Notices by Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org), page 6

The problem Apple (and other manufacturers) have of course is that for 99% of people smartphones already have far more features than they'll ever use. So they have to keep piling on new hype-features to try sell the next round of hype hardware. But now, by piling on generative AI and such, each round is even more destructive of natural resources than the previous. But Big Tech doesn't care.

Harris has published a concise set of reasoned policy proposals (whether you agree with them or not).

Trump is ranting about imprisoning anyone who doesn't kiss his behind, pardoning violent criminals on Day One, and emulating dictators around the world.

Smart watches (especially from Apple) are getting so large they should come with a big round rubber nose to stick on your face, because they look like clown accessories.

@darnell Which reminds me, look how long Apple fought against USB-C ...

@darnell The problem is the overall accuracy and usefulness of these classes of sensors is not very good (and can in some instances be very deceiving) compared with medical grade instruments. This can cause even more problems for medical professionals trying to diagnose and treat patients. But Big Tech doesn't care.

#YouTube suddenly surfaces a 3-year-old video to me, that apparently is some older guy at a piano playing the main theme to "Theater of Blood" (1973), one of my favorite Vincent Price films with a wonderful score that I've always loved, especially that opening theme.

After watching for a few minutes, an interview begins, and I realize THIS is the composer of that score at that piano, discussing how the score came to be. Wonderful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sewVcJcklgc

And I mean this literally. Some carriers even transcode down to 480 lines for mobile devices using their mobile networks.

Irony: Creators spend a fortune buying equipment to produce videos in beautiful color graded HDR 4K and 8K, while the majority of their viewers watch those videos on their tiny phone screens that have an effective viewing resolution similar to that of a mid-1960s console TV.

Every country has mentally disturbed persons. Without guns, the damage they can do is generally relatively limited. Only the U.S. has this problem, apparently because the GOP, while declaring that life begins at conception, doesn't really care how many children are slaughtered later on. Q.E.D.

Police departments are now using AI systems to write up police reports automatically from the audio recorded on their body cams. What could go wrong?

@jwildeboer I had almost 400K followers on G+. However, I suspect most of them were essentially ghosts who never actually engaged in any way. The core group of engaged followers was vastly smaller. Here I have about twice as many followers as I ever had on Twitter, but the engagement group is larger I suspect.

When I say that Generative AI is a "laughingstock", I do want to make clear that we're laughing AT it, not with it.

Am I the only one suddenly getting slow responses and actual hangs from #Google Search? Wow, and SNAPs too. Not a good sign at all. No other sites seem affected.

#Google wants you to pay them for the privilege of using a version of their Gemini AI that will suck in all your Gmail messages and spew out gobbledygook answers to questions you ask about them. Of course if the answers Gemini gives you turn out to misrepresent important aspects of your email, Google will be unlikely to take responsibility for such errors. Anyone who trusts Google Gemini with such an important task is a true risk taker.

According to the "Terminator" film franchise, TODAY is the day that Skynet became self-aware, took over, and started its campaign to destroy humanity. The good news is that instead we have garbage like #Google Gemini that can't even answer questions like "When was Kamala Harris born?"

So we're probably safe from Skynet for now.

@DreamsAndLogic @DefectiveWings When you say none of the numbers you tried have "worked" what exactly is happening? Unfortunately (and I have pushed on this both publicly and inside Google during those periods I worked inside), the #Google Account Recovery system is a train wreck in major ways and Google just doesn't care if a significant percentage of users get locked out for no fault of their own without recourse.

***** Without warning, #Google appears to have broken #Chrome for still supported Linux systems *****

I'm receiving reports -- and have confirmed locally -- that Google appears to have broken support for the Chrome browser for Ubuntu Linux 18.04 systems, without any warning that I'm aware of.

While 18.04 is an older system, many are running with extended support from Canonical that runs through 2028. Many of these systems are in crucial applications where upgrading to later Ubuntu versions is not currently practical.

The problem appears to be that while Chrome Stable 127 is fine on these systems, Chrome Stable 128 now being rolled will not upgrade via apt, due apparently to the system libgcc-s1 library not being >= 4.2.

While there may be manual workarounds for this situation, they cannot be considered generally applicable since tampering with system libraries can easily render a system unbootable.

If Google intended to obsolete Chrome on these systems, there should have been plenty of warning -- but apparently there was none. Not being able to update Chrome invokes a variety of serious security concerns.

The current situation is unacceptable. -L

RFK, Jr. is reportedly going to make an announcement on Friday. Betting is he will announce the end of his campaign and throw in with Trump.

Explaining sampling bias can be very difficult. I'm personally of the belief that intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations capable and willing to communicate are extremely rare in space and time. That is, they need to be close enough physically to communicate, and exist during the same period when another civilization exists that is willing to communicate. I call this the "flashbulb effect". Winks of civilization that briefly flash across the galaxies.

A response I frequently get to this reasoning is that there are so many billion billion billion stars and galaxies that if civilizations like ours were so rare, the odds of our existence would be infinitesimal. And that since we exist there must be lots of other similarly advanced civilizations out there -- surely we can't be the only one or one of just a handful scattered widely.

But the point is that if we didn't exist we wouldn't even be asking the question. That's the sampling bias. If we were the only intelligent civilization in the universe, being one in a trillion trillion odds, we'd have no way to know at this point, since if we hadn't "won" that cosmic lottery, we wouldn't be here to ponder the question.

@antran22 I don't believe in ad blockers, and don't use them. Pay with money or pay by watching the ads. Ad blockers cause the most harm to smaller organizations that depend on ads and have no reasonable other ways to keep necessary income going.