A Technologist Realizes Philosophy 101 Was Not All Horse Feathers
January 6, 2025
This is an official dinobaby post. No smart software involved in this blog post.
I am not too keen on non-dinobabies thinking big thoughts about life. The GenX, Y, and Zedders are good at reinventing the wheel, fire, and tacos. What some of these non-dinobabies are less good at is thinking about the world online information has disestablished and is reassembling in chaotic constructs.
The essay, published in HackerNoon, “Here’s Why High Achievers Feel Like Failures” explains why so many non-dinobabies are miserable. My hunch is that the most miserable are those who have achieved some measure of financial and professional success and embrace whinge, insecurity, chemicals to blur mental functions, big car payments, and “experiences.” The essay does a very good job of explaining the impact of getting badges of excellence for making a scoobie (aka lanyard, gimp, boondoggle, or scoubidou) bracelet at summer camp to tweaking an algorithm to cause a teen to seek solace in a controlled substance. (One boss says, “Hey, you hit the revenue target. Too bad about the kid. Let’s get lunch. I’ll buy.”)
The write up explains why achievement and exceeding performance goals can be less than satisfying. Does anyone remember the Google VP who overdosed with the help of a gig worker? My recollection is that the wizard’s boat was docked within a few minutes of his home stuffed with a wifey and some kiddies. Nevertheless, an OnlyFans potential big earner was enlisted to assist with the chemical bliss that may have contributed to his logging off early.
Here’s what the essay offers this anecdote about a high performer whom I think was a entrepreneur riding a rocket ship:
Think about it:
- Three years ago, Mark was ecstatic about his first $10K month. Now, he beats himself up over $800K months.
- Two years ago, he celebrated hiring his first employee. Now, managing 50 people feels like “not scaling fast enough.”
- Last year, a feature in a local business journal made his year. Now, national press mentions barely register.
His progress didn’t disappear. His standards just kept pace with his growth, like a shadow that stretches ahead no matter how far you walk.
The main idea is that once one gets “something”; one wants more. The write up says:
Every time you level up, your brain does something fascinating – it rewrites your definition of “normal.” What used to be a summit becomes your new base camp. And while this psychological adaptation helped our ancestors survive, it’s creating a crisis of confidence in today’s achievement-oriented world.
Yep, the driving force behind achievement is the need to succeed so one can achieve more. I am a dinobaby, and I don’t want to achieve anything. I never did. I have been lucky: Born at the right time. Survived school. Got lucky and was hired on a fluke. Now 60 years later I know how I achieve the modicum of success I accrued. I was really lucky, and despite my 80 years, I am not yet dead.
The essay makes this statement:
We’re running paleolithic software on modern hardware. Every time you achieve something, your brain…
- Quickly normalizes the achievement (adaptation)
- Immediately starts wanting more (drive)
- Erases the emotional memory of the struggle (efficiency)
Is there a fix? Absolutely. Not surprisingly the essay includes a to-do list. The approach is logical and ideally suited to those who want to become successful. Here are the action steps:
Once you’ve reviewed your time horizons, the next step is to build what I call a “Progress Inventory.” Dedicate 15 minutes every Sunday night to reflect and fill out these three sections:
Victories Section
- What’s easier now than it was last month?
- What do you do automatically that used to require thought?
- What problems have disappeared?
- What new capabilities have you gained?
Growth Section
- What are you attempting now that you wouldn’t have dared before?
- Where have your standards risen?
- What new problems have you earned the right to have?
- What relationships have deepened or expanded?
Learning Section
- What mistakes are you no longer making?
- What new insights have you gained?
- What patterns are you starting to recognize?
- What tools have you mastered?
These two powerful tools – the Progress Mirror and the Progress Inventory – work together to solve the central problem we’ve been discussing: your brain’s tendency to hide your growth behind rising standards. The Progress Mirror forces you to zoom out and see the bigger picture through three critical time horizons. It’s like stepping back from a painting to view the full canvas of your growth. Meanwhile, the weekly Progress Inventory zooms in, capturing the subtle shifts and small victories that compound into major transformations. Used together, these tools create something I call “progress consciousness” – the ability to stay ambitious while remaining aware of how far you’ve come.
But what happens when the road map does not lead to a zen-like state? Because I have been lucky, I cannot offer an answer to this question of actual, implicit, or imminent failure. I can serve up some observations:
- This essay has the backbone for a self-help book aimed at insecure high performers. My suggestion is to buy a copy of Thomas Harris’ I’m OK — You’re Okay and make a lot of money. Crank out the merch with slogans from the victories, growth, and learning sections of the book.
- The explanations are okay, but far from new. Spending some time with Friedrich Nietzsche’s Der Wille zur Macht. Too bad Friedrich was dead when his sister assembled the odds and ends of Herr Nietzsche’s notes into a book addressing some of the issues in the HackerNoon essay.
- The write up focuses on success, self-doubt, and an ever-receding finish line. What about the people who live on the street in most major cities, the individuals who cannot support themselves, or the young people with minds trashed by digital flows? The essay offers less information for these under performers as measured by doubt ridden high performers.
Net net: The essay makes clear that education today does not cover some basic learnings; for example, the good Herr Friedrich Nietzsche. Second, the excitement of re-discovering fire is no substitute for engagement with a social fabric that implicitly provides a framework for thinking and behaving in a way that others in the milieu recognize as appropriate. This HackerNoon essay encapsulates why big tech and other successful enterprises are dysfunctional. Welcome to the digital world.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2025
China Smart, US Dumb: The Deepseek Interview
January 6, 2025
This is an official dinobaby post. I used AI to assist me in this AI. In fact, I used the ChatGPT system which seems to be the benchmark against which China’s AI race leader measures itself. This suggests that Deepseek has a bit of a second-place mentality, a bit of jealousy, and possibly a signal of inferiority, doesn’t it?
“Deepseek: The Quiet Giant Leading China’s AI Race” is a good example of what the Middle Kingdom is revealing about smart software. The 5,000 word essay became available as a Happy New Year’s message to the US. Like the girl repairing broken generators without fancy tools, the message is clear to me: 2025 is going to be different.
Here’s an abstract of the “interview” generated by a US smart software system. I would have used Deepseek, but I don’t have access to it. I used the ChatGPT service which Deepseek has surpassed to create the paragraph below. Make sure the summary is in line with the ChinaTalk original and read the 5,000 word original and do some comparisons.
Deepseek, a Chinese AI startup, has emerged as an innovator in the AI industry, surpassing OpenAI’s o1 model with its R1 model on reasoning benchmarks. Backed entirely by High-Flyer, a top Chinese quantitative hedge fund, Deepseek focuses on foundational AI research, eschewing commercialization and emphasizing open-source development. The company has disrupted the AI market with breakthroughs like the multi-head latent attention and sparse mixture-of-experts architectures, which significantly reduce inference and computational costs, sparking a price war among Chinese AI developers. Liang Wenfeng, Deepseek CEO, aims to achieve artificial general intelligence through innovation rather than imitation, challenging the common perception that Chinese companies prioritize commercialization over technological breakthroughs. Wenfeng’s background in AI and engineering has fostered a bottom-up, curiosity-driven research culture, enabling the team to develop transformative models. Deepseek Version 2 delivers unparalleled cost efficiency, prompting major tech giants to reduce their API prices. Deepseek’s commitment to innovation extends to its organizational approach, leveraging young, local talent and promoting interdisciplinary collaboration without rigid hierarchies. The company’s open-source ethos and focus on advancing the global AI ecosystem set it apart from other large-model startups. Despite industry skepticism about China’s capacity for original innovation, Deepseek is reshaping the narrative, positioning itself as a catalyst for technological advancement. Liang’s vision highlights the importance of confidence, long-term investment in foundational research, and societal support for hardcore innovation. As Deepseek continues to refine its AGI roadmap, focusing on areas like mathematics, multimodality, and natural language, it exemplifies the transformative potential of prioritizing innovation over short-term profit.
I left the largely unsupported assertions in this summary. I also retained the repeated emphasis on innovation, originality, and local talent. With the aid of smart software, I was able to retain the essence of the content marketing propaganda piece’s 5,000 words.
You may disagree with my viewpoint. That’s okay. Let me annoy you further by offering several observations:
- The release of this PR piece coincides with additional information about China’s infiltration of the US telephone network and the directed cyber attack on the US Treasury.
- The multi-pronged content marketing / propaganda flow about China’s “local talent” is a major theme of these PR efforts. From the humble brilliant girl repairing equipment with primitive tools because she is a “genius” to the notion that China’s young “local talent” have gone beyond what the “imported” talent in the US has been able to achieve are two pronged. One tine of the conceptual pitchfork is that the US is stupid. The other tine is that China just works better, smarter, faster, and cheaper.
- The messaging is largely accomplished using free or low cost US developed systems and methods. This is definitely surfing on other people’s knowledge waves.
Net net: Mr. Putin is annoyed that the European Union wants to block Russia-generated messaging about the “special action.” The US is less concerned about China’s propaganda attacks. The New Year will be interesting, but I have lived through enough “interesting times” to do much more than write blogs posts from my outpost in rural Kentucky. What about you, gentle reader? China smart, US dumb: Which is it?
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2025
Marketing Milestone 2024: Whither VM?
January 3, 2025
When a vendor jacks up prices tenfold, customers tend to look elsewhere. If VMware‘s new leadership thought its clients had no other options, it was mistaken. Ars Technica reports, “Company Claims 1.000 Percent Price Hike Drove it from VMware to Open Source Rival.” We knew some were unhappy with changes Broadcom made since it bought VMware in November, 2023. For example, nixing perpetual license sales sent costs soaring for many. (Broadcom claims that move was planned before it bought VMware.) Now, one firm that had enough has come forward. Writer Scharon Harding tells us:
“According to a report from The Register today, Beeks Group, a cloud operator headquartered in the United Kingdom, has moved most of its 20,000-plus virtual machines (VMs) off VMware and to OpenNebula, an open source cloud and edge computing platform. Beeks Group sells virtual private servers and bare metal servers to financial service providers. It still has some VMware VMs, but ‘the majority’ of its machines are currently on OpenNebula, The Register reported. Beeks’ head of production management, Matthew Cretney, said that one of the reasons for Beeks’ migration was a VMware bill for ’10 times the sum it previously paid for software licenses,’ per The Register. According to Beeks, OpenNebula has enabled the company to dedicate more of its 3,000 bare metal server fleet to client loads instead of to VM management, as it had to with VMware. With OpenNebula purportedly requiring less management overhead, Beeks is reporting a 200 percent increase in VM efficiency since it now has more VMs on each server.”
Less expensive and more efficient? That is a no-brainer. OpenNebula‘s CEO says other organizations that are making the switch, though he declined to name them. Though Broadcom knows some customers are jumping ship, it may believe its changes are lucrative enough to make up for their absence. At the same time, it is offering an olive branch to small and medium-sized businesses with a less pricy subscription tier designed for them. Will it stem the exodus, or is it already too late?
Cynthia Murrell, January 3, 2024
WhatsApp: Chasing More Money
January 1, 2025
Meta aims to make WhatsApp indispensable to businesses around the world. The app is currently responsible for just a fraction of the company’s revenue, but Zuckerberg seems to have high hopes for the messaging platform. Rest of World‘s thorough piece, “How WhatsApp Ate the World,” describes the plan. Writer Issie Lapowsky details the app’s evolution since Facebook (now Meta) bought it and examines where the company plans to take it from here. We learn:
“WhatsApp initially achieved that global dominance in large part by doing just one thing very well: enabling cheap, private, and reliable messaging on almost any phone, almost anywhere in the world. But in the decade since Meta acquired WhatsApp for an eye-watering $22 billion in 2014, the app has been transformed from a narrowly focused utilitarian tool into a sort of ‘everything app.’ In countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, WhatsApp is now also a place for scheduling doctor’s appointments and conducting real estate deals — and buying Sabharwal’s ceramic ducks. In Brazil, the beauty juggernaut L’Oréal now makes an average of 25% of its online direct-to-consumer sales on WhatsApp. The shift has been driven, of course, by money. WhatsApp has never been much of a moneymaker. While Meta makes billions off mining people’s personal data to sell more ads, WhatsApp is an encrypted app, whose founders once very publicly swore off advertising altogether. Lately, however, WhatsApp has been aggressively luring big businesses to its suite of paid messaging products for businesses, and openly flirting with the possibility of introducing ads in the not-too-distant future.”
Because of course it is. Meta insists it respects WhatsApp’s original mission of privacy, pledging to keep its end-to-end encryption intact. The company has even added privacy tools that remind us of the old Telegram: disappearing messages, encrypting backups, and shielding IP addresses in calls. Is Meta attempting to move forward by stepping into the past? Even with these privacy promises, Lapowsky notes:
“And yet, with each new revenue-boosting feature, WhatsApp has added a little asterisk to its core privacy promises, according to Nathalie Maréchal, co-director of the privacy and data program at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C. ‘It’s not necessarily that those asterisks are illegitimate. It’s that they’re complicated,’ she told Rest of World, ‘and many users are either not going to take the time, or aren’t going to prioritize, fully understanding it.'”
Ah, details. Another key part of Zuck’s vision is no surprise—generative AI. Meta’s chatbot is now a standard part of the app’s search bar, while a customer-service version and AI marketing tools are now available to businesses. Will all these changes turn WhatsApp into the moneymaker the tech mogul envisions?
Cynthia Murrell, January 1, 2025
AI Oh-Oh: Innovation Needed Now
December 27, 2024
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. No smart software was used.
I continue to hear about AI whiz kids “running out of data.” When people and institutions don’t know what’s happening, it is easy to just smash and grab. The copyright litigation and the willingness of AI companies to tie up with content owners make explicit that the zoom zoom days are over.
A smart software wizard is wondering how to get over, under, around, or through the stone wall of exhausted content. Thanks, Grok, good enough.
“The AI Revolution Is Running Out of Data. What Can Researchers Do?” is a less crazy discussion of the addictive craze which has made smart software or — wait for it — agentic intelligence the next big thing. The write up states:
The Internet is a vast ocean of human knowledge, but it isn’t infinite. And artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have nearly sucked it dry.
“Sucked it dry” and the systems still hallucinate. Guard rails prevent users from obtaining information germane to certain government investigations. The image generators refuse to display a classroom of student paying attention to mobile phones, not the teacher. Yep, dry. More like “run aground.”
The fix to running out of data, according to the write up, is:
plans to work around it, including generating new data and finding unconventional data sources.
One approach is to “find data.” The write up says:
one option might be to harvest non-public data, such as WhatsApp messages or transcripts of YouTube videos. Although the legality of scraping third-party content in this manner is untested, companies do have access to their own data, and several social-media firms say they use their own material to train their AI models. For example, Meta in Menlo Park, California, says that audio and images collected by its virtual-reality headset Meta Quest are used to train its AI.
And what about this angle?
Another option might be to focus on specialized data sets such as astronomical or genomic data, which are growing rapidly. Fei-Fei Li, a prominent AI researcher at Stanford University in California, has publicly backed this strategy. She said at a Bloomberg technology summit in May that worries about data running out take too narrow a view of what constitutes data, given the untapped information available across fields such as health care, the environment and education.
If you want more of these work arounds, please, consult the Nature article.
Several observations are warranted:
First, the current AI “revolution” is the result of many years of research and experimentation, The fact that today’s AI produces reasonably good high school essays and allows people to interact with a search system is a step forward. However, like most search-based innovations, the systems have flaws.
Second, the use of neural networks and the creation by Google (allegedly) of the transformer has provided fuel to fire the engines of investment. The money machines are chasing the next big thing. The problem is that the costs are now becoming evident. It is tough to hide the demand for electric power. (Hey, no problem how about a modular thorium reactor. Yeah, just pick one up at Home Depot. The small nukes are next to the Honda generators.) There is the need for computation. Google can talk about quantum supremacy, but good old fashioned architecture is making Nvidia a big dog in AI. And the cost of people? It is off the chart. Forget those coding boot camps and learn to do matrix math in your head.
Third, the real world applications like those Apple is known for don’t work very well. After vaporware time, Apple is pushing OpenAI to iPhone users. Will Siri actually work? Apple cannot afford to whiff to many big plays. Do you wear your Apple headset or do you have warm and fuzzies for the 2024 Mac Mini which is a heck of a lot cheaper than some of the high power Macs from a year ago? What about Copilot in Notebook. Hey, that’s helpful to some Notepad users. How many? Well, that’s another question. How many people want smart software doing the Clippy thing with every click?
Net net: It is now time for innovation, not marketing. Which of the Big Dog AI outfits will break through the stone walls? The bigger question is, “What if it is an innovator in China?” Impossible, right?
Stephen E Arnold, December 27, 2024
Petrogenesis Means New Life for Xerox and Lexmark
December 24, 2024
Written by a dinobaby, not an over-achieving, unexplainable AI system.
I read about Xerox’s bold move to purchase Lexmark. I live in Kentucky, and some remember the days when IBM sought to create a brand called “Lexmark.” One of its Kentucky-proud units was located in Lexington, Kentucky. Unfortunately printers performed in market competitions about as well as most of the horses bred in Kentucky to win big money in races. Lexmark stumbled, but was not put down. Wikipedia has an amusing summary of the trajectory of Lexmark, originally part of IBM. That’s when the fun began.
The process of fossilmorphism begins. Will the progeny become King of the Printing Jungle? Does this young velociraptor find the snorting beasts amusing or the source of a consulting snack? Thanks, You.com. Good enough.
Xerox, on the other hand, is another Rochester, New York, business case study. (The other is Kodak, of digital camera fame.) Again Wikipedia has a good basic description without the color of the company’s most interesting missteps. (Did you know that one of Xerox’s most successful sales professionals was a fisherman. That’s is. Boat to big bucks without any of the Fancy Dan stuff in college.) Oh, Xerox made printers, and I was a dinobaby who worked on a printer that ingested scanned images or typed pages at one end and spit out collated paper copies at the other. Yep, a printer.
What has caused this dinobaby to stumble down memory lane? I read “Xerox to Acquire Lexmark.” Yep, Xerox a printer outfit has acquired what was once an IBM printer outfit. I call this type of business tactic
Fossilmorphism
A coinage! It meaning is that two fossil type companies fuse and create a new company. The idea is that the deal has “synergy” and the flows of cash from surging sales with lead to dinomorphism. This term suggests that companies only a dinobaby like me can love change and explode beyond their decades of organization and re-organization, might-have-been thinking, and the constraints of tromping around when this dinobaby was an agile velociraptor.
The deal raises an existential question: Are two dinosaurs able to mate? Will the offspring be a Darwinian win or fail? Every horse owner knows their foal is a winner. (Horse veterinarians are the big winners, according to Kentucky lore.)
Stephen E Arnold, December 24, 2024
Microsoft Grouses and Barks, Then Regrouses and Rebarks about the Google
December 23, 2024
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. No smart software was used.
I spotted a reference to Windows Central, a very supportive yet “independent” explainer of Microsoft. That write up bounced around and a version ended up in Analytics India, an online publication from a country familiar to the Big Dogs at Microsoft and Google.
A stern mother tells her child to knock off the constant replays of a single dorky tune like “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake.” Thanks, Grok. Good enough.
The Analytics India story is titled “Google Makes More Money on Windows Than Microsoft, says Satya Nadella.” Let’s look at a couple of passages from the write up and then reflect on the “grousing” both giants in the money making department are sharing with anyone, maybe everyone.
Here’s the first snippet:
“Google makes more money on Windows than all of Microsoft,” Nadella said, discussing the company’s strategy to reclaim lost market share in the browser space.
I love that “lost market share”. Did Microsoft have market share in the browser space. Like Windows Phone, the Microsoft search engine in its many incarnations was not a click magnet. I heard when I did a teeny tiny thing for a Microsoft “specialist” outfit that Softies were running queries on Google and then reverse engineering what to index and what knobs to turn in order to replicate what Google’s massively wonderful method produced. True or false? Hey, I only know what I was told. Whatever Microsoft did in search failed. (How about that Fast Search & Transfer technology which powered alltheweb.com when it existed?)
I circled this statement as well:
Looking ahead, Nadella expressed confidence in Microsoft’s efforts to regain browser market share and promote its AI tools. “We get to relitigate,” he said, pointing to the opportunity to win back market share. “This is the best news for Microsoft shareholders—that we lost so badly that we can now go contest it and win back some share,” he said.
Ah, ha. “Lost so badly.” What an interesting word “relitigate.” Huh? And the grouse replay “win back market share.” What market share? Despite the ubiquity of the outstandingly wonderful Windows operating system and its baked in browser and button fest for Bing, exactly what is the market share.
Google is chugging along with about 90 percent Web search market share. Microsoft is nipping at Google’s heels with a robust four percent. Yandex is about two percent. The more likely scenario is that Yandex could under its new ownership knock Microsoft out of second place. Google isn’t going anywhere fast because the company is wrapped around finding information like Christiano Ronaldo holding one of his trophies.
What’s interesting about the Analytics India write up is what is not included in the article. For example:
- The cultural similarities of the two Big Dogs. The competition has the impact of a couple of high schoolers arguing in the cafeteria
- The lack of critical commentary about the glittering generalities the Microsoft Big Dog barks and rebarks like an annoyed French bulldog
- A total lack of interest in the fact that both companies are monopolies and that neither exists to benefit anyone other than those who hold shares in the respective companies. As long as there is money, search market share is nothing more than a money stream.
Will smart software improve the situation?
No. But the grouse and re-grouse approach to business tactics will be a very versatile rhetorical argument.
Stephen E Arnold, December 23, 2024
IBM Courts Insurance Companies: Interesting Move from the Watson Folks
December 20, 2024
This blog post flowed from the sluggish and infertile mind of a real live dinobaby. If there is art, smart software of some type was probably involved.
This smart software and insurance appears to be one of the more active plays for 2025. One insurance outfit has found itself in a bit of a management challenge: Executive succession, PR, social media vibes, and big time coverage in Drudge.
IBM has charted a course for insurance, according to “Is There a Winning AI Strategy for Insurers? IBM Says Yes.” The write up reports:
Insurers that use generative artificial intelligence have an advantage over their competitors, according to Mark McLaughlin, IBM global insurance director.
So what’s the “leverage”? These are three checkpoints. These are building customized solutions. I assume this means training and tuning the AI methods to allow the insurance company to hit its goals on a more consistent basis. The “goal” for some insurers is to keep their clients cash. Payout, particular in uncertain times, can put stress on cash flow and executive bonuses.
A modern insurance company worker. The machine looks very smart but not exactly thrilled. Thanks, MagicStudio. Good enough and you actually produced an image unlike Microsoft Copilot.
Another point to pursue is the idea of doing AI everywhere in the insurance organization. Presumably the approach is a layer of smart software on top of the Microsoft smart software. The idea, I assume, is that multiple layers of AI will deliver a tiramisu type sugar high for the smart organization. I wonder if multiple AIs increase costs, but that fiscal issue is not addressed in the write up.
The final point is that multiple models have to be used. The idea is that each business function may require a different AI model. Does the use of multiple models add to support and optimization costs? The write up is silent on this issue.
The guts of the write up are quite interesting. Here’s one example:
That intense competition — and not direct customer demand — is what McLaughlin believes is driving such strong pressure for insurers to invest in AI.
I think this means that the insurance industry is behaving like sheep. These creatures follow and shove without much thought about where the wolf den of costs and customer rebellion lurk.
The fix is articulated in the write as have three components, almost like the script for a YouTube “short” how-to video. These “strategies” are:
- Build trust. Here’s an interesting factoid from the write up: “IBM’s study found only 29% of insurance clients are comfortable with virtual AI agents providing service. An even lower 26% trust the reliability and accuracy of advice provided by an AI agent. “The trust scores in the insurance industry are down 25% since pre-COVID.”
- Dump IT. Those folks have to deal with technical debt. But who will implement AI? My guess is IBM.
- Use multiple models. This is a theme of the write up. More is better at least for some of those involved in an AI project. Are the customers cheering? Nope, I don’t think so. Here’s what the write up says about multiple models: “IBM’s Watson AI has different platforms such as watsonx.ai, watsonx.data and watsonx.governance to meet different specific needs.” Do you know what each allegedly does? I don’t either.
Net net: Watson is back with close cousins in gang.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2024
A Monopolist CEO Loses His Cool: It Is Our AI, Gosh Darn It!
December 17, 2024
This blog post flowed from the sluggish and infertile mind of a real live dinobaby. If there is art, smart software of some type was probably involved.
“With 4 Words, Google’s CEO Just Fired the Company’s Biggest Shot Yet at Microsoft Over AI” suggests that Sundar Pichai is not able to smarm his way out of an AI pickle. In January 2023, Satya Nadella, the boss of Microsoft, announced that Microsoft was going to put AI on, in, and around its products and services. Google immediately floundered with a Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show in Paris and then rolled out a Google AI service telling people to glue cheese on pizza.
Magic Studio created a good enough image of an angry executive thinking about how to put one of his principal competitors behind a giant digital eight ball.
Now 2025 is within shouting distance. Google continues to lag in the AI excitement race. The company may have oodles of cash, thousands of technical wizards, and a highly sophisticated approach to marketing, branding, and explaining itself. But is it working.
According to the cited article from Inc. Magazine’s online service:
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had said that “Google should have been the default winner in the world of big tech’s AI race.”
I like the “should have been.” I had a high school English teacher try to explain to me as an indifferent 14-year-old that the conditional perfect tense suggests a different choice would have avoided a disaster. Her examples involved a young person who decided to become an advertising executive and not a plumber. I think Ms. Dalton said something along the lines “Tom would have been happier and made more money if he had fixed leaks for a living.” I pegged the grammatical expression as belonging to the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” branch of rationalizing failure.
Inc. Magazine recounts an interview during which the interlocuter set up this exchange with the Big Dog of Google, Sundar Pichai, the chief writer for the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show:
Interviewer: “You guys were the originals when it comes to AI.” Where [do] you think you are in the journey relative to these other players?”
Sundar, the Googler: I would love to see “a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft’s models and our models any day, any time. Microsoft is using someone else’s models.
Yep, Microsoft inked a deal with the really stable, fiscally responsible outfit OpenAI and a number of other companies including one in France. Imagine that. France.
Inc. Magazine states:
Google’s biggest problem isn’t that it can’t build competitive models; it’s that it hasn’t figured out how to build compelling products that won’t destroy its existing search business. Microsoft doesn’t have that problem. Sure, Bing exists, but it’s not a significant enough business to matter, and Microsoft is happy to replace it with whatever its generative experience might look like for search.
My hunch is that Google will not be advertising on Inc.’s site. Inc. might have to do some extra special search engine optimization too. Why? Inc.’s article repeats itself in case Sundar of comedy act fame did not get the message. Inc. states again:
Google hasn’t figured out the product part. It hasn’t figured out how to turn its Gemini AI into a product at the same scale as search without killing its real business. Until it does, it doesn’t matter whether the competition uses someone else’s models.
With the EU competition boss thinking about chopping up the Google, Inc. Magazine and Mr. Nadella may struggle to get Sundar’s attention. It is tough to do comedy when tragedy is a snappy quip away.
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2024
The Starlink Angle: Yacht, Contraband, and Global Satellite Connectivity
December 16, 2024
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. No smart software was used.
I have followed the ups and downs of Starlink satellite Internet connectivity in the Russian special operation. I have not paid much attention to more routine criminal use of the Starlink technology. Before I direct your attention to a write up about this Elon Musk enterprise, I want to mention that this use case for satellites caught my attention with Equatorial Communications’ innovations in 1979. Kudos to that outfit!
“Police Demands Starlink to Reveal Buyer of Device Found in $4.2 Billion Drug Bust” has a snappy subtitle:
Smugglers were caught with 13,227 pounds of meth
Hmmm. That works out to 6,000 kilograms or 6.6 short tons of meth worth an estimated $4 billion on the open market. And it is the government of India chasing the case. (Starlink is not yet licensed for operation in that country.)
The write up states:
officials have sent Starlink a police notice asking for details about the purchaser of one of its Starlink Mini internet devices that was found on the boat. It asks for the buyer’s name and payment method, registration details, and where the device was used during the smugglers’ time in international waters. The notice also asks for the mobile number and email registered to the Starlink account.
The write up points out:
Starlink has spent years trying to secure licenses to operate in India. It appeared to have been successful last month when the country’s telecom minister said Starlink was in the process of procuring clearances. The company has not yet secured these licenses, so it might be more willing than usual to help the authorities in this instance.
Starlink is interesting because it is a commercial enterprise operating in a free wheeling manner. Starlink’s response is not known as of December 12, 2024.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2024
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