In 1951 the great science-fiction author Ray Bradbury published a short story called The Pedestrian . It told of a robotic police car roaming a future city looking for so-called unusual behaviors in this case walking alone at night. And a pedestrian in the story was arrested by the car and driven off to be Continue reading "When Robotaxis Call the Cops"
You may recall an episode of Rod Serling s original The Twilight Zone called The Brain Center at Whipple s , an episode he wrote himself. It first aired almost exactly to the day 62 years ago. It tells the story of a factory where all the vast numbers of workers are laid off to be replaced with Continue reading "Big Tech s Catastrophic Layoffs Frenzy"
The very first YouTube video, uploaded by one of YouTube s founders before it was purchased by Google, is called Me at the zoo . It was uploaded about 21 years ago. It has accumulated almost 400 million views and over 10 million comments. This is NOT the most watched YT video, which is a children s video Continue reading "The Rise of AI Slop on Google s YouTube"
I ve written in the past about inaccuracies in Google s Search AI Overviews (let s call them AIOs) that so often seem to provide specific answers to search queries, usually in rather authoritative wording. And there have been many concerns about how accurate or not these AIOs actually are. I ve publicly noted a number of examples where Continue reading "Why Google Search AI Overviews Are a…
Regular readers know that I don t routinely do product reviews or announcements here, but when something pops up that could have significant impacts to the tech industry and broader society I ll explore those. And that s what we ve got now with Apple, and it really is quite stunning because it pretty much goes directly against the Continue reading "Why Apple s New MacBook Neo Has Stunned the Tech…
Data centers are now at the heart of a rapidly growing battle between Big Tech billionaire CEOs and ordinary people that those billionaires are used to treating like bugs to be swatted away. And increasingly it s looking like politicians who find themselves on the billionaire side of data center disputes may find their political careers Continue reading "When Data Centers Destroy Communities"
Various AI firms have launched so-called AI browsers and in particular what are called agentic AI browser features. And now Google has announced they ve made massive AI upgrades to their Chrome browser which is by far the most used Web browser on this planet. And these Google Gemini AI features are becoming available to different Continue reading "Why You Shouldn’t Use Google’s Chrome “Auto…
UPDATE (3 February 2026): New York State introduces its own utterly impractical and damaging legislation attacking 3D printers and other equipment, similar to the Washington State legislation I discussed in this original post. Please see: https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/03/new-york-wants-to-ctrlaltdelete-your-3d-printer/ Proposed legislation in Washington State would attempt to ban the use of 3D…
An experiment in AI coding with Google Gemini. I try to be fair. When I call generative AI mostly slop, I don t do so blindly; I attempt to conduct reasonable tests in various contexts. Yesterday I needed a couple of routines one in Bash, the other in Python. I tried the Python one first. Continue reading "Coding with Gemini: Cheerful, Cooperative, and Usually, Wrong."
Drone leader Chinese company DJI this morning announced a new drone in their economical but powerful mini drone lineup, the Mini 5 Pro . Speculation and rumors about this product have been circulating online for many months, and on Monday the world got to see a short video tease telling that today at 8 am Eastern Continue reading "The World Gets an Important New Drone That Can Save Lives But…
Calls for Google s Chrome Browser to be separated from Google could potentially result in a privacy and security disaster for literally billions of people around this planet. An AI firm just offered 34.5 billion dollars (about twice what that company is theoretically worth) for Google s Chrome browser, and then almost immediately another AI firm offered Continue reading "Separating the Chrome…
There is currently what amounts to a war between the U.S. federal and state governments against specific Chinese drone makers, with the big target being DJI. And a major issue has been what would happen if the many organizations law enforcement, search and rescue, other public safety, farmers, utilities, on and on couldn t Continue reading "In the War Between the Federal Government and States…
We all want to prevent children from being harmed on the Internet, but exactly how to do this without creating even more problems for them and for adults has turned into quite a complicated and political situation. There have been broad concerns that various website age verification systems could be privacy invasive, ineffective, and in Continue reading "The Website Age Verification Train Wreck"
For many, many years, the U.S. has been considered to be the world s technology and science research leader in all sorts of areas of science medicine and computer science broadly are just two it s a long, long list. But increasingly observers are seeing signs that this is changing in a negative way and Continue reading "Unforced Errors: How the U.S. Is Losing Its Lead in Technology and Science…
UPDATE (May 12, 2025): The administration has agreed to lower its enormous tariffs on China, and China has agreed to lower its enormous retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., temporarily for 90 days, as shipping between the two countries has almost halted. No announced agreements on the underlying issues have apparently been reached at this time, Continue reading "The Enormous Negative Impacts of the…
UPDATE (April 10, 2025): Social Security Administration reverses entirely, says they will permit all claim types to take place over the phone, no longer requiring website use or in-person visits to Social Security offices, as had been previously announced to start on April 14, 2025 for many transactions. UPDATE (March 26, 2025): Social Security Administration Continue reading "DOGE Is Destroying…
I have long held that efforts to tamper with Section 230 from the Communications Decency Act of 1996 are dangerously misguided. It is this section that immunizes online service providers from liability for third-party content that they carry. I have also argued that attempts to mandate age verification for social media will spectacularly backfire in Continue reading "Holding Social Media…
I just had a good laugh. Someone asked me this morning how they could reach the Google Ombudsman for help with an account lockout issue. And I laughed not because their situation was funny, but because of the sad fact that I ve been pushing for Google to establish an Ombudsman (or these days, often called Continue reading "The Helpful Google Ombudsman (Who Doesn t Exist)"
I ll use very simple words for these government officials: You ban Chinese drones, you re putting U.S. lives at risk. Congress with bipartisan support very recently passed what is effectively a ban on import of (and perhaps, but less likely, the use of existing) Chinese drones such as those from market leader DJI, taking effect in Continue reading "More Bipartisan Madness: Commerce Department…
According to reports, in a recent employee meeting, Google CEO Sundar said that (essentially) the entire focus of Google in 2025 will be AI and pushing it out to consumers in a scrappy way with him referencing the early days of Google. This was when, I would note, their rush resulted in massive arrogance, Continue reading "AI Is Dooming Google, but Not in the Way Its CEO Believes"
All the talk now is about using AI-based mechanisms to authenticate social media users as being not underaged for access, through analysis of their faces on video feeds. The multitude of ways in which this could fail in both directions (declaring faces either older than they really are, or younger than they really are, not Continue reading "[What say you, Spock?] My Proposed Terminology to…
Is this happening around the world, or is it only here in the USA that everything appears to be going totally nutso? Seemingly all at once, politicians of both parties look and sound like they ve given up all pretense of being educated human beings and are behaving like infantile idiots with political agendas. Oh boy, Continue reading "Insanity: Drone Hysteria and Bans Put Lives at Risk"
Ah yes. Poodle skirts and bobby socks. Jimmie Rodgers and the Everly Brothers. Around the world, there seems to be a collective longing for a rose-tinted, 20/20 hindsight, fantasy view of the good old days of the 1950s, before those damned computers starting infiltrating so much of our lives. And social media bans have become Continue reading "Australia s Under-16 Social Media Ban Is Doomed"
Despite my continuing differences with various specific aspects of Google operations that I feel could be straightforwardly improved to the benefit of their users, I can t emphasize enough what an utter disaster the DOJ proposed Google antitrust remedies would be for the privacy and security of their users and consumers more broadly, and for the Continue reading "DOJ s Proposed Antitrust Remedies…
Despite my ongoing concerns over various of the directions that current management has been taking Google over recent years, I must state that I agree with Google that the kinds of radical antitrust remedies and radical is the appropriate word apparently being contemplated by DOJ, would almost certainly be a disaster for ordinary Continue reading "DOJ vs. Google: Users have the most to lose"
I Am the Very Model of a Google AI Overview Lauren Weinstein To the tune of I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General (with apologies to Gilbert Sullivan) I am the very model of a Google AI Overview. I know what you ll be searching for, At least an hour Continue reading " I Am the Very Model of a Google AI Overview "
Google Search AI Overview answers are clearly not ready for prime time. Google should immediately return them to Lab (opt-in) status. Before deploying them again generally beyond Labs, there needs to be an opt-out option permanent until changed by the user at least for logged-in users. Lauren
The technical term for what s happening now with Artificial Intelligence, especially generative AI, is NUTS. I mean it s not just Google, but Microsoft too, with OpenAI s ChatGPT. The firms are just pouring out half-baked AI systems and trying to basically ram them down our throats whether we want them or not, by embedding them into Continue reading "Generative AI Is Being Rammed Down Our Throats"
Every day it becomes ever clearer. All the talk of super-intelligent AI destroying humanity was and is nonsense. It s the CEOs running the Big Tech firms pushing AI into every aspect of our lives in increasingly irresponsible and dangerous ways who are the villains in this saga, not the machines themselves. The machines are just Continue reading "Evil"
Let me be very clear about why I am, frankly, so angry with Google over their Account Recovery failures. I have on numerous occasions directly proposed to Google a variety of significant improvements to their current Account Recovery processes. While their existing procedures successfully recover many accounts daily, they tend to fail disproportionally for innocent Continue reading "The Nightmare…
Google refuses to create a specific role for someone to oversee the issues of older users, who depend on Google for so many things but so often get the shaft and lose everything when something goes wrong with their accounts. Google should AT LEAST (I still think the role is crucial), be providing focused help Continue reading "Google and Seniors"
You may have seen a lot of press over the last few days about Google moving location data by default to be on-device (e.g., your phone) rather than stored centrally (and encrypted if you choose to store it centrally), and how this will help prevent abuses of broad geofence warrants that law enforcement uses to Continue reading "About Google and Location Privacy"
As you may know, Google has recently begun a protocol to delete inactive Google accounts, with email notices going out to the account and recovery addresses in advance as a warning. Leaving aside for the moment the issue that so many people who have lost track of accounts probably have no recovery address specified (or Continue reading "Google s Inactive Account Policy and Phishing Attacks…
Last February, in: Giving Creators and Websites Control Over Generative AI https://lauren.vortex.com/2023/02/14/giving-creators-and-websites-control-over-generative-ai I suggested expansion of the existing Robots Exclusion Protocol (e.g. robots.txt ) as a path toward helping provide websites and creators control over how their contents are used by AI systems. Shortly thereafter, Google publicly…
As per requests, this is a transcript of my national network radio report earlier this week regarding Google passkeys and Google account recovery concerns. So there really isn t enough time tonight to get into any real details on this but I think it s important that folks at least know what s going on Continue reading "Radio Transcript: Google Passkeys and Google Account Recovery Concerns"
Google continues to push ahead with its ill-advised scheme to force passkeys on users who do not understand their risks, and will try push all users into this flawed system starting imminently. In my discussions with Google on this matter (I have chatted multiple times with the Googler in charge of this), they have admitted Continue reading "Google is making their weak, flawed passkey system the…
In the 2005 film V for Vendetta a fictional UK government has turned into a tightly censored, tracked, and controlled hellscape, with technology used to control citizens in every way possible. The UK has now taken a massive step toward making that horror a reality, with the passage of likely the most misguided legislation in Continue reading "UK Passage of Online Safety Bill to Create…
I love YouTube. I consider it to be a wonder of the world for an array of reasons. Its scale is well, the technical term is mindbogglingly enormous. I subscribe to YouTube Premium (primarily to obliterate the ads I don t use ad blockers), and as far as I m concerned it s the best streaming Continue reading "The Potential Privacy Problems With YouTube s Family Plan Suggestion Leakage "
Suddenly there seems to be an enormous amount of political, regulatory, and legal activity regarding AI, especially generative AI. Much of this is uncharacteristically bipartisan in nature. The reasons are clear. The big AI firms are largely depending on their traditional access to public website data as the justification for their use of such data Continue reading "Artificial Intelligence at the…
Greetings. The excellent essay: https://circleid.com/posts/20230628-the-eu-ai-act-a-critical-assessment (by Anthony Rutkowski) serves to crystallize many of my concerns about the current rush toward specific approaches to AI regulation before the issues are even minimally understood, and why I am so concerned about negative collateral damage in these kinds of regulatory efforts. There is…
This post could get very long very quickly, so instead I m going to endeavor to keep this introductory discussion brief, with an array of crucial details to come later. In my recent posts: An Example of a Very Sad Google Account Recovery Failure — and How It Affects Real People https://lauren.vortex.com/2023/05/17/google-account-recovery-failure-sad and: Potentially Serious Issues Continue reading…
UPDATE: 24 May 2023: A Proposal for “Enhanced Recovery Services” for Locked Out Google Accounts All, I am doing something in this post that I ve never done before over these many years. I m going to share with you an example of what Google account recovery failure means to the people involved, and Continue reading "An Example of a Very Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and How It Affects Real…
UPDATE: 24 May 2023: A Proposal for “Enhanced Recovery Services” for Locked Out Google Accounts UPDATE (17 May 2023): An Example of a Very Sad Google Account Recovery Failure — and How It Affects Real People Google has announced that inactive personal Google accounts will be removed and all of their data Continue reading "Potentially Serious Issues with Google s Announced Inactive Accounts…
UPDATE (15 May 2023): And about 48 hours after this original post, bookmarks starting successfully syncing in full to my tablet, after months of failing totally (despite my many best efforts and every sync trick I know). Coincidence? Could be. But I ll say Thanks Google! anyway. Greetings. Recently I Continue reading "How Google Broke Chrome Bookmarks Sync"
In several of my past recent posts: The “AI Crisis”: Who Is Responsible? https://lauren.vortex.com/2023/04/09/the-ai-crisis-who-is-responsible State and Federal Internet ID Age Requirements Are Hell-Bent on Turning the Internet Into a Chinese-Style Internet Nightmare https://lauren.vortex.com/2023/03/23/government-internet-id-nightmare Giving Creators and Websites Control Over Generative AI…
There is a sense of gathering crisis revolving around Artificial Intelligence today not just AI itself but also the public s and governments reactions to AI particularly generative AI. Personally, I find little blame (not zero, but relatively little) with the software engineers and associated persons who are actually theorizing, building, and training these Continue reading "The AI Crisis : Who Is…
The new Utah Internet ID age laws signed today and what other states and the feds are moving toward in the same realm will destroy social media and much else of the Internet as we know it. Vast numbers of people will refuse to participate in any government ID-based scheme for age verification, Continue reading "State and Federal Internet ID Age Requirements Are Hell-Bent on Turning the Internet…
Seemingly overnight, the Internet is awash with controversies over Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) systems, and their potential positive and negative impacts on the Net and the world at large. It also seems very clear that unless we (for once!) get ahead of the potential problems with this new technology that seem to be rushing toward Continue reading "Giving Creators and Websites Control…
Greetings. The last hours and minutes of 2022 are ticking off, and we re all being drawn inexorably into the new year and even deeper into the 21st century. In my previous post of early October Social Media Is Probably Doomed I discussed various issues that call into question the ability of social media Continue reading "2023 and Social Media s Winds of Change"
UPDATE (31 December 2022): 2023 and Social Media’s Winds of Change Social media as we ve known it is probably doomed. Whether a decline in social media would on balance be good or bad for society I ll leave to another discussion, but the handwriting is on the wall for a Continue reading "Social Media Is Probably Doomed"