Imagine going into debt to get a College Degree to become an influencer . . . . . :|

As an influencer, your usefullness to society is right up there with overpaid Athletes
and people who know how to cry on cue. ( actors )

In addition, the odds of you making it into the big leagues where the real money exists
is about as likely as a lottery win.

But, go ahead, get your influencer degree.

As the old adage goes:

" A fool and his money are soon parted. "

" Despite finding no evidence of the crime on his digital devices, Canadian police arrested Klayme in 2020 on child sex abuse charges. He was convicted after a trial in 2023 and sentenced in 2024 to 18 months in prison. "

Without finding any actual evidence, how the hell was he arrested and CONVICTED via trial at all ?

What insanity that you can be arrested and jailed with absolutely zero evidence of a crime ?
( and, in this case, 100% proven that his arrest and conviction were without merit )

The only thing it didn't do is post an image of a middle finger on screen after it was done.

The folks who create the OS needs to rethink their approach of how they wipe user data from
the device vs going nuclear and wiping everything.

Why not put all user data into their own home directory ( see most other Operating Systems )
and securely wipe ONLY that directory upon entry of a duress code or bad pin entry X number
of times. Perhaps give the user the option to select / flag which sub-directories to purge and
which ones to keep. ( Eg: Purge all phone contacts, email, text messages and photos / videos,
keep everything else. )

The phone would still unlock with all the basic / default operations still available to it, but the users
private data would be beyond recovery and it won't be quite so obvious that anything happened at
all.

I really don't see how anyone can call these " pervert " glasses unless the person wearing
them is crawling around on the floor trying to do upskirt stuff . . . . .

Simply being filmed / photographed is pretty much the daily normal these days.
With or without your consent, it happens all the same.

Think about how much surveillance footage of you there is by simply leaving your home
and practically going anywhere. Literally everyone and their brother holds a smartphone
which has a camera in it. I can sit quite some distance away from you with any decent
zoom lens and photo / film you all day long without your knowledge.

How is it everyone seems to be bothered by the everyday Joe filming people with what are,
arguably, the ugliest glasses on Earth, when you're on more cameras than you can count by
the time you make it into work in the morning ?

Basically, they got caught doing something stupid and conveniently blamed it on the AI.

The old excuses typically consisted of:

a) Blaming Junior Coders / Engineers
b) Oh, thats just left over development code
c) It's a software bug

Which now begs the question:

When an AI you created goes and does something stupid, who bears the criminal
and financial penalties ? Blaming it on the AI will only go so far when folks pull the
pitchforks and torches out of storage . . . .

Logic dictates the entity responsible for creating it but our reality has never been one
to follow Common Sense very well.

A lot of folks have called for the World to take a step back, take a deep breath and slow down the development
of their AI programs.

However, this article should give you a large hint as to why that will never happen.

It's an all out race to AGI ( assuming we ever get there at all ) and the stakes are far too high to come in
second place. Hence the reason the throttle is wide open, no one is giving any serious thoughts as to
where the brake pedals are and damn near unlimited resources are being poured into the programs.

China will do everything in their power to ensure the US doesn't get there first and vice versa.

We always like to say " Competition spurs innovation " but time will tell if that is a positive or negative thing
once we get there.

Yes, folks still use Windows 10 because:

1) Windows 11 now includes CoPilot, extra telemetry, Windows Recall and mandatory updates
    which continue to cause almost as many problems as they try to solve.

2) Too much software still doesn't work on Linux

My machine is more than capable of running Windows 11, yet I am still running Windows 10
on it ( and have a cloned SSD with Win 10 on standby in case my running copy keels over ).

I'm tired of having to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. Win 10 does everything I need it
to do, Windows 11 most certainly will not do it any better and there simply isn't an alternative for
some of the software I utilize within the Linux ecosystem.

It does get tiring to keep reminding the few who can't seem to quite get it but, once again, there
is a lot of professional software that simply does not work within Linux ( either directly or indirectly
via incompatible or non-existent drivers ) nor has an acceptable alternative. Yes, some folks actually
use more than some flavor of IDE or Notepad ++ on a daily basis. ( Really ! )

If you know of a driver that connects a Yamaha or AKAI hardware synth to a DAW within Linux that is on
par with Ableton Live or MPC do let me know. ( I have yet to find it )

No, I don't care if it no longer gets security patches because I don't use the Win 10 box as my
daily driver. The only time it connects to the internet is when the aforementioned software has
updates. ( DAW's, Steam, Adobe, Autodesk, etc )

My daily driver IS a Linux box so I'm not all that concerned about the Windows 10 situation.

The sky isn't going to fall anytime soon because people refuse to use the latest trash from Redmond.

My best guesses for their decision to go sans screen would be to increase
the battery life as much as possible while also shrinking the devices size.

Since I'm no electrical engineer, I can't tell you which pulls more power:

1) An always hot microphone
2) A surface that only activates the microphone after you touch it

The latter would be better privacy wise, of course.

A part of me hopes that engineers have decided too many folks walk about
with their eyes glued to their tiny little smartphone screens as it is and this
would help with that problem as well.

To point out a simple fact:

Unless you believe this whole AI thing just magically appeared within the last two years, then
it should be noted that the -previous- administration did nothing to slow this down. In fact, they
had the same attitude as the current administration and, if I'm being honest, any administration
regardless of party affiliation would be sailing the same waters with gusto.

Why ?

Because the race to AGI is of the same National Security importance as the race to be first for the Atomic Bomb.

Whomever reaches that goal first ( assuming it is reachable at all ) will enjoy an enormous advantage
over everyone else. Oh, and make no doubts about it, if AGI is achieved, that technology will instantly
be seized by the Government, declared a National Security Asset and there is exactly zero anyone will
be able to do about it.

Hence, the reason everyone seems to have the " damn the torpedos, full speed ahead " attitude.
( This may burn us all in the end, but time will tell. )

Even IF, someone convinced US interests to slow this thing down, everyone else will simply keep
the throttle wide open and vice versa.

They are NOT going to slow down because to do so, allows your competitors to catch up.
They are NOT going to implement any safety protocols because, see the previous sentence.

Try to remember: We're all just riding this train. At no point will we ever be allowed to drive it.

Data centers will eat a lot of resources that we may not have enough of to go around as it is
before building a new one creating a new variable in the overall equation.

I don't need China / Russia / whomever to tell me that putting extremely data / water hungry
data centers into areas who barely have a stable electrical grid or water supply is a bad idea.

Those in favor of putting them in everywhere ( resource availability be damned ) will simply try
to convince the idiots in charge ( politicians ) that it's some evil communist country that's driving
negative opinions on the matter vs the reality of things.

Social Media has become a toxic wasteland.

A wasteland where many hold the mistaken belief that anyone else cares what
their opinions are.

It's toxic.
It's fake.
It's a waste of time.

It exists not to bring you and your friends and family together.
It exists to data-mine the living shit out of everyone who interacts with it.

It's a data harvesting tool designed to be as addictive as possible while also being
as subtle as possible while doing it.

If you closed out / deleted all of your Social Media accounts, you might find yourself
to be in a better mood far more often.

A lot of folks are starting to wake up to the reality that getting a degree and a soul-crushing
8-5 job may no longer be sufficient to have a decent life.

In addition, there is nothing like coming to the realization that while you're doing a job that barely
pays enough to cover your monthly bills, there are nine year olds on You-Tube making $20M a year
reviewing kids toys and twenty something cat girls with a tentacle ( or two ) up their ass on OnlyFans
making more in a year than you will in a lifetime :|

The motivation to be a Doctor, Lawyer, Nurse, Scientist, etc., has been replaced with YouTube influencers,
OnlyFans models and professional gamers.

This Country has always had its priorities backwards when it comes to what professions are paid in
relation to how useful said profession is overall.

The most useless professions in existence ( actors, celebrities, athletes, etc ) are typically the highest paid
in the World. I mean, would the World even care if the aforementioned professions ceased to exist tomorrow ?
What would change ? ( Hint: Not much )

While the professions that have actually improved our species standards of living for the past century or two are
paid a fraction of their worth. Without the researchers and scientists who made modern technology possible, we
would be living a very short and miserable life.

( I will always choose the miracles of modern technology ( especially Air Conditioning ) vs any given actors ability to cry on cue )

Is it any surprise then that the kids of today are no longer interested in a " normal " job when they have seen
the previous generation ( many with college degrees ) struggle to even find a job at all ?

Bottom line:

If you want folks to become interested in the professions we are going to need the most in the upcoming decades,
then you need to encourage people to choose those professions. The best way to do so is to simply make the
compensation / benefits for said professions far more appealing than they are today.

Smartphones and tablets are essentially digital babysitters in this day and age.

Go to any restaurant and look around ( assuming you aren't a part of the problem by being addicted to your own phone ).
Make a note of how many families are there with every member of said family doing nothing but playing with their phones.

Go to the park, make a note of how many people are walking, jogging, riding their bikes, walking the dog, etc. all while staring at their phone.

Blasting down the freeway at 80mph and, yep, many of them are staring at their phone.

It's rather sad.

Hands down the most addictive invention within the last several decades imo.
But the Governments will do nothing about it because the devices are loaded with surveillance / data harvesting tech they love.

The smartphone is to humanity in modern socieity what a pacifier or security blanket is to a toddler.
They're fine as long as they have their favorite little toy in hand.

Deny them said toy, however, and they will absolutely lose their mind.

Appologies for the silly question ( I just woke up ) but wouldn't a simple VPN be all that is needed to
bypass this ?

I'm assuming they're doing some dynamic geolocation to determine if the phone is in Texas at the time
the App Store was accessed.

If true, I think Texas will become the greatest salesman for VPN's there is.
( I can't imagine how many have one installed already for sites like Pornhub )

Unless they next plan on banning VPN's within the State, they should probably look at alternatives to
this idea of annoying the sh*t out of all the voting adults while also annoying all the future voting kids
they're trying to " protect ".

The odds of Anthropic only using this for Chinese users is quite low.

I would be more surprised if the public " AI " systems like Claude aren't tracking everything and everyone.
Regardless of what country they are in.

But, like usual, anytime they get caught, they will simply blame some junior engineer or claim this was developer
code that accidentally made it into production.