Thoughts
Gadgeteer has an embed of a leaked walk thru of the forthcoming Android Desktop that Google officially announced as Googlebook this week. The demo is running in a VM on a Mac not on any native hardware. I don’t see anything in the demo that is really new or exciting. We have been using the “desktop” personal computer metaphor for so long and I wish that a company would have the guts to try something really new.
I think the only reason to consider Googlebook if it were built from the ground up as a AI-based user interface, but instead I think it will simply have AI stuff bolted on and that is not appealing. It’s early days, but hard to say what will be the reason to buy a Googlebook rather than a MacBook.
A significant amount of my childhood fears was driven by K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base located about 50 miles north of my childhood home. The base was part of the United States Strategic Air Command, housing B-52 bombers and nuclear weapons. When there was ever talk in the 1970s and 80s about nuclear war, that meant bombs dropping on K.I. Sawyer and close enough for either instant or near term death. The based paired with the Soo Locks that are vital to the transportation of iron ore to manufacture weapons, meant the U.P. in general was a strategic target for our enemies, meaning then the U.S.S.R.
Of course things changed in the early 90s with the fall of the Soviet Union and with it a decrease for the need of Air Force Bases, leading to the closure of K.I. Sawyer. The economic impact on the area was huge, and while today the site is partially in use including for the Marquette County airport, some of the buildings standing unused not too unlike the abandoned mining locations that dot the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Home improvement is exhausting. We have spent the last two weeks seeking quotes to replace the windows in our condo. The condo was built in the 1970s and the windows are original and should have been replaced long ago. Ever since we bought this unit, windows has been the responsibility of the association, but the cost of replacing all the windows of all the units of the condominium would result in a huge assessment, so the topic has been avoided. Now the association is planning to update the bylaws to make window replacement the responsibility of co-owners.
The cost of replacing windows is made worse by the fact that our unit, like many in our condominium, has several large, non-standard windows. For example, multiple patio doors with four foot wide panels rather than a more standard three foot wide panels. By the end of the week we will have four quotes with a wide range in price between low and high. Part of me wants to pay the lowest amount, but the other part of me does not want to risk having to replace the windows again, given that we may be living here for ten more years. We are on the fence about which direction to take.
In my opinion, SCOTUS’ decision in Louisiana v Callais is based on two flawed beliefs. First is that it is ok to make voting districts for partisan reasons, in other words, allow a majority party to create districts that favor their party winning seats. Second is the belief that racial discrimination is a thing of the past. I also have qualms with the idea that a majority can be discriminated against.
The refusal of seeing partisan gerrymandering and lobbying and very large campaign donations as wrong is evidence of a system functioning as desired by those in power.
A few days back I asked the question, does Apple really need to have an AI product? In this video Nate Jones reads the tea leaves of Apple’s impending re-org suggesting that Apple’s strategy towards AI may be the same as it’s strategy about personal computing 50 years ago. I think it’s the right move by Apple. However, I do wonder about what might be the relationship between local models and personal computer operating systems.
I can’t help but notice that in his blog post about the value of RAM for AI and how Apple’s unified architecture has proven to be an advantage, Om does not mention the Neo. Om’s point in this post, Memory Is The Machine, is the reason why think users are going wish their first generation Neos have more RAM. Heck, my M4 MacBook Pro’s 16 GB of RAM might not be enough in three years.
Our fears about artificial intelligence are a projection of the fears about ourselves. The human ego desires to control the world, and AI is probably the biggest threat to human control we have created to date. We know that we are incomplete yet our ego insists on turning to ourselves to resolve what ails us rather than changing our mind to follow the path of Jesus.
Everyone seems to think Apple must have an AI product. Why should that be true? A problem many companies have is constantly chasing the next big thing at the expense of doing their own thing very well. The problem I see for Apple is that it is a hardware company and AI is software. Apple probably should focus on making sure it’s hardware runs AI the best and it could focus on sandboxing AI in a way to protects privacy, but these are not AI products.
Read Joan Westenberg’s essay, Optimism Is Not A Personality Flaw. Christians actively working to initiate armageddon are the most dangerous of the pessimists that Westenberg describes.
Dave says, We Are All Good Germans Now, and I get his point but while he is using metaphor, there is an actual act made by the United States for which we all Americans should feel is our birthright shame. The United States is the only nation on earth to drop a nuclear weapon on another nation, and this reality, which is our shame, is how most of the world sees us. Consider the reason why you never hear U.S. politicians suggest attacking North Korea.
Ever since World War II U.S. citizens have been told to fear the possibility of other countries dropping nuclear weapons on us, while the rest of the world knows the U.S. has and thus is willing to drop nuclear weapons on them.