usually the functionality is similar enough for my purposes, and typically the web version is drastically easier to configure for minimal privacy invasions. Apps can be an absolute train wreck in this respect, no matter how well you think you understand a mobile OS' permissions model.

2024-06-11 03:07:39

- reply

"Messaging" for these companies is often utterly divorced from the reality of their products, services, and ops. The comms departments in these firms are highly skilled at "messaging", which in these cases is often akin to other forms of propaganda.

2024-06-11 03:03:15

- reply

Trusting Apple is a fool's errand -- as demonstrated by their self-serving fake privacy principles and their kowtowing to Communist China.

2024-06-10 20:21:03

Some advisors want Trump to pick a female running mate, but unfortunately Leni Riefenstahl has been dead for years.

2024-06-10 18:04:28

The frozen dinners, etc. typically say something like: "Heat on high for 10 minutes, lift film and stir, then cook on high for another 5 minutes." The problem is that after you lift the film, it immediately turns into a crumpled mess that probably has more than three dimensions.

2024-06-10 17:51:06

- reply

Yep. Over the years I've mentioned many times that Darrin was a serious jerk indeed. Endora was usually on point.

2024-06-10 17:48:22

Tonight on my usual Monday evening national network radio tech segment, I'll be discussing the train wreck that Adobe has caused over the last few days by changing their terms of services, and how many in the Adobe user community are already calling this the "Adobe Apocalypse" and pledging to stop paying for Adobe subscriptions, and instead switch to other software. I'll also be briefly discussing how the push by so many firms to force users to pay on a subscription basis for cloud-based services, instead of paying one-time for locally running apps, has inflamed these situations, as well as privacy concerns regarding creators' content being viewed by these firms and potentially used for AI training.

2024-06-10 04:57:38

- reply

Don't play sarcasm with polls. Nobody just reading the poll knows about your sarcasm.

2024-06-10 04:56:56

- reply

The main focus will be on the larger firms to start, then over time move to encompass the entire Internet globally. This is not just a U.S. effort. Politicians around the world want to track everything their populations do on the Net and control all content. This will take time, but that's their goal ... Just Like China -- which is their model. Sites covered by the laws that ignore them will do so at their own risk. A few prosecutions of larger Mastodon sites, for example, would likely be enough to put fear into everyone.

2024-06-10 03:55:45

Would you be willing to use your government-issued ID, either directly to social media or other websites, or to "third-party ID verification services", to begin or continue accessing these sites, as now contemplated by multiple states or already in their existing laws currently in litigation?

2024-06-10 03:07:58

New York joins states demanding that all social media users prove their ages with government IDs, enabling mass tracking of all users.
Here we go again. There's no way to prevent children from accessing material without forcing ALL USERS to use government IDs to prove their age. Ultimately, that WILL lead to hacks of credentials, mass tracking of users' Web activities, and more. Politicians of both parties clearly want to replicate Communist China's terrible Internet tracking here. Awful.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/09/new-york-moves-to-limit-kids-access-to-addictive-feeds/
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/589/642/798/116/828/original/109baa9f2176e140.png

2024-06-09 04:32:29

I've been asked if I can name another aspect of contemporary tech that has been as badly handled as the deployment of AI ... (not including cryptocurrencies). That's a toughie. AI is probably the winner, even if we included cryptocurrencies. AI will probably end up wasting even more electricity than cryptocurrencies, and is being stuffed down everyone's throats in a way that cryptocurrencies haven't been. And while cryptocurrencies impact financial markets in various creepy ways, AI is pretty much polluting EVERYTHING now. Yeah, there's no beating AI for evil in these respects.

2024-06-09 04:07:52

Fun Fact: In a famous episode of the original "Star Trek" (1966), Spock is asked his last name, and responds that "You'd never be able to pronounce it." However, around two years earlier, in one of the first episodes of "Bewitched", Samantha's husband Darrin, upon meeting her mother for the first time, asks the same question of her, who replies, "You'd never be able to pronounce it. Just call me Endora."
So now you know. And cue the theremin.

2024-06-09 03:11:29

- reply

Massive heart attack at 62 was cause of death. Three packs a day smoker. He reportedly was also a heavy drinker.

2024-06-09 03:01:46

- reply

It's easy to forget how pervasive cigarette ads and openly available cigarette machines were during that era. In the earliest days of mass TV viewing, the line between the show and cigarette firms was often pretty much invisible, as you note. By the 60s, it was getting less so, but the ads were still pervasive. For a short period after TV and radio ads for cigarettes were banned on 2 Jan 1971 (law signed by Richard Nixon), some firms managed to bypass the ban briefly by promoting little cigarette-sized cigars (e.g. Tijuana Smalls - "One for the road, baby!"). These were ultimately banned from radio and TV ads as well.
Now, also as you note, we have the scourge (these are banned in most of the world) of Big Pharma ads one after another after another flooding the country.

2024-06-08 20:22:49

As much as I dislike #Meta / #Facebook, there is no denying that their Meta Quest 3 VR headset is an amazing piece of technology, and very much a 21st century device. Like smartphones, I have this fantasy of setting one up with lots of local apps, time traveling to the early 1950s, and dropping one on a workbench at Bell Labs. Probably would seriously screw up the timeline though.

2024-06-08 19:49:08

Why so many people are mad at Adobe!
In case you don't follow this stuff, many people in the creator community are apparently very upset at #Adobe, who has moved full steam into subscription cloud-based services with everything that implies.
It seems they recently asked users to accept some relatively minor changes in their terms of service, relating to content moderation, what content Adobe can view and use, legal requirements, etc.
I said these were minor changes and from what I've seen they seem to be that. But the problem is that this has attracted creators' attention to terms of service that most didn't read or understand fully before this, which is quite a nasty piece of work. Very typical of many cloud services today though. So the creator community is up in arms, with new YouTube videos on the topic seemingly popping up by the hour. An "explainer" that Adobe sent out to try calm things down appears to have just made things worse.
Talk about unforced errors. It's not just #Google.

2024-06-08 17:33:13

Fell into a #YouTube rabbit hole last night regarding Carmen Miranda. At one time one of the most famous women in the world -- parodied in art and famous cartoons, and the template for Chiquita bananas labels and their original commercials, she died reportedly of alcohol, pills, and smoking at only 47.
Most recognizable for her singing dances, bare midriff, and fruit-filled hats, her influence is still felt today.
I stumbled onto an episode of the Jimmy Durante show from 1955, where he spoke to camera noting that her last performance before dying that year was on his show (in a comedy skit), that he felt it was still appropriate to show it, and he claimed to have a telegram from her family giving their blessing to his doing so.
If you're not familiar with her, do a YouTube search, and be amazed.

2024-06-08 02:58:10

The best video I've seen explaining the technical reasons why keeping AM radios in cars is so important!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OIrx2Za8OY
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/578/282/799/044/428/original/8411616f609df28d.jpg

2024-06-07 19:04:59

#Microsoft reverses, will make their screenshot spying Recall features opt-in
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/7/24173499/microsoft-windows-recall-response-security-concerns
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/576/422/613/788/114/original/bc1eb9878e4d9367.jpg

2024-06-07 01:23:11

- reply

Not a single person who would ever vote for Trump will change their vote or change their voting behavior based on this issue. It's wasting time. What Alito did isn't even illegal. With all the illegal actions that could be worried about, wasting time on legal actions is unbelievably counterproductive. Keep this up and you guarantee a Trump win which is already more likely than not. But hey, there seem to be plenty on the Left who would be perfectly happy to have Trump back in to prove a point. I hope they enjoy the Trump concentration camps that he has planned for them. Because that's what he's promising and you can bet that's what he's going to do.

2024-06-06 17:02:20

I can't believe all the time being wasted on this Alito flags story. There's so much more important to be dealing with. He's NOT going to recuse himself. There AREN'T going to be any negative repercussions for him. MOVE THE HELL ON. This is how the Left loses to the fascist Right, by not keeping their eyes on the ball and trying to drag the discussion so far Left that independents are turned off.

2024-06-05 02:32:03

- reply

"Stored locally" has little deep meaning without knowing exactly WHOSE AI system is being used. Can medical records be hacked? Yeah. So now there are two targets, the medical records themselves and the "AI data".

2024-06-05 02:19:07

- reply

No, you are not being paranoid. Whose AI system? With what data privacy (e.g. HIPAA) protections? Who is responsible for medical errors resulting from possible errors in the AI system? Who is responsible if data leaks from the AI system or is hacked? Is this a third party AI system? Long list of reasons to decline participation, including a long list of questions regarding the privacy and disposition of the voice recordings themselves, irrespective of any AI aspects.

2024-06-05 01:15:58

So I stumbled into this video, and I really was enjoying his presentation style. But all through it I was bugged that he reminded me of someone else -- not in appearance really but voice and related mannerisms especially. Took me a few minutes before the right identity dragged itself out of the slimy goo of my deep brain recesses, but yeah: Fred Willard! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1KKSEevvGw

2024-06-04 23:58:39

- reply

I know all this. But you only get away with it once. As time went on more and more of the xenomorph was shown (and I've seen a photo of it sitting offstage reading a magazine, as I recall). But then everyone wanted dark sets for no good reason. With recent incarnations of Star Trek (e.g. Picard) being particular offenders. Yeah, @virtualbri already knows my feelings about this ...

2024-06-04 21:01:45

- reply

Sure, but even most horror films were typically never that dark. Hell, there were usually well lit so you could see the blood.

2024-06-04 20:57:28

- reply

I blame the original Alien for starting the whole dark ride movie trend.

2024-06-04 20:54:56

- reply

I still can't figure out why Sci-Fi film and TV budgets are no longer permitted to buy light bulbs.

2024-06-04 20:29:27

Cyndi Lauper is 70 years old. Ouch.

2024-06-04 20:21:33

Google's AI Overviews misunderstand why people use #Google
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/06/googles-ai-overviews-misunderstand-why-people-use-google/
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/559/737/027/765/231/original/d57d2b8700fb6d64.jpg

2024-06-04 18:24:52

This is the script from my national radio report yesterday regarding #Google AI Overviews. As always, there may have been a few very slight word variations as I presented this live.
- - -
So yeah, I've previously mentioned the controversies spinning up when Google began recently pushing their Search AI Overviews out to all Google Search users instead of just users who had opted in from Labs, and since then the situation has really gone rather ballistically downhill. Google's latest move in the AI hype race is to push out AI-created "overview" answers at the top of many search results, causing a bunch of problems.
Those AI overview answers can take a lot of space, so users must often scroll down the page to find most of the links to sites where Google got the information from in the first place. Some of these AI Overview answers do theoretically show links with them, but typically they're in a tiny font, blurry unless you have great vision, often in pastel colored boxes making them even harder to read. Google claims there are still lots of users clicking through, but many sites have apparently had their traffic drop massively since Google started AI Overviews.
Another problem is that AI Overview answers are often just plain wrong, or incoherent, and in some reported cases potentially dangerous. So as all this has been noticed the amount of basically public ridicule aimed at Google recently has been dramatic, with some observers saying that Google has basically broken search and by starving sites of traffic could effectively break much of the Web, especially for smaller sites. Google is already that target of government antitrust actions and now these AI Overviews and their effects are triggering new calls for government regulation of Google's activities, given their enormously dominant position when it comes to search activities.
And Google's reactions to the criticisms have been, well, interesting. They insist most of the AI Overview answers are good ones and claim that these are the answers we should concentrate on and not the inaccurate or wacko answers. And they also seem to be doing a bit of "victim shaming", claiming that people just shouldn't be asking questions of Google that will cause their AI Overviews to give bad answers. Which seems like rather a public relations kind of viewpoint that pretty much completely misses the point of why this situation is such a problem.
Nonetheless, some days ago I noticed that the number of queries to Google search that were getting AI Overview answers seemed to have fallen significantly, and in more cases there were simply only the normal blue links that Google so much seems to want to de-emphasize now. Or blue links with the old-style "featured snippet" at the top with a direct link to the site from which the snippet was sourced. And Google then apparently as part of their attempt to justify this AI Overview mess said that (for now at least) they've cut back the number of AI Overviews, so that they'll mainly appear on questions where they are the most helpful in Google's view, rather than seemingly on so many queries as it was originally. So my sense that AI Overviews were reduced appears to have been accurate.
Google does now seem to be reacting to public concerns about AI Overviews, but whether this is just a pause that will be reversed in the near future or not is a different question entirely. I have no expectations that Google is really backing off in the long run on various of their AI efforts, even the particularly misguided ones.
So it seems most likely that we're going to be back discussing these and other Google AI-related issues frequently going forward, absent some drastic change in Google management's philosophy, and I definitely wouldn't suggest betting the farm that such a change is going to happen anytime soon, or quite possibly, ever.
- - -
L

2024-06-04 18:13:39

Analysis: Google AI Overviews now on < 15% of queries, was as high as 84%
The lower the better. But for how long? -L
https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-overviews-visibility-drops-15-percent-queries-442850
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/559/234/023/291/132/original/9e7e3f72bce86eed.jpg

2024-06-04 17:52:19

- reply

Sounds extremely stupid.

2024-06-03 23:59:16

- reply

It's a lot different now!

2024-06-03 23:52:29

TIL there is a #YouTube channel called "Fiber Splice God".

2024-06-03 23:34:24

- reply

I believe they're all free currently in U.S. on #YouTube Movies & TV.

2024-06-03 23:10:12

It's been suggested that with Elon Musk turning #Twitter into an X ... -rated pit of right wing disinformation and pornography, we're all actually living in a nearby timeline of the "Back to the Future Part II" forked timeline where Biff Tannen had turned 1985 Hill Valley into a pit of depravity.
This seems accurate.

2024-06-03 22:48:36

- reply

They're gonna be flooded with illicit stuff. Watch and see.

2024-06-03 18:59:17

Elon turns #Twitter / X into a porn platform
I wonder if this will trigger age verification requirements in some states? -L
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/x-embraces-adult-content-amid-wave-of-porn-in-bio-bots/
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/553/750/244/918/483/original/1ef222c1e435aefc.png

2024-06-03 18:50:41

- reply

Yeah, that'll do it.

2024-06-03 18:48:06

It seems to confuse some folks when I support #Google on some issues after being highly critical of them on others of late. As I've said before, I am NOT a Google Hater, and I'm utterly uninterested in the opinions of Google Haters per se.
When Google does something I consider wrong, I say so. When Google does something I consider right, I say so. If I feel Google is getting a bum deal from some observers on given issues, I'll say this too.
My goal is not to see Google destroyed, but to make it better for its users and employees. If you can't handle my philosophy on this, best to block me here now. Thanks.

2024-06-03 18:41:43

Tonight on my usual Monday evening national network radio tech segment, I'll be briefly discussing the continuing controversies over #Google #AI Overviews. It won't be pretty.

2024-06-03 18:39:55

- reply

0.00431 lightyears.

2024-06-03 18:38:43

Noticed a video contest from DJI where they want videos submitted that use "tilt-shift" actions. Except they left a letter out of the latter word. Oops.

2024-06-03 17:21:06

[But don't panic!] Google Leak Reveals Thousands of Privacy Incidents
These appear to be years-old reports, and related to the system employees use to report possible breaches/security problems for quick action. Often these are not even actual incidents, but employees are encouraged to report if they even suspect a problem, even if it will turn out to not be a real problem at all. Given their billions of users, these kinds of reports aren't just inevitable, I consider them to be a very positive sign that #Google has been taking these matters seriously and acting on them quickly. -L
[Note, this article requires an email address to access fully.]
https://www.404media.co/google-leak-reveals-thousands-of-privacy-incidents/
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/553/364/405/683/172/original/4381ad8f211ce069.jpg

2024-06-02 23:20:32

BREAKING: Felon ex-president joins TikTok saying he's proud to be there, after originally calling for it to be banned in the U.S.

2024-06-02 19:10:55

News Corp's Murdoch, 93, marries former mother-in-law of Russian oligarch, 67.

2024-06-02 19:04:57

***** Lauren's Blog: "I Am the Very Model of a Google AI Overview" *****
https://lauren.vortex.com/2024/06/02/i-am-the-very-model-of-a-google-ai-overview
I am the very model of a Google AI Overview.
I know what you'll be searching for,
At least an hour ahead of you.
My answers aren't always right,
In fact they're often quite a brawl.
But hey we're Google and you're here,
So that's the way the chips will fall.
We really don't like those blue links,
They're so old-fashioned we agree.
Why bother sites with viewers,
When users can just come here to me?
Of course some sites may suffer,
And yeah that's a bit tragic to see.
But while we aren't evil,
Face the facts it's all about money!
Now if your Google search results,
No longer seem of quality,
It's not our fault,
The problem is,
Your queries are just all lousy.
So welcome to my AI world,
An LLM can't think things through,
I am the very model of a Google AI Overview.
- - -
--Lauren--

2024-06-02 18:30:42

- reply

I highly recommend YouTube Premium to kill those ads.

2024-06-02 18:23:30

"I am the Very Model of a Google AI Overview"
Lauren Weinstein
With apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan
- - -
I am the very model of a Google AI Overview.
I know what you'll be searching for,
At least an hour ahead of you.
My answers aren't always right,
In fact they often are bizarre.
But hey we're Google and you're here,
So that's the way the chips will fall.
We really don't like those blue links,
They're so old-fashioned we agree.
Why bother sites with viewers,
When users can just come here to me?
Of course some sites may suffer,
And yeah that's a bit tragic to see.
But while we aren't evil,
Face the facts it's all about money!
Now if your Google search results,
No longer seem of quality,
It's not our fault,
The problem is,
Your queries are just all lousy.
So welcome to my AI world,
An LLM can't think things through,
I am the very model of a Google AI Overview.
- - -
--Lauren--
#Google

2024-06-02 02:02:31

#Google has announced that they've dialed back Search AI Overview hallucinations from LSD down to psilocybin.