https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge’s_law_of_headlines

What if I’ve lost a bet?

Most TV programs are broadcast in HD format. Especially sports. That was the main reason we got rid of our last CRT. The scoreboards were getting cut off at the edges. That, and the fact that the bottom right corner of the display had permanently faded to black.

Think of Google as a set of signals.

Every time you search, you’re sending it a signal that you’re interested in a subject.

Google Analytics is embedded in lots of sites. Each time you visit, it sends them back a signal. If you click on one of the ads on the google site, or on any of the millions of sites with embedded google ads, it sends back a signal. If you use Android, each time you change location, make a call, or click on an app, that’s a signal.

When using Nest, or Google Home, or Assistant, that’s another signal. If you use Google Maps , Google Auto, shopping, photos, drive, translate, image search, gmail, all the office apps, and Gemini. Bingo, a signal.

If you follow a link in any of the above, shared by someone else. A signal.

You don’t need to be logged-in. All is needed is an association of that signal with an ‘abstract user’ which represents you across many systems, devices, and applications.

You can turn off tracking, or tighten privacy settings, or go private. All they need is a loose combination of factors (aka fingerprint) to match your previous actions with your devices, user accounts, or signals.

When you get on Youtube, you’re at the tail end of a massive amount of historical data accumulated over time and attached to you. The algorithm just returns a best prediction of what matches that trail. And what you click on and how much of it you watch or skip. Yup, another signal.

And no, none of us can opt out. The same is true for Facebook/Meta, and any other embeddable service, powered by ads.

You can go private, turn off javascript, use alternate browsers, or go back to a flip-phone. Sorry, it doesn’t make a difference. Not any more.

I used to work on making those types of devices. There’s one good reason to connect them to the internet, and that is to report the health of the device and automatically call up maintenance if things go wonky. But nobody does that. Instead, they all snag user interaction data and send it off to the magical cloud without knowing why. Or to upsell you consumables like water filters and detergents.

One other reason to have them connected is to send push notifications when something needs attention. Like when the power to the chest freezer in the basement has gone off and the human body parts are starting to leak.

Sounds like the issue is getting to the server, not the LLM server itself. If so, may want to look into running a reverse proxy, or if you want to access it remotely, tunnels: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

A long time ago I helped set it up so an elderly relative’s HOA dues were auto-withdrawn from their checking account. Someone stole one of their checks, washed it, wrote in a different name and amount, and cashed it. Bank anti-fraud caught it, refunded the money, and closed the account. I sent the HOA a message explaining the situation and asking what the procedure was to change account numbers.

They emailed over an attached PDF form. Had space for fullname, phone, address, bank routing and account number, and her real signature. Pretty much a PII nightmare. The instructions were to have it filled out and emailed back to them. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Told the relative to print it out and send it back by post.

AWS S3 lets you upload all content to a bucket, then mark it as a website. If usage is not too heavy, it can stay under the free tier.

But a favorite free one is Cloudflare pages: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/techtips/deploying-static-website-to-cloudflare-pages/

You can keep your content on github, connect it to a CF page, and have it auto-update on push to github.

Palm 😔

If you have control of the server or platform serving the content, could look into “robots.txt” and “tarpits.” There are a few, but one example is Nepenthes: https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes/

If you just own the domain and it’s hosted elsewhere, you could set it up to go through CloudFlare DNS. They have a one-button scrape-stopper: https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-block-ai-bots-scrapers-and-crawlers-with-a-single-click/

They should be GRATEFUL they get floppies. Until a few years ago all you got was a Turkey feather and some coal-black.

I pay for Cursor, OpenAI, and Anthropic. I was paying for Google Gemini as well, but it was returning too many errors so I canceled it. I also pay for Google office, Microsoft office, and Adobe subscriptions. They inject their own AI into their services, but I end up ignoring them or turning them off.

Mostly use it for coding in Cursor, but occasionally for research into the state of AI and to make MCP extensions. It’s been worth the investment so far, given how much more of the mundane coding tasks get done by supervising it. I also had it update a Wordpress theme because I had no interest in learning the innards.

I never let them loose in ‘agentic’ mode, as they inevitably destroy all the work. I can run decent-sized models locally through lmstudio and Cline, but they’re much slower than just using Cursor and a cloud model.

Outside coding, the only usable one I’ve found is Adobe Firefly, accessed inside Photoshop (to remove material) and Illustrator (to generate simple SVGs and icons from prompts).

Every single other one, when I’ve put it to a non-coding use has been a pile of slop. If all LLMs go away tomorrow, the only one I’ll miss is the Adobe SVG creator.

Black Mirror episode: BCI that reads and WRITES inner thoughts.

Plot: a rival publisher hires a killer to murder a successful author over the copyright.

Slow news day, or are the Summer interns heading back to school?

Windows MICE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Metafile_vulnerability

You are guilty of thinking about having Merlot with that steak instead of a local Malbec.

Any CEO who says AI would replace staff is pandering to short-term investors. They’re not a long-term visionary.

That, and wiping off the caked dust.