TechTakes

Recently read Brian Merchant's latest piece on the upcoming election, and I felt like making a quick-and-dirty prediction:

If Harris wins, I expect there will be some pretty harsh regulation against Silicon Valley. Putting aside everything but simple political pragmatism:

1. Elon Musk's election antics and Trump's support from tech billoinaires have shown SV holds a significant amount of power over politics - power which will almost certainly prove a constant thorn in Harris' side. As such, it'd be in her self interest to kneecap the Valley ASAP.

2. Public opinion of Silicon Valley has taken a pounding over the years for a variety of reasons, with the AI slop-nami just the latest and most serious grievance the public has against them. Any tech regulation a Harris presidency makes (especially against AI) is gonna enjoy significant public support from day one.

Fuck it, off-the-cuff prediction: I expect resistance to Silicon Valley is gonna turn violent during Trump's term.

today's a fucking trip and a half

in a mall I saw some Honor laptop[0] ads with "AI" pitch sauce slathered all over it

later walking between art galleries I saw a roadsign ad for a property sales company promising "more effective strategies using AI" (more effective strategies for.. selling.. houses..? I guess..? (x up for doubt))

and now I get this shit in my mailbox from someone who absolutely purchased a dataset with this address in it:

From: Ai Everything GLOBAL <newsletter@event.aieverythingglobal.com>
Subject: Join the AI Elite—G42, TII, DIEZ, Dell & More!

[0] - I didn't even know they were in ZA, but nope, 2-floor hanging banners and ads allllll over elevator doors and shit

Personal rant: in my ongoing search for a replacement for ProtonMail after they pivoted to AI had me almost sign up with Tuta because, hey, they looked good and were on my radar originally anyway, when I found out that they do not offer any IMAP/SMTP access at all.

I mean, I get it, their whole thing is privacy and, yes, storing mail locally on my machine kinda undermines the idea of strong and impenetrable E2E encryption, but I should at least have the choice like I do with Proton Bridge. Because without SMTP Tuta is completely unusable for git send-email. I mean, yes, technically I could copy-paste the output of format-patch into the web client but, first, I am lazy and don't wanna do that, and second, from my experience it rarely works anyway because the clients do some encoding crap so that git am doesn't eat it without cleanup.

Meh. I guess I have to keep looking.

Less election dreariness, Dr Michael Cook talking about the oasis minecraft 'game'.