ai – Page 10 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Delusions abound in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

If it’s Sunday, it is time for Sunday Morning Reading with interesting writing on a variety of topics, that without intending to all seem to involve delusions in one way or another. There’s also a little Procol Harum on the side. Enjoy reading, while you skip the light fandango.

Speaking of delusions, check out a piece by Michael Connors and Peter Halligan exploring What Delusions Can Tell Us About the Cognitive Nature of Belief.

It’s no delusion that Artificial Intelligence remains in the news (before it eventually subsumes the news). Harry McCracken takes us a bit into the deep mind behind Google’s DeepMind in The Future According to Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. That first link takes you to the web version, this one takes you to the Apple News version of the article since the piece is a premium article for Fast Company readers.

Joan Westenberg has caught my eye of late (if you follow Sunday Morning Reading you should know that) and here are a couple of recently published dynamic pieces: Don’t Confuse Volume with Truth and Rebel Optimism: How We Thrive in a Broken World. Both worth your time.

We’re all complaining about a lot of things, the continued enshittification of the Internet being a familiar and well deserved target. (It’s interesting that I use that term enshittification so frequently and yet spell check or any other type of check hasn’t picked it up yet.) Dave Winer is fighting the good fight on a lot of fronts and he looks at a new kind of enshittification in Billionaire-proof?

David Todd McCarty takes on the platitude “the meek shall inherit the earth” in The Children of Pacifists.

Ronan Farrow takes a look at The Technology The Trump Administration Could Use To Hack Your Phone. You know it’s going to happen. You know it most likely already has.

And to round things out this week, Ulf Wolf spools out an essay on the mostly forgotten Keith Reid of Procol Harum in The Shadow Member of Procol Harum. Not going to lie, I did spin up a copy of Whiter Shade of Pale while writing this week’s column. The Salty Dog album is cued up next.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks, including Bluesky, under my own name.

Sunday Morning Reading

Looking ahead, looking back, yet always looking in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

It’s Sunday. It’s the Sunday after the U.S. election that will change everything. In my opinion those changes will make life worse not better. The one thing that won’t change is my curiosity and sharing that in Sunday Morning Reading.

I cranked out a Thursday edition of Sunday Morning Reading this week to share some terrific writing in the aftermath of the election. I’m going to once again share a couple of those titles here, for the record, but also because they are worth re-reading now, and perhaps also later.

John Gruber’s thoughts post election are special, as is his piece How It Went.

Ken White of PopeHat fame’s piece And Yet It Moves is also worth re-reading and re-sharing. Excellent.

David Todd McCarty’s So, That Happened is also worth re-visiting.

Now on to some new stuff to share.

A series I had been sharing links to for awhile never really escaped my radar, but for some reason didn’t get mentioned as much here. Ellis Weiner and Steve Radlauer’s excellent serial The Split has come to an end. Conceived as a meditation “about what a country modeled entirely on red state ‘values’ would be like,” it has been a fantastic journey through 52 chapters. I’m sorry to see it come to an end. You can find the final chapter here and all of The Split here.

Over at Beardy Guy Musings, Denny Henke advises that we Remain Calm. But Prepare. Good advice.

Rachel Maddow reminds us that America has had its share of bad guys in the past in Dead Last.

Jeff Jarvis asks and answers Why Are Liberals So Infuriated with the Media?

Matteo Wong ponders The Death of Search in a world racing to embrace AI harder and harder.

Finally Frank Landymore tells us that a Physicist Says There’s Another Universe Hiding Behind the Big Bang. You can read the original essay Landymore refers to by Neil Turok here. Intriguingly not only does it exist in this theory but it is moving back in time. I’m sure not alone in wishing somehow we could do that either here or there.

Sunday Morning Reading

Jokers to the left and right, but things feel increasingly unfunny.

Time for some Sunday Morning Reading as we continue treading water until the election on November 5th and prepare for the aftermath here in the U.S. There’s more tech and culture in this week’s edition than politics, but that’s here too. Hard to avoid it.

Speaking of politics, this article from Leah Feiger, Meet the Far-Right Constitutional Sheriffs Ready to Assert Control if Trump Loses, should remind us that this election isn’t just about one fascist. It’s about quite a few of them, already in power.

Take a look at We Are Willing Lord, But What, If Anything, Is Needed?, by David Todd McCarty. It’s a fascinating, very human discourse on attempting to find a way through the madness we’re mired in. And it’s not just about politics.

There was a big kerfuffle when the LA Times owner chose not to make an endorsement in this year’s election. There was a much larger one when Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos did the same with the Washington Post. Cowardly moves by both men who got where they are by not being cowards. Funny how money can change a guy. Many of those working for the papers are upset, some have quit, some are making their views known, including Alexandra Petri, the humor columnist for the Post. Check out It’s Fallen To Me, The Humor Columnist, To Endorse Harris For President.

On the AI beat this week, there’s more discussion about just how much, and what type of energy will be needed to power all of these Artificial Intelligence moves. Adele Peters takes a look in Google and Amazon Are Betting On ‘Advanced’ Nuclear. This Critic Warns It’s Not Ready.

Speaking of AI, Adobe seems to have put their foot in their mouth. Again. Jess Weatherbed reports that Adobe Execs Say Artists Need To Embrace AI Or Get Left Behind. Sadly, I think there’s truth in what Adobe is saying.

This week news broke about location surveillance issues and how our easily our smartphones can be tracked via ad tracking data. Yes, we’ve heard that for awhile, but if you check out this article from Brian Krebs called The Global Surveillance Free-for-All In Mobile Ad Data and this from Dan Goodin called Location Tracking Of Phones Is Out of Control. Here’s How To Fight Back, you’ll be thinking about this anew.

Iceland Embraced A Shorter Work Week. Olesya Dmitracova lets us know how it turned out. Spoiler alert: Better than predicted.

I keep talking about treading water, waiting for the election, Natasha MH talks about The Waiting Game in a broader context.

McNeal is a new play, by Ayad Ahktar on Broadway that tackles AI and creativity. Alexander Alter takes a look at How ‘McNeal,’ a Play About A.I., Lured Robert Downey Jr.to Broadway. There’s some fascinating semiotics with Ironman in this role of a writer embracing AI.

Sunday Morning Reading

The days are getting longer and things are getting scarier in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

We’re getting closer to Halloween, Dia De Los Muertos, and perhaps the more frightening of the days ahead, Election Day in the U.S. With just three editions of Sunday Morning Reading to go before whatever tricks, treats, and horrors might befall us on or after the votes are tallied, enjoy the somewhat frightening reading ahead.

Aimee Ortiz takes a look at how Halloween has turned into a retail bonanza in Halloween’s Mutation: From Humble Holiday to Retail Monstrosity.

For some every day is fraught with peril. Philip Ogley wonders Why Do We Find It So Hard To Get Through the Day?

Approaching Dia De Los Muertos, David Todd McCarty remarks on turning his father’s passing into a celebration in We Called Him Papa.

Artificial Intelligence continues to be the dominant ghost story in tech with ups, downs, and promises everywhere. So far, most tech promises make good hype, but not necessarily good products. Matteo Wong thinks delivering on promised deadlines for superintelligence might be the truly scary part in The AI Boom Has an Expiration Date.

Could copyright law be a part of the solution to the horror story that is gun violence? Robin Buller takes a look in Mass Shooting Survivors Turn To An Unlikely Pace for Justice—Copyright Law.

Perhaps the scariest story linked in this week’s edition is Franklin Foer’s What Elon Musk Really Wants. There’s no trick, and there’s certainly no treat in what this madman aims to do.

Equally, if not more frightening is this piece from back in July from George Michael called An Anti-Democratic Philosophy Called ‘Neoreaction’ Is Creeping Into GOP Politics. I would say it’s moved from a creep by creeps into a gallop by goblins.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Paul Rosenberg examines Fighting Demons: The New Apostolic Reformation Is Waging A Holy War Against Democracy.

Paolo Bacigalupi takes us on a little science-fiction journey into what a future shaped by climate change might look like in Azalea: A Science-Fiction Story. A great piece. I’m just not so sure we can call what we’re living through science-fiction anymore.

Sunday Morning Reading

Fears rise as the election nears in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading

Time for some Sunday Morning Reading, with more than a dash of politics, culture, and tech mixed together and served up for your pleasure.

Why Do Politicians Lie? My $.02 is because they can and not enough of us seem to care. Bill Adair takes a look at What I Didn’t Understand About Political Lying.

Michael Moore thinks Joe Biden should use the immunity and powers granted the office of the presidency by the Supreme Court in his final days to take care of some business. I may not agree with everything on Moore’s list, but check out what he thinks in Bucket List Joe. I do agree with the principle though.

The election is just around the corner and having served previously as an election judge I know first hand the anxiety election workers up and down the chain are feeling. The New York Times Editorial Board takes a good look at the stakes for those folks, paid and volunteer, in The Election Will Need More Heroes.

The Atlantic, famous for not endorsing a presidential candidate each and every election, has endorsed Kamala Harris. The endorsement is no surprise. Endorsements are choices and Trump has increased their pace of doing so. Check out The Case for Kamala Harris.

Life is a gamble and sometimes you need to go all in. Natasha MH pushes her chips forward with Into the Battlefield Armed with a Toothbrush.

A bit or two on tech and AI that I found interesting this week. Apparently we’re running out of data to train these AI engines on, and we’re also running out of space in data centers to do that environment crushing work. Check out Microsoft Azure CTO: US Data Centers Will Soon Hit Size Limits from Reed Albergotti.

And on a frightening note, apparently Silicon Valley Is Debating If AI Weapons Should Be Allowed To Decide To Kill. Margus MacColl explores this tricky issue, which really shouldn’t be a tricky issue.

There’s also apparently slippage in the great gold rush to Artificial Intelligence as everyone chases a less than Holy Grail of turning these data crunching engines to machines that can reason. Gary Marcus says that LLMs Don’t Do Formal Reasoning-And That Is A HUGE Problem. For the investors, shareholders, and suckers perhaps. I’m guessing the rest of us are just fine with that.

The two hurricanes that hit the U.S have caused so much damage and for those suffering that has been multiplied by the political BS that has followed. Who would have thought that on the ground Neo-Nazi’s showed up to “help” but. more to the point, use the disasters and their aftermath as recruiting tools? Tawnell D. Hobbs, Jennifer Levitz and Joe Barrett explore When The Hurricane-Relief Worker Turns Out To Be a Neo-Nazi. Who would have thought it? Anyone who has read a history book.

Sunday Morning Reading

Halloween is around the corner and the election is nearing. Sunday Morning Reading is full of scary politics and a tech ghost story.

There’s one month to go prior to the election that will decide the fate of the U.S. and possibly the world. After today that’s four more Sundays for Sunday Morning Reading. Fair warning those four Sundays will have more than a normal dose of politics in the mix. That said, enjoy this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

Politics has infected everything and in my opinion in the worst ways imaginable. Nothing points this up like the storm around the storm recovery from Hurricane Helene. Juliette Kayyem in The Atlantic tells us The Fog of Disaster Is Getting Worse, and she’s correct. Perhaps a better way for journalism to cover this beyond just complaining would be to do what Chantal Allam and Joe Marusak did in the Charlotte Observer and tackle each bit of disinformation, (which I prefer to call lies) head on in Helene Fact Check: Here Are The Rumors and the Reality in Western North Carolina.

The mythical swing voter has become larger than myth. Parker Malloy in Dame tells us The Real Swing Voters Aren’t Who You Think.

Phillip Bump usually nails it. He does so again in Trump and His Allies Are Not Planning To Concede Another Election Loss. Nothing is over on November 5th.

LZ Granderson in The Los Angeles Times also nails it in Trump Blames Immigrants As If That Were A Policy Position. It’s Just Racist. I’m losing hope we’ll ever recognize that we’ve recognized this and don’t seem to care.

Trump and his delusional followers couldn’t be this close to turning the clock back unless they had help from our transparently corrupt Supreme Court. Bill Blum takes a look at the awful immunity decision in John Roberts and the Second Coming of Dred Scott.

Speaking of the Supreme Court, Andy Kroll, Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz take a look at why We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court’s Supermajority.

Joyce Vance is worried that even if Trump loses he won’t face any consequences in Trump Must Be Tried. She’s right to worry.

And the final link on the politics beat is and is not about politics, but it is about endings. Sunita Puri looks at how promises at the end of life, like Jimmy Carter’s to stay alive to vote one last time, can affect our last days in Death Has Two Timelines.

The WordPress saga continues and it seems to get muddier with each clarifying new chapter. Dave Winer says WordPress Has a Greater Destiny. I agree with his premise. I think those screwing things up do as well. In a competition between destinies unfortunately everyone loses.

I’m preparing some thoughts on the new iPhones and Apple releases for later this week. I won’t have to write much about the new Camera Control after reading José Adorno’s piece Apple’s Biggest Hardware Change On the iPhone 16 Is A Huge Disappointment. I feel much the same.

As if the political moment wasn’t harrowing enough, Halloween is also around the corner. Angela Watercutter tells an intriguing tale that weaves tech (TikToK), a haunted house, the cops and a rolled up rug in her backyard in She Asked TikTok If Her House Was Haunted. Then The Cops Came.

Sunday Morning Reading

Social Media, AI, and exoskeletons are all in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading

It’s Sunday. It’s a morning. Time for some Sunday Morning Reading with a bit of history, some looking forward on social media, and as usual, a mix of reading on AI and politics. Around here it’s always free for your reading pleasure.

Speaking of free, some say The Best Things In Life are Free. Not always. At least according to Natasha MH.

Molly White has some more than interesting thoughts about social media and how we use it. Check out POSSE: Reclaiming Social Media In a Fragmented World. Also check out Dave Winer’s Making The Social Web Really Work for his thoughts on POSSE and this discussion.

On the AI front Mike Elgan takes on a New AI Trick: ‘Synthetic Human Memories.’ I’m not sure if we’ll measure that in gigabytes or what.

Continuing on the AI front, Karen Hao takes a look at Sam Altman’s consolidation of power as OpenAI (and others) keep making moves behind the scenes that I doubt any LLM will ever be able to summarize. Check out OpenAI Takes Its Mask Off.

While we’re talking the Internet behind the scenes, Emma Roth gives us an explainer on what’s happening at WordPress in The Messy WordPress Drama, Explained. Hint: It’s always about the money.

Politics and the coverage of it continues to ratchet up anxiety levels. Dan Fromkin wonders What If The Media Has The Election All Wrong? At this point I don’t think they or we would have anyway of knowing.

Peter Wehner walks us through The Republican Freak Show, listing out most of the freaks most are already familiar with. It’s a good summary of the lineup, but as the cliché goes, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Speaking of MAGAt freaks, it’s one thing to be given a presidential pardon. It’s another to keep on committing crimes. Check out Trump Gave Them a Second Chance. They Could Not Stay Out of Trouble by Kenneth Vogel and Susanne Craig.

Here’s a couple of interesting reads that provide some necessary historical context. First up Paul Rosenberg takes a look at Who Created “The Constitutional Sheriff” Myth. Hint: It’s Not in the Constitutio n. Also check out The Fire of The Grand Dragon by Phil McCombs. The piece dates back to 1991. It’s not dated or old. It should serve as a reminder that what we’re seeing out in the open these days has been smoldering under cover for as long as most people keep conveniently forgetting.

Here’s one more for some history and context: Blake Lindsey and Taylor Malone take a look at The Wide Awakes: The 1860 Election Was Influenced By Young People Advocating Against Slavery.

And to close this out this week, issues surrounding the Right to Repair are always stewing around, but they are not hot button these days. Unless you’re a Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker Of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It’s Now Obsolete. Check out the piece by Frank Landymore.

At Last: A Cure for Apple iCloud Migraines Thanks to Craig Federighi

Finally, a solution to those Apple iCloud Migraines thanks to Craig Federighi

Relief. At last. All it took was the right doctor.

We’ve all been there with health situations. You lay out your symptoms and whatever checklist your medical professional follows leads to a course of treatment that might or might not work. Perhaps after repeated tests and possible cures you might finally get the attention of someone who actually listens, goes beyond the symptom check list, and you get treatment that works to solve your problem.

If your situation and symptoms don’t fit those of the majority of patients it can be an exhausting, frustrating, and dehumanizing experience.

The same is sadly true with technical support. You have a problem. You call or chat (hopefully with a human). Lay out your symptoms and you get served up solutions from a playbook that don’t solve your problem. Striking out on your own you search the Internet for solutions, (increasingly a frustrating and useless experience), only to discover others facing the same issues.

At least you find comfort in knowing you’re not alone. Even so, there’s not enough strength in numbers if you and your compatriots fall into that ever popular yet corporately dismissed category of a “small minority of users.”

Like with your medical condition, if your technical issue falls outside of the range that most experience, then you better hope that you are talking to someone who actually listens and isn’t just a part of a solution mill that rewards quick dispensing of the call the way restaurants hope for quick table turnovers.

The Diagnosis

Perhaps you’ve read my previous chronicles discussing the Apple iCloud Migraines. I’ve been suffering with these headaches for a number of years and through a tourist guide map of California named macOS operating systems. I won’t go into detail, but you can find links to them here, here, here, here, and here. I will offer a brief summary (non AI generated) of the problem :

At each point that Apple released an operating system update, whether beta or final release, my Macs would mysteriously lose all Continuity based or related features. Continuity is the system Apple uses to connect its devices allowing users to copy and paste between them, sign in to Macs with an Apple Watch, display iPhone widgets on a Mac Screen, and connect Macs and iPads together via Universal Control. Your iCloud account is a key to Continuity.

Note that I haven’t been on a beta since owning any of my current devices. So, in theory, none of these beta updates should have affected me. However, I might as well have been downloading betas like a beta junkie, given the return of these migraines with each beta release and subsequent full releases.

Communications over the years with Apple Support yielded nothing that would help until Dan Moren of Six Colors posted about a similar issue he was facing and the responses he got from Apple Support.

That second agent proved quite capable, not only agreeing that the situation was strange, but also looking into issues on Apple’s side. Which led to the somewhat bizarre conclusion of this story: after perhaps 20 minutes on the phone, he seemed to hit on something. I heard him laugh and say something along the lines of “that explains it” and then, with my consent, put me on hold. When he came back, he said—and I’m not exactly quoting, but close enough: “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you any more than this, but all your services should be back up pretty much exactly 12 hours after they went down.”

Now, in my initial forays on social media, I had gotten a reply from someone on Mastodon mentioning that Apple’s iCloud servers were sometimes put in maintenance mode for 12 hours—but upon going back and looking for that specific reply, it was nowhere to be found.

It did, however, support the theory that something had gone wrong with the particular iCloud server on which my account was located.

There was, according to this support agent, nothing to do but sit back and wait, then call back if service hadn’t returned by the 12-hour mark and reference my case number. He was again apologetic for not being able to give me any more information, but reiterated his confidence that everything would be resolved.

After Dan’s post turned the heat up a bit on the issue my calls with Apple Support changed in tone and substance. I got moved a couple of rungs up the ladder to an advanced support level. (Draw your own conclusions). Initially that seemed promising. I also got the “just wait it out” response as Dan.

Suffice it to say that eventually yielded no real solution and there were two periods of time when things just seemed to stall. The first being prior to the Apple Vision Pro release and the second in the run-up to WWDC 2024. I chalked those up to resource allocations.

Reaching the Right Doctor

Following WWDC I decided on one frustrating evening to drop an email to Craig Federighi, Apple’s honcho on all things software. I didn’t expect any response. My previous emails to Tim Cook were met with a brush off.

In the context of my email I appealed to Craig quite explicitly that I was very interested in the new iPhone Mirroring feature coming in Sequoia that relied on Continuity and how he had discussed Continuity during the WWDC presentation. I also expressed that I imagined this feature would be at best a hit and miss for me given the ongoing migraines.

Lo and behold, I got a response from Federighi requesting I share diagnostic files with him. Note I don’t know if I was actually communicating with him directly or one of his staff, but after submitting another round of diagnostic files I received the emails below:

And then I received the following:

Once macOS Sonoma 14.6 and iOS 17.6 were released the problem did indeed appear to be solved, but I knew I would have to wait through the next few beta releases and also the release of Sequoia to determine if the fix would indeed hold.

The good news is that I can report the fix did indeed hold through the remainder of the beta cycle and also through the final releases of macOS Sequoia 15 and iOS 18. As of today it has held through developer betas and also public release of the betas for 15.1 and 18.1 since installing the final versions of macOS 15 and iOS 18 the day of their release. It has also held through upgrading my iPhone and Apple Watch.

I’m glad this seems to be resolved but I’m going to remain skeptical until we see the .ox and .x releases of Sequoia and iOS 18 roll out. To be honest, it feels like I’m waiting for any sign of a possible reoccurrence of a medical symptom.

Wrapping Up

I’ve always tied my migraines to problems somehow related to my iCloud account and it appears those suspicions were by and large correct. I don’t have a definitive answer but given that only a “small percentage of users” experienced this issue combined with comments from support personnel and a few clues from Dan Moren’s post, that is what logically makes the most sense to me and a few others I’ve consulted, social network buddy Dwight Silverman among them. By the way Dwight led me to a workaround involving signing out and back in to Messages in iCloud.

I’m certainly appreciative of Craig Federighi or his office pushing this forward to a resolution. I’m reasonably convinced it helped that iPhone Mirroring, which relies on Continuity, is one of the sexy tent pole features of this year’s new releases finally probably brought quicker attention to the issue. That and a stroke of good luck with my timing.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, users in situations that don’t have a large podcast or online audience and can’t stir up a major hullabaloo in the tech press are left to piece these clues together. Unless on a rare occasion they catch the attention of a higher up at Apple to find a resolution. That shouldn’t be the case.

Certainly the bigger a company becomes it’s easier for all sorts of issues for a “small minority of users” to fall through the cracks and for priorities to shift. That’s just a reality. And it shouldn’t take the luck of good timing in sending an email to a top executive, certainly busy with many other tasks, to suss out an issue.

As I’ve said all along, Apple needs to find a way to come clean with both users and its front line support personnel when these issue present themselves. Listening should be the key because sometimes the patient/user has all the clues you need to help them.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Fall is creeping in and things are creeping me out.

The world continues its whirl, the vultures continue circling, and down here on the ground we keep working hard to turn the tide on the ignorant before it’s too late. Still, it’s time to sit down, breathe and enjoy if you can some Sunday Morning Reading.

Perhaps you aren’t aware of the Second Circuit of Appeals decision rejecting the Internet Archive’s fair use defense. You can check out info on the decision here. Reading beyond that check out Matthew Ingram’s post The Second Circuit’s Decision in the Internet Archive Case is Bad. It is bad news for all of us. As a side note, Matthew has recently struck out on his own and you might want to check out his writing on The Torment Nexus. It promises to be a great place to read about issues in the intersection of technology, media, and, well…life.

Politics, or what passes for it these days, continues to dominate much of our attention even as it gets darker and more stupid with each passing day. Springfield, Ohio found itself the unwelcome center of the political world with all of the talk about eating pets and immigration. Isabel Fattal has a very good piece in The Atlantic titled The Springfield Effect. FWIW I don’t think Springfield is going to catch a break anytime soon, but then neither are the rest of us.

Voting is just around the corner, but the discussions and machinations around it now dominate our lives all the time. Check out Eli Saslow’s 3 Georgia Women Caught Up in a Flood of Suspicion About Voting.

Sanewashing is just a new name in a long line of new names for ignoring the crazy, idiotic, and dangerous ways of the decaying orange convicted felon/child rapist and his followers. Parker Malloy tells us Why The Atlantic’s Critique of Sanewashing Doesn’t Hold Up. There’s a link to the Atlantic piece in Malloy’s article. When a thing becomes a thing to criticize it becomes just another excuse for ignoring the truth.

There’s sadly a chance of some sort of carnage, physical or psychic, post-election. Certainly there will be political casualties. Perhaps that’s why we should read Ian Rose’s piece The Hidden Value of Vultures. Let’s hope the vultures doing the cleanup are only feasting on those who caused the mess.

Karen Hao takes a look at Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI when it comes to Microsoft working with fossil-fuel companies while purporting to fight climate change.

In a world full of what feels like willful ignorance, Daniel R. DeNicola takes a look at Plato’s Cave and the Stubborn Persistence of Ignorance.

Elizabeth Laura Nelson has a very poignant piece called Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night. Don’t let moments and opportunities pass you by.

Before you clear your palette and move on to whatever you move on to, take a brief trip along with NatashaMH to Bangkok City in When The World’s Your Oyster.

The AI Bubble Won’t Burst. It Will Just Flatten Into a Puddle.

Put on your waders.

Artificial Intelligence in some form or the other continues to dominate tech and the markets around it, though there are some clouds on the horizon. Even the gold rush seems to show signs of slowing with the realization that AI might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

It’s still exciting technology and there will certainly be some aspects that stick and enhance the way we do things. There will also be quite a bit that doesn’t, even more that’s controversial, and all causing trouble for that which does stick, and generally mucking everything up.

If you’ve paid attention to the comments and reviews during this recent Apple beta season and Google’s latest releases, it’s pretty easy to discern that the general temperature of the responses is lukewarm at best.

Advocates say it’s still early in the game.. That’s true. It’s also true that that putting bets down on an NFL team based on what seems like a good draft and undefeated pre-season is, well, more than a bit premature. (*Cough* *Chicago Bears* *Cough*)

Take the 5G rollout. Though the technologies aren’t comparable, the hype certainly is. 5G got its beginnings before 2020, but that was the year of the big push, arguably led by Apple. I’ve done a lot of driving over quite a few major highways large and small this summer and I’m still amazed at how little 5G coverage (and often LTE coverage) there is along these well traveled arteries between large population centers in the South, Midwest and on the East Coast.

What’s intriguing about that is that while there is a push by Apple and Google to have large chunks of AI operation happen locally on device, there will still be quite a few of those operations that will need higher bandwidth when they do need to call home to the mother ship for a response.

If we fast forward a decade or so and put a query into some LLM to summarize the rise of Artificial Intelligence, I’m betting it will spit out something along the lines of “yet another new promising technology, launched as a product before it was really ready, and spoiled by the hype.”

The book that will eventually be stolen by scraping Internet posts like this one is still to be written, but in these early chapters it is feeling more and more like the bubble might have currently reached it’s outer limits of expansion. There’s pushback on a number of fronts and quite a few enthusiasts always easily seduced by the thrill of a new technology seem to be chilling, if not chafing a bit.

Is there gloom and doom on the horizon? No, just storms and cloudy skies. I don’t think the AI bubble will ever burst, but I do think it will flatten into a puddle with not enough rising tides to lift all boats.

We’ve seen this story before. We’ll see it again. Only this time around the summaries will all sound more and more alike.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.