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asadotzler.com
"he's spilling big tech's beans" artist, animal-lover, and eager reader ex-Netscape, ex-Mozilla https://asadotzler.com
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Netflix's Daredevil is without a doubt the best written of any live action Marvel. Nothing comes close. If you have any interest in Marvel comics, movies, or shows, and haven't watched this gritty noire, do your self a favor, pay 11 bucks for a month of Disney+ and binge it. Trust me; it's good.

About 2 weeks before its debut, Daredevil: Born Again has been renewed for a 2nd season. Awesome! I've mostly avoided industry coverage to avoid spoilers, but I'm a huge fan of the Netflix series and thrilled to learn this is a continuation not a reboot. A 2nd season coming has me even more hyped.

I estimate Apple spent $150,000 for each one of its Vision Pro users. Mr. Cook, maybe it's time to re-think strap-on facial computing; it might not our productivity future, "tomorrows technology, today."

Low-income and rural public schools are getting AI chatbots instead of human counselors. So far 9 districts have turned to a VC-backed startup to cover their professional councilor shortages. Don't worry; the chatbot's CEO, fully 2 years out of Stanford, says he's got some staff monitoring things.

this a thousand times and also this particular time

They'll fuck everyone over: you, me, their constituents, staff, and that's all terrible. I don't mind terribly, however, when they fuck over each other.

A threat to the privacy of Apple users arose in the UK and so Apple removed the privacy feature. Bought your iPhone for one of its critical privacy features? Apple can take that back from you and you have no recourse. Tim Cook won't fight for you. You're not even his customer, Wall St. is.

AMAZING AI DISCOVERY Prompt: Convert bracketed phrases in following text to emojis. Provide multiple if uncertain: <my text> Asynchronous emoji autocomplete for when I don't know or want options! Big Tech, please spend some of those trillions making this synchronous and ubiquitous for me. Thanks.

Apple's Vision Pro VR goggles debuted ~1 yr. ago for $3,499. Meta's Quest 3 is only $499 and seems not much worse for my simple late night bigscreen TV and movie watching wants. Then again, gently used Vision Pros on Ebay are $1,599 and falling; maybe I should wait and get the nicer goggles, used.

Current white hot hatred: Websites that hold the search box hostage, keeping it inactive until all the promoted content shows, forcing me to spend attention on garbage I don't care about before letting me navigate to what I do. Load the site navigation first, you bastards. Then the ads.

current mood www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvsf...

Apple's Vision Pro is AMAZING! Isn't this the most exciting thing ever! Look at it! It can...well...um... It can show application windows floating over desktop wallpaper! I told you it was great, didn't I. (If you love touch input, you're gonna explode with joy poking and pinching empty space.)

The OPPO Find N5 is the first foldable that seems to have "good enough" hardware. Weight and thickness are decent, about 15% heavier and 10% thicker than an iPhone; the screen crease is nearly eliminated; and a 5,600 mAh battery is likely sufficient. Too bad the software ecosystem isn't there yet.

From Endgadget: "Bybit hacked for almost $1.5 billion in the biggest crypto theft ever....One expert says it's likely the all-time biggest heist of any kind." Ha-ha!

"The Information reports that OpenAI projects to burn $20 billion in cash during 2027, far more than the $5 billion it reportedly burned through in 2024." It is wild that people are giving billions of dollars to Sam Altman when it's clear he's setting it all on fire.

I've been a electric car enthusiast since age 17 when I learned the early cars were mostly short range EVs and internal combustion engines came later. I was into EV long before Musk and Tesla. My EV enthusiasm is no more endorsement of Musk than my hopes for EV1 were support of GM CEO Roger Smith.

After investing ~$15B in AI over ~6 yrs, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella 2 days ago: "[B]ig winners here are not going to be tech companies. The winners are going to be the broader industry that uses this commodity that, by the way, is abundant." Frontier models, an abundant commodity? Interesting.

Another Tesla dealership vandalized. This one struck by gunfire and a car lit on fire. Tesla depends on Musk to keep its stock price outrageously inflated, more than the rest of the world's auto industry combined, and Musk depends on Tesla for his piggy bank. The relationship is reaching its limit.

Psychopath, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said trying to beat AI [in skill] is like trying to [beat a calculator] in arithmetic. He's wrong, of course. Calculator give repeatable arithmetic results w/ about five nines (99.999% of the time) while LLMs can barely make one or two nines in their domain.

Sorkin's writing was particularly strong here: "You're going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole." Mark Zuckerberg has always been an asshole.

This seems mostly accurate, though I'd say it's not a purely partisan divide; there's enough corruption on both sides. It leans heavily (R) today, but many with a (D) next to their name are also in Big Tech's pocket. Big Tech has and will always be in bed with anyone that helps increase its power.

The US isn't warming to the Zuckster despite his mid-life make-over with those gold chains, curly locks, and surfer's tan. Pew research's survey of 5,000 random adults found that 67% have an unfavorable view of Zuckaburger.

This is excellent news: "Google is set to be charged with breaching EU rules aimed at checking the power of Big Tech after proposed changes to its search results failed to address the EU antitrust regulator's concerns and those of its rivals"

Meta on 2025: we leech torrents and never seed. Me in 2002: assholes.

PSA Do not mistake your eye glasses lens cleaning wipes for your eyelid wipes. The first will not feel as good in your eyes as the second. It's not even close.

Wow. Canada don't play. [up close video of a train plowing through several feet of snow creating a wave of white in front and down the sides of the engine]