Hot Coffee

Taken in a Seattle-area Starbucks. (Where else?)

One thing that I've never taken the time to learn is image-manipulation software. I'm pretty sure that Photoshop could accentuate the steam rising from the white tumbler pretty easily. Come to think of it, I suspect that if I knew my camera well, I could have made the steam stand out simply by engaging the proper settings. But it's reasonably visible as it is, and that's good enough for my needs.
 

Looking Up

I avoid doomscrolling. I think. I'm not sure that I'm clear enough on the definition of the term to be able to confidently say that I don't do it. I don't spend much time on news sites these days, because most of them require subscriptions, and I don't find most of them valuable enough to trade date, let alone money, for. And other than Linkedin, I don't have much of a social media presence. I enjoyed Google+, but that's long dead at this point. I could never get a straight answer as to the proposed business models of the would-be alternatives, and so never moved over to any of them. I haunt Reddit once in a while, but don't spend much time reading the news there.

So I don't think that I indulge in a lot of doomscrolling. But even without it, it's hard to find positive news about what's going on in the would, since positive items neither sell subscriptions nor drive attention to advertisers. So my media diet tends to have a fairly negative bent to it... which I dislike, and so I'm less likely to spend a lot of time reading the news.

But why do that, when the positive news is out there... it's just a matter of going out and finding it. Part of it, I suspect, is an aversion to the treacly "rainbows and puppies" sort of good news. It's easy to sort, and easy to report, but it comes across as being pretty trivial. There are only so many rousingly successful grade school bake sales I can be bothered to read about. Perhaps it's due to the stories being mainly human interest. And of course there are always people out there doing good things... the population of the United States is in the hundreds of millions, we can't all be jackasses all the time.

I think that what I'm actually looking for is accessible technology news; something I can read to learn how people are getting out there and solving problem, with enough technical detail that it's not all about the personal stories involved, but in language that I can actually make heads or tails of, given that I don't have a technical education.

That's likely to be a rare beast, and unlikely to be free. But, given the length and breadth of the World Wide Web, it's out there somewhere, I just have to find it. I expect that it will be a worthwhile project. 

Enlightening

Why not?

I stopped in a local bookstore and found this display. I'd never heard of celebrity prayer candles before, but it turns out that there's a decent-sized cottage industry for this sort of thing. I already have a few too many things that I don't have an immediate use for, otherwise, I might have purchased one, just for the novelty factor.

I'm a bit surprised that this hasn't made anyone angry enough that it's become newsworthy, but I suppose I shouldn't complain when people take things in stride for a change.
 

Hidden

A low-effort fake profile from LinkedIn.

So I received a connection request on LinkedIn from a person I'd never heard of, and wasn't even a second-level contact. Curious, I looked at their profile. And was greeted by a raft of red flags.

This sort of thing is common with fraudulent LinkedIn profiles: the lack of connections, prior roles without details and only a handful of connection despite a seemingly long career. And all that before I did a reverse image search on the profile picture.

And that commonality can be part of the problem. Because while not all bogus profiles are so obviously bogus, it can be easy to come to the conclusion that they are. And thus, anyone with an ounce of sense should be able to spot them. But someone with a decent amount of time and some resources can avoid many of the obvious pitfalls; existing profiles can be "rented" or compromised, work histories can align with stated timeframes and locations, and a fabricated résumé can be constructed. That may be more effort than a stereotypical third-world fraudster can bring to the project, but not everyone conforms to the stereotype.
 

Can't Buy Me Love

Given the fact that part of the reason why SpaceX wants to build data centers in space is that they understand that many communities find living near ones on Earth sucks, the idea that opposition is the result of a foreign influence campaign by Chinese interests seems to be a bit misguided.

Look, I get it, there's the promise of money to be made from ubiquitous automation, and boosters of technology have long held that the general public is simply too ignorant for their concerns to be allowed to slow progress.

But there's a reason why there are individuals who aren't going for: "This will be great for everyone; just trust us," and that's because time and again, promised benefits haven't arrived (or, perhaps more accurately, haven't been shared), and rather than supporters of technology taking the responsibility to make those who bore the costs whole, fingers were pointed until the whole thing blew over.

If LLMs were going to be such moneymakers, why did Meta and Anthropic feel the need to pirate books to train their systems, rather than just paying for them? I think that there are more causes to be suspicious of generative automation firms than their supporters may be willing to cop to.

The fact of the matter is that "Big Business" are not considered trustworthy by many members of the general public, and "Big Business" hasn't done a whole lot over the years to change that. Generally speaking, it's rare that someone supports something where they bear the costs, but the benefits go to someone else.

All of that said, I think that it's more than "the rich" and "tech moguls" who think (or want to think) they smell a rat. There's a reason why the term "Luddite," is more of a pejorative today than it was originally. When groups of people are pitted against one another, it's common for one or both sides to not only believe they deserve to win, but to see the opposition to them as illegitimate. And a lot of people have hitched their wagons to the generative automation star. It's not only the well-off among them who might resent pushback.