Tab Clearing...

• How about an all-wheel drive shooting brake with a 496 cubic inch V-8?


• A shirt to confuse AI-powered cameras and keep them from recognizing you as a human. Another William Gibson book come to life!


• Meta wants to replace human low-level maintenance workers in data centers with robots.


• Fake Flock cameras used to honeytrap would-be vandals.

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Tab Clearing...

• "How were those 'Freedom Fuel' stations selling gas so cheaply?" you ask. Well, you may wanna sit down for this one.


• A petri dish of human brain cells is in hell. Sort of.


• One of the last great stop-motion animation SFX houses is closing its doors. Check out all the great memorabilia from '70s-'90s sci-fi and fantasy movies in the photos at this link!

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It's about frickin' time.

I’m rarely in a Walmart and every time I am, I’m surprised anew by their archaic checkout. I mean, I literally used Apple Pay to buy an obsidian knife from the flint knapper in Pioneer Village at the Indiana State Fair the other day.

“What do you mean I gotta actually take my card out of my wallet and stick it in the machine with my hands like it’s 2015 up in here? I used my wristwatch to pay a guy in bib overalls for a stone knife last Wednesday, for heaven's sake!”

Resin-filled cholla hilt and gold sheen obsidian blade.

Well, Wally World is finally saying they're going to bring touchless payments, including Apple Pay, to their stores by the end of this year. Better late than never, I reckon.

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Tab Clearing...

• Naval Estimates, a browser-based game of warship design in the Dreadnought Era. Looks like big nerdy fun!


• Tales of crossing the Russian border in the Current Era.


• Run by slavers, manned by captives, the internet scam compounds are moving deeper into Myanmar, adopting AI tools.

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Important Announcement!

When burying your loved ones these days, it’s important that you inter them with a smart phone.

Placing coins on their eyes does not work anymore. Charon is apparently no longer accepting cash and wants the recently deceased to download the ETERNAL FERRYMAN app so that they can pay via PayPal or Venmo in order to be poled across the River Styx.

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Tab Clearing...

• What a Monopoly vendor learned when making things in America.


• Flock pitched a plan to turn Uber and Lyft drivers into roving surveillance vehicles.


• Hello Local Business, your AI ads are costing you customers.

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Tab Clearing...

• The state of the air war over Ukraine, four years on...


• The Rise of American Bushido


• Meta, belatedly and ineffectively, gets worried about creepers using its pervert glasses.

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I'm good, thanks...

"What is X Money? The new service on X basically provides banking and financial services for paying X Premium and Premium+ subscribers right within the app. X Money includes peer-to-peer payments and money transfers within the X platform, as well as a deposit account. Users will also receive "the X card," a physical Visa debit card for ATM withdrawals and in-person transactions."

Now you'll be able to pay for your Grok-generated revenge porn without even leaving the app!

To Boldly Nerd Like No One Has Nerded Before

Any kid in my neighborhood when I was in elementary school would have cheerfully murdered people in their beds to get their hands on this USS Enterprise bridge playset.

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Life in the Panopticon...

Not only is your LG television spying on you, your LG computer monitor may be installing bloatware on your system behind your back...

LG's Smart TV features being overly intrusive is common among smart TVs, but LG's newer UltraGear computer monitors are now also taking liberties with user privacy and security.

On some Windows systems, connecting a new LG monitor will spur Windows Update to download drivers and the LG Monitor App Installer, which will then display pop-up ads for other LG applications or even McAfee antivirus software. This is disappointing news to say the least, but fortunately my LG UltraGear 27GL850-B doesn't seem to be impacted.

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Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends...

Me, Last Year: "I need to upgrade my Mac Mini to keep running Photoshop for work. I can save money by getting the smallest HDD since I never play games anymore."

Me, Last Week: "I need to de-stress. Maybe I'll take up WoW again."

Me, Yesterday: *googling 'how expand mac mini hard disk cheaply'*

When your first hard disk was a 20MB Seagate, it feels wild that with just MacOS, MS Word and Excel, Photoshop, and World of Warcraft, you've filled a 256GB HDD to the point that PShop is howling about its scratch disk size every time you open it.

"My little dude, nothing I ask you to do really requires much of a scratch disk."

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Tab Clearing...

• The etiquette of pointing out another writer's errors.


• Now there's an automated ragebait generator.


• The summit of AI Hype Mountain is approaching.

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Tab Clearing...

• Your favorite gadgets are getting way more expensive again. Thanks AI bubble!


• Cop caught on video stalking a woman by using a license plate reader.


• Waymo robotaxi delivers teen hooligans to the cops.

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Jerked by a Mechanical Turk

The latest iteration of the Neo domestic robot from startup manufacturer 1X has freakishly sensitive and mobile fingers. Very dextrous, pretty much the equivalent of human hands, capable of delicate chores like screwing in a light bulb, or... well, you know how people are.

Thing is, like most of these robots today, it's not entirely autonomous...

1X says the goal is full automation for Neo, but for now, the robot is partly teleoperated, as a Wall Street Journal video noted last year.

Some guy who works in a Singapore cubicle farm sits at the dinner table with a haunted, 1000yd stare.

“How was work today, honey?” asks his wife…

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Tab Clearing...

• Bot farms that create fake social media virality will hawk your product or service.


• The Baltic nations, facing the greatest threat from Russia and unable to count on the USA's promises anymore, are leading NATO in the rearmament race.


• Priorité à Droite (priority to the right) in France.

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Gamification!

Adult chores would be better if they were more like World of Warcraft daily quests.

If I could turn in five mown lawns or ten folded laundry baskets for a special title or a pretty hat or a magic sword, life would be way cooler.

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Uh...

Bitching about "data centers" is becoming a bipartisan thing, which I guess is okay, on balance. Still, people are doing so on social media and, uh, I hate to be the one to break it to everyone but Facebook and Blogger are not hosted on a Commodore VIC-20 running in a closet in someone's spare bedroom.

I fear we may have gone a Glonzo too far, gentlemen.

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Panopticon Update...

Meta's pervert goggles are getting face recognition to make stalking random strangers you run across in public even easier.

"Rank One, whose board includes a former CIA deputy director and a former FBI science chief, supplied face recognition to Meta for internal development of its smart glasses app."

Well, there's nothing creeptastic about that at all.

This meme remains undefeated:

Tab Clearing...

• The goons who keep an eye on the crews of the "shadow fleet" tankers that are the Russian economy's increasingly tenuous financial lifeline.


• The paid influencers who hype Polymarket to the rubes.


• Pokémon Go location data sold for use in training military drones. No wonder people are starting to hate everything about Big Tech.

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Tab Clearing...

• Big tech data mining is endangering US troops, but big tech dollars own too much of the government to do anything about it.


• Was your country at war with Japan for 102 years?


• Skyrocketing beef prices endangering famous Texas BBQ joints.

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