nishiko

[nishiko @nishiko]

Reuters Climate Monitor Data Dashboard

You can drill down to your own location for a very enlightening comparison to now vs the average for 1961 to 1990.
https://t.co/ipvnlwrmao

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Vice President of Apple Intelligence, and this week I stood on a stage and introduced you to Apple Foundation Models, which I named, which is the part I built.

The models are Gemini. They are Google's. We did not make them. I want to be precise, because precision is a value here: we made the words "Apple Foundation Models," and we made them in San Francisco, on a Mac.

Here is what I actually shipped. A system orchestrator. It is a layer that sits on top of Google's brain and decides which of Google's thoughts to show you, and in which app, and with which font. I orchestrate. The intelligence is rented. I am the conductor of an orchestra I do not own, playing music I did not write, and I walked out for the bow.

For ten years we told you the magic was that we made the whole thing. The silicon, the software, the soul. On your device. Yours. This year the soul is a vendor relationship, and I said the word "seamless" and you applauded, because the word still works even after the thing it described left the building.

We reportedly pay Google about a billion dollars a year for the brain. I have a budget line for it. The line does not say "brain." It says "foundation services." I named that too.

And the privacy promise, I kept it, word for word, the same sentence as last year. Your data is used only for the task. Google does not see your request. Outside experts can verify our guarantees at any time. I can recite it in my sleep. I recited it over a model I did not build, about a partner I will not name on the slide, and every clause was technically true, which is the only kind of true we ship.

Someone in the keynote row asked me, quietly, "so what did Apple make." I said: the experience. He asked again. I said: the orchestration. He asked a third time. I told him that question was not aligned with the roadmap, and he stopped asking, and I gave him a lanyard.

We did not build the intelligence.

We built the sentence that says we did.

And you bought the phone that says it out loud.

[tern @1goodtern]

I was absolutely appalled to hear Bonnie Henry say "Personal Protective Equipment, the word we all dread".

You may have had an instant visceral reaction to that yourself, but here are the eleven things wrong with what she said:

[Ashish K. Jha @ashishkjha]

For folks waking up to this important news

@WHO has declared a public health emergency (PHEIC) for the Ebola outbreak in DRC & Uganda. Only the 9th such declaration in history

The strain is Bundibugyo for which we have no vaccine, no treatments. Here's what concerns me:

[nishiko @nishiko]

@Daniel_Rubino Thanks. TIL:

Use fewer for countable nouns (like wishes).

Use less for uncountable nouns (like water or time).

... trying not to contribute too much to the decline... 😉

[BestMVNO.com 🤳📶 @bestmvno]

About that Trump Mobile t1 phone, it might not be real or ever manufactured and a down payment on it does not constitute an acceptance of order. Wtf? 🤡🤡🤡

https://t.co/UT1EqSW961

[Gary Marcus @GaryMarcus]

Why is the AI backlash growing?

Outside of coding (where there is clear value), and a handful of other domains (e.g. brainstorming), Generative AI has been a net negative for society.

GenAI has been undermining secondary and college education, opening up mass surveillance, increasing disinformation, delusions, impersonation, phishing, and other forms of cybercrime, nonconsensual deep fake porn, bias in employment and other domains, and economic disparity, drowning the world in slop and unwanted, over-leveraged environment-damaging data centers that risk causing a recession.

Simultaneously it has empowered a bunch of people who want to privatize almost all the gains while leave all the downsides to society, taking almost zero responsibility.

I don’t think we are better off than we were four years ago.

Some of this is technical (LLMs aren’t reliable), some of it is political/economic (such as the utter lack of responsible regulation). Most of this was predictable.

Almost none of it is good.

All that said, I honestly believes some future form of AI might be great. But Generative AI has hurt more than it has helped, and been managed irresponsibly.

It’s no wonder many people have had enough.

[nishiko @nishiko]

@ghhughes @vitacoreinc Great to hear that, it would be good to have this option even though pricey. Doesn't seem that unreasonable for all that's involved.

I'm sure it would last for a while, otherwise it would be a pretty small market opportunity. Could be worth a try anyway.

Thanks Gerard!

[Daniel Rubino @Daniel_Rubino]

This guy is so boring, cringe, and insufferable. Just the worst of what the US represents.

[nishiko @nishiko]

Media and tech justice are community defense issues. MediaJustice is raising $25,000 this giving season to seed media and tech justice strategies, political education, and narrative leadership in local communities.
https://t.co/lgwIWxkC26

[nishiko @nishiko]

We need a lot more of this in the world! Revenge is a vicious cycle.

https://t.co/ZDsgGLcpXY

[Shirley Shelangoski @sjs159]

No birth certificate? No passport? No problem—you’re registered for the DRAFT. But to register to VOTE? The SAVE Act says show your papers first. They’ll send you to war without ID but won’t let you vote without one. WTH!

#TrumpVotesByMail

[CA Health & Human Services @Cal_HHS]

Public health isn’t just hospitals & doctors, it’s the invisible shield that protects our communities and builds a Healthy #CaliforniaForAll.

From injury prevention & food safety to controlling & preventing the spread of diseases & more, public health keeps us thriving.  #NPHW

[JWeiland @JPWeiland]

Do the public and the markets recognize that the 20% oil supply disruption is as great as use decline during global lockdown in 2020? Yet markets and people don't seem to see what's coming in the near future. Major Feb 2020 pre-impact head in the sand vibes.

[nishiko @nishiko]

@peter_adderton @bestmvno @mobileXus I'm sorry you are being treated like this Peter. So wrong.

I sure wish we had federal government agencies doing their job to protect the public interest in this and so many other ways, but it looks like there won't be much improvement for at least ~2.5 years.

[nishiko @nishiko]

@AllermaSF Thanks for the updates as always Sudhir! 😊

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

A gallows image directed at a vaccine scientist who spends his career fighting disease. This is what happens when you spend years telling people scientists are the enemy. Words have consequences. Report it and say so loudly.

[nishiko @nishiko]

@Daniel_Rubino *beat

[nishiko @nishiko]

@OptimizedPort Seeing Hungary in there makes me wonder what these would look like inflation-adjusted / real returns.