On the way home from the airport, decided to use a taxi-sharing service instead of waiting in line (Uber was up to their usual antics with surge pricing, not that it would have mattered – the client is paying anyway).

Improbably, I got paired off with someone who not only was standing next to me in the taxi line, but also lives around the corner, and was coming back from Toronto where he was for a week rehearsing with his indie-rock band, Born Ruffians , that I vaguely heard of before. Super nice guy with strong Canadian accent, moved here for his girlfriend who is doing  her Ph D here, and he likes NY.

Got his phone number – but how do I make new friends?

Bitcoin Mining Guzzles Energy—And Its Carbon Footprint Just Keeps Growing

“Simply put, bitcoin is slowing the effort to achieve a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. What’s more, this is just the beginning. Given its rapidly growing climate footprint, bitcoin is a malignant development, and it’s getting worse.”

It is under appreciated how evil bitcoin is. It literally has no redeeming qualities for me, and I do openly judge people who invest in it. We all should.

Bitcoin Mining Guzzles Energy—And Its Carbon Footprint Just Keeps Growing

‘Don’t Buy Anyone an Echo,’ he opined

wolfliving:

https://gizmodo.com/dont-buy-anyone-an-echo-1820981732

by Adam Clark Estes

Three years ago, we said the Echo was “the most innovative device Amazon’s made in years.” That’s still true. But you shouldn’t buy one. You shouldn’t buy one for your family. You definitely should not buy one for your friends. In fact, ignore any praise we’ve ever heaped onto smart speakers and voice-controlled assistants. They’re bad!

What’s challenging about this holiday season is that the futuristic gadgets are just so damn easy to buy. We’ve also given glowing reviews to several smart speakers and especially the Google Home devices. They’re so pretty! Right now, smart speakers are cheaper than ever, too. Both Amazon and Google have slashed $20 off the price of their cheapest smart speakers, the Echo Dot and the Home Mini. That’s $30 for gift that you could wrap and give your cousin and expect a “Wow cool, I always wanted one of these!” If you really want to impress them, you can get the full-sized Amazon Echo or Google Home for $80 a piece—a discount of $20 and $50, respectively. Such savings!

Let me make this point dreadfully clear, though: Your family members do not need an Amazon Echo or a Google Home or an Apple HomePod or whatever that one smart speaker that uses Cortana is called. And you don’t either. You only want one because every single gadget-slinger on the planet is marketing them to you as an all-new, life-changing device that could turn your kitchen into a futuristic voice-controlled paradise. You probably think that having an always-on microphone in your home is fine, and furthermore, tech companies only record and store snippets of your most intimate conversations. No big deal, you tell yourself.

Actually, it is a big deal. The newfound privacy conundrum presented by installing a device that can literally listen to everything you’re saying represents a chilling new development in the age of internet-connected things. By buying a smart speaker, you’re effectively paying money to let a huge tech company surveil you. And I don’t mean to sound overly cynical about this, either. Amazon, Google, Apple, and others say that their devices aren’t spying on unsuspecting families. The only problem is that these gadgets are both hackable and prone to bugs.

Before getting into the truly scary stuff, though, let’s talk a little bit about utility. Any internet-connected thing that you bring into your home should make your life easier. Philips Hue bulbs, for instance, let you dim the lights in an app. Easy! A Nest thermostat learns your habits so you don’t have to turn up the heat as often. Cool! An Amazon Echo or a Google Home, well, they talk to you, and if you’re lucky, you might be able to figure out how to talk back in the right way and do random things around the house. Huh?

You don’t need an artificially intelligent robot to tell you about the weather every day. Just look outside or watch the local news or even look at your phone. You already do one or all of these things, so just keep it up. Same goes for turning on the lights. Use the switch. It works really well! A light switch also doesn’t keep track of everything you’re doing and send the data to Amazon or Google or Apple. What happens between you and the switch stays with you and the switch.

Which brings us back to security and surveillance. I’m not here to be Tin Foil Hat Man and convince you that companies like Amazon are spying on your every move and compiling data sets based on your activity so that they can more effectively serve you ads or sell you products. I am here to say that smart speakers like the Echo do contain microphones that are always on, and every time you say something to the speaker, it sends data back to the server farm. (By the way: If you enabled an always-listening assistant on your smartphone, now’s a good time to consider the implications.) For now, the companies that sell smart speakers say that those microphones only send recordings to the servers when you use the wake word. The same companies are less explicit about what they’re doing with all that data. They’re also vague about whether they might share voice recordings with developers in the future. Amazon, at least, seems open to the idea…. (((Etc etc etc)))

Technology steers what 2 billion people are thinking and believing every day. It’s possibly the largest source of influence over 2 billion people’s thoughts that has ever been created. Religions and governments don’t have that much influence over people’s daily thoughts. But we have three technology companies who have this system that frankly they don’t even have control over—with newsfeeds and recommended videos and whatever they put in front of you—which is governing what people do with their time and what they’re looking at.

Tristan Harris, Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones. Tristan Harris Wants To Rescue Them (via Wired)

Tokyo Project on HBOGO feels kind of contrived and acting’s just a bit too wooden, but it is only 30 min long, and it made me miss Tokyo so so much!!

And I really want that sake cocktail with persimmon and grated ginger and kumquat…

atlasobscura:

Planted in the 18th century by the Stuart family, these opposing rows of beech trees were meant to create an impressive, scenic road leading up to their estate in Northern Ireland. However as the trees matured they began to bend over the road and their upper branches intermingled creating a shadowy arboreal tunnel. The bent trunks and gnarled branches give the road an aura of the supernatural, which has landed the Irish thoroughfare a number of background roles in both movies and television shows such as Game of Thrones. The Dark Hedges have even developed their own ghost story featuring a “Grey Lady” who floats along behind the rows, and disappears just as the lane ends. 📸: Photo by Flickr user mdavidford.

I want to be there!!