Testing the camera of my new Google Pixel 7a
Regular, zoom, and wide angle
“Countries such as Serbia, whose governments made the promise of security central to their power, have come to depend on keeping alive the very fears they pledged to defend their citizens against.” – The Atlantic, What the U.S. Can Learn About Gun Violence From Serbia
Compare the above to statements from U.S. politicians in the United States. The fear they foment not only increases gun sales, which makes their benefactors happy, but also adds to the thought that only an authoritarian can fix the problem. The deep irony is that the very argument made by many against gun regulation, “first Hitler came for their guns…,” leads to inaction, more violence, and more willingness to give up freedom for the sake of safety.
Temperature back down into the forties this morning, turned the furnace back on to get the basement home office comfortable.
I wonder what will be the price of the Pixel Tablet come this Christmas? I bet near $400.
If I were in charge of marketing a foldable phone, I think I would call it a mobile 2-in-1 rather than foldable because that puts emphasis on the functionality. From using the original Surface Duo learned that you have to think of these devices as a small tablet first and a smartphone second.
I could be a target consumer for these devices because I am a heavy tablet user and a lite phone user, and I use both devices every day. The problem is, no foldable is ever going to be as thin as a standard smartphone and feel comfortable in front pants pockets.
Price is a real constraint right now. When the price drops to a comparable to smartphone + tablet then it will be more compelling. So I wonder, how long will it take for a new foldable to cost $800 or less?
In the category of just because we can do something doesn’t mean we have to.
The reality is that Fortune 100 companies will hire McKinsey instead of your pro-social firm, because McKinsey’s solutions will increase shareholder value more than your firm’s solutions will. It will always be possible to build A.I. that pursues shareholder value above all else, and most companies will prefer to use that A.I. instead of one constrained by your principles
Source: Ted Chiang, “Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey?” Via Schneier On Security
It is practically impossible to trust any of the cable TV news outlets because they are all owned by corporations who we know to be driven by profit motive. Even if one likes to watch Fox News or CNN and what you see is everything that you like to see, you should be smart enough to realize the only reason why you see it is for Fox or CNN to make money. It doesn’t matter whether it is true and it certain is not fair and balanced or simply “calling balls and strikes.”
So yes, you can blame the networks for what they are doing, but really, the problem is with the voters who appear to rather be entertained more than participate in democracy.
This E-Ink display by Philips looks really interesting although right now a bit too expensive. Not available in the United States.
As Steven describes it, Tailwind is a “personal” Large Language Model that an individual can train based on their own input. It sounds very much like the personal chatbot that Dave Winer is using that is trained on all 20+ years of his blog posts, and having access to something like that I find very interesting. Curation and interaction with my own personal knowledge base is how I have hoped to use Roam Research, but I find Roam works very well for curation but not as well for interaction.
Like a lot of people, I imagine, I was frustrated while watching most of the Google I/O keynote yesterday because I was more interested in the hardware and Android announcements, things that I use every day, than Google’s AI announcements. Consequently, I didn’t pay close attention to most of the AI stuff. Later that evening I received Steven Johnson’s newsletter and learned about Project Tailwind, which he contributed on.
I think the Cubs are being hurt most by Seiya Suzuki not hitting, continuing to play Eric Hosmer, and Yan Gome’s injury. The Cub really need Suzuki to start hitting and stop putting Hosmer in the line up. If you are going to lose, better for the future to lose with young players getting MLB experience.
Impressive New Zealand road trip journal/web site.
I’ve enabled passkey login for my Google account but it doesn’t work on Linux even if I store a passkey on a Yubikey. Not sure when it will ever work on Linux, perhaps when one can store passkeys in 1Password?
“We have millions and millions of Christians who have had no experience of God, and the Church, for the most part, prefers it that way. We can then supply beliefs and dogmas as a replacement for encountering a living God. This is part of the reason so many people cling to the Bible or their theological beliefs so firmly. Because, to them, it is the closest thing to God they have ever encountered.”–MARK VAN STEENWYCK, emphasis added
— Jesus Unbound: Liberating the Word of God from the Bible by Giles, Keith,
Finished reading: Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman 📚
“To still others he [Jesus] is a man who found the answer to life’s riddle, and out of a profound gratitude he becomes the Man most worthy of honor and praise. For such his answer becomes humanity’s answer and his life the common claim. In him the miracle of the working paper is writ large, for what he did all men may do. Thus interpreted, he belongs to no age, no race, no creed. When men look into his face, they see etched the glory of their own possibilities, and their hearts whisper, ‘Thank you and thank God!’”
Good morning
Rule one of being a United States citizen, and really a citizen of any country, ought to be, ignore all political advertising. It’s shocking to that this fundamental advice is not taken seriously by enough people. Frankly, I would prefer all political advertising, to which the vast majority of campaign funds is spent, were outlawed so that our tools to evaluate candidates were primarily their record and debates.
The advent of Large Language Models appearing as artificial intelligence makes this advice more important then ever. We will see video clips of people who appear to be saying things they did not say. Money is not a constraint (thanks SCOTUS) and technology is no constraint (thanks capitalism).
The U.S. Constitution puts in place a structure of “checks and balances” between the three branches of government to prevent tyranny, and it is that concept that limits the degree of oversight of SCOTUS by Congress. However, this structure also enables tyranny when the same wealthy parties buy SCOTUS justices and members of Congress.
If members of Congress, no matter party, are unwilling to actually impeach those who support their ideology to maintain freedom for all citizens and not just a select few, you have in place opportunity for corruption and defacto dictatorship.
The founders imagined that the threat of impeachment would be sufficient to keep people in line, but we now know that is not true. Impeachment itself is useless without conviction. If Senators are unwilling to convict a sitting President for inciting an insurrection, then for what will it ever convict a President for?
The lesson we should have learned from the Internet is that technology is not really the problem, the real problem is the humans who use the technology. Amongst any group of humans there will always be one or two trying to lord over the other humans. In their constant quest to rule their world, they will spend all their time at figuring out how to game the technology for their ends. So, I think we should talk less about the technology of chatGPT and more about people and how they will use that technology.
The entire history of the United States has been one long debate, some times out in public but often times in private, about freedom for whom? More often than not the debate settles on the implied idea that freedom of some, usually white males, requires less or no freedom for others.