Re: AI is the scam du jour. Worry less about it. Spend your tech budget on infosec instead.
". . . before they woke up and smelled the covfefe."
Bang on!
112 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jun 2011
We need to remember the early age of the internet. Wondrous things were happening and optimism was running high. I know—I was working in it—elbow high in HTML and Photoshop 3.0. But then dark actors started messing around, corporate slimes were finding ways to scrape info, infiltrate user accounts, etc. Those optimistic days were dying. Today we need ad blockers, firewalls, site security out the wazoo as these dark actors are turning it into a shit-show. Same will happen to AI. Yes, I too can see a small proportion will use it for decent purposes, but quickly it will be used to nix jobs by the corporate greedy. Then the nefarious stuff will start to happen. I say without some serious controls, this thing could be our undoing. My problem is who are going to apply the controls and do they know how to craft those controls. Somebody opened that AI 'Pandora's Box' and we're going to be stuck with it. I wish I could be optimistic, but I've been alive and working tooo long and know how Humanity works. We'll be living in a world of 6 fingers. Just my 2¢ worth.
Yeah (LOL!) Foxconn. What a major fizzzzzzle THAT was. Foxconn built a building, 13,000 employees were to be hired, but that ended up being 1,000—and then maybe EV batteries will be made? Nobody is really sure. Yeah the iDigital manufacturing landscape really changed with that one. So I'm not expecting to see an American-made $3,000-$5,000 iPhone coming out of Trump's USA anytime soon.
"Android phones are also going to be much cheaper than iPhones now"
How do you figure? The tariff that's good for the Apple, is good for the Android. Both are imported. Both get hit. Build them in the USA? Same thing for Apple as for Android. Only Android would be a bit typically cheaper, as it is now.
We don't buy anything from unsolicited phone calls, emails, SMS, or the like either. I save the 'fuck offs' for wankers who truly deserve them. So when a call comes in with "Can I speak with the homeowner?" I say nothing and just hang up. To get to THAT point first though, they will have had to go through my phone's gate-guardian: "To continue with this call or leave voice mail, please press the pound key"
A lot of landline phones have a feature that as soon as a call comes in, the caller is greeted immediately with "Please enter the pound sign to continue your call or leave a message"
Of course, easy enough for a human, but a robocall will be pooched. What about a Human scammer? Let the call go to voice mail.
Job done.
Yes—I have to agree with the 3 comments here as much of that has been my experience, except during my career with digital exposure (1995 & on) I was expected to be fluent on both Mac and Windows. Regardless, I still run into people who use Windows by choice, who continually run into needless pain. A colleague of mine was having Outlook issues with a project he and I were working on, so I looked up the symptoms, and sure enough—well documented glitch that MS 'gave up' on fixing. Well, we fixed the MS glitch of his for sure. We swapped out his Outlook mail client for Thunderbird. No further glitches.
"I cannot think of anything I do on a computer that I would prefer to be done by an AI, that I would have to review and check. I even dislike auto-correct, heck, if I'm gong to publish typos I would like them to be my types*, not some AI generated guess typo."
Bingo. Nailed it. Me too.
My buddy and I were just grousing on about this Apple issue, both of us being Art Directors and retired, but still keen to keep our hand in periodically and still have very well-running hardware.
I am a MacBook Air fan and currently use a 7,2 (SSD) from 2017-2019. The hardware is in minty-mint shape and it runs smooth as silk. No, I don't use Adobe stuff but Affinity Designer/Photo 1.x which I find easy on the resources. Today I'm on 10.13.6 (High Sierra) and can only move up to OS12 (Monterey) according to Apple. I wouldn't mind getting closer up yet—so I will be spending some time investigating how far up I can go, and how best to deal with it.
Let's face it—I just need the later OS ONLY to keep a reasonably current version of Firefox going. *rolls eyes* I hate that free stuff can sideline a perfectly good machine. (Sorry—I know I'm preaching to the converted)
I also thank those who posted some 'advisories' in this thread. Well noted.
Regardless of that ad, I still see Apple as a premier component WITHIN the creative community, while Samsung doesn't even seem to exist. And while I personally don't know any creative artists actually creating much on an iPad, they ARE used in subservient roles. I use mine for chasing down typefaces, colour swatches, and sheet music from IMSLP. Could I do that on a Samsung tablet? Sure, but from what I've heard in my social circle, Samsung isn't quite that reliable and they're hooked up to data-slurping Google. Pass.
Apple really needs to wake up. The 'best tablet' is the one I'm using and have no need or desire to 'upgrade'. My 2017-19 10.5" iPad Pro runs very nicely still and is light/thin enough. But for the most part, I just use it as a digital tool to browse the web, as one might thumb through a magazine of yore.
Nice to know Apple is still making tablets. SOMEDAY I will have to upgrade, but not now. But I can do well without the sanctimonious negative ads. Wake up Apple—you risk pissing off potential customers.
This comes from a career Designer/Art Director:
PDFs were never intended to be used on 'phones'. They were intended to be an exchange file that preserved formatting in various forms of communication, often intended for some form of print. There is no uninspired 'responsive design' aspect to PDFs like there is for webpages. So, that said—choose the right tool for the right job. Your 200 page PDF in best viewed on a desktop/laptop. I find my iPad works just fine for that as well. Consider turning the thing sideways as well if you want the immediate content larger.
Face it—phones have limitations and can't be used for everything, and work best as a phone.
Pretty much agreed. Professionally designed documents, created by someone who understands typography and line-lengths for readability, is more often to be found in the 'PDF world' as opposed to the web one. I agree with your paper viewpoint too. Regrettably, the web-world has just turned into a sch!tt-show due to the persistent accommodation of the 'smartphone' at the primarily level.
I'm fine with the way Apple operates. I went through the 90's downloading software/shareware/freeware from all sorts of places, mainly magazine CD-ROMs. I never had issues, but some of my colleagues had a few. Viruses, poorly written keystroke loggers, etc.
Face it—it is Apple's business and if developers/consumers don't like the way it is run, just go elsewhere. I'm sure the Android 'leaky sieve' would love to have you. I appreciate Apple's vigilance in keeping 'the bad guys' out and away. As far as developers are concerned—Microsoft and Apple have always had various regulations that MUST be adhered to.
Sorry to disappoint the 'freedom' crowd. Blame the bad guys.
I would say that is ONE interesting defense idea worth following up. I wonder if any other EU members have any other practical solutions. As others have said here, it would be a challenging problem to, essentially, case-harden these undersea cables.
I know from my reading last week that Iceland is particularly concerned (read: shitting their pants), as their various servers are in Ireland and are connected by two undersea cables. (I think there maybe a third, but where it is escapes me at the moment). Russian 'research vessels' have been identified 'snooping around'.
We all know how vital the internet is, and know what WE do when our ISP goes down for an hour or two at home. Yes—this is a serious challenge I hope finds an answer.
Yes—fine for short subjects that may also be now and again frequency. Not sure how happy I'd be paying a monthly subscription for what could end up being 'occasional use'. As a professional career Designer, I dumped Adobe for Affinity (Serif) for that very reason (although none of it is being used on my iPad Pro). Super happy I did too!
"Safari is the browser that you use for downloading Firefox, isn't it?"
On a laptop, yes. But not on an iPhone/iPad. Firefox is on the App Store, and one uses the App Store app on your iPhone/iPad to download it. AND there are a few versions of Firefox there.
Yeah, agreed. Then I look at all the neighbourhoods where RFID key fobs for cars have been tampered with inside houses from a van on the street to gain access to said parked cars. This 'over digitization' for the sake of convenience and/or cool factor is pure madness. Re-direct the efforts, Apple (et al).
While that is true, essentially national currencies are traditionally more stable, and overseen with a responsibility towards the well-being of said nation.
Crypto is private, and has no regulations or oversight whatsoever. Hence, the opening statement: Crypto 'derives value based on make believe' rings very true. I absolutely refuse to endorse it, or go near it in its current state. I see it as currency for the dark web and criminals.
Now, tell me that the G20 has come up with an 'international currency' that operates similar to crypto, but is much more stable and has iron-clad G20 oversight, there may be more of a mainstream appetite for the concept then—especially from the business world.
Just my 2¢ worth.
One odd impact crater caused by Chinese space junk. For decades humanity has been trashing up space and there are increasing amounts of junk in orbit. The moon already has a notable amount of left junk, and Mars is now being trashed up as well. And NOBODY seems to care. Just like here on Earth. Nobody really cares unless there is negative political impact, or a nasty financial one. And those who do believe we should be picking up after ourselves are just viewed as 'enviro-lefty-kooks'.
So I see one double impact crater. Does it really matter? Nobody apparently gives a toss.
Oh, gawd—yes. As one who was responsible for in-house online design (enterprise & consumer) I saw that shite all the time from outside vendors who management would contract without our knowledge (f#$k !). So many times we'd be asked by internal stakeholders to redesign/rebuild the entire disaster. Thankfully, I had a crack-on team who were able to rise to the challenge. The downside was trying to keep it under wraps from management that their 'wunderkind' vendor had caulked up. But that was the CIOs job, not mine.
I can see this as a real concern for businesses who blindly trust Zoom as they discuss confidential matters.
But for myself, who is retired, all Zoom will be getting is mindless rabble from a bunch of p!ssed up old yobs who periodically group for a virtual pub night and yak on endlessly about our favourite 80's bands (LOL!!)
They are useful.
As soon as you’re connected to the Internet, applications can potentially send whatever they want to wherever they want. Most often they do this to your benefit. But sometimes, like in case of tracking software, trojans or other malware, they don’t. But you don’t notice anything, because all of this happens invisibly under the hood.. While this may edge into the tin-foil hat crew, it's not a bad idea if one is concerned to that degree. I've been thinking myself of installing Li'l Snitch for the last 20 years. I'm still thinking about it, but I'm a cheap SOB yet I could afford it easily. And as we know, these programs like Li'l Snitch can turn off the offending programs ability to 'call home'.
Personally, I don't see them as absurd as you do. To each his own.