Tech Time by Tim #37

I can’t beam these newsletters directly into your brain yet, but that might be about to change. Neuralink got FDA approval for human testing. What might remote work look like in a world of efficient brain implants? Hard to say, but you can at least catch a glimpse via the existing phenomenon of digital nomadism. So what else happened this past week? Well! Computex and Microsoft Build dumped a whole lot of numbers on us, and we got a glimpse of the Pegasus of Guam. Last but not least, a question; for whom does the notification bell toll? Ponder that as you listen to a song of podcasts and product placements.

At A Glance

A quick overview of this week’s content.

·??????The Week that Was: The Missing Neuralink, Roaming Charges

·??????Technobabble: Computex And The Mainstream, The Pegasus Of Guam

·??????Rules of Engagement: ?For Whom The Notification Bell Tolls, A Song Of Podcasts And Product Placements

The Week that Was:

A look back at the tech world of the past week.

The Missing Neuralink – Promises And Perils of Brain Machine Interfaces:

Neuralink, one of the more prominent companies working on so-called ‘brain machine interfaces’ (BMI’s) has finally gotten FDA approval for human testing. It’s not quite a wearable in the traditional sense, but most concerns about these implants do indeed focus on issues of device safety. It will still likely be some time before the trials start, and Neuralink has indicated they aren’t actively recruiting yet.

Having said that, it’s already possible to reconstruct high-quality videos from brain activity without implants. Similarly, artificial brains are helping scientists gain a better understanding of the real thing.

As far as implants in active testing are concerned, a high-profile brain and spinal implant test made the news this past week for allowing a paralyzed man to walk again. This story is reminiscent of a similar trial from 2014 during which a 19-year-old quadriplegic gradually began to regain some of his motor functions. Quadriplegia is generally defined as a loss of motor and/or sensory functions in the cervical area of the spinal cord. This results in partial or total paralysis from the neck down.

The problem with trials is that they aren’t one-and-done deals. Clinical trials require constant investment and maintenance. The ‘neuro rights’ movement seeks to establish ethical and legal safeguards for the recipients of brain and spinal implants. Such safeguards should protect and support people both at the start and potential end of tests. The end of tests in particular can happen abruptly in cases where a company or research team runs out of money and wants to remove an implant. LINK

Roaming Charges – What Are The Costs Of Digital Nomads?

Say, readers,?do you know what digital nomads are? For those that don’t, let’s do a quick history lesson. Particularly common on large, expansive terrain such as plains and steppes, nomads were people that constantly relocated. Unlike communities that would build villages in a set spot and grow them over time, nomadic communities would periodically move their settlements around.

Digital nomads are similar in the sense that they are highly educated, affluent knowledge workers who don’t have a set address. They move from temporary abode to temporary abode, usually relying on a network of flexible workspaces and internet cafés.

This gradually increasing group of people travels a lot. At least some of that distance will be by car. So it’d be pretty helpful, from a climatological point of view, if the tires used on those cars were able to be converted into climate-friendly fuel. To be recycled once they’d reached the end of their service life would be pretty poetic. The nomads of yore were all about living in harmony with their temporary home.

Digital nomads… not so much. Ironically enough, they can instead be highly disruptive to fixed communities, whereas in the past, permanent settlement disrupted nomadism. Indeed, a dark side to the practice in our current day is how people tend to flock to countries with weaker economies. They’ll arrive, inject a whole bunch of money, and then leave again. The local economy becomes warped, and permanent residents risk being priced out. Businesses may, for example, adjust prices based on what the visitors are willing to pay, look for ways to retain digital nomads for longer, and seek to attract more of them. LINK

Technobabble:

Explaining complex techniques, technologies, and terminologies.

Computex And The Mainstream – Gulfs Between Possibility And Utility:

Computex and Microsoft Build both happened this past week, and you can view summaries of their major reveals and announcements here and here. Beyond the hype and hyperbole, it was basically just a numbers game. More AI in more things, in more ways. Stronger chips, new integrations, fancier spreadsheets, you know the drill.

And therein lies the rub. Few people actually know the drill. Take ARM’s new mobile chips for example, or Intel’s new Virtual Processing Units (VPU’s). How many people are going to know what those even are? And that is actually super interesting, because the value proposition of every new AI powered enterprise tool being offered right now is super simple. “You don’t understand this thing, we do, put your faith (and money) in us”.

Don’t let the FOMO get to you, don’t feel stupid for not ‘getting AI’ no one actually does, that’s why there’s so many calls to make so-called ‘black boxes’ accessible and reviewable. That’s (partially) why the people in charge of these companies want AI to be regulated, but not like that.

Think about it. If you were to crack open your smartphone, would you be able to tell me which part is which? Probably not. And that’s fine. None of us have to understand everything, but I do take issue with lack of understanding being used as a revenue model. Not only is it morally dubious, it also isn’t efficient.

Case in point: a new report about how many people in the US have actually tried ChatGPT. Most people interviewed for the report had heard about it, few had actually tried it. What I’m getting at here is that explainable AI is actually both ethically and financially advantageous. To put it in gaming terms “you can’t play a spreadsheet”. LINK

The Pegasus of Guam – Risk vs. Reward In Cyberwarfare:

The NSO group is a new infamous Israeli manufacturer of a highly aggressive, difficult to stop spyware product known as ‘Pegasus’. Pegasus exists in a tense state of limbo. No one wants to have it used against them. Yet no customer wants to give up such an effective tool either. And so it is that the spyware has now been found not only on the phone of a close ally of the Mexican president. It has also been used by a United Nations official and others in Armenia. Granted, the latter case dates way back to a hacking campaign between 2020 and 2022. Information about it coming to light now just goes to show how difficult it remains to expose Pegasus use.

On the other side of the law, cybercrime cannibalism continues as a new hacking forum has exposed the data of 478,000 former RaidForum members. RaidForum was a popular dark web marketplace for stolen data. It was shut down in April 2022, after a successful internationally coordinated raid by law enforcement agencies. One question we’ll likely not know the answer to anytime soon is how many of those were state sponsored hackers. China for example, was recently revealed to have been successfully spying on Guam for years before a recent breach of its security systems. LINK

Rules of Engagement:

Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.

For Whom The Notification Bell Tolls:

This past week a Japanese YouTuber was arrested for copyright violations regarding the cult-hit visual novel Steins;Gate. To be honest, I would have expected Nintendo’s crusade against leaks, emulation, and homebrew to lead to an arrest at some point. Indeed, it still may further down the line. Yet here we are, the first such arrest was of?a Netabare or ‘fast content’ creator. This is a popular short-form media format in Japan. It condenses down the plot of works of anything from games to TV shows down into a bite-sized video and adds captions or narration explaining what is going on. Anyone familiar with the similar phenomenon of ‘BookTok’ will know the general gist of it.

For those that don’t know what BookTok is, well! It’s basically a highly popular and lucrative variety of content on TikTok where creators will discuss and (assuming they like the work) promote books using highly condensed terminology. Mostly, the content creators will use narrative tropes to make it quick and easy for others to see whether a book might appeal to them or not. It’s all about virality in this case.

Speaking of virality, it didn’t quite pan out for California governor Ron DeSantis. He’d intended to go viral on Twitter with his presidential bid. He did get his wish, sort of, but only because of how badly Twitter crashed and burned… again…during the livestream. Ron DeSantis’ claim to fame is a bitter feud with Disney. Disney is frustrating his attempts to roll out anti-LGBTQ legislation across the state California. Naturally, Elon Musk choosing to partner up with such an individual has drawn plenty of questions and criticisms. Not just about the alleged radicalisation of Twitter as a platform, but also about the mental health hazards of social media, and to what extend the people in charge are responsible for protecting vulnerable demographics as well as they are supposedly protecting their own children. LINK

A Song Of Podcasts And Product Placements:

I’ve been thinking about Venn-diagrams a lot lately. This diagram was invented in 1880 and has been used ever since to show the relationships and overlaps between different sets of data. The Venn-diagram I’ve had stuck on my head concerns three bits of information: advertising, broadcasts (both tv and podcasts), as well as AI.

It shouldn’t come as a shock that Google is hard at work on integrating dynamic ads into its advertising platform. I’m calling them dynamic ads, because they are intended to dynamically adjust to each individual user, displaying custom advertisements in real-time. It isn’t just Google though, tv advertisers are working on new product placement infrastructure. For those not in the advertising industry, product placement is the practise of putting real brands in shows. The intent is to nudge users into buying the products that their favourite fictional characters and celebrities use.

So that brings us to Spotify and its AI DJ. I’d been meaning to write about this for some time now but couldn’t quite find an angle I liked. Now, the streaming service is looking to leverage the same technology it used for the DJ to create an advertising framework. This framework will use host’s voices to read commercials to listeners without the host ever having to see or record the ad copy.

I have this morbid need to see what kind of bloopers will come of these initiatives, perhaps something like what happened to Firefox this past week? They caught flak for over-zealous self-promotion. I don’t want their apology though; I want to know how effective this ‘accident’ was in terms of conversions. LINK

A Nice Cup of Serendipity:

Cool bits and bobs from around the web.

Priced Out LINK

Crypto Card LINK

Project Q LINK

Sekiro Wisdom LINK

Gaming Difficulty LINK

Token Scandal LINK (WoW Classic Token Scandal)

Kickstart Union LINK

The 1941 Strike LINK

LoL Walkout LINK

3D Printing LINK

New Charger LINK

The Deep End:

A weekly batch of long-form content recommendations.

Dunning Kruger:

The Dunning Kruger effect isn’t what you think it is. LINK

Alternative Jet Fuels:

Ever wanted to know about alternative jet fuels? LINK

Guinness Longevity:

How a silly book about random records stood the test of time. LINK

Right To Repair State of Affairs:

A list of right to repair articles, for those curious about the state of it. LINK

Relatable Bots:

A research paper about anthropomorphism in dialogue systems. LINK

Predator Deep Dive:

A deep dive into the inner workings of the Predator spyware. LINK

One More Thing…

I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about more about FOMO, the fear of missing out. It’s not just relevant to AI, it’s pretty much the bogeyman of the tech world in general.

The only real thing that matters about any given technique or technology is what it can actually do for you. Technology is a tool, a means to an end. What’s important is how you can meaningfully make use of technology to improve the lives of yourself and your loved ones.

To make that a bit more tangible, let’s do a thought exercise. I’d like for you to picture a hammer. This is the greatest hammer in the history of hammers. Grab a hold of it in your mind. Now… go and use this hammer to cut down that huge tree over there, a bit further along in the theatre of your mind.

As it turns out, hammers are useless for cutting down trees. Interesting, don’t you think? How the king of tools in one situation can be so useless in another. All tools are the same, they rely on their user to imbue them with power and to make use of the tool in a meaningful way. So don’t ever feel like you need to force a particular tool into your product or workflow. “If it fits, you sits,” as my sister’s cat would say if the technology to speak to it were available already.