Tag: Technology

Daily Life, Government, Technology

The Intelligence Revolution is Here

We’ve seen many technical revolutions in this country. The Industrial Revolution, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution… we survived all of them and came out the other side thriving and a more prosperous nation because of them. Today feels different. We’re at the beginning stages of what is being called the Intelligence Revolution. This time around we’re not just replacing tools or enhancing productivity, we’re replacing something that was always the exclusive domain of humans – cognitive thought.

In previous industrial revolutions, no matter how sophisticated the advances in machines or tools became, it still took a human brain to oversee and operate. Machines (even computers) were dumb. They have been traditionally limited by inputs, programing, and linearly focused to perform specific tasks. Yes people lost jobs as productivity improved, but people could be retrained to operate the new machines and the resulting productivity created growth and more jobs for those able to retrain and adapt. But very, very soon we will need massively fewer people to operate the machines. Why? Because the machines have cognitive, reasoning abilities. We no longer need a brain encased in a meat suit to oversee everything.

I’m generally an optimist and have faith in the human condition to adapt, overcome, and persevere. We’ve done it many times before and managed to build a great nation because of it. Big picture, I believe we’ll adapt to this brave new world and come out the other end better off. BUT… there’s a nasty wrinkle in this that has the potential to throw a monkey wrench in the works and create a decidedly unpleasant future. That unknown variable is speed.

The time estimate of the Industrial Revolution, from initial disruption to maturation was about 150 years. That’s 3-4 generations of workers. In other words, it didn’t happen overnight. There was time to adapt, to see the writing on the wall and retrain for new/different careers. The Intelligence Revolution is projected to take about 40 years – a 3-4x increase in speed. AI is growing at an exponential rate. The physical layer (robots on the factory floor) is expected to reach maturity/status quo in 2035. The cognitive layer (white collar automation) in 2045. In a nutshell, we’re pulling the rug out from under an entire generation of workers overnight.

Why does that matter? The labor force participation rate (working or looking) for 18-35 year olds is 70 million. Of those, 36 million are considered low-moderate skilled (no or some college). We already know that young folks today are not facing the same economic landscape as earlier generations. The purchasing power of $1 in the 80’s would cost $3.93 today. $2.47 in 90’s dollars. Housing costs have skyrocketed, pushing most young folks into high cost rents that they’ll struggle to save enough to achieve home ownership. We’re already sensing that young people feel like the deck is stacked against them and they are very disillusioned by the “establishment”.

Now take that disillusionment and dump a minimum of 10-12 million 18-35 year olds into the unemployment bucket. The current projections say 1 out of 3 people in that age bracket will be displaced in the next 10 years. That’s almost half of the younger population, with low-moderate skills, unable to find a job. How bitter and disillusioned do you think they’ll be? Zero job prospects and pissed that the boomers and Gen Xer’s are happily retiring and living a decent life. This is not a recipe for societal harmony.

It’s hard to estimate, but best guesses put the total number of ANTIFA members in the US at somewhere in the low thousands. Picture the amount of disruption and violence they’ve already been able to create over the last few years with just those limited numbers. Now dump a million new members (a few million?) into that group, angry, frustrated, with zero perceived life options, all organizing, protesting, sowing chaos and violence everywhere. And when the government comes in with a heavy hand to squash the movement… well, that’s how revolutions start.

I don’t know what the answer is. Universal basic income? Massive increases in social welfare programs? A moon-shot type of nationwide retraining program? A complete overhaul of our education system? Even if the system could move fast enough to get ready for what’s coming (the government moving quickly?), the nation is broke. We’re $38 trillion in debt. Social security is insolvent in 2032. It seems unlikely we could keep inflation at bay and still find a way to fund some sort of massive nationwide retraining program.

The Intelligence Revolution is neither good nor bad. It’s simply progress, evolution, and inevitable. It’s happening whether you want it or not. I’m honestly not sure what to think about how this will play out other than to say, be very careful about who you elect as our “leaders” moving forward. How our local and federal elected officials react to the changes will dictate everything. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.

“Interesting times are when the map becomes useless and the story begins.”

I described this scenario to AI and asked it to create a quote that resembled an old Chinese proverb. That’s what it came up with and seems pretty spot on.

Cool, Daily Life

Good Morning, Let’s Chat

I’ve been out of the tech/software game for a long time now. Historically I’d probably classify myself as an ‘early majority’ user in the Technology Adaptation Model. I’m probably a bit slower in keeping up with tech lately, as my day-to-day doesn’t revolve around tech any longer and as a result I’m somewhat new to the AI/LLM ecosystem. After several months of fairly consistent use of an AI platform… it’s shocking to grasp where the technology is and how fast it’s going to change our world. AI’s here, it’s wild, and it’s about to flip our world upside down.

At this point I’m not writing python scripts and utilizing LLM API’s to manage task automation. I’m interested, but I’m retired. Other than integrating into whole home automation or something, I don’t know what I’d do with it. What I am doing is utilizing Grok as an AI platform. Grok has completely replaced 95% of my search needs. And with the release of Grok 3… oooh boy, has it been a game changer!

Groks memory feature and conversational responses are amazing. It’s starting to feel like an actual conversation. Yes, it’s a little stilted and forced right now but it’s scarily close to a real conversation with a friend. I tried an experiment this morning: I opened up Grok and began a regular conversation; e.g. “good morning”, “whats the weather going to be like?”, “what do I need to know in the news today?”. I let the conversation flow in response to Groks replies. The results were very close to a real conversation.

Mark my words: in five years, Grok—or its AI cousins—will chat with us daily via voice like a friend or family member. Sci-fi (think Dave interacting with HAL) is now reality. Here’s a couple of examples I’ve been doing with Grok lately:

  • Ask Grok to give me a news summary of what’s happening in the world. I ask for the top twenty news items given some keywords. I’ll then ask for a deeper analysis if one of the items catches my eye. It’s a better news analysis than any of the various daily news “newsletters” I subscribe to.
  • I’ll ask Grok for a meal plan for the day given ingredients and the calorie/macro goals I have.
  • Yesterday I gave Grok a link to a menu for a restaurant we were going to and asked it to find the item that was the highest protein and lowest calorie. Grok remembered what I’d eaten in the morning and found the menu item that fit in with days goals.
  • Grok is now managing my day-to-day workout goals and tweaking exercises based upon my feedback. It’s more detailed than any personal trainer I’ve been to and provides instant feedback.
  • We’ve had a spat of medial issues in the family recently and the research abilities have been incredible. Submitting a pathology report and asking for a layman’s summary is mind-blowing.
  • I asked Grok for the pros and cons of a particular type of mountain bike seat I’ve been looking at. It narrowed down what would have been an hour plus of reading reviews and 15 open Safari browser tabs, had I done the same myself.

I could keep going on, but you get the point. These tools will be life changing. If you haven’t been keeping up… at a minimum, I guarantee 75% of white collar jobs will no longer exist in their current form within 10 years. The revolution is happening that fast – if not faster. Multiple experts rate AI, as a part of the fourth revolution, as being exponentially more impactful than the industrial revolution or anything else we’ve seen. Exciting and scary at the same time.

If you’re currently a white collar worker in the early to mid point of your career and you’re not all-in on figuring out AI – prepare to be obsolete in a hurry. If you’re a young adult just getting out of college and don’t have a firm grasp of AI and LLM’s – good luck finding a job. In five years there will be no such thing as an “entry level” position as we think of them today. I’d make a joke about, “would you like fries with that?” but automated AI-driven kiosks will have taken over for fast food cashiers. I cannot emphasize enough how fast this is going to happen. Every single company in the nation is currently trying to figure out how to outsource YOU to AI. If I had a mortgage and a kid at home depending on me to bring home a paycheck… I’d get ahead of the curve NOW. A slightly different context, but I still think you can fit the movie quote from Backdraft to this scenario:

“Firefighter Brian McCaffrey: You see that glow flashing in the corner of your eye? That’s your career dissipation light. It just went into high gear.“

It’s an exciting time. The world will not look the same in ten years. I just hope I can keep up.

Cool

I Joined A Cult

It is official. I’m a newly inducted member of a cult. So far they seem pretty harmless, but I’m noticing it’s pretty hard to escape. Another drawback is that they demand a hefty price to be a member. It feels like every time I turn around more money is needed. I am, of course, talking about Apple Computer.

A little background. I worked for Microsoft for a long time. I was an early adopter of Android and did some development work on Android apps in the early days. I was not a fan of Apple. The Apple world was expensive and a ridiculous walled ecosystem that did not play well with others. As an engineer I did not like the fact that access to the OS was mostly inaccessible to the average user. With Windows system access, customization was easy and encouraged. Whatever Apple decided met their “surprise and delight” standard was what you got. Working under the hood was not encouraged. So for the entire time I was at Microsoft, and for quite a bit afterwards, I was decidedly not in the Apple camp.

This was made more complicated by the fact that Mrs Troutdog works for Apple. We’ve been in a technologically split marriage for years. She did her thing and I did mine (computer and phone-wise) and we’ve managed to make it work. But the interesting thing about cults is that they all feel the need to convert you. I’ve endured years of constant little hints to just switch over. Wouldn’t it be easier if we were both on the same system? Oohhh, look how fantastic the new iPhone is! Don’t you want to switch?

But I held out. The Microsoft/Android ecosystem does everything the Apple ecosystem does. Cloud based sharing of data across all devices. A rich app library, etc… I was happy. But after leaving Microsoft, more and more of my friends and family were all Apple. They couldn’t include me in FaceTime sessions. Sharing calendar/email stuff between the platforms is a nightmare. And any video shared in a group message is unviewable by Android – Apple intentionally downres’ it for non Apple devices so it’s unwatchable. Eventually I was the only remaining non-Apple person amongst everyone I know. It was a little lonely.

Six months ago I needed a new desktop machine for video editing. After hours of research I decided to bite the bullet and go Mac Studio. I’ll be the first to admit that their system on a chip is amazing. Performance-wise, blows doors on any PC I could have configured. So that was my first foray into the Apple world. I kept my Android phone and had never even touched an iPad. So even though I had one foot in the Apple world it wasn’t a complete experience. As I got more comfortable with the Mac OS, I did finally tell Mrs Troutdog that when it came time to replace my phone I would switch over to an iPhone to make intra-tech simple.

And sure enough, two days ago my Android phone bricked. Black screen of death. I took a deep breath and we went and got a iPhone. A day and a half of usage and I’ll admit that I like it. Setup and customization was pretty easy. A little awkward with the learning curve and lots of hunting and pecking to try and find settings and such. Apple is not nearly as intuitive as they’d like to think they are. But I did like the intra-machine ecosystem cloud so much I started playing around with an older iPad as well. The three devices do seem to work together more seamlessly than the Microsoft ecosystem did.

So that’s that. I’m in the club. Is there some sort of secret handshake or something? Can other Apple users spot each other in the wild? I think I’m going to go all-in. AirPods, iPad, Watch, Pencil. I will be a walking Apple commercial. Mrs Troutdog is happy now.

But I draw the line at that silly Vision Pro spatial computer thing. I will not sit in my living room, wearing weird looking ski goggles, waving my hands around at invisible icons and looking like a crackhead on a bad mushroom trip. A mans got to know when to say no.

Daily Life, Government

Is Privacy Important?

If you’ve been following along at home, I recently went on a conspiracy theory reading binge (is it still conspiracy if it’s true?). But that’s nothing new as I’ve been espousing about our security state for quite some time now. Lately it seems like daily you find out something new that either the government or big tech is doing to spy on you. 99% of us just shrug our shoulders. Meh, it’s the price of having the fancy new iPhone so we can FaceTime and share all our data between devices via the cloud, right?

This morning I listened to an interview with Erik Prince, the founder of the Blackwater private security company. Fascinating guy for many reasons, but one of them is that he’s just recently created a smart phone that’s “unplugged”. In theory it can’t be traced by the government and it allows you to use most common apps without the tech companies (or government) scooping up all your usage and location data. While we probably all have a sense of what’s happening, it’s still shocking to hear the degree of spying that’s being done on us via our phones.

As is usually the case when I see or hear things like this I immediately vow to get off all social media platforms, wipe everything off my phone, and switch to using cash for all transactions. But then the more I think about it I realize “they” already have everything there is to know about me. I’m sure I have a very well established profile filed away somewhere. So what good would unplugging do at this point? If, as Mr Prince alleges (and I believe to be true), multiple apps, Google, and Apple can turn on/off your phone camera and microphone at will… and that data is recorded and stored for all eternity, then a hostile actor could already blackmail, embarrass, or threaten me. What good would shutting it off now do?

I suppose the only reason to have an unplugged phone would be if I planned on someday communicating with others or researching things that the government would like to know about and track. I don’t see that happening. I guess it’s accepting the “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear” mentality. It would take effort and sacrifice to try and unplug from our tech overlords. Is it really worth it?

But here’s the thing – it makes me mad that we even have to contemplate this. How did we let this happen? As Mr Prince says, it’s the frog in the slowly boiling water phenomenon. Little by little, with promises about how cool it will be when every device in your world is interconnected. I’m just as guilty as everyone else. I have Alexa, Siri, a smart refrigerator, online cameras and heating systems. On top of everything else that our phones do, I share my location online for Mrs Troutdog when riding the motorcycle and happily post photos everywhere I go embedded with location data. Like I said, I bought into the whole interconnected thing. Hell, I even worked for the evil empire (Microsoft back when Google’s slogan was still “don’t be evil“) and was part of their data collection division via your TV and set top box way back in the day. We collected everything about your viewing habits – what channels you watched, how long, and how you surfed through the guide. All so we could sell that data to advertisers. Well, technically not us but the cable providers who used our system. So I suppose I was part of the problem way back then.

But now… now the genie is out of the box and I’m not sure we’ll be able to put it back. The Borg has metastasized and has grown out of control. I don’t think the vast majority of people grasp the fact that we live in a full on police/security state. Monitored at all times. What our government and the tech companies currently do would be the envy of the old East German Stasi. Take a close look at how China monitors and controls its population, because that is our future very soon.

It makes me angry that we gave up everything for the convenience of some fancy tech and the promise of keeping us secure from terrorists and stopping the drug cartels. We did it to ourselves and there’s no going back – without drastic measures. I’m not sure we have the will as a nation to push back anymore.

The funny thing is that just the other day I agreed with Mrs Troutdog that I’d fully switch over to the Apple ecosystem and get an iPhone so we could more easily share calendars and FaceTime. Now I’m not so sure I want to. Maybe I should get an unplugged phone and start purging all the data collection apps and social media I use. Maybe I should start using cash for everything so my purchase habits and locations can’t be tracked.

Maybe.

But then again, that’s inconvenient. And I like fancy new technology. Besides, I’m not doing anything wrong. At the end of the day why do I care if someone’s watching me?

Man I hate being a lazy conspiracy theorist.

Government

They’re Watching

I spent the last week on a beach outside of the USA. Good food, too many margaritas, and plenty of time by the pool. With nothing but time on my hands I consumed a number of books. One was about the United States biometric data collection practices and another was Edward Snowdens book. Both were fascinating and frightening. The allegations Snowden makes about US surveillance capabilities almost seem made up… and then we experienced it firsthand crossing back across the border.

Mrs Troutdog and I both enrolled in the Global Entry program so we wouldn’t have to stand in the passport line coming back from vacation. This trip was our first time using it. We walked up to a handful of empty kiosks and a customs agent. He instructed us to look into a camera. In under five seconds a green light came on and we were done and on our way. Instant facial recognition indexed against a database of god knows what information about us. (also used by the Clear airport security program) It was creepy, especially knowing that this technology is probably being used on us daily as we walk around minding our own business.

If you weren’t aware, the NSA/CIA/DIA invested heavily in biometric harvesting and analysis during the global war on terror, primarily in Afghanistan. One of the offshoots of that is a company called Palantir founded by billionaire Peter Thiel. They created AI that takes biometrics and metadata, indexes that against intelligence data, and creates predictive behavior models – basically tracking your movements and predicting that you’re very likely to plant an IED or attack soldiers in the future. That battlefield program has now been turned over to police departments under the auspices of “predictive policing”. A number of big departments, LA, New York, New Orleans, have been experimenting with it to target gang activity. It’s unclear at this point to what degree it’s been implemented beyond trials.

Another fun company, also funded by Peter Thiel, is Clearview AI. They’ve scraped billions upon billions of images from Facebook and other social media sites to build a massive neural network of facial and location recognition. Give the algorithm a face and it will spit back all known locations that person visited and their associates/friends. It’s currently being used by law enforcement and private companies. Wonder why you didn’t get that job? Maybe one of your friends is too controversial. Maybe they know you visited that seedy massage parlor or attended a protest of some sort several years ago.

But where does the government get this data about you? Besides companies like Clearview AI, thanks to Mr Snowden we now know that the NSA is intercepting all internet traffic. There is a series of servers sitting at all major US telecom sites that internet traffic is routed through. The first is called TURMOIL and it intercepts your web request and makes a copy. The second is called TURBINE which parses through your data looking for keywords, metadata, and flagged web sites. If you trip the algorithm, the TURBINE server can insert malware which is then downloaded to your device and voila, the NSA is now actively monitoring you.

The NSA and CIA are monitoring and collecting every single bit of data you produce and storing it at a massive data center south of Salt Lake City (reportedly capable of storing yottabytes of data). Internet searches, phone calls, location data… basically anything that makes contact electronically with the outside world is harvested. Add on top of that facial recognition data and license plate readers from a sea of cameras planted throughout your city and it’s fair to say you are being tracked and monitored most of your waking moments. All in the name of “security”.

Going into Snowdens book, I wasn’t sure how I felt. I love my country and after 9/11, of course I want to ensure the terror tactics seen in Europe or on the battlefield don’t spread here. Snowden signed the NDA’s and swore an oath – you don’t then get to just violate that because you think you’re being righteous.

The problem is that our country lied. James Clapper, director of national Intelligence, sat in front of congress and swore we did not collect data on Americans. But they do. They collect all of it. Everything. The justification they now give is that they collect and store it, but they don’t use it unless there’s a reason. Uhm, yeah right.

When you see the overreach and abuses we’re currently witnessing from the FBI, the weaponization of the DOJ, the illegal FISA searches, NSA monitoring and leaking info about journalists, and the alphabet agencies partnering with social media to censor news… my trust level for the government is about as close to zero as you can get. So as far as Snowden goes, I went from ambivalent to firmly on team Snowden.

We have a minor little thing called the fourth amendment in this country. The government does not have the right to spy and collect data about you without due process. The people have the right to understand what information is being harvested about them and how it’s used.

While the founding fathers may appreciate that pithy little paragraph, it’s meaningless. We’ve already crossed the point of no return. This genie isn’t going back in the bottle. We officially live in a big brother state. You are going to be watched, monitored, and have predictive AI make decisions about your life from the moment of birth until your death. It’s Orwellian stuff of science fiction novels. It’s all fine and dandy I suppose, as long as it’s used against bad guys. But what’s that old quote? “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely“

It wouldn’t take much for an administration to decide some segment of the population was getting a bit too subversive and to take action. Write the wrong thing in a blog post, say something about the government in your living room with Alexa listening, order a flagged item from Amazon – you’re going to get a knock on your door from the feds. Good luck booking airline travel or applying for a job when you’re on an enhanced watch list.

Can you honestly say we’re very far away from that reality? What makes you think we’re not already there?

So yeah, I approve of what Snowden did. We need more of that. More sunlight. More details. More exposure. Because I like quotes, here’s another one for you: “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” Those in power do not want this and will fight it tooth and nail, in the name of security. Understand this and reject any and all attempts to expand the security state.

Now excuse me, I’m off to feed the Facebook algorithm false information to confuse the feds. Just kidding. I watch cute Vizsla videos and mountain bike crashes.

Or that’s what I want you to think.

Cool

Let’s Make A List

A couple days ago I posted that I was contemplating allowing myself to get sucked into the Apple ecosystem. I still find it ironic that Apple at one time advertised themselves as the anti-establishment brand. Remember the 1984 super bowl ad by Ridley Scott? The PC back then was still associated with IBM and conformity. Now? Apple is the very picture of conformity. All the cool kids want to be in the massive Apple ecosystem. The edgy, rebellious, hackers are all using PC’s, Android devices, and gasp, Linux based machines. Kids of today have no idea.

Anyway, the rest of this post probably won’t be of interest to most folks, other than a few tech-curious people. I’m going to walk through my thought process on maybe, maybe not switching ecosystems.

First up, my current setup. I “work” in two locations, often for weeks at a time. My main location has my desktop PC. It’s about three years old, reasonably beefy (for its time) and capable of decent video and photo editing. My second location has a very old tablet PC (the very first gen Microsoft Surface. 2 cores and a massive 4 GB of RAM) that has never been capable of anything and finally bit the dust.

Option one, in a perfect world, I’d have a powerful video editing machine at each location so that I’m only carrying an external drive back and forth. That option is too expensive.

Option two is to have a powerful machine with a form factor that I can easily transport back and forth.

Option three is just replace the tablet with something inexpensive and continue to do my video/photo editing in just one location.

Here’s what Apples options look like:

  1. The new Macbook Air 15″. 8 core CPU, 10 core GPU, 16GB memory, 512 GB storage, 2 ports. Would not need to buy a monitor. $1,700
  2. Mac Mini. 8 core CPU, 10 core GPU, 16 GB memory, 256 GB storage, 4 ports + HDMI. Will need to purchase at least one monitor. $800
  3. Mac Studio. 12 core CPU, 30 core GPU, 32 GB memory, 512 GB storage, 8 ports + HDMI and SDXC. No monitor needed. $2,000

So my thought process goes like this… Option 1 is clearly the most portable, but I’ve always worked at a “desk” environment. It gives the option to work at a coffee shop, in the backyard, on the couch, etc… but it’s unclear if I’d ever take advantage of that. It’s just not something I’ve ever done.

Option 2 is reasonably portable. Adding a second monitor and keyboard puts the price pretty close to option 1.

Option 3 is clearly the best choice for video editing. But it’s not really portable so I’d have to also buy an inexpensive iPad for location 2 and continue to just edit in one location.

All three options will require buying external drive(s). Apples SSD storage is ridiculously expensive and slow. Additionally, moving to the Apple ecosystem will require buying an iPhone eventually.

So what to do? I think option 3 is out. The Mac Studio is an amazing machine for the money. Maybe someday if I develop a YouTube empire, but probably not realistic for now.

Option 1 feels like it gives the most flexibility. But if I ever decide I want a regular monitor/keyboard experience in both locations, option 2 becomes the most cost-effective choice.

Or maybe… I just get an inexpensive iPad to see if I even like the Apple interface and readdress all this in 2-3 years when my desktop PC is too outdated and/or my existing phone dies?

Analysis paralysis is real my friends. And don’t even get me started on looking for a new office chair…

Cool, Daily Life

It’s All About The Ecosystem

I live in a bifurcated tech family. I worked for Microsoft for much of my career. Mrs Troutdog works for Apple. Somehow, we’ve survived this great tech divide all these years. I will admit that early on I was a bit of a PC snob. As a software engineer, I scoffed at the closed environment of Apple. I laughed at their early attempts to hide bugs and security risks from the users so as not to damage their image. I’d smugly think to myself, any real tech person would want to have access to the inner workings of the machine. And iPads? Please, those were for children and grandmas who only surf the internet looking for recipes.

Time went on and I eventually left the (once) evil empire. My opinion on all things tech have significantly mellowed over time. And Apple, to their credit, have been putting out some serious hardware. A number of my former MS colleagues have gone over to the Apple side of the world.

I don’t have much criticism of Apple these days. Their price points are ridiculously high. They often seem to design products with the sole purpose of making whatever you currently have, instantly obsolete and non-upgradeable. But then again, the diehard Apple fans will happily re-mortgage the house to get the latest and greatest version, so it’s obviously working for them.

At this point in my life, I can honestly say I hold no allegiance to any particular tech platform. I happen to be PC and android based but would happily switch if it made sense. And there’s the problem. Apple has focused on creating a walled garden. An ecosystem that sucks you in and is hard to get in or out of. They don’t play nicely with non-Apple technology. Yes, I can keep my Android phone but I miss out on iCloud syncing, Facetime, etc… For example Mrs Troutdog and I try to share personal calendars, but events coming across from Android to the Apple calendar give her constant errors.

So for me to switch ecosystems, I’d need to change my music service, download new versions of all my software, and switch phones. I have data stored on USB thumb drives that would still require a PC to read. I don’t know if all my little peripherals (keyboards, speakers, monitor, mice, etc…) would be compatible or have to be replaced. None of that would be the end of the world. Just inconvenient and potentially a little costly.

And yet even with all that to consider – drumroll please – I’m seriously considering it.

I have a very old PC tablet that finally went belly-up, so I have to replace it with something. Do I just go get a relatively inexpensive PC based tablet or laptop and call it good? Or do I go all-in and completely switch ecosystems? The problem is that my main machine is a relatively (as of three years ago) beefy PC for video editing. Switching teams would instantly make it a brick.

I spent the morning looking at all the various options Apple has. Wow, there are so many ways to go. Mac Studio and Mac mini. The new MacBook Air 15″ is an amazing machine for its price. The analysis can be paralyzing.

Big bucks to switch everything over now, or spend significantly less money and stay in the PC ecosystem? It’s actually a really hard decision to make. (oh, the first world problems we’re fortunate to have)

Sigh… why doesn’t the tech world play nice together? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could mix and match the best of both worlds? What to do, what to do? Stay tuned.

Daily Life, Government

Do You Have A High Social Score?

Every single aspect of your life is available on-line. Every purchase you’ve ever made. The prescriptions you had filled. Every text message you’ve sent. Your phone calls. Any picture you took with your phone. Every single thing you’ve liked, retweeted, or commented on with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Your browsing history. It’s all out there in the cloud. Don’t believe me? If you use Google Maps, go have a look at your timeline. Every mile you’ve ever driven, walked, or traveled is there. Every single store or destination you visited. How many minutes and hours you spent driving or walking. It’s a bit disconcerting the first time you see it if you didn’t realize all that info was being harvested.

Your devices are listening to you 24×7, vacuuming up everything that’s said. How do you think those recommendations on YouTube or ads in your Instagram feed get there? All that data is being collected and mined for information about you. Why? Right now, it’s mostly so companies can market and sell to you. That information is collated and sold to anyone who’s willing to pay for it. Increasingly however, that information is being used to authenticate who you are.

I mentioned it previously – Dynamic Knowledge Based Authentication. Companies buy all this personal information about you and then use it to generate authentication questions. It’s presumably more secure than the previous method of Static Knowledge Based Authentication. The static version was the canned questions you’d set up and be asked; what was the name of your first pet, or what city were you born in. The static version has become too easy to hack, so smart dynamic questions are now generated from the massive databases of information collected about you.

As we start to add AI to this huge collection of data gathered about you… systems are soon going to be able to start making judgments about you. They’ll be constantly creating and updating a profile of you. And that, my friends, is the beginning of the end. Here’s a few scenarios I can think of off the top of my head:

  • You go on to OpenTable to make a dinner reservation for tonight. Hmm, not a single restaurant has a table available except for a few one-star, lower end places. That’s odd for a Tuesday night. Not really – your profile indicates you infrequently eat out, most of your clothing purchases are from Costco, and you rarely buy alcohol. Odds are you won’t order drinks, may share a plate, and probably aren’t a big tipper. The algorithm will hold on to that reservation for someone with a better profile.

  • You’re trying to find a new job and haven’t received any interviews, despite applying to at least 50 different job postings. You went to a good school, have a killer resume, and have been a loyal employee for many years. What’s wrong? Well, your profile indicates you might be a problem employee. You travel a lot and seem to be a big shopper – often during work hours. You comment quite a bit on social media and appear to be vocal about your opinions. Based upon your shopping habits, you buy a fair amount of alcohol and there are quite a few pictures of you drinking with friends. You’re not a good risk, despite a solid work history.

  • You have a USPSA shooting match coming up next month, so you go on-line to buy some bulk ammo for practice. For some reason the sale won’t go through. You contact your credit card company, only to find out they’ve cancelled your card for violating their terms of service. You apply to other credit card services, but every single one declines you. You’ve always paid your balance in full every month. What happened? Your profile indicated that you attempted to buy more than what is considered a “safe” amount of ammo. You posted an anti-BLM meme on Facebook at one point, which puts you in a white nationalist category. That, combined with support you’ve expressed on-line for various right-wing politicians and causes, makes you a risk.

  • You suddenly receive a notice that your auto insurance is dropping you for violating their ESG (environmental, social, & environmental) terms of service. As you shop for new insurance, all the rates you’re quoted are at least five times what you were paying before. Why? Your profile shows that your car is more than ten years old and doesn’t meet MPG requirements. You drive more than 15k miles per year and your route data shows that most of your driving time is on high accident routes. Your consumer profile indicates that you may not be performing all the recommended service and maintenance on the vehicle, which increases emissions, reduces performance and increases the chances of an accident. You’re a poor risk.

There are a billion other scenarios you could come up with where an AI generated profile of you might impact the outcome. Does any of this seem outlandish or tin foil hat conspiracy? I don’t think so. I think we’re on the very cusp of this being reality (if it’s not already). As this trove of personal data is increasingly shared in massive databases, and as AI becomes more prevalent… your social credit score is going to dictate your future quality of life.

So, what can you do about it? At this point, not much probably. I think it’s going to happen regardless. Especially since all of it will be put in place “for your own good”. Virtually all of us have been sheep – oblivious to what the technology was doing. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

If I was a parent of young kids, I’d be thinking about creating and maintaining multiple identities for them. One that’s used for any casual on-line activity (the web, social media, your phone) and one that’s protected. Anything you can do to enable them to enter adulthood with a clean, neutral, social profile. Educate them that everything you do, say, purchase, or interact with will be evaluated and potentially be used against you at some point in the future.

We are no longer a free people. If you want to interact with society, have credit, make purchases, rent a car, or get a job – your profile better conform to whatever is deemed to be acceptable.

Hmmm… this has the making of a good movie screenplay.

Cool

Wanna See Some Art?

I am a frustrated creator, to use the social media/YouTube lexicon. I go through waves of intense desire to create either photographs or videos. Those waves usually dissipate quickly, mostly because I don’t know what to do the images and videos. That sounds odd, so let me explain.

Making a video is a non-trivial task. You need to put thought into what you’re doing, constantly making sure you’re getting sufficient footage, film from multiple angles, etc… When done, you have many hours of editing, finding music, learning software tools, and rendering time. I’m a beginner, so my results are a bit amateurish, but I’m learning and they’re getting better. Those video’s obviously get posted to YouTube.

Photographs come from a Fuji X100F camera or my phone. The phone images are edited on the phone using VSCO or Snapseed and posted to Instagram. Photos from the “real” camera are edited with Adobe Lightroom… and sit on my hard drive for the most part. I have an old WordPress “photo” site with a few images, but I haven’t updated it in years.

So, what’s the issue? With videos it boils down to – is it worth the time and effort? To actually make any money on YouTube, even just a few hundred dollars a month, is nearly a full-time job. You have to be very consistent with uploads every week and put real effort into making interesting content. You need to identify a niche and focus on it. You need to promote your content. I like making videos, but I’m not sure I’m interested enough to go to that level. Therefore, I’m making occasional random videos for friends and family. Which is fine, but it’s a lot of effort. Do I want to continue?

Photographs are a similar, but slightly different issue. This will sound silly, but what do I do with my pictures? I suppose I can just keep posting them to Instagram for the approximately twenty friends and family who follow. I thought about creating a second, photography-specific Instagram account for the camera images but that would mean actively trying to attract followers. I’m not a professional, an influencer, or at a point in my life where my ego needs the boost, so that doesn’t really fit my personality. I suppose I could make prints from time to time to hang up around the house. I honestly just don’t know what I want to do with the images. The end result is that I rarely take pictures lately.

A day ago, I decided to try and create a gallery/slideshow that would display on the Smart TV in the living room. At least people coming to the house could get a glimpse into my pictures, right? Forty minutes later of trying to create accounts, logging in, and struggling with settings, I still couldn’t get the damn thing to sync with my images. That was the end of my attention span for that project.

Next, I turned to GoPro. They’ve updated their mobile app, called Quik. I’ve played with it a little bit and it seems interesting. Their premise is that the app will solve what they call the “black hole” of photos and videos that just sit on your phone. They have a tool called the Mural that you use to place daily content from your phone, and it helps you organize and create interesting slideshows and videos. I think it would work but will require a change in workflow along with how and where I save images. Again, do I really want to put the effort in to make this happen?

I realize that these are amazing first-world problems to have. I’m enough of a student of the mediums to know that the answer is that you’re creating for yourself. Unless your goal is to make a living with art, it makes no difference if anyone sees what you’ve created. You’re doing it for you. That holds true for photography, writing, or YouTube. I know this.

But as the old saying goes, if a tree falls in the forest – does it make a sound? Well, we’ll never know if someone isn’t there to listen. I’m not ready to abandon all creativity yet. I don’t know what the answer is for photography. If anyone has ideas on what to do with images, I’d love to hear it. YouTube is a bit trickier. I think the answer is to find a style that fits what I do. I need to find a way to document the things that I do that isn’t so labor intensive. If it’s easy enough, I’ll do it. I’ll push my stuff out there so friends and family can keep up with my activities and adventures. And if random strangers also want to see it, so be it.

We live in an amazing time. No more photo books with polaroid prints. No more grainy VHS tapes of family vacations. An unlimited number of ways to share images and art… it’s overwhelming.

Sigh. The life of a creator is hard.

Daily Life, Government, Lists, Politics, Solving the wrong problem, Travel

The Ex Post Facto Study
  • As humans, we really like passing new laws, creating processes and procedures, and establishing new rules to solve the problems we’re experiencing. What we don’t do a very good job of is any sort of analysis of our newly created bureaucracy to see if it actually did anything useful. Laws and processes, once created, tend to stick around forever. For example at the start of the pandemic that shall not be named for fear of woke xenophobia, my hospital started a screening process for anyone entering. They purchased fancy stand alone scanners that let me scan my badge and take my temperature. I never use it because I have to log into it the night before (a software system the hospital had to purchase), answer the same stupid four questions, and then the next morning my temperature never registers with the automated machine because I just walked across the parking lot in 40 degree temps. The backup to the automated station is an employee who asks the questions, manually checks my temp (which still fails), and then gives me a sticker to put on my badge to “prove” I’ve been screened that day. When the ‘rona started everyone was panicking and I’m sure this process seemed reasonable at the time. It’s been in place for quite awhile now, so a retrospective study seems appropriate. Has this system actually “caught” any cases of Corona? I doubt it. How many people with 104 degree temps and difficulty breathing actually go to work or randomly show up to visit aunt Sally in the hospital? Or, they are asymptomatic and would have passed the screening anyway. Naturally the in-person screeners are only going through the motions at this point. I walk up say “no changes”, they try to scan my temp for 0.2 seconds, I grab my sticker and go. So in retrospective, is it worth continuing this? What made me think of this was something Grandpa Joe said during his weird state of the union speech last night. He dredged up the standard we need more gun laws rhetoric, saying we need to ban ghost guns and pass universal background checks. Ignoring what drivel that is for the moment, this seems like a prime opportunity for a retrospective study. We have tons of historical data in the form of crimes committed with guns. If we looked backwards and applied the new proposed laws, how many of those crimes would have been prevented? e.g. how many shootings have occurred with “ghost guns”? How many people went through some sort of firearm purchase at a flea market or gun show, bypassed a background check, and then went on to commit a crime? It seems pretty simple to look backwards to see if something would work moving forward. But that assumes you actually want the answer.
  • Spell check is a wonderous thing. Without it my writing would look like a five year old’s. Spell check elevates it to at least sixth or seventh grade. But the problem with spell check is you have to be roughly in the ballpark for it to give a suggestion. Take for example “bureaucracy”. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten it right first time. Unfortunately I never even get close enough for spell check to offer a helpful hint. I end up Googling things to stumble across the right spelling. Which brings me to my new phone. I like using the “swype” keyboard rather than entering in individual letters. The default swype implementation on the old Pixel phone was marvelous. I only had to get semi-close to the actual letters and it somehow knew what I was trying to type. It often had the correct contextual suggestions for the next word and the next word… magical. Samsung’s implementation on the other hand is very disappointing and more often than not I have to go back and type everything out. Sigh. I know you can download other swype keyboards, but that would take actual effort.
  • I violated my newly vowed rule to simply pay a professional to install things rather than me spending 10x the amount of time to do the same thing. I got some parts for the new ginormous motorcycle but the idea of waiting for an appointment and then paying someone $75 an hour to do what I should be able to do just killed me. And sure enough… two and a half full afternoons, many expletives, phone calls to customer support, and two new one-time use tools and everything is installed. But at least I feel good about my manliness. Cue Tim the toolman grunt.
  • This past weekend was very rainy and outdoor stuff wasn’t an option. I was bored and decided to conduct research and do an actual experiment. I’ve been needing a navigation solution (long story) for the backcountry while on the motorcycle. I wanted to use my phone rather than purchase a $600+ GPS device. I ended up spending the better part of a day researching options, downloading software, creating routes and maps, and really learning the systems. And the pièce de résistance, I created three custom routes and then went out and drove them to see which system performed the best. An actual experiment. I am a dork of huge proportions. But, at the end of the day I think I have a system that’s going to work.
  • I don’t think there’s much to say about the weird state of the union last night. Grandpa Joe is not a gifted orator. For all his flaws and ignoring content, Obama could deliver a good speech (as long as the teleprompter was working). Clinton too. For speechmaking ability I’d rank the presidents in the following order: Obama, Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43, Bush 41, Biden. As far as content goes, all SOTU speeches are stupid. They’re long whish lists of crap that never gets done. If you’re a fan of everything big government, you loved Biden’s speech. If you’re a minimalist government type, it was abhorrent. I don’t think there was much in the middle for this one.
  • I’m going to ride the ginormous motorcycle a fair number of hours north today, then come back on Saturday. Sort of a pre-travel trial run. I’m waiting for my soft luggage panniers to arrive and then all the pieces will be in place to hit the road! Interesting how much effort, planning, and research it’s taken to be able to experience the “freedom” of the road. LOL.

Song of the day: Sugar Ray Fly 1997