Category: Technology

I have said, on occasion, a couple of things which I meant to be a little speculative:

• It’s not that your phone is listening to you; it’s that everyone’s phone and gadget are listening to you
• Companies are going to break privacy laws, covenants, and mores and are willing to pay a little fine if they get caught

Pixy’s Daily Tech News for May 11, 2025 links to this Please Donate story: Google will pay Texas $1.4B to settle claims the company collected users’ data without permission:

The agreement settles several claims Texas made against the search giant in 2022 related to geolocation, incognito searches and biometric data. The state argued Google was “unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ private data.”

Paxton claimed, for example, that Google collected millions of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of face geometry, through such products and services as Google Photos and Google Assistant.

Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the agreement settles an array of “old claims,” some of which relate to product policies the company has already changed.

Do you think they were just looking at those voiceprints, or do you think they were globally matching voices with spoken text from any recording or open mic everywhere? If not, why not?

A Chatbot Has Passed a Critical Test For Human-Like Intelligence. Now What?:

There have been several headlines over the past week about an AI chatbot officially passing the Turing test.

These news reports are based on a recent preprint study by two researchers at the University of California San Diego in which four large language models (LLMs) were put through the Turing test. One model – OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 – was deemed indistinguishable from a human more than 70% of the time.

Unfortunately, I have had the opportunity to spend some time on the “live chat” on both the sales side and technical help side of a couple of major tech companies (HP and GoDaddy). I am pretty sure that I was connected to a live person in both instances, but in both cases, quite likely someone whose second (or third or fourth) language was English working from a tightly-written script with long pauses between my “prompts” and their responses.

One suspects that the fact that you cannot tell whether you’re talking to a human might not be just because the computers have gotten better–it might be because the “chats” we have (and, let’s be honest, all communications with large companies especially tech companies) have gotten worse.

(Link via Vodkapundit on Instapundit.)

Commodore 64 gets a true Full-HD HDMI plus stereo sound daughterboard

Commodore 64 devotee Side Projects Lab has released a video teaser showcasing a “true Full-HD HDMI” adaptor for the iconic 8-bit home computer. Apparently, the development of this slick HDMI solution with stereo sound routed through the HDMI cable has taken a full year. If you are interested in the new HD-64, there is still some wait time though, as the first production batch won’t be ready until later in Q1.

Since reading 50 Years of Text Games, I’ve had the urge to make some room on my desk for the last CRT television we have here and a Commodore. Maybe I can wait a little while longer and hook one up to the alternate monitor that’s already here.

If there’s no soldering involved.

(Link via Pixy @ Ace of Spades HQ.)

Commodore 64 claimed to outperform IBM’s quantum system — sarcastic researchers say 1 MHz computer is faster, more efficient, and decently accurate:

A paper released during the SIGBOVIK 2024 conference details an attempt to simulate the IBM ‘quantum utility’ experiment on a Commodore 64. The idea might seem preposterous – pitting a 40-year-old home computer against a device powered by 127-Qubit ‘Eagle’ quantum processing unit (QPU). However, the anonymous researcher(s) conclude that the ‘Qommodore 64’ performed faster, and more efficiently, than IBM’s pride-and-joy, while being “decently accurate on this problem.”

Well, yeah. The article goes into detail how they did it using under 64K of memory.

Unfortunately, it’s only hobbyists and, presumably, super low-end embedded device programmers, maybe, who continue to squeeze the maximum out of their code.

Everyone else in 2024 is just scaffolding stuff up with thousands of dependencies and hundreds of MB of code they never look at or seek to understand.

Oh, and as a reminder, I have at least five Commodore 64s. And after that enumeration in 2005, I added Triticale’s Commodore 128. The turn of the 21st century proved to be a high water mark for finding those old computer systems in the wild as people emptied their closets of fifteen and twenty year old technology. Since we moved to Nogglestead, I’ve only bought a pair of TI 99s at a church garage sale. You don’t even see them, really, at antique malls, although I have seen a TRS-80 at Relics.

Maybe I really do have all of them now.

(Link via Tech Shepherd.)

I’ve recently (well, four years ago) posted The Myth of the Modern Hard Switch about on/off switches that looked to be actual physical switches but really just prompted software.

Well, it’s worse with purely software switches, of course.

As you might know, I have used a wide variety of computer-based video conferencing bits of software, and they all have a mute button that purportedly turns off your microphone.

Oh, but no.

Google Meets serves up this helpful reminder:

A helpful reminder that, although you have the mute button on, Google is still listening. It’s just not sharing the audio with the other people.

Note that this displays after I have given Google permission to use the Web camera, and the green light is on. But still. Mute does not mean your audio is off.

C’mon, man, I can’t be the only one who noticed this, but Google Meet displays you a mirror image of yourself, as though you were looking in the mirror:

While Zoom and most other video call/recording systems show you a true image, which is what you look like to someone else:

I imagine that Google does that because one tends to think one looks weird or off when viewing one’s self true instead of what one sees in the mirror all the time.

Maybe I’m the only one to notice, since I have had to use so many of the meeting technologies in short order–sometimes two or more per contact (I had a Zoom meeting cut off at the free limit, so we had to switch to Google Meets to finish up recently).

It’s also why you tend to think you look different in photographs. Perhaps Google is trying to help avert video meeting fatigue/stress by making ourselves look more familiar.

Twitter must be having problems with money metrics again, since they’ve ramped up sending emails to all my testing accounts trying to get me to log in and provide them with free content again. “Brian, don’t be selfish! Pour words into our interface so we can make money off of your thoughts! “Brian, did you see that great tweet?”–never minding that most tweets these days are not, in fact, great, and the medium is best for one-liners, not deep thoughts, but our modern tastemakers have only enough depth to their thinking to fill maybe, what is it now, 280 characters?

Also, I get stuff like this:

“Sonu Sood evaded taxes over Rs. 20 crore: I-T department” Moment

I am not sure what most of those words and abbreviations mean. Or if they’re real words and abbreviations at all.

Does this mean that I am old? Or that Twitter thinks I’m Indian? Embrace the healing power of And.

And you can rest assured, gentle reader, I did not click through to share in the Moment.

Here’s Why Firefox is Seeing a Continuous Decline for Last 12 Years.

Not found in the litany? The words Brandon Eich. Which is when I quit using Firefox as my default browser.

(Link via Pixy’s Daily Tech News post at Ace of Spades HQ.)

Full-Sized Commodore 64 Remake ‘The C64’ Now Available for Preorder.

After all, I already have five:

as well as a Commodore 128 that I received from blogger Triticale, the rye and wheat guy, may he rest in peace:

So, actually….

I might need one as I haven’t lit one of them up in a couple of years, and as modern televisions and monitors make the video connections tricky, and as old 1541 floppy drives are notoriously dicey….

(Link via Vodkapundit on Instapundit.)

I’ve noticed a couple of times over the last couple of weeks that, when I order something, the items remain in the cart. So if I was not paying attention, I might order the same thing again.

Such as these four CDs that I ordered the other day:

You see, I already ordered them.

Today, I decided to order a guitar strap online since I have two guitars in my office, but only one strap, and I forgot to pick one up when taking a baritone into the local music shop for repair.

So I added one to my cart, and:

As I said, I’ve seen this behavior before, and I’ve been fortunate enough to not mistakenly order the same thing twice, but come on. I’m just cynical enough to think, “Bugs resulting in more revenue get addressed last” even though I don’t quite believe it. Not quite.

Like Ann Althouse, I’ve been seeing prompts by Facebook to join various groups on its site.

Which is weird; I am on a couple for my martial arts school and run one (The Legion of Metal Friends). So it’s not as though I’m unfamiliar with the concept. However, I’m not actively looking to increase my engagement with the intrusive behemoth at this time, thanks.

Which is weird, because Facebook recently killed a large group:

Recently, Facebook deleted without warning or explanation the Banting7DayMealPlan user group. The group has 1.65 million users who post testimonials and other information regarding the efficacy of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. While the site has subsequently been reinstated (also without warning or explanation), Facebook’s action should give any serious person reason to pause, especially those of us engaged in activities contrary to prevailing opinion.

So I’ve fixed one of their Group come-ons for them:

Of course, I’m just incensed that Facebook reminded me of my recent anniversary a day late. Thanks, Facebook. I can make that mistake on my own.