Geek Stuff category archive

Even as the Colorado shrinks, Big Tech drinks. From El Reg:

Datacenters in America used about 17 billion gallons of water during 2023, triple the amount they used a decade earlier in 2014, according to an estimate from US Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Your BFF? At the Psychology Today website, F. Diane Barth reminds us that “(t)here is no capacity in AI bots for conflict or self-awareness.”

Going rogue? Security maven Bruce Schneier argues that the genie may have escaped from the bottle.

Mind-numbing? At the Psychology Today website, Patrick L. Plaisance argues that “. . . the design and use of AI assistants are arguably destroying our digital opportunities to cultivate curiosity.”

There’s a reason some persons call them “pervert glasses.”

Just because you can do it with computers, doesn’t mean you should.

A thumb on the scales of justice? At Above the Law, Joe Patrice reports that a lawyer attempted to send a secret message to any AI agent that might read his plea. A snippet:

A court employee in Connecticut noticed an unusual stretch of white space in a filing. Upon closer inspection, the “nothing” turned out to be 3-point, white-on-white text. It would be invisible to any human casually reading reading the page, but perfectly legible to any software that happened to ingest the document.

Methinks “AI” does not stand for “artificial intelligence.”

It stands for “antisocial invidiousness.”

Stephen L. Carter is fed up with our surveillance society. Methinks he makes some good points. A snippet:

It’s hard to imagine now, but in the 19th century, when cameras were young, it was considered discourteous to take a person’s picture without permission. Now, once we’ve exited our homes, our images are being recorded constantly. In cities and suburbs and, increasingly, rural areas, cameras along the road are accepted as a fact of life.

I have a quibble, though. He blames government. I think might have more accurate pointed his accusatory finger at Big Tech.

They’re the pushers; government is the pushee.

Immoderate moderation.

. . . and meet a new kind of hijacker: One who tries to hijack your wifi and, with it, your data.

At the Psychology Today website, Marianne Brandon expresses–er–skepticism over advertisements from Big Tech claiming that they “believe in you,” i. e., people, users, the targets of the ads. A snippet, in which she decodes de code:

The ads want you to hear “we believe in people” as a statement about your resilience and your capacity for connection. What it actually means, if you look at what these companies have built over two decades, is closer to this: We believe you are predictable. We believe you are exploitable. We believe that when we build something compelling enough, you will choose it over the healthier, harder thing, almost every time. And we like those odds, because we’ve tested them for years and they’ve made us some of the most profitable companies ever to exist on Earth.

Follow the link for the rest.

Sometimes, quite a lot.

At the Psychology Today website, Hansika Kapoor explores the use of “rage-baiting” to get clicks. A snippet:

. . . angry people engage more with content that upsets them. Today, deliberate provocation online fuels engagement metrics, and these numbers transform into revenue from social media platforms.

Methinks it a timely read .in these days when so many monger hate for profit and power.

Going rogue? Security maven Bruce Schneier argues that the genie is out of the bottle.