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Month: June 2023

The Birds and the Bs and the Importance of the Pivot

The Birds and the Bs and the Importance of the Pivot

We spend time at our place outside of the city, come the warmer weather. Two years ago, when Spring came, we noticed a small bird building her nest, tucked into a seemingly protected nook above our front door. Most people use our side door, so it was apparently out of harm’s way, and she also seemed to enjoy perching herself on the fence in front of the house, to keep an eye on her nest, and an eye out for predators and to forage.

One day, we noticed that the nest had somehow been dislodged and had fallen onto the concrete tiles. All the eggs had been destroyed. The little bird continued to perch herself on the fence in front of the door, but guess she only had one shot at that season’s eggs.

The following year, she made her nest in the same spot, and, well, history does have a way of repeating itself. Again, the nest had somehow been dislodged and had fallen, and all her eggs destroyed. Read More...

The Internet of Things Not to be Trusted

The Internet of Things Not to be Trusted

Image by Mohamed_hassan @Pixabay

While LLMs such as ChatGPT are still very new and people do seem to forgive them for some of the  ‘hallucinations’ qua fabricated information they may deliver, Amazon’s Echo and Alexa have been around for quite some time now and in case you missed it, Amazon Shuts Down Smart Home for a Week Over Racist Slur Claim.

Which begs the question: where does tech end and what belongs to you begin?

“If you bought a toaster, at the end of the day, you own the toaster. It’s your toaster…Alexa is not a subscription service. You buy the devices, and that’s supposed to be it,” said the Microsoft engineer who was shut out of all things in his connected home connected by Amazon-controlled devices, such as Echo and Alexa. Read More...

Technology’s Marks of Evil?

Technology’s Marks of Evil?

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

What is it with that name and the need to control? Or manipulate. We refer to the Mar(c)(k)s Andreessen and Zuckerberg, respectively.

Although the spellings may be different to deceive the clueless.

Marc Andreessen, who a while back explained Why Software Is Eating the World, is now instructing us on Why AI Will Save The World. Mind you, in his earlier a16Z blog post, while he was right about how technology would take over, he didn’t bother to mention what we’d have to surrender for the privilege: our privacy and all our personal information. Read More...

Barreling Towards The Terminator Trifecta

Barreling Towards The Terminator Trifecta

 With summer just a few weeks away, the lists of summer movies are starting to appear. Entertainment talk lately has turned to whether or not James Cameron (The Terminator, Avatar, Titanic et al) will make yet another Terminator movie and what does this have to do with tech? Read on.

The movie, if you will recall, is about a future where sentient robots have taken over the world. Their goal: eradicate humanity. It was science fiction, but how often do these films turn out to be prescient? (How a movie predicted Ohio’s toxic derailment)

We can also tell you on fairly good authority that another Terminator movie is in the serious discussion stages, especially since we seem to be at least close to Skynet going live – the last part of The Terminator tech trifecta. Read More...