Blog
It’s only going to get worse
According to the Guardian, “Cheating in professional exams is still a ‘live’ issue at the UK’s biggest audit firms, the accountancy watchdog warned.”
Just wait till ChatGPT or its successor gets good.
I’m a teacher, and I’m already trying to find ways to understand how to test that makes it harder for AI models like ChatGPT to provide coherent answers. I fear I may be losing that battle.
21 December 2022 — French West Indies
Another “End of Era”: Terry Hall
His voice and the Specials were part of the sound when we were growing up.
Saddened to hear of his passing.
The story behind Gangsters is interesting and totally Terry Hall.
Enjoy.
19 December 2022 — French West Indies
End of an era: The final Boeing 747 is delivered after 50 years of production
Reduced to a cargo plane today, this was probably the most important plane ever designed, developed and put into production.
I flew on one once, maybe twice.
It was first produced before I was born and flown commercially in the year of my birth. Its production has stopped, with the last plane being shipped to Atlas Air as a cargo plane.
One thousand five hundred seventy-four planes were produced, and less than 4% were lost in accidents or incidents that put them beyond repair—a formidable record.
Of the 61 lost, only 32 resulted in a loss of life. Less than 2%. That’s a lot of safe air miles.
Sadly, however, when they did crash, it usually ended in significant losses of life. Holding the record for the highest death toll of any civil aviation accident, the highest death toll of any single aeroplane accident, and the highest death toll of a midair collision simultaneously, we’re unlikely to see another plane like it.
So long, 747.
19 December 2022 — French West Indies
Freedom
For a specific class, freedom always means freedom to do and say what they want, not what anyone else does or says.
As the owner of a private platform, Elon Musk is free to do as he pleases, but he cannot escape the consequences.
It will be interesting to see where this goes.
As of today (Sunday, 18/12/22), the platform violates two important GDPR provisions and is under warning from the EU regarding the de-platforming of journalists.
The unmasking of Elon as a far-right apologist and activist is not that surprising.
You can find me on mastodon.social.
18 December 2022 — French West Indies
The Same Old Logical Conclusion
Despite the odd way it works —and the new, sometimes, infantile terminology— Mastodon feels a lot like Twitter when I first joined in 2009, but I can’t shake the feeling that it will go south quickly as more get on the app.
It’s a small community (really stretching that definition, but hey 🤷♂️) with civil discourse and a genuine will to keep it that way.
It won’t last.
It never does.
There is only one logical conclusion with Social Media, regardless of the business model. And that result is a cesspool of the worst of humanity intertwined with pure gold.
Happy Holidays.
15 December 2022 — French West Indies
The Line I Will Not Cross
Yesterday I wrote about how I’d likely dial-down Twitter use, but not leave the platform. Then this:
Forcing me to give my location AND opt-in to personalised ads is a line that I won’t cross. I’m confident that many people will not do so either for all sorts of reasons, from personal privacy to personal (physical) safety from nefarious actors. Because location information is data, it can be breached and used to profile and locate people physically on the planet. Twitter is not immune to being hacked. Gaining access to this type of data is becoming easier, with one-stop shops for buying and selling hacked data easily accessible, which means almost anyone can do it.
I suspect this is not legal with the GDPR and could not be successfully implemented in Europe and European countries.
14 December 2022 — French West Indies
Not particularly social
According to Insider Intelligence, as reported in the Grauniad, Twitter will likely lose 30 million users over the next two years. To put that into perspective, Twitter’s Q2 2022 DAUs were in the region of 238 million.
Ad revenue is in free-fall to boot.
I, for one, am looking at alternatives, and the recent uptick in posting is partly to do with that.
For the moment, I’m still on Twitter, but I’m no longer engaging, not that I did much previously. I only use an automated bot to post updates on this blog, something that will eventually get turned off I suspect.
I’m on Mastodon, and besides the really quirky way it works, I’m beginning to see more activity from the topics and people I tend to enjoy reading. I anxiously await a decent client and an API for WordPress and other systems to post automatically.
13 December 2022 — French West Indies
Crypto or Criminal?
It is getting harder to tell whether Crypto actually means “Criminal”.
Take this Reuters article, for instance (emphasis mine):
The charges under investigation are unlicensed money transmission, money laundering conspiracy and criminal sanctions violations, the four people said. No final charging decisions have been made, though prosecutors consider Zhao and some other executives to be subjects of the investigation, one source familiar with the situation said.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Proof of Work Waste blockchains should be considered criminal when considering the substantial environmental impacts. But hey, as long as you have your “unique” profile pic or your magic beans, who cares, right?
12 December 2022 — French West Indies
Experiences and Timelines
I had an odd experience last night. I say odd, but that’s making it sound more dramatic than it is on closer inspection.
I’m an ex-pat and have been for approximately two-thirds of my life. Some years ago, I passed the threshold of living outside my birthplace for more years than in. Some years ago, I passed the threshold of living more years with my mother no longer alive than alive. These are arbitrary datelines, but they have meaning and significance when you are the person directly living them.
Last night, I passed one of those arbitrary thresholds. Through circumstances irrelevant —a birthday party— I caught up with someone I hadn’t seen in more than 15 years. I’ve now crossed the threshold of having acquaintances from long ago in my relatively new life in the French West Indies.
If this had happened whilst I was still in the UK, meeting someone from ten or twenty years ago, I wouldn’t remark upon it. But it happened here, in my adopted home of over 18 years, making life’s timeline more intriguing to me.
11 December 2022 — French West Indies
Hold my beer
The world: “Surely it can’t get much worse than this now?”
SBF: “Hold my beer…”
https://www.axios.com/2022/12/09/bankman-fried-funded-crypto-news-site-block
10 December 2022 — French West Indies