Visit “Aitana Lopez” on Instagram. As you scroll down, the account looks like that of any of the hundreds (or thousands) of “influencer” accounts on Instagram. “Aitana” post photos from her travels, of her wearing various clothes, and making references…
Jan 01
AVFTCN 032 – Finding Hope Amidst the Chaos
Happy New Year! Climbing up into the proverbial crow’s nest as 2024 begins, it looks a bit bleak up ahead. LOTS of icebergs! Of course here in the USA we have the US presidential election, that is sure to bring out an added level of nastiness. We are not alone in this… a colleague of mine […]
Jan 01
My Themes for 2024
As I have been doing for the past 15 years (see list), my first post of 2024 across all my sites is of three words that are my aspirations or “themes” for the year ahead. They are not “resolutions” so much as guiding thoughts or principles. This year I decided on 3 H’s: Hope, Health, and Habits. Hope We live in challenging times… and 2024 looks to present even greater challenges. A colleague of mine noted that there will be over 100 elections in 67 countries in 2024 – all of which will undoubtedly create communication and societal challenges in…
Dec 07
Can You Kick the Trolls Out Of Your Online Forum? U.S. Supreme Court to Decide
Should the governments of Texas and Florida decide whether and how online discussion sites can moderate their posts? Let’s say you have an online community about the town you live in, and someone starts posting off-topic messages about some other town…
Dec 02
AVFTCN 030 – Want to run an AI on your laptop? Just download one file…
5:42 am Mind = 🤯 Would you like to run a large language model (LLM) on your own local computer? So that all your data and requests stay local? Would you like your own private “ChatGPT”-like thing that you could ask questions of? I happened to be looking at my personal email the other afternoon […]
Nov 26
AVFTCN 029 – Sunday Smorgasbord: Humane AI Pin, LEOs, Livestreaming Wikipedia editing
5:03 am Greetings from basement isolation. The dog has been let out and I’m back here in the dark. Instead of a specific topic, I want to catch up on some updates to past newsletters. So today’s note is a collection of smaller updates of different flavors. I’ll call it a smorgasboard, which of course […]
Nov 25
AVFTCN 028 – Let’s Not Forget the Magic of the Internet
6:23 am It is so easy to get so used to how the Internet works*, that sometimes we forget to pause and just think about how amazing this technology can be. We just expect that it will work – and for the most part it does. I’m had some experiences this week… and plenty of […]
Nov 18
AVFTCN 027 – The Paywalling of the Web
5:03 am Is the future of the Web really one where so much of the content is behind a paywall or a registration screen? (some call it a “regwall”) Are we returning to the pre-Internet days where so much information was locked away in gated “walled gardens” of online activity such as CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, […]
Nov 13
AVFTCN 026 – Humane’s “AI Pin” gets closer to the Star Trek:TNG Communicator
5:09 am From 1987-1994, Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG) brought an updated version of the classic show to our TV sets. Through my later years in university and first years out on my own, I tuned in each week to see the latest saga of Captain Picard, Commander Riker, Data, Worf, Deanna Troi, Geordi […]
