Test Note
21:48 Friday, 11 July 2014
Words: 4
This is a test.
Google and Facebook
22:11 Friday, 11 July 2014
Words: 842
Shortly before my father died, the news broke that Facebook had published a paper documenting an experiment it had performed on its users. Happily, this seems to have stirred more outrage than I anticipated. Unfortunately, I suspect this is a manifestation of the typical sort of internet "outrage" we see all too often, where everybody seems to take great umbrage for a moment, then goes all "Oooohhh, shiny!" on the "next big thing." We are unable to sustain any meaningful level of outrage, and I suspect Facebook, Google and Amazon all kind of count on this.
I’m disappointed, though unsurprised.
I’m disappointed because Facebook’s "experiment" was entirely foreseeable, indeed, it seems to me that one would have to be a fool not to expect it. Anyone with the kinds of tools that Facebook and Google have at their disposal is going to want to see what they can do with them.
When General Patraeus’ affair was revealed because he was sharing the same Gmail account with his mistress, I wondered how many data scientists at Google went "Hmmmmm…" and quickly wrote an "algorithm" (a search query) to count how many Gmail accounts were being used by more than one user who were not in the same marital relationship. Because I would. Wouldn’t you?
With the vast, truly staggering, amounts of data Google and Facebook are gathering, and the equally staggering computational resources and intellectual horsepower these corporations are able to throw at that data, I think we can be certain they are developing some very interesting insights. Facebook just made the mistake of sharing that fact with us. Apparently it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
We know Facebook wondered about "emotional contagion." Do you suppose there aren’t some bright scientists that might not want to see how or if independent "swing voters’" polling views could be influenced by "personalized" search results? Do you suppose there aren’t some corporate officers that might be interested in knowing if any legislators or regulators are involved in any illicit conduct, so that they might be able to use that data to influence the individual to behave more compatibly with Google’s or Facebook’s corporate initiatives? It wouldn’t be so baldly Machiavellian. It’d be a "good government" internal "experiment" to see if they might be able to increase the "transparency" of government by identifying corruption or vulnerability to corruption. Because that would be "good," right?
I wonder how much of that might be going on already, given how little interest the federal government has in a surveillance apparatus that rivals the NSA in scope.
But we’re not outraged. We all think it’s just great. Because Google and Facebook are giving us all these wonderful things.
Big Brother Larry is solving all kinds of horrendous problems for us. They stumbled a bit with Glass, but its still giving them useful data. It’s not going to be as ubiquitous as the mobile phone, because no normal human being wants to wear a mobile phone on their face. But a watch, now that’s something. Can still gather arousal data, location data, more ambient environmental data than a phone that might remain in a pocket or a purse. Yes, a watch, that’d be a useful platform for surveillance, I mean, data gathering. And it’s so very useful! Brother Larry tells us so.
“Or look at the unlocking that we showed,” Mr. Page said, referring to a system in which your computer detects that your watch is nearby, then lets you start using it without typing in a passcode. “It just makes a lot of sense,” Mr. Page said. “That’s a big hassle today.”
Yes, "a big hassle today." Brother Larry is going to save us all from the "big hassle" of typing your password on your computer. All you have to do is wear this thing on your wrist that lets Brother Larry listen in to what’s going on around you, see what kind of mood you’re in. Privacy is so inconvenient! And we don’t need to worry about that at all, as Farhad Manjoo explains for us:
What is more, for “context aware” computing to become truly useful, our devices must deeply understand our context — and that necessarily involves collecting, analyzing and acting on boatloads of information about each of us and the world around us. Google excels at that.
Yes, Google excels at that. Understanding "our context."
Brother Larry reassures us too. Be not afraid!
Perhaps more important, only Google has Mr. Page — and he is completely undaunted by the resistance these technologies may engender. “For me, I’m so excited about the possibilities to improve things for people, my worry would be the opposite,” he said. “We get so worried about these things that we don’t get the benefits.”
Who is Google accountable to? No one. Larry and Sergey hold the controlling interest in the stock. If they don’t already, they will soon hold a "controlling interest" in your government as well.
Google is accountable to no one.
What are they doing in their data centers?
Use your imagination.
Kingston-Port Ewen Suspension Bridge
Current Wx: Temp: 76.24°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 3.44mphWords: 135
When we've been here before, we were able to walk over the Kingston-Port Ewen Suspension Bridge. Now it's closed for renovations. It's officially 100 years old now, and it's a cool piece of retro-engineering. Though, since it's an "original," I guess it can't be "retro." Nevertheless, I'm glad they're renovating it and not just tearing it down.
This is from the Olympus XZ-1 I carried with me to dinner last night, shot as we walked down by the Rondout afterwards. Straight out the camera, just resized.
[Editor's note: I've been using an app called Retrobatch to resize these images because I didn't have much bandwidth at the lake. It's becoming clear that I need to pick a smaller maximum dimension because these portrait-oriented images don't fit on my little 13" screen.]
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Current Wx: Temp: 77.2°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 3.44mphWords: 136
This is a nothing-burger, just a quick test of whether I got the resizing right. I saw this and hoped I could find a position where the moon would appear at a point where an imaginary line from the suspension cable continued upward and intersected with the moon's position. Couldn't make it happen. Tried to get the moon on top of the truss, couldn't do that either.
If the bridge was open, that would be a neat shot to try and get sometime. Since I don't live here, that's not for me. Wouldn't be surprised if someone hasn't already done it.
Update: Obviously, I failed (getting the re-sizing right). Oh well, no time to mess with it now. Time to figure out what we're doing today. I think Hyde Park is on the agenda.
✍️ Reply by emailOut and About
08:25 Thursday, 11 July 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 78.4°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 314
Went to Corning, New York yesterday, about fifty minutes from here. We visited the Corning Glass Museum, our first visit since 2017 when we stopped in on our wedding road trip. Mitzi still had the paper map and program from that visit, much to the delight of the young lady at the admission desk. She asked if she could keep them.
We toured the museum, focusing on the things we hadn't seen the first time. It's a large museum and full of fascinating artifacts, art and exhibits. Unique, perhaps, in that respect.
It also has a very large gift shop. Mitzi managed to escape unscathed, while I bought a "crystal ball" and a glass globe.
From there, we went into Corning proper and had a nice lunch at an Italian restaurant. I had an Italian sausage sub, while Mitzi had a small pizza. It's an authentic Italian restaurant, family owned and operated. Dessert was a delicious cannoli, that I probably should have skipped.
Mitzi saw a doe with two fawns in the yard yesterday morning. We saw them later in the evening down by the creek. We also saw a rabbit when we got back from the museum. So we've seen a fairly representative sample of common rural New York fauna, a woodchuck, skunk, rabbit and deer. There's a nesting pair of robins outside as well, who keep a wary eye on me when I'm in the hammock.
We're going to hike Cascadilla gorge this morning, also called Giant's Staircase because it's mostly steps. Looks like three quarters of a mile each way, so we'll go up first, then turn around and come back down and go look for lunch in Ithaca.
We're having dinner in a microbrewery tonight, which is supposed to feature live entertainment.
Only a couple more days here, then we'll head up to Geneva for our last week of vacation.
✍️ Reply by emailCascadilla Gorge
Current Wx: Temp: 91.6°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 54% Wind: 9.22mphWords: 202
It was a short hike, but it was lovely. Since the gorge is right in the middle of town, it gets a lot of traffic. A lot of steps, but otherwise easy.
We stuck around and had lunch at the Moosewood vegetarian/vegan restaurant. I had a nice black bean burger.
We stopped by the Ithaca town hall to see if the clerk that issued us our marriage license still worked there. She does not, she retired about five years ago. The woman we spoke to sees her often and will let her know we stopped by. When we received our marriage certificate, the clerk had enclosed a very nice note and invited us to stop by anytime we were in town. We've been to Ithaca many times since then, but never really made the time to drop by. Today we did.
It's been cloudy and overcast most of the day. On the ride home we could see rain off in the distance. Even cloudy, it's beautiful.
I suppose I could come to take these vistas for granted again eventually, but for now they continue to enthrall. There's so much ugliness in the world, I'm grateful for the beauty that nature offers.
✍️ Reply by emailBasement
Current Wx: Temp: 75.63°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 63% Wind: 7.38mphWords: 615
It's been almost a week since I'd last posted.
Kind of a busy week. Wednesday through Friday were spent traveling and attending my niece's wedding. It was a nice time. My youngest sister managed to bring Mom along from Clifton Park, near Albany, to Williamsville, near Buffalo. It was a bit of an ordeal for Mom, given her mobility issues, but I think she enjoyed being there and spending time with her children and grandchildren.
Work on the house is progressing. We hired a new timber frame company for the deck and the porch. Getting fired by the previous company was a blessing, since we're getting a larger deck, in white oak, and a better design for a lot less money. Go figure.
White oak was an extra-cost option with the first company, so we were going to use Douglas fir. The problem with Douglas fir is that it's a haven for carpenter bees. White oak has a much denser grain and is less attractive to carpenter bees.
We met the company owner and he's a remarkable guy. Restores classic cars as a hobby. Easy to work with, we walked through his house, which is all timber frame construction, to see his deck and got a clear idea about what to expect. We're very excited.
I wanted to use my DJI mini 3 to take shots of the new house. It worked fine last week, but I guess Beta 2 of iOS 27 may have introduced some sort of incompatibility. I couldn't get either the mini 3 or the mini 2 to connect with their respective controllers. Very frustrating.
I think we're going to have some challenges with the elevation of the first floor, based on how high the basement rises out of the ground. Our goal was to have only one step from the porch to the ground, and it's not clear to me that that will be achievable absent a great deal of grading. We'll figure something out.
I got my eyes examined on Tuesday and a new prescription. My astigmatism has gotten worse somehow. I'll be correctable to 20/40 in the left eye and 20/80 in the right. The optometrist said I was a good candidate for cataract surgery now, and that would resolve nearly all my vision issues, apart from near-field. I'm going to look into setting it up soon. My brother had his done a few years ago and he only uses glasses for reading now. He can see clearly mid-field to distance, so no need for glasses driving.
There's a new Medicare program that allows qualified Medicare patients to be prescribed GLP-1 medications for $50 a month for about the next 18 months. The program ends in December 2027. I'm pretty sure I qualify because of my BMI and Stage 3a kidney disease. The process to actually receive the medication is very convoluted and counterintuitive. You have to be denied twice and then have your doctor write some magic words in "all caps" (literally) in order to ultimately receive the meds.
It looks to me as though Medicare is undertaking a kind of large-scale study to see if GLP-1 interventions can reduce healthcare spending by treating obesity. I don't really care, I'd just like to get to a healthy weight to preserve my kidney function. I weighed myself this morning and I weigh more than I ever have before. I thought I'd been maintaining, but I guess there was a subconscious reason why I hadn't been weighing myself lately.
Le sigh.
Anyway, hopefully I get my eyes fixed and my weight down and life will be grand.
The beat goes on...
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