The maybe immortal photon, the key to everlasting life?
25 April 2024
Light may have an infinite lifetime. Who’d have thought? Even after the eventual, possible, heat death of the universe, photons may live on as beacons of light in an impossibly dark cosmos… maybe:
One such candidate for a truly stable entity is the photon: the quantum of light. All of the electromagnetic radiation that exists in the Universe is made up of photons, and photons, as far as we can tell, have an infinite lifetime. Does that mean that light will truly live forever?
Sounds like life everlasting to me. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? If we could, somehow, infuse our consciousness, our living essence, into photons, could we — to lift a line from the Space Odyssey novels written by Arthur C. Clarke — preserve our “thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light?”
If so, we could then dispense with the botox regimens, followed by cryonics. This is an idea totally worth looking into.
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The best big screen stories of star-crossed lovers
24 April 2024
From Letterboxd: definitely there was love, oh but the circumstances… try Carol, Never Let Me Go, Brokeback Mountain, and Ammonite, on for size. Even the not so well received One Day, recently adapted as a TV series, makes the grade.
Let’s not forget Portrait of a Lady on Fire either. But what puzzles me is the inclusion of Before Sunrise. After all, did we not eventually change our memory of that day? Unless we’re looking at the story in isolation, and ignoring the sequels, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight.
On the subject of Before Midnight, it has been eleven years since its release. The Before films were coming along every nine years, but the main players, namely Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, and series director Richard Linklater, were unsure whether to proceed with a fourth instalment.
Delpy declined to take part in another film when asked by Linklater, but a bit later Hawke said there were still “ideas” for another story.
Will they, or won’t they? This sounds like a great premise for a love story to me.
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Ethan Hawke, film, Julie Delpy, Richard Linklater
Tracking versus privacy, are Pay or Ok consent models ok?
23 April 2024
So called “pay or ok” consent models allow social media users to access services such as Facebook or Instagram, without adverts, if they’re prepared to pay a subscription. Otherwise they’ll see ads, possibly targeted ads, at some point, and obviously be OK with that. At face value, this seems reasonable. There’s no such as a free lunch. If people want to continue using big social networks, they either need to pay to do so, or accept the presence of ads.
But regulators at the European Union’s (EU) European Data Protection Board (EDPB) aren’t happy with the “pay or ok” arrangement. In particular, the idea of targeted advertising. Long story short, to place targeted ads in a social media user’s content feed, it’s necessary to track that user. This is something the EDPB objects to.
Instead, they’d prefer a third option. Freely available access to social media services, but with non-targeted advertising. This might be akin to radio and television advertising, where a more blanket approach is taken to ad placement. As far as the social networks go, this sort of strategy could prove to be hit and miss though. One or two revenue generating ads may be relevant to a user, but not enough to be viable.
I didn’t want to write in-depth today on the topic of online tracking, whether consensual or not, but a point John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball, made last week caught my eye. According to Gruber, the majority of EU residents, when it comes to the likes of Facebook and Instagram at least, prefer free access to these social networks, and are prepared to see targeted ads in return.
Gruber paraphrases late Apple founder Steve Jobs in making the point that people are smart, and perfectly capable of making informed choices when it comes to — in this instance — accepting targeted ads on their social media services. Gruber suggests regulatory bodies such as the EDPB believe many people are not so switched on though:
But Jobs was right too: people are smart, and they can — and should be allowed to — make their own decisions. And many people are more comfortable with sharing data than others. The privacy zealots leading this crusade in the EU do not think people are smart, and do not think they should be trusted to make these decisions for themselves.
That seems reasonable. Or is it? Jack Baty suggests the problem isn’t to do with how smart people are, but rather their general lack of concern. Particularly when it comes to comes to opting into targeted ads, in exchange for a payment-free social media experience.
I wouldn’t say I’m a zealot, but I think John mis-characterizes people here. It’s not that people aren’t smart, it’s that they don’t care. If we can’t get them to care about doing things that might be harmful to themselves or others, maybe the government should step in and care for them.
Baty’s point raises the question: how much thought are people really giving to some of the decisions they make? Do we indeed need the support of lawmakers because we may not be fully aware of what we’re agreeing to sometimes? It’s a pertinent point. For my part, I know I have, on occasion, clicked the “agree” button when presented with a text-wall of small print, so I can gain access to an app or service quickly.
Updates to the operating system of my smartphone are one example of what I mean. I try to skim read what I’m being asked to agree to, often numerous pages of legalese, but I can imagine many time-poor people would baulk at the prospect. Particularly those who need to use their phone urgently. And in doing so, not fully reading what they’re agreeing to, what tribulations might they be setting themselves up for later on?
People probably aren’t asked to read voluminous terms and conditions when agreeing to targeted ads appearing in their content streams, but are they aware of just what they’re signing away? The exact degree of privacy they might be forfeiting? Targeted ads can only be generated by tracking, but just how deep does this tracking go?
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privacy, social media, social networks, technology
When you learn your housemate died via social media
22 April 2024
Mohamed Aboelez recently learned his roommate, a person he shared a residence with, had died. But no one called to say so, instead Aboelez read the news on Facebook:
I froze. I hadn’t seen Paul in about two days. I had assumed he’d been with his friend. But not dead. Of course not dead.
What a terrible thing to happen, and what an awful way to find out: through social media.
If I found out today, via social media, that someone I lived with, in the same apartment/house had died, something would be seriously wrong. People would be asking, quite rightly, what planet I thought I was living on.
But dial back to my days of share house living, and that may not be quite so bizarre. I resided in a number of share houses, and it was not unusual for housemates to be absent for several days at a time. Nor was it unusual — in the normal course — for anyone to say they’d be away either.
It wasn’t that anyone was being aloof or evasive, because often their absences were not — initially at least — intentional. Someone would leave the house in the morning, likely planning to return later that day, but end up getting, perhaps, side tracked. And remain that way for a day. Or three.
Back then, I think someone would need to go unseen for a good week, or their share of the rent had gone unpaid, before concerns were raised. But there was also the point that determining a period of an absence could be tricky. Let me illustrate. Flatmate A is away for two days. I (unknowingly) end up being away for three days afterwards, but leave before Flatmate A comes back in. When I return three days later, Flatmate A has been in the house for a few days, but again gone walkabout for a few days, by the time I arrive back. And so on.
Twenty-somethings, hey?
Unless Flatmate A left all the dishes unwashed, or some such, I might have no idea they’d been back. Equally, I’d have no way of knowing that they hadn’t. Confusing, much? To make matters (sort of) worse, we often didn’t have each other’s mobile numbers, or emails, because, you know, there was no need: we lived in the same house. We could obviously communicate face-to-face.
In these sorts of circumstances then, it may not be entirely strange to learn that a housemate had met with misfortune, on a social media channel. In my case though, all, thankfully, turned out to be well. My flatmates were absent precisely because they wanted to be. Sadly, this was not the case for Aboelez’s roommate.
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Meta AI, coming to your Instagram or Facebook page, like it or not
20 April 2024
Anyone checking into their Instagram or Facebook pages in the last few days, will have no doubt noticed the presence of Meta’s AI “assistant”, named, um, Meta AI.
Britney Nguyen, writing for Quartz:
The tech giant said on Thursday that it is bringing Meta AI to all of its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, calling it “the most intelligent AI assistant you can use for free.” The AI assistant can be used in platform feeds, chats, and search. Meta also said the AI assistant is faster at generating high quality images, and can “change with every few letters typed,” so users can see it generating their image.
Awesome.
On the Instagram iPhone app (mine at least), the search bar-like assistant hovers at the top of the search page, partly blocking content it sits above. Annoying. No, hold that, not annoying. Since the “default” content displayed on the search page is Meta “suggested” (for want of a better word) content, based on what they think you want to see — which just about couldn’t be any further from the mark — the AI bar actually helps obscure some of this rubbish.
Accordingly, I’d be in favour of a full screen size AI assistant, blocking all the useless meme-like junk appearing there. That would be “the most intelligent AI assistant you can use for free.”
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artificial intelligence, social media, technology
Extra-terrestrials may not want Earth as part of their galactic empire
19 April 2024
A conquering interstellar civilisation could bring the entire galaxy under its yoke in about a million years, assuming said civilisation could traverse the Milky Way at about ten percent the speed of light. I expect it’d be a multi-generational undertaking.
It’d also be up to those who conceived of the original vision to conquer the galaxy, to find a way to keep their descendants motivated. A million years is a long time.
This might be one reason why we’ve not encountered any extra-terrestrial lifeforms so far. No one has the energy to invade the whole galaxy, so they’ve stayed in their corner, undetected. But there is another possibility. The all-powerful invaders are being picky.
They’re only acquiring sections of the Milky Way, and the planets in those regions, that are of some sort of value to them. Perhaps Earth is not in that category.
This is the upshot of the latest Kurzgesagt video presentation. An interesting theory. We are not alone, but we are not wanted.
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Pub Choir gather nineteen thousand people to sing Africa by Toto
18 April 2024
From time to time, a few years ago now, I found myself walking passed a bar called The Dock (Facebook page), on Monday evenings. The bar, located in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern, was host to something I’d not witnessed at a watering hole before: everyone singing.
And, as far as I could tell, without musical accompaniment. I later learned these sessions were called the Sea Shantys. They were clearly a drawcard for the bar, as every time I went passed at least, there seemed to be standing room only inside.
To the best of my knowledge, given I’ve not been over that way recently, these singalongs still continue, recent pandemic lockdowns notwithstanding.
Short wonder then Australian community organisation Pub Choir, was able to gather close to nineteen thousand people, from all across Australia, to perform a rendition of Africa, the 1982 hit by American band Toto, in August last year. See what you think. It ain’t half bad, if you ask me.
Yep: it’s gonna to take a lot to drag me away from you…
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The ghostwriters and AI filling the world with garbage ebooks
18 April 2024
An eye-opening article by Constance Grady, writing for Vox. AI and unscrupulous ghostwriters are combining to flood the world with poor quality ebooks, sometimes called garbage ebooks, and giant online booksellers seem to be doing little about it:
Here is almost certainly what was going on: “Kara Swisher book” started trending on the Kindle storefront as buzz built up for Swisher’s book. Keyword scrapers that exist for the sole purpose of finding such search terms delivered the phrase “Kara Swisher book” to the so-called biographer, who used a combination of AI and crimes-against-humanity-level cheap ghostwriters to generate a series of books they could plausibly title and sell using her name.
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A not so deep dive into a not so new neologism
17 April 2024
When it comes to what’s published online, I consider myself a moderately well-read person. Obviously, I’m not across every last thing posted on the web, but I probably spend a good couple of hours a day following news sites, what’s on the RSS feeds I subscribe to, social media, and so on.
Despite this, what I’d describe as big news stories still seem to slip me by. I’m sometimes surprised to read, for example, that a major international sports fixture is about commence. Or a music act that is otherwise a household name, is preparing to play their first show locally, and I had no idea they were even in the country.
Maybe that’s why — prior to a few days ago — I’d seemingly missed seeing the term deep dive, which is being used to refer to in-depth news stories, and blog posts, on a given topic. It’s quite possible however I missed seeing the neologism, in my daily futile attempts to sidestep that other overused noob of a term, reach out.
Of course neither deep dive, nor reach out are neologisms, new terms, as such. People I’m sure have been deep diving, or feel as if they have been, in the oceans and other bodies of water for eons. Similarly, people have been reaching out to grab an apple from the fruit bowl, or take a book off a shelf, for many long centuries.
But it is the connotation these terms are used in, that is new, or rather, somewhat new. So before writing a post heralding the advent of a freshly minted neologism, in this case deep dive, I decided to have a look around. This actually amounted to a pretty perfunctory look around, consisting of but a single search engine query.
That query led me to Merriam-Webster, a “leading provider of language information for more than 180 years”. Thanks to their listing of deep dive, I learned the term had been used to describe “an exhaustive investigation, study, or analysis of a question or topic”, since, wait for it, 1986.
1986. That’s like ten years before the internet as most of us know it, come along. Either I’ve been hanging out in all the wrong places online, all this time, or someone on TikTok has only recently made the term deep dive go viral. Obviously, my money is on the latter.
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How crush proof is the average marriage? Maybe not much
16 April 2024
Gabe Trew, owner of Australian market retailer POP Canberra, decided to run a Valentine’s Day competition this year. He invited social media followers to send him, anonymously I believe, stories about the great love crushes of their lives.
Entrants would be in the running to win what was described as a “dream date.” But something strange happened. Two weeks after Valentine’s Day passed, submissions, or romantic confessions, were still rolling in.
Now, nearly two months on, and some five-thousand people, with stories to tell about their secret crushes, have been in contact with Trew. As a result of the promotion, eight couples — people previously staring down the barrel of possibly a lifetime of unrequited love — have come together.
Of those who were united with their crush through the POP Canberra promotion, I’m not sure how many, if any, were married, or in a relationship, immediately beforehand.
But when ABC National Radio show, Life Matters, recently canvassed the subject of crushes, some listeners admitted to holding a torch for someone else, despite being married. And some of these people eventually deal with the dilemma. They end the relationship, or marriage, they’re in, and find it in themselves to tell their crush how they feel. Sometimes, it turned out the light of their life felt the same way. But for others, the path can be fraught with peril:
For Julie, another Life Matters listener, things haven’t worked out so neatly. She’s been dealing with a difficult crush on a friend that has left her feeling confused and distressed. She’s also married, and has been trying to work out how to protect both her relationship with her husband and her friendship with the object of her crush. “I don’t want to hurt my husband. I’m sort of trying to hold on to that,” she says.
While things may have worked out well for some POP Canberra contest participants, it’s not all bad for those who remain where they started. Professor Michael Slepian, an American psychologist, says having the chance to air their secret, albeit anonymously, can be beneficial:
“[Individuals] do want to get secrets off their chest, they do recognise that a secret can burden them … but those opportunities rarely present themselves,” he said. “It [the POP Canberra competition] provides people this outlet that is not normally available to them, to talk about the things they don’t normally get to talk about.”
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