Tag: Internet

Google: Another IST FYI

From time to time I try to find helpful information that I can pass on to my readers as an FYI post.

We all use the platform of Google at least some of the time…..and we all are worried about our on-line security and who is tracking us….and one of the worse violators of our privacy is Google.

An article I recently read could help with someone’s struggle…..if you are concerned read the article closely….it may help….

Where you lead, Google will follow. The company can log your searches, watch history, and activity across various services, and while that might sound handy for looking back at your browsing history or revisiting a previous trip, it feels a little Big Brother to me. As a result, I’ve changed a few settings on my Google account to keep that monitoring in check.

Google uses this data to give you “more personalized experiences,” which can include faster searches, but also “more helpful app and content recommendations.” That’s basically code for “we use your search, app, and map data to serve you ads.”

You can head to Google’s My Activity dashboard to view your data, but I use the Data & privacy section of my Google account dashboard to make changes, since it also gives me easy access to Personalized ads settings, for some extra privacy management. Even if you don’t change much, this is a great way to see what information Google has on you, and start fighting back.

If you use Google Search or any Google-owned apps, your activity will be tracked under the Web & App Activity section. From this screen, I use the drop-down menu and choose Turn off to immediately stop Google from tracking my activity. If you select Turn off and delete activity, it will disable the feature but also wipe all previously saved information from Google’s servers.

If you’d rather get rid a bunch of data from a specific Google service, you can also select that app (like Maps, Search, News, Play, etc.) from this menu. For example, I chose Google News, which then shows a timeline of all my activity with the service. I can then go through and click the X icon to remove something. Otherwise, use the drop-down menu in the top-right to delete a specific subset (or all) activity for the app.

https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/google-is-tracking-you-settings-to-change-right-now-to-take-back-control#

I have not done this yet and please shar4e any experiences you have with this after you try.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

War On Porn

Last year my state of Mississippi passed a law that requires age verification before entering…..and Mississippi is not alone this movement has swept through the South in break neck speed.

The idea was to protect underage viewers from accessing these sites to look a porn.

My question is how successful has this battle been?

The panic over porn has spread through the South, with Pornhub’s parent company Aylo cutting off access to its sites in states that have instituted age-verification requirements: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.

These laws are positioned as protecting minors, though we’re not seeing the same enthusiasm for legislation to close a loophole allowing videos featuring children. That’s because the ultimate aim of the age-verification laws is not to promote the welfare of children but to criminalize access to anything pertaining to sexuality or gender that conservatives find objectionable.

The Pornhub bans are part and parcel of a movement seeking to return to a time when obscenity laws were thinly veiled curbs on LGBTQ+ rights. As Aylo notes: “Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy.” (The company has instead backed device-level age verification.)

With these laws, children are (non-voting) pawns used to justify discriminatory measures, from Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law to Target being successfully cowed via social media to hide or remove Pride merchandise from its stores. 

The conservative Heritage Foundation states that one of its objectives is to ban pornography in the United States—not just for minors, but for everyone. Yet it repeatedly tries to bring the focus to children and LGBTQ+ issues when it makes its arguments for the eradication of porn. 

In its Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which is part of Project 2025, Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts writes that “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.” He adds that “educators and public librarians who purvey [pornography] should be classed as registered sex offenders.”

https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/the-pornhub-bans-are-not-about-keeping-kids-safe

Here we go again…..from a party that thinks government is too intrusive to being the leader of intrusiveness.

Could we find a more accurate example of hypocrisy?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Social Media–A New Year’s Resolution

Many of us at the beginning of a new year make resolutions that we seldom keep…..and this year I have heard some say they want to try and wean themselves off of social media…

To that I say good luck.

I was not one of those people for I have absolutely no social media presents other than a blog….for me social media is where the brain goes to die…as an old fart I want my brain to keep working as long as it can.

It is the first Sunday of the New Year and I want to help as best I can so this is my first FYI for 2025.

Part of living on the modern internet is realizing that a social network just isn’t useful or fun anymore. The thing that you used to get from social media—friends, jokes, or information—have disappeared, generally replaced by some combination of rage, churn, and monetization schemes. 

Even knowing this, though, it can be hard to give up the habit of visiting Facebook, X, Instagram (or whatever network you still use) that’s been part of your life for years or even decades. Part of this is just human nature—we’re creatures of habit. Another part of this is that most social networks employ teams of brilliant psychologists and designers who work hard to make quitting as hard as possible. 

The good news? You can fight back, turning the tricks these companies use against you to your advantage. A new year is about to begin—resolve to stop spending time on a website that you hate. Here’s a few ways you can do that.

The companies that build social networks work hard to reduce friction—those moments of annoyance that might cause you to do something else. If a page takes a while to load, for example, you might decide to do something else instead.

Knowing about friction can help you train yourself to visit particular social networks less often: you just need to add some friction. If you tend to reflexively open a social network on your phone, for example, you could remove the icon for the social network from your phone’s home screen, meaning you’ll have to scroll through your list of apps in order to launch it. Or, to make things more annoying, you could uninstall the app entirely.

https://www.popsci.com/diy/how-to-quit-social-media/

I realize that an addiction is a hard mistress but if you are serious about the break then I hope this did help a bit to ease your recovery.

Have a wonderful Sunday….and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

AI: A History

There it is a chance for me to offer up some history….that is always a good day…..at least for me….after all it is a Sunday and I like to give a history lesson when I can.

It is all the rage these….that being Artificial Intelligence (AI)….it has invaded all aspects of life from major programming to homes to cars to blog posts….it is everywhere and in just about everything.

Some see the birth of ‘Skynet’ (look it up) while others see it as a boon to human activities….but where did it all begin?

To answer that question I put my skills and my mind to work…..

It’s the simplest questions that are often the hardest to answer. That applies to AI, too. Even though it’s a technology being sold as a solution to the world’s problems, nobody seems to know what it really is. It’s a label that’s been slapped on technologies ranging from self-driving cars to facial recognition, chatbots to fancy Excel. But in general, when we talk about AI, we talk about technologies that make computers do things we think need intelligence when done by people. 

For months, my colleague Will Douglas Heaven has been on a quest to go deeper to understand why everybody seems to disagree on exactly what AI is, why nobody even knows, and why you’re right to care about it. He’s been talking to some of the biggest thinkers in the field, asking them, simply: What is AI? It’s a great piece that looks at the past and present of AI to see where it is going next. You can read it here. 

Artificial intelligence almost wasn’t called “artificial intelligence” at all. The computer scientist John McCarthy is credited with coming up with the term in 1955 when writing a funding application for a summer research program at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. But more than one of McCarthy’s colleagues hated it. “The word ‘artificial’ makes you think there’s something kind of phony about this,” said one. Others preferred the terms “automata studies,” “complex information processing,” “engineering psychology,” “applied epistemology,” “neural cybernetics,”  “non-numerical computing,” “neuraldynamics,” “advanced automatic programming,” and “hypothetical automata.” Not quite as cool and sexy as AI.

AI has several zealous fandoms. AI has acolytes, with a faith-like belief in the technology’s current power and inevitable future improvement. The buzzy popular narrative is shaped by a pantheon of big-name players, from Big Tech marketers in chief like Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella to edgelords of industry like Elon Musk and Sam Altman to celebrity computer scientists like Geoffrey Hinton. As AI hype has ballooned, a vocal anti-hype lobby has risen in opposition, ready to smack down its ambitious, often wild claims. As a result, it can feel as if different camps are talking past one another, not always in good faith.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/07/16/1095001/a-short-history-of-ai-and-what-it-is-and-isnt/

I am an old fart so I do not need help turning my lights on or starting my car….I prefer to do things for myself….at least as long as I can.

I refuse to let some program do my research for me or for that matter write a blog for me.

I am old but not lazy!

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Dead Internet Theory

I hope everyone is enjoying their long weekend…..

Yesterday in my stretch of the woods it was 96 and Summer is a month away….oh goody another steamy Summer.

A follower of IST wrote a post about AI generated photos and artwork……his post is great and he brought up a subject that was today’s Sunday post….check it out…..

Photoshop, generative AI and art. And a few observations.

That brings us to the meat of this post….the Dead Internet Theory…..

If you search “shrimp Jesus” on Facebook, you might encounter dozens of images of artificial intelligence (AI) generated crustaceans meshed in various forms with a stereotypical image of Jesus Christ.

Some of these hyper-realistic images have garnered more than 20,000 likes and comments. So what exactly is going on here?

The “dead internet theory” has an explanation: AI and bot-generated content has surpassed the human-generated internet. But where did this idea come from, and does it have any basis in reality?

What is the dead internet theory?

The dead internet theory essentially claims that activity and content on the internet, including social media accounts, are predominantly being created and automated by artificial intelligence agents.

These agents can rapidly create posts alongside AI-generated images designed to farm engagement (clicks, likes, comments) on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. As for shrimp Jesus, it appears AI has learned it’s the current, latest mix of absurdity and religious iconography to go viral.

But the dead internet theory goes even further. Many of the accounts that engage with such content also appear to be managed by artificial intelligence agents. This creates a vicious cycle of artificial engagement, one that has no clear agenda and no longer involves humans at all.

https://theconversation.com/the-dead-internet-theory-makes-eerie-claims-about-an-ai-run-web-the-truth-is-more-sinister-229609

Okay time to go on record….I am not a big fan of AI….I am an old fart and I still do my own research and writing….I really do not want some soul-less SOB of a program doing my work for me.

Yes I know I need to get with the program….but sadly that ain’t happening.

I would like to thank my reader, grouchyfarmer, for the assist……

If you are traveling on this weekend please be careful and be safe…..

Please do not forget the military that gave their lives in service of their country.

Peace….Out

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

TikTok–A Step Closer

In the past few months as a diversion the Biden people have been thumping their chest about TikTok….and it looks like the ban is a step closer….

The House passed legislation Saturday that would ban TikTok in the US if the popular social media platform’s China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake within a year. That doesn’t mean the app will go away anytime soon, the AP reports. The decision by House Republicans to include TikTok as part of a larger foreign aid package fast-tracked the ban after an earlier version had stalled in the Senate. A standalone bill with a six-month selling deadline passed the House in March as both Democrats and Republicans voiced national security concerns about the app’s owner, the Chinese technology firm ByteDance.

But the maneuver could speed up the TikTok crackdown’s route through Congress, per the Washington Post, while putting pressure on the Senate. Negotiations between the chambers had produced a compromise measure, and the Post finds support increasing in the Senate. TikTok is “a spy balloon in Americans’ phones” used to “surveil and exploit America’s personal information,” Republican Rep. Michael McCaul told the House in introducing the provision for debate on Saturday. The company could challenge the law in court, per the AP, possibly arguing that it deprives millions of TikTok users of their First Amendment rights. President Biden said last month that he would sign the TikTok bill if Congress passes it.

Is TikTok truly dangerous?

Researchers studied the app’s source code and reported it carries out “excessive data harvesting”. Analysts said TikTok collects details such as location, what specific device is being used and which other apps are on it.

However, a similar test carried out by Citizen Lab concluded “in comparison to other popular social media platforms, TikTok collects similar types of data to track user behaviour”.

Similarly, a report by the Georgia Institute of Technology last year stated: “The key fact here is that most other social media and mobile apps do the same things.”

If TikTok does nothing different than other social media sights why then is TikTok the only danger?

What do you think this proposed ban is all about?

Is this truly a freedom of speech thing?

How will the Supreme Court rule on this for we know it will make it there for their ruling?

Do we really want to start down this road of banning social media?

Is this a made up ‘crisis’ or is it an accusation with some teeth?

All good questions that deserve good answers….

Your thoughts included.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Crap In–Crap Out

Back in 2006 I started my blog on another platform it was entitled, Studies And Observations, basically it was started for me not thinking about others being interested in what I had to say about international stuff.

In all that time I have not worried about my ranking on Google or any other format…..it just was not that important for it would change nothing in the way my blog is written.

I will finally get to the point in my round-about way……

Many bloggers spend lots of time trying to find that perfect formula that will help them and their search for the perfect SEO.

SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a fundamental aspect of online success. Why? Because it drives organic traffic and enhances online visibility. In today’s digital landscape, competition is fierce. That’s why having a strong SEO strategy is crucial for small business owners, eCommerce store owners, website owners, bloggers, and webmasters alike.

Well all the hard worker those interested in improving their SEO may be a fart in the wind.

Google Search has been caught up in a massive tidal wave of generative AI garbage.

It’s starting to look like an unrecognizable heap of spam, meaningless search engine optimization (SEO) filler, and dubiously sourced news.

“It’s the worst quality results on Google I’ve seen in my 14-year career,” eminent SEO expert Lily Ray told Fortune.

Instead of filtering out scams, Google is seemingly bowing to the pressure and is instead promoting them.

“Right now, it feels like the scammers are winning,” Ray added.

Researchers recently confirmed these suspicions, finding that Google is consistently ranking ad-filled spam. In a year-long study, first reported on by 404 Media, a team of German researchers studied search results for thousands of product-review terms and found some shocking results.

The team found an “inverse relationship between affiliate marketing use and content complexity, and that all search engines fall victim to large-scale affiliate link spam campaigns.”

In other words, the “search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam,” the team concluded in their paper.

And, as you might expect at this point, generative AI is likely playing a central role in the dissemination of this low-quality content.

https://futurism.com/ai-garbage-destroying-google-results

Sorry if I peed on someone’s parade….I just want a little FYI to help save people’s mind from ODing on stats and stuff.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–18Dec23

WE all have heard or read some of the insane things Donald the Orange would do as president….but one of his aides has mentioned one I had not considered…..the internet.

One of Donald Trump‘s former staffers claims the former president may “turn off the internet” if he is re-elected.

Miles Taylor, Mr Trump’s former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, made the claim during an appearance on MSNBC.

Mr Taylor was asked what kind of damage Mr Trump could potentially do if he were re-elected to the Oval Office in 2024.

“The possibilities are almost limitless,” Mr Taylor said. “The biggest concerns for me are on the national security side. I think Americans still don’t understand the full extent of the president’s powers and things Donald Trump could do, bubble-wrapped in legalese, that would be damaging to the republic.”

He claimed that Mr Trump could “invoke powers we’ve never heard a President of the United States invoke” which include decisions to “potentially shut down companies or turn off the internet, or deploy the US military on US soil”.

“We don’t know because the things that are in there, the emergency powers of the president, aren’t widely known to the American people,” he said.

He said the potential for Mr Trump to use his presidential powers as bludgeons against his political enemies is “a big worry for people like me and others”.

“But that weaponisation of the government could extend across the interagency to places where we haven’t seen it before — the Department of Education, the Department of Veteran Affairs — ways to wield that power and those budgets to help his allies and to hurt his enemies,” Mr Taylor said.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-turn-off-internet-aide-b2465020.html

Can he do that?

He may try but keep in mind that he has a uber-conservative Supreme Court that may allow him to do as he desires.

So again…can he do that?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

AI In The Shadows

Remember back to last month when everything was AI this and AI that?

It seems to have lost its appeal in the last month….I guess everyone is embracing technology so they will not be left at the curb.

Now we have the Trump indictments and the armchair analysts talking smack….but they had better hurry for a new meme is just a social media post away.

That said let’s get back to AI and the evils of man.

On a June 1 YouTube podcast/video, “The Diary Of a CEO,” former Google officer Mo Gawdat highlighted the inevitability of AI’s emergence, not due to technological constraints, but because of humanity’s inability to trust each other. This observation sheds light on the complex dynamics surrounding the development and regulation of AI technologies.

The first inevitable aspect of AI, as described by the former Google officer, is its unstoppable nature. Despite efforts to regulate and control its progress, the race to develop AI capabilities will persist.

The second inevitable aspect lies in the potential intelligence of AI systems. Gawdat predicts that AI will be a staggering one billion times smarter than humans by 2045. This claim may seem astounding, but it aligns with the exponential growth and learning capacity of AI systems. Existing AI models, such as the GPT series, already possess a depth of knowledge surpassing that of any single human.

It is essential to understand the nature of AI’s intelligence. Gawdat highlighted AI’s intelligence is not original or creative in the traditional sense. Rather, AI’s strength lies in its ability to merge and predict information based on vast datasets. It can combine existing concepts in new and intriguing ways, mimicking the algorithm of creativity itself.

This remarkable ability to generate novel insights challenges our preconceived notions about human ingenuity and paves the way for AI-driven innovation.

The interview also touched on the potential implications of AI’s intelligence surpassing our own. As AI becomes increasingly capable, the need for certain human roles, even highly skilled ones, may diminish.

(benzinga.com)

You think the internet is a crazy place now….just wait AI will make it so much worse…..

Across platforms, users have been stumped by increasingly impossible puzzles like identifying objects — such as a horse made out of clouds — that do not exist.

The reason behind these new hoops? Improved AI. Since tech companies have trained their bots on the older captchas, these programs are now so capable that they can easily beat typical challenges. As a result, we humans have to put more effort into proving our humanness just to get online. But head-scratching captchas are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how AI is rewriting the mechanics of the internet.

Since the arrival of ChatGPT last year, tech companies have raced to incorporate the AI tech behind it. In many cases, companies have uprooted their long-standing core products to do so. The ease of producing seemingly authoritative text and visuals with a click of a button threatens to erode the internet’s fragile institutions and make navigating the web a morass of confusion. As AI fever has taken hold of the web, researchers have unearthed how it can be weaponized to aggravate some of the internet’s most pressing concerns — like misinformation and privacy — while also making the simple day-to-day experience of being online — from deleting spam to just logging into sites — more annoying than it already is.

“Not to say that our inability to rein AI in will lead to the collapse of society,” Christian Selig, the creator of Apollo, a popular Reddit app, told me, “but I think it certainly has the potential to profoundly affect the internet.”

And so far, AI is making the internet a nightmare.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-scam-spam-hacking-ruining-internet-chatgpt-privacy-misinformation-2023-8

Just how much worse can AI make the internet and/or social media?

Finally, Google’s lead AI guy has this to say….

Another day, another Silicon Valley AI exec straddling the contradictory gap between AI optimism and AI doomsay.

James Manyika, a former technological advisor to the Obama administration and Google’s freshly-appointed head of “tech and society,” told The Washington Post that AI is “an amazing, powerful, transformational technology.”

But, like others in the field — take OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Silicon Valley’s reigning king of cognitive dissonance, for instance — he also voiced some serious concerns.

Manyika was one of the many AI insiders who, back in May, signed a one-sentence letter declaring that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-lead-ai-amazing-kills-us

Got any thoughts about any of these points?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Will WiFi Be Replaced?

Meanwhile back to stuff that resembles FYI….

Most of us use WiFi in some form or another….but is it possible that there is something on the horizon that could replace it?

I am so glad you asked.

Wi-Fi might be on the way out even though Wi-Fi 7 is on the way in. According to The Verge, the IEEE standards body that oversees Wi-Fi has released the IEEE 802.11bb light communications standard that will cover the emerging Li-Fi technology. Instead of using wireless network signals, Li-Fi uses invisible (to the human eye, anyway) infrared light to deliver light-based wireless optical connectivity at speeds up to 100 times faster than Wi-Fi.

Light can deliver signals free of radio interference and Li-Fi already has a competing standard, the International Telecommunication Union’s G.9991. The Verge notes that this standard is used with data-beaming bulbs from Signify. Another company called pureLiFi released the Light Antenna One system in February which already meets 802.11bb standards. This is a module that could fit into smartphones and the manufacturer claims that it can deliver data speeds exceeding 1Gbps.

However, Light Antenna One is rated to communicate with devices less than 10 feet away and when transmitting back it has only a 24-degree field of view. Still, the manufacturer of the Light Antenna One says that it is ready “to enable mass integration of Li-Fi for the first time.” Despite the 1Gbps claim from pureLiFi, download data speeds for Li-Fi are said to be as high as 224Gbps which tops the average 40Gbps download speed expected for Wi-Fi 7.

Some of the advantages of Li-Fi includes better security as signals are less likely to leak through walls. Li-Fi transmitters can be easily installed in light fixtures used in offices, and Li-Fi’s higher data speeds certainly would deliver the fast connectivity that Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and gaming devices could benefit from. And besides the faster download speeds, Li-Fi promises to deliver low latencies.

Light Antenna One claims to deliver up to 1Gbps download data speed using Li-Fi - Wi-Fi is old school; get ready for faster, more secure Li-Fi

(phonearena.com)

Whatcha think?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”