Technology

We are at a unique juncture in the AI timeline; one in which it’s still remarkably nebulous as to what generative AI systems actually can and cannot do, or what their actual market propositions really are — and yet it’s one in which they nonetheless enjoy broad cultural and economic interest.

It’s also notably a point where, if you happen to be, say, an executive or a middle manager who’s invested in AI but it’s not making you any money, you don’t want to be caught admitting doubt or asking, now, in 2024, ‘well what is AI actually, and what is it good for, really?’ This combination of widespread uncertainty and dominance of the zeitgeist, for the time being, continues to serve the AI companies, who lean even more heavily on mythologizing — much more so than, say, Microsoft selling Office software suites or Apple hocking the latest iPhone — to push their products. In other words, even now, this far into its reign over the tech sector, “AI” — a highly contested term already — is, largely, what its masters tell us it is, as well as how much we choose to believe them.

And that, it turns out, is an uncanny echo of the original smoke and mirrors phenomenon from which that politics journo cribbed the term. The phrase describes the then-high tech magic lanterns in the 17th and 18th centuries and the illusionists and charlatans who exploited them to convince an excitable and paying public that they could command great powers — including the ability illuminate demons and monsters or raise the spirits of the dead — while tapping into widespread anxieties about too-fast progress in turbulent times. I didn’t set out to write a whole thing about the origin of the smoke and mirrors and its relevance to Our Modern Moment, but, well, sometimes the right rabbit hole finds you at the right time.

Awash in vehicle data, most car manufacturers, or OEMs—original equipment manufacturers—found themselves in an unfamiliar role. “What has given rise to the industry is that most OEMs have recognized that they are better at making cars than they are at processing and handling data,” said Andrew Jackson, research director at PTOLEMUS Consulting Group, which studies the connected vehicle industry.

This created an opening for a new kind of third-party data company, vehicle data hubs, which are at the center of the connected vehicle data market.

[…]

Andrea Amico is founder and CEO of Privacy4Cars, an automotive data privacy company. Amico said of vehicle data hubs, “So, there’s many sources out there. Their business proposition is collect all this data, create massive databases, try to standardize this data as much as possible and then literally sell it. So that’s their business model.”

There are two clear, connected issues to address. The first is the extent of power concentration, which contradicts the decentralised spirit I originally envisioned. This has segmented the web, with a fight to keep users hooked on one platform to optimise profit through the passive observation of content. This exploitative business model is particularly grave in this year of elections that could unravel political turmoil. Compounding this issue is the second, the personal data market that has exploited people’s time and data with the creation of deep profiles that allow for targeted advertising and ultimately control over the information people are fed.

How has this happened? Leadership, hindered by a lack of diversity, has steered away from a tool for public good and one that is instead subject to capitalist forces resulting in monopolisation. Governance, which should correct for this, has failed to do so, with regulatory measures being outstripped by the rapid development of innovation, leading to a widening gap between technological advancements and effective oversight.

The future hinges on our ability to both reform the current system and create a new one that genuinely serves the best interests of humanity. To achieve this, we must break down data silos to encourage collaboration, create market conditions in which a diversity of options thrive to fuel creativity, and shift away from polarising content to an environment shaped by a diversity of voices and perspectives that nurture empathy and understanding.

Killed by Google is the Google graveyard; a free and open source list of discontinued Google services, products, devices, and apps. We aim to be a source of factual information about the history surrounding Google's dead projects.

Contributors from around the world help compile, research, and maintain the information about dying and dead Google products.

"In Soviet Russia… erm, I mean, oh, whatever… products buy you."

It's clear that HP's tactics are meant to coax HP printer owners into committing to HP ink, which helps the company drive recurring revenue and makes up for money lost when the printers are sold. Lores confirmed in his interview that HP loses money when it sells a printer and makes money through supplies.

But HP's ambitions don't end there. It envisions a world where all of its printer customers also subscribe to an HP program offering ink and other printer-related services. "Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription. This is really what we have been driving," Lores said.

[…] 

HP has faced numerous lawsuits in relation to blocking device functionality due to third-party ink and has paid out millions as a result. So why is it still continuing down this road? That might be partially explained by the company's perspective on the vendor-customer relationship.

When people buy an HP printer, they consider it an investment. But HP thinks that when you buy a printer, the company is investing in you.

As Lores put it:

"This is something we announced a few years ago that our goal was to reduce the number of what we call unprofitable customers. Because every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us. We're investing [in] that customer, and if this customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment."

On Thursday, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf announced that Dr. David L. Mills, the inventor of Network Time Protocol (NTP), died peacefully at age 85 on January 17, 2024. The announcement came in a post on the Internet Society mailing list after Cerf was informed of David's death by Mills' daughter, Leigh.

"He was such an iconic element of the early Internet," wrote Cerf.

Dr. Mills created the Network Time Protocol (NTP) in 1985 to address a crucial challenge in the online world: the synchronization of time across different computer systems and networks. In a digital environment where computers and servers are located all over the world, each with its own internal clock, there's a significant need for a standardized and accurate timekeeping system.

NTP provides the solution by allowing clocks of computers over a network to synchronize to a common time source. This synchronization is vital for everything from data integrity to network security. For example, NTP keeps network financial transaction timestamps accurate, and it ensures accurate and synchronized timestamps for logging and monitoring network activities.

Capitalism relies on maintaining an artificial scarcity of essential goods and services (like housing, healthcare, transport, etc), through processes of enclosure and commodification. We know that enclosure enables monopolists to raise prices and maximize their profits (consider the rental market, the US healthcare system, or the British rail system). But it also has another effect. When essential goods are privatized and expensive, people need more income than they would otherwise require to access them. To get it they are compelled to increase their labour in capitalist markets, working to produce new things that may not be needed (with increased energy use, resource use, and ecological pressure) simply to access things that clearly are needed, and which are quite often already there.

Take housing, for example. If your rent goes up, you suddenly have to work more just to keep the same roof over your head.  At an economy-wide level, this dynamic means we need more aggregate production — more growth — in order to meet basic needs.  From the perspective of capital, this ensures a steady flow of labour for private firms, and maintains downward pressure on wages to facilitate capital accumulation. For the rest of us it means needless exploitation, insecurity, and ecological damage. Artificial scarcity also creates growth dependencies: because survival is mediated by prices and wages, when productivity improvements and recessions lead to unemployment people suffer loss of access to essential goods — even when the output of those goods is not affected — and growth is needed to create new jobs and resolve the social crisis.

There is a way out of this trap: by decommodifying essential goods and services, we can eliminate artificial scarcity and ensure public abundance, de-link human well-being from growth, and reduce growthist pressures.

The SimCity series has achieved the universal success few games do, with a veneer of realism that draws gaming and non-gaming fans alike. But just what is SimCity's model based on? And what politics are hidden inside the black box driving the simulation?

“The Y2K crisis didn’t happen precisely because people started preparing for it over a decade in advance. And the general public who was busy stocking up on supplies and stuff just didn’t have a sense that the programmers were on the job,” says Paul Saffo, a futurist and adjunct professor at Stanford University.

But even among corporations that were sure in their preparations, there was sufficient doubt to hold off on declaring victory prematurely. The former IT director of a grocery chain recalls executives’ reticence to publicize their efforts for fear of embarrassing headlines about nationwide cash register outages. As Saffo notes, “better to be an anonymous success than a public failure.”

After the collective sigh of relief in the first few days of January 2000, however, Y2K morphed into a punch line, as relief gave way to derision — as is so often the case when warnings appear unnecessary after they are heeded. It was called a big hoax; the effort to fix it a waste of time.

Just don't buy these cursed machines. Get a nice, big, dumb, computer monitor.

If you bought a new smart TV during any of the holiday sales, there’s likely to be an uninvited guest watching along with you. The most popular smart TVs sold today use automatic content recognition (ACR), a kind of ad surveillance technology that collects data on everything you view and sends it to a proprietary database to identify what you’re watching and serve you highly targeted ads. The software is largely hidden from view, and it’s complicated to opt out. Many consumers aren’t aware of ACR, let alone that it’s active on their shiny new TVs. If that’s you, and you’d like to turn it off, we’re going to show you how.