El Pais: Cheating at Brown University. What? US Students Cut Corners?
July 8, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I have a number of newsfeeds allegedly informing me of important “real news.” As you know, I believe everything I read on the Internet. When an item does not appear in one of my newsfeeds, I cannot read it; therefore, I cannot believe. What happens when i stumble by accident across a news story from the land of late dining, I assume I have to treat it as information I should evaluate.
“Professor Denounces Mass AI Fraud on an Exam at Brown University: ‘Academic Integrity Is at Risk’” includes some interesting assertions. Before I comment on Harvard faculty fabricating ethics data in an ethic paper under the name of the head of the ethics department or the president of Stanford University doing the Photoshop thing to spiff up data — I want to point out that corruption, short cuts, criminal-like behavior seems to be flourishing in the US. (The Spanish original is available from El Pais.)
Now what’s this paper from a country that delivered Don Quixote and his penchant for jousting with windmills have to say?
Consider this passage:
Professor Roberto Serrano, who is the Harrison S. Kravis University Professor of Economics at Brown University… has conclusive evidence that at least 50 students cheated on the March midterm exam, making it the biggest known scandal at Brown and in the entire Ivy League…
Hey, hey, hey. Just 50 students?
The article reports:
When he reported the case to high-ranking officials at Brown, he got a cold reaction. The response from the president, he said, was absolute silence. The dean did not comment either until Serrano took the case before the Academic Code Committee. At that point, he received a note acknowledging that what had happened in his classroom was “a wake-up call.”
Well, let’s just hit the snooze alarm, roll, and go back to dreams of academic integrity. Quite factoid: Dr. Serrano is blind. My hunch is that the academics at Brown University have what William James called a “certain blindness.” These brilliant, open-minded people choose not to see what smart software is doing to create stupid people.
Furthermore, the “cold reaction” illustrates the lack of backbone certain administrators manifest when decisive, ethical action is required. Dr. Serrano took action. The final exam was old fashioned. The average score of the in-class test was a revealing 48 score out of a 100. When I was a AI-free stupid student, a 48 was an F at the one horse high school I attended in the US Rust Belt.
The write up from a country that kills bulls for fun includes this statement from the Professor:
“The empirical evidence of fraud is overwhelming,” says the professor, who has decided to make changes for the coming academic year.
Several observations:
- Universities need to focus on students learning, not on using smart software to demonstrate how good software is at fooling professors. Please, keep in mind that some professors use smart software and output non reproducible research and pretend to be ethical.
- Students’ examinations should be old fashioned: Blue books in front of proctors and oral quizzing by a professor and possibly his or her graduate assistant. Too hard. Not my problem. It is the country’s problem. Students who cannot pass can sign up for one of Google’s blue collar labor training programs.
- Faculty and administrators have to establish standards of academic conduct and enforce them. I know that a student’s family can donate several million to an institution. That’s okay. But if the kid cheats punishment is warranted. Figure it out because discipline is the administration’s job.
- Why did I learn about this disgraceful activity at Brown via a newspaper from Spain? Yeah, I know. No news is really good news for some unethical behavior.
Net net: Am I qualified to criticize Brown University? Of course not. But I am a dinobaby, and I recognize a life-threatening cancer when it erupts.
Stephen E. Arnold, July 6, 2026
Tech Bros Rat on Other Tech Bros and Set National Policy. Absolutely
June 25, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I have seen the name “David Sachs” in the context of affluent Silicon Valley luminaries. He has or is working in an important job in the US government. I scanned a “tweet” or is it a “musk” on X.com. The lingo in the message is not dinobaby speak, so I have to interpret it the best I can.
The main idea is that an outfit named Anthropic, the marketing juggernaut that can make paradoxes as familiar as the smell of eggs on the grill in the Palo Alto Creamery. Anthropic is into “safe” and it releases Mythos to make software unsafe and then releases a public version that is sort of safe. The folks who care about unsafe are the accelerationists and the bad actors. Most people don’t care, understand, or want to know. But BAITs (big AI tech firms) and BAIT surfers care and care a lot.
Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
This Anthropic stuff is disrupting the old stand by BAIT outfits.
What’s the fix? I think a hint of how the AI world works is revealed in the cited tweet or musk. I quote the post:
Fable is Mythos with guardrails. But if those guardrails fail, then you’ve exposed Mythos and its advanced cyber capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them. (Keep in mind that Anthropic itself widely promoted the idea that Mythos was a cyberweapon and needed to be regulated as such. They asked for government regulation of Mythos and championed the guardrails on Fable. If there is a vulnerability — big or small — it is Anthropic’s responsibility to patch.)
I think this means that Anthropic is not behaving like a responsible BAIT. Therefore, Anthropic shape or face the wrath of the other BAITers.
The tweet or musk continues:
A highly credible trusted partner of both Anthropic and the USG who was testing Fable came forward with a jailbreak of those guardrails. The Admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or de-deploy the model. Dario refused.
One of my team told me that the “trusted partner” was Amazon, an outfit I once described as the Bezos bulldozer. (Hey, sorry about those mom and pop businesses. Vrrooom vrrooom.) I know there are not too many BAIT outfits operating in the US so I am probably incorrect. Plug in your own estimable outfit.
The consequence of the “alert” was, and I quote:
In reaction, the Admin issued the export control. The Admin did this reluctantly. It’s been very surprised that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to cooperate with a reasonable safety request (ie fixing the jailbreak issue). Anthropic’s reaction is very much at odds with their branding and ethos as a safe AI research community.
“Admin” means, I think, the US Federal government. I think Anthropic was in hot water over some confusion about the normal behavior of senior government professionals. Many of these people assume that “we pay, vendors obey.” Anthropic did not get the message about this standard operating procedure.
Several observations manifested themselves on my writing pad as I was thinking about this tweet or musk. As a dinobaby, I shall exercise my prerogative and insert them in this blog;
- US government policy can result when a single BAIT tattles on another BAIT. Both BAITs have business entanglements. (See, for instance, “Anthropic and Amazon Expand Collaboration for Up to 5 Gigawatts of New Compute.”) I wonder what the phrase “trusted partner” means to these outfits?
- Anthropic seems to be like the fur on a Rhodesian ridgeback. The BAIT fur is tidy, fluid, and goes with the grain. The fur on the Anthropic dog goes in a different direction. The nail that sticks up gets pounded down. Does fur work that way in BAIT Land?
- Some of the Mythos functionality can be replicated in other BAIT systems. One of my team suggested that Qwen has some utility in juicing the activities of bad actors. I think this means that a Kentucky Derby winner’s barn has burned as the valuable steed has headed off to another farm on the Bourbon Trail.
Net net: If the tweet or the musk are accurate, policy is indeed set by what some individuals call :
- Squealing
- Dry snitching
- Grassing
- Tattling
- Ratting
- Spilling tea (organic green, of course).
Stephen E Arnold, June 25, 2026
Google Management Faces Push Back
June 25, 2026
People are complaining that Google has lost its morality in the Teach Radar article: “ ‘Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass’: Google Director Jumps Ship Over Company’s New AI Contracts With DoD, Pentagon.” René Mayrhofer jumped the Google ship, because it was “unavoidable.” He declared that Google had lost its moral compass in a letter highlighted in the article’s title. He outlined that Google is one of many AI companies that have authorized the Department of Defense to use AI models. The DOD has the right to use AI models for what it deems “any lawful purpose”.
He continued in his letter:
“ ‘Worse,’ the letter continued, ‘the current Google management is now signing deals with the US Ministry of War—where ‘any lawful purpose’ by the current US government has already been repeatedly demonstrated to be in violation of international laws.’
Other Google employees were upset about the new contracts and penned an open letter for Sundar Pichai to reject the “unethical and dangerous” decision to use Google’s AI models for classified purposes. Google decided to allow the DOD and Pentagon access their AI models to avoid what happened to Anthropic.
Google once promised to do no evil, but
“In 2018, Google published a set of AI principles for the responsible development and use of the technology. Included within them was a clause that the company would not use AI to develop weapons or surveillance tools. The principles were removed from Google’s guidelines in February 2025. Google’s previous motto, “Don’t be evil”, was steadily phased out between 2015 and 2018.”
Perhaps this is a situation where evil is in the eye of the beholder? Or maybe these circumstances are truly downright evil? Who is to tell? We have a job tip: The prince of Monaco funds a dolphin charity. Maybe a Xoogler can do AI for the prince and the dolphins?
Whitney Grace, June 25, 2026
Word of the Day: Techlordism. Yes! Winner!
May 8, 2026
How many ideologies are we dealing with today? More than we should need to from both sides of the political and cultural spectrum. They’re redundant, absurd, and appalling to the majority moderate population in the country.?I will say one side is louder than the other, but I won’t say which to avoid controversy.?What stinks is that The Point says there’s a new ideology we’ll now have to deal with straight from Big Tech: “Palantir And The New Order: Neoliberalism Is Dead. Say Hello To Techlordism.”
The editorial starts by saying neoliberalism was the “undisputed creed” of the global elite.?Neoliberalism arose from the ashes of the New Deal and it spread the gospel that Wall Street was infallible.?Now there’s a new modus operandi called techlordism straight from Silicon Valley and the rich people of the world.?It derives from cloud capital, meaning networked algorithm machines that give Big Tech lots of power to modify behaviors.?It sounds like this also includes screen time for the kiddies along with AI chatbots.
Here’s the plan for techlordism:
“Consider the three fronts. First, techlordism must legitimise replacing fallible, recalcitrant humans with cloud capital in every realm, from medicine to poetry translation to raising children. Why? Because the deeper the penetration, the greater the cloud rents for the technofeudal class. Second, it must legitimise colonising the state—privatising public data, hooking systems into the tax office and the Pentagon, as Elon Musk’s DOGE and Peter Thiel’s Palantir have already done. Third, it must legitimise colonising Wall Street, merging cloud capital with financial services to create unfettered cloud finance outside traditional markets.”
Techlordism will replace the now old-fashioned transhumanism in a way similar to neoliberalism zapped classical liberalism. The current ideals related to the human economy are replaced with pseudo-AI psyches that control everything and take over human thinking. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? The write up states:
“…ubiquitous surveillance, automated targeting on the battlefields, macroeconomic instability (as cloud rents destroy aggregate demand), the end of democracy as even an ideal (cheered by Peter Thiel), and the death of universities replaced by personalised AI augmentations.”
And what outfit is linked with these ideas? The write up leaves me with the impression that Palantir Technologies is the pointy end of the new world order spear. Erasing privacy and using fear as a force leads to this, according to the article:05
“The idea that it is wrong to judge someone by the colour of their skin, ethnicity, or religion must be jettisoned. Blacks, Muslims, most Asians, and of course, women, are inferior untermensch. Western men have for half a century resisted putting these subhumans in their place in the name of inclusivity. It was a mistake. Subhumans must never be allowed in, except as servants or sex service providers—at least until Palantir and Tesla can perfect our androids, in which case they will become surplus to requirements.”
I quite like the phrase “surplus to requirements.” If you ask, “Whose requirements?”, the answer just may be some of those big AI tech (BAIT) pros. These folks definitely know what they want and have the confidence to believe that their views are the correct ones. Sounds like a Sillycon Valley plan to me.
Whitney Grace, May 8, 2026
Tech Bros Are Not Stoopid. You Are.
April 29, 2026
The Nation posted“The Anti-Intellectualism of the Silicon Valley Elite.” Let’s think about that for a moment. Do the technology elite, the leaders in Silicon Valley, and the future of mankind lack intellect?
Look at these notable contributions: Data centers that suck power and scare animals. Social media. 24×7 surveillance. Lots of money for them and their fellow travelers.
Outstanding achievements.
The Nation’s article states:
“As the historian Richard Hofstadter noted, a fierce anti-intellectual spirit has long animated American culture, but it has typically targeted the knowledge elite from below. What’s striking about today’s brand of anti-intellectualism is that it infuses the American knowledge elite; it stems from the bedrock conviction among tech oligarchs that they have mastered everything and have nothing left to learn. In this cloistered vision of tech-driven learning, they believe that deep intellectual work—the kind you do when you author a complex piece of music, for example—has little or no inherent value. Their disdain for it has fueled their attacks on higher education, the humanities, and learning for its own sake, which they believe has no purpose beyond its inevitable digitization and monetization.”
The write up points out that some tech elites think learning for learning’s sake does not deliver a payoff. High school and college education are not useful unless a wizard is a late bloomer can join one of the BAIT (big AI technology) companies.
What else does the article reveal:
“As ardent monopolists, they’ve managed to believe they’ve cornered the market on critical thinking. Everyone else needn’t be troubled by the rigors of learning, since they exist solely to serve as drones in the tech regimes of the future.”
Does this sound in line with “all men are created equal”? My view is that Silicon Valley bros are indeed elitists, oligarchs, champagne socialists, idiots with money, toxic masculinity, and gangsters made of zeros and ones.
Yep, the tech bros want females to be “trad wives” and pay attention to the kiddies. The tech bros do the man concerns. Lesser entities support the new construct. And what about emotional intelligence of empathy and compassion?
Hey, just ask Gemini, OpenAI, or another of the AI utilities. The outputs will set you on the right path.
Whitney Grace, April 29, 2026
Does Google Believe That Addiction Is Good?
April 2, 2026
![green-dino_thumb_thumb[3]_thumb](https://www.arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/green-dino_thumb_thumb3_thumb-1.gif "green-dino_thumb_thumb[3]_thumb")
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I believe everything I read on the Internet. You may be different in your views. I noted this story in the New York Post: “YouTube Staffers Deliberately Aimed for Viewer Addiction, Killed Safety Tools for Kids: Court Docs.” As you may now, my team and I absolutely love the Google. Over the years, I have had a few trivial interactions with Googlers. When Google had just morphed from Backrub into the enhanced version of Clever and basic Web indexing, Larry Page and I disagreed about the importance of truncation, both forward and back. (Note: This was an issue important in a major US government procurement in Year 2000 to 2001.) I then chased down a senior Googler to tell that estimable individual that I was using the neologism “Googzilla” in my second monograph about Google’s strategy and technology. That person was delighted. Since that interaction, I happily talk about Googzilla. I even used some art that resembled a semi-happy Japanese movie monster as cover art. Over the years, Googlers and I have have interacted with the estimable firm communicating the fact that I was not ready to marry Googzilla and my keeping my affection in check.
A meeting in which the methods for creating habitual viewing of videos is discussed. The member of leadership goes directly to the point. That outstanding business thinker wants reassurance that addiction will come about. Let the rest of the group argue about other topics. Thanks, Venice.ai. Once again I did not bump into your guard rails. Aren’t I the good little LLM user?
This story in the New York Post, therefore, strikes me as having a couple of kernels of truth in it. Let’s see what is offered by the cited story, shall we?
I noted this passage:
YouTube employees admitted that their goal was “viewer addiction” and killed proposed safety tools for kids because they wouldn’t provide a sufficient “ROI” — financial lingo for “return on investment,” according to bombshell court documents reviewed by The Post.
I don’t think the word “bombshell” is necessary. The court stenographers and the folks who slap on Bates’ numbers just process that which flows to them. But “bombshell” is colorful. The key point, from my point of view, is that Googlers took specific action to create “viewer addiction.” From my admittedly limited information about the Google, I think the reason the addiction path looked appealing boils down to the incentive plans and the value of generating revenue. Google is definitely more into money than worrying about delivering on point, relevant, and timely search results my own experience has suggested.
The write up includes this snappy statement:
…The “goal is not viewership, it’s viewer addiction.”
I am not surprised. YouTube is social with the follower thing and the comments. The recommendations, as flawed as they are for me, seem to attract the attention of those who manifest quite specific interests in topics against which advertisers messages can display. I get recommendations for French instrumental music, the history of mayonnaise, and a 10th grade mathematics examination. Definitely relevant to someone, just not this dinobaby. Let’s see. I was in the 10th grade in 1958 and 1959. That works out to about 70 years ago. News flash: When confronted with the weird math my great uncle who worked with Kolmogorov, I plug the problem into ChatGPT. Works for me!
Here’s another statement from the article:
During the state trial last month, YouTube executive Cristos Goodrow testified that the app was “not designed to maximize time” and the company doesn’t “want anybody to be addicted.” This summer’s federal case in Oakland, however, includes an internal YouTube presentation from April 2018 recounting study findings that “excessive video watching is related to addiction” and that it results in a “’quick fix’ of dopamine.’”
Could this be a prevarication or a fundamental lack of knowledge about the whiz kid Googlers were doing when not playing Foosball? It would not surprise me if a member of Google leadership did not know what was happening. Management processes seems to be idiosyncratic and inconsistent. Once the estimable firm could not pay me because no one in accounting knew how to output a check. How’s that for rock solid business process fundamentals? I was impressed. Not even the failing start ups for whom I did work were able to issue checks until the VCs pulled the plug.
The highlight of the article is an Google slide. It sure looks like the Google slides I saw from the period between 2004 and later. Here’s the one from the write up. Obviously it is the work product of a person named Howard (name means nothin to me) and Gunamtillake (nope, I am drawing a blank for this person too). The image is the property of the Google and probably now the courts and the New York Post.
The headline for this slide is “Excessive video watching is related to addiction.” Who knew? Obviously, the Google.
I urge you to read the full article. It contains some nifty phrases like “big tobacco moment” and Google’s surveillance business” and “kids as pawns.” But this is, in my opinion, the juiciest passage in the cited article:
Multiple federal judges have ripped Google for destroying chat logs that should have been preserved, including US District Judge James Donato, who furiously condemned the practice during a 2023 antitrust case as “a frontal assault on the fair administration of justice” that “undercuts due process.”
A curious person might ask, “Now what?” Answer: Nothing.
Google has a vision. Googzilla is very focused.
Net net: Without meaningful regulation and substantial penalties for the individuals who cause the laws, rules, and regulations to be ignored, BAIT (big AI tech) companies will just keep moving on down the road to the pot of gold at the end of their digital rainbows. Can the damaged be remediated? Answer: Not easily. Will BAIT outfits operate in a different way? Answer: As I write this, it is April Fool’s Day. Surely you are joking.
PS. Act fast to access the information available from CourtListener.com. Some content, like my Telegram essays, have a habit of going to the digital graveyard without warning and quickly. Here’s the full link. Yep, my team and I absolutely think Googzilla is the cutest company on the planet.
Stephen E Arnold, April 2, 2026
Why Worry? Be Happy. Big Tech Is
March 24, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
With the growing dependency on land and water, AI data centers are popping up quicker than nuclear power plants post World War II. Nana Nwachukwu published a piece on The Conversation with a startling comparison: “We Are In A Digital Version Of The Enclosures – Like The Landowners, Big Tech Has Power Without Responsibility.”
Thanks, Venice.ai. Do much user testing with your new interface? I understand. Speed is better than user satisfaction.
If you’re unfamiliar with British history, during the 18th-19th centuries the English parliament passed over 4,000 enclosure acts that stole public land from peasants. The land was given to aristocrats and the church. The same thing is happening says economic historian Karl Polanyi, because resources that once sustained the community are now being targeted by bigwigs. The resources are transformed into commodities and force people to depend on markets they don’t control.
With those lands came certain responsibilities, but the new landowners rejected them.
Nwachukwu noticed something similar with the lack of culpability with Big Tech. One example is Grok was used to generate images of scantily clad women. She also mentions this:
“As a former Trusted Facebook Partner, I am familiar with how content moderation used to work. Platforms such as Meta (when it was Facebook) ran programs where activists and civil society organizations could flag harmful content directly to human reviewers for outright removal or labelling. While these arrangements were imperfect, they were a form of negotiated governance where communities retained input into what stayed and what was taken away.
A year ago, Meta announced it was ending its fact-checking program and moving to “community notes” modeled on X’s systems. Users now moderate each other. Meta framed this as a trade-off for free expression. I regard it as a withdrawal of responsibility while retaining control.”
Big Tech seems to touch everything some people do. The power of these firms seems to be regulated. The EU investigates, fines, and then repeats without causing meaningful change to the behavior of certain US companies. Checks and balances are not working or not in place. How is that freedom of scope working out? Yeah, great.
Whitney Grace, March 24, 2026
Has Paragon Knocked NSO Group Off the Leader Board for Great Marketing?
March 2, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
NSO Group has been a good example of what happens when PR and marketing is viewed as no big deal. These two soft functions are definitely significant in certain contexts; for example, public awareness of mobile security.
I am not sure if the information in “The Israeli Spyware Firm That Accidentally Just Exposed Itself” is 100 percent accurate. I have not seen many references to this article published on February 12, 2026. I am writing this short blog post on February 23, 2026. It is possible that the write up simply is not that significant in the midst of some kinetic outfits near Iran and the constant refrains of Epstein Epstein Epstein.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
What does the write up say as actual factual.
Here’s the main point of the story from Ahmedeldin’s report:
Israeli surveillance company Paragon Solutions briefly exposed its own spyware dashboard on LinkedIn, revealing the hidden architecture of a billion-dollar surveillance empire built on the backs of journalists, activists, and ordinary people.
Yep, good old LinkedIn. I am not 100 percent certain why spyware, intelware, and policeware vendors [a] have a LinkedIn page or [b] why those working as contractors or employees at these *ware firm allow individuals to put any information on any social media about what is secretive products for specialized applications. The fact that LinkedIn was a conduit strikes me as a big time mistake in governance. I personally have not felt comfortable with *ware outfits pitching their “products” after egregious security breaches have taken place when these types of systems were up and running. The problems range from commercial nightmares like SolarWind to nation state issues like the October attack on festival goers in Israel. Yep, governance is more important than marketing or over confidence.
Here’s a secondary point in the write up:
Once spyware achieves device-level persistence, access pathways inevitably extend beyond the narrow confines vendors claim and describe. The technical reality is clear: if you can compromise a device, you can access everything…. The $900 million valuation of Paragon Solutions reveals the brutal economics of surveillance capitalism.
The article wants to make darned sure the reader knows that governments cannot be trusted with sophisticated *ware. In the context of certain nation states going all in for smart software from third parties, the idea is planted that bad things will happen. News flash: Bad things have already happened and regulators and law makers have not been able to do much about these “leaky” systems.
What’s the fix? What’s the reader supposed to do?
Here’s the conclusion to the write up:
This is a crisis of global proportion, a threat to human dignity that crosses borders and transcends politics. The question is no longer whether we should be concerned about surveillance. The question is whether we will allow this system to continue unchecked, whether we will demand accountability from those who profit from our vulnerability, whether we will reclaim our digital lives from those who would turn our devices into tools of control.
Where’s the fix? Where’s the citizen pressure on elected officials? Where’s the external repair person for the damaged moral compasses in the leadership of certain big tech companies?
I hear crickets.
Stephen E Arnold, March 2, 2026
Apple: Waking Up Is Hard to Do
October 16, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I read a letter. I think this letter or at least parts of it were written by a human. These days it can be tough to know. The letter appeared in “Wiley Hodges’s Open Letter to Tim Cook Regarding ICEBlock.” Mr. Hodge, according to the cited article, retired from Apple, the computer and services company in 2022.
The letter expresses some concern that Apple removed an app from the Apple online store. Here’s a snippet from the “letter”:
Apple and you are better than this. You represent the best of what America can be, and I pray that you will find it in your heart to continue to demonstrate that you are true to the values you have so long and so admirably espoused.
It does seem to me that Apple is a flexible outfit. The purpose of the letter is unknown to me. On the surface, it is a single former employee’s expression of unhappiness at how “leadership” leads and deciders “decide.” However, below the surface it a signal that some people thought a for profit, pragmatic, and somewhat frisky Fancy Dancing organization was like Snow White, the Easter bunny, or the Lone Ranger.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
Sorry. That’s not how big companies work or many little companies for that matter. Most organizations do what they can to balance a PR image with what the company actually does. Examples range from arguing via sleek and definitely expensive lawyers that what they do does not violate laws. Also, companies work out deals. Some of these involve doing things to fit in to the culture of a particular company. I have watched money change hands when registering a vehicle in the government office in Sao Paulo. These things happen because they are practical. Apple, for example, has an interesting relationship with a certain large country in Asia. I wonder if there is a bit of the old soft shoe going on in that region of the world.
These are, however, not the main point of this blog post. There cited article contains this statement:
Hodges, earlier in his letter, makes reference to Apple’s 2016 standoff with the FBI over a locked iPhone belonging to the mass shooter in San Bernardino, California. The FBI and Justice Department pressured Apple to create a version of iOS that would allow them to backdoor the iPhone’s passcode lock. Apple adamantly refused.
Okay, the time delta is nine years. What has changed? Obviously social media, the economic situation, the relationship among entities, and a number of lawsuits. These are the touchpoints of our milieu. One has to surf on the waves of change and the ripples and waves of datasphere.
But I want to highlight several points about my reaction to the this blog post containing the Hodge’s letter:
- Some people are realizing that their hoped-for vision of Apple, a publicly traded company, is not the here-and-now Apple. The fairy land of a company that cares is pretty much like any other big technology outfit. Shocker.
- Apple is not much different today than it was nine years ago. Plucking an example which positioned the Cupertino kids as standing up for an ideal does not line up with the reality. Technology existed then to gain access to digital devices. Believing the a company’s PR reflected reality illustrates how crazy some perceptions are. Saying is not doing.
- Apple remains to me one of the most invasive of the technology giants. The constant logging in, the weirdness of forcing people to have data in the iCloud when those people do not know the data are there or want it there for that matter, the oddball notifications that tell a user that an “new device” is connected when the iPad has been used for years, and a few other quirks like hiding files are examples of the reality of the company.
News flash: Apple is like the other Silicon Valley-type big technology companies. These firms have a game plan of do it and apologize. Push forward. I find it amusing that adults are experiencing the same grief as a sixth grader with a crush on the really cute person in home room. Yep, waking up is hard to do. Stop hitting the snooze alarm and join the real world.
Net net: The essay is a hoot. Here is an adult realizing that there is no Santa with apparently tireless animals and dwarfs at the North Pole. The cited article contains what appears to be another expression of annoyance, anger, and sorrow that Apple is not what the humans thought it was. Apple is Apple, and the only change agent able to modify the company is money and/or fear, a good combo in my experience.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2025
AI Can Be a Critic Unless Biases Are Hard Wired
June 26, 2025
The Internet has made it harder to find certain music, films, and art. It was supposed to be quite the opposite, and it was for a time. But social media and its algorithms have made a mess of things. So asserts the blogger at Tadaima in, “If Nothing Is Curated, How Do We Find Things?” The write up reports:
“As convenient as social media is, it scatters the information like bread being fed to ducks. You then have to hunt around for the info or hope the magical algorithm gods read your mind and guide the information to you. I always felt like social media creates an illusion of convenience. Think of how much time it takes to stay on top of things. To stay on top of music or film. Think of how much time it takes these days, how much hunting you have to do. Although technology has made information vast and reachable, it’s also turned the entire internet into a sludge pile.”
Slogging through sludge does take the fun out of discovery. The author fondly recalls the days when a few hours a week checking out MTV and Ebert and Roeper, flipping through magazines, and listening to the radio was enough to keep them on top of pop culture. For a while, curation websites deftly took over that function. Now, though, those have been replaced by social-media algorithms that serve to rake in ad revenue, not to share tunes and movies that feed the soul. The write up observes:
“Criticism is dead (with Fantano being the one exception) and Gen Alpha doesn’t know how to find music through anything but TikTok. Relying on algorithms puts way too much power in technology’s hands. And algorithms can only predict content that you’ve seen before. It’ll never surprise you with something different. It keeps you in a little bubble. Oh, you like shoegaze? Well, that’s all the algorithm is going to give you until you intentionally start listening to something else.”
Yep. So the question remains: How do we find things? Big tech would tell us to let AI do it, of course, but that misses the point. The post’s writer has settled for a somewhat haphazard, unsatisfying method of lists and notes. They sadly posit this state of affairs might be the “new normal.” This type of findability “normal” may be very bad in some ways.
Cynthia Murrell, June 26, 2025
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
