Personal Musings category archive
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
In the midst of a longer post about a recent made-up who-shot-john over the Trump hush money financial fraud trial, Dick Polman succinctly states one reason–perhaps the primary reason–why “social” media isn’t:
It has long baffled me why persons will believe stuff they see on a computer screen when they would not believe the same stuff if it happened right before their eyse.
No Place To Hide 0
The EFF explores how some car manufacturers’ are tracking your movements and selling their findings. Needless to say, the EFF thinks oversight is required. Here’s a bit of the article.
Car manufacturers including General Motors, Kia, Subaru, and Mitsubishi have some form of services or apps that collect, maintain, and distribute your connected car data to insurance companies. Insurance companies spend thousands of dollars purchasing your car data to factor in these “select insights” about your driving behavior. Those insights are then factored into your “risk score,” which can potentially spike your insurance premiums.
Afterthought:
It’s ironic, is it not?
Many persons sweat bullets about government surveillance, which has rules and regulations (and is nowhere nearly so extensive as some would have us believe), then run nekkid through industrial for profit tracking of their day-to-day activities.
WATB 0
So far tonight, I’ve gotten three texts on my cellular phone (purporting to be) from Donald Trump whining that he is the victim here.
Yeah.
Right.
Aside:
And, yes, I instructed my cellular provider to block those numbers.
Also, too, their market research seems to be somewhat less than–er–impeccable.
Stray Question 0
Why do persons say, “Have sex”?
Shouldn’t it be, “Do sex”?
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
If this is not de facto secession, I don’t know what is.
Stray Thought 0
Plastic toothpaste tubes are a plot by Big Toothpaste to prevent you from completely emptying a tube of toothpaste, thereby necessitating that you buy another tube of toothpaste before you otherwise must needs do so.
Stray Thought 0
My ISP has outsourced its email to Yahoo! (I gather that a number of ISPs are outsourcing their email services because they are lazy cheap sons of b–oh, never mind). Until I figure out how to import my emails into a mail client such as Thunderbird–my personal favorite–I am stuck with using Yahoo!’s webmail interface, which is not only clunky, but which also includes advertisements disguised as emails in my inbox.
Which leads me to remark that . . . .
Despite what Yahoo! would have me believe when I delete an email exchange from my inbox, an exchange of emails is not a “conversation.”
It is, at worst, an annoying but necessary task. At best, it is a correspondence.
But it’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, a “conversation,” for Pete’s sake.
Furrfu.
Stray Question 0
I wonder whether, if I owed a court money, I could talk the judge into cutting it by two-thirds just because I said it was too high?
Stray Thought 0
I suspect that, if I looked up “truth” in my trusty Roget’s Thesaurus, which I’ve had for forty years, I would not find “divisive concepts” listed as a synonym thereof.
But, if I had an updated version, I think I just might.
Keeping Up with the Times 0
Thanks to climate change, the saying is now
March showers bring April flowers.
(Or maybe it’s “February showers,” as the daffodils by our back steps started to bloom well over a week ago and now their blossoms are fully deployed.)
“Hollywood Power Couples” 0
That’s a phrase I noticed on IMDB, and, it occurs to me, that this honor is accorded to persons noted for pretending to be something they aren’t.
Stray Thought 0
Watching videos by randos on Youtube is in no way “research.”
Stray Question 0
I noticed tonight as I was driving to DL that the speedometer on my new(ish–I bought it used two years ago) car bares the label, “Ground Speed.” (I just noticed that, because I usually just look at the needle to make sure my speed is reasonable.)
Does the manufacturer seriously expect that I shall attain “air speed” (or, for that matter, “sea apeed” or “space speed”)?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Dis Coarse Discouse 0
It’s amazing the lengths the press will go to try to turn every vote into a horse race,
If they can make it a horse race, they can avoid tackling stuff like, oh, you know, just for a couple of examples, who’s telling the truth and who’s telling lies or who cares about fulfilling the duties of office and who cares about filling his pockets.
Favoring Faction over Action 0
If this isn’t putting party over country, I know not what could be.
Today’s Republican Party is a vile and loathsome thing.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. (Updated) 0
I find it ironic that what used to be called “data scraping” somehow morphs into being “training” when the scraper is labeled “AI.”
Aside:
Can this be? Is “AI” the new blow-up doll?
Addendum:
Bruce Schneier offers a hint as to how to out “AI” bots on “social” media.
A Glaring Problem 0
The Portland Press Herald’s Victoria Hugo-Vidal has a complaint about some modern car headlamps. Follow the link for her evidence.
Car headlights are too damn bright, and the government needs to do something about it.
I agree with her.
I’ve noticed that many of the headlights on newer cars seem more intense than traditional incandescent bulbs and, frankly, a lot them seem to be aimed too high. I remember back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un, the annual car inspection included adjusting the aim of the headlights. Next inspection, I’ll have to remember to ask if they still do that . . . .
Designs of the Times 0
As I was running errands today, it occurred to me that improvements in automobile technology have led a competition among automakers:
Who can design the stupidest looking turn signals?
“AI’ Is the New Spellcheck 0
Last night, I saw a commercial for “Shutterstock AI” which, when stripped of the hockypuck, rebranded computer-assisted image editing as “AI.”
(As an aside, everything they showed in the ad is stuff I can do in the GIMP, because I bought, read, and practiced the techniques in the book. It would just take me a little longer.)
If that’s the standard, spellcheck is “AI” and “AI” is as old as spellcheck.
“Artificial Intelligence” is assuredly artificial and it is certainly fast and dressed in Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, but fast and well-dressed does not equal intelligent.
Don’t fall for the con Be skeptical of the hype.
Furrfu.
Afterthought:
It occurs to me that I may be maligning spellcheck. According to news reports, “AI” gets stiff wrong a lot more often than spellcheck.
Another Sign of Decline 0
I discovered, thanks to this cartoon, that there are multiple websites devoted to explaining emojis.
We are devolving.
