For the Benefit of Earth

The most recent edition of the wonderful 9pm Edict mentions Blue Origin's pretty wild promo video in which they talk about how energy consumption is expanding exponentially which is why we need to colonise new worlds (I'm paraphrasing). I've long said what matters is not where the energy comes from but how much is used which is ultimately the cause of climate collapse. And somehow my mind drifts back to AI.

Being involved professionally with projects that are attempting to leverage AI, I found The RAND corporation's analysis of why AI project fail instructive.

Sonos' app redesign is so bad that it recently cost the CEO their job. I just don't use the Sonos app any more and just Airplay to my Sonos, which is still a great speaker but one feature which drives me crazy about the Sonos (other than the app) is that the 'line in' is delayed. I have no idea why.

My son got a record player for his birthday. It's cheap and has a tinny little speaker on the side but he loves it and can just go and put on a record any time he wants to list to something. Which has be thinking about getting my old stereo out a plugging it into that. Then what's stopping me plugging a Raspberry Pi Zero with a DAC Hat on it into the stereo and just Airplaying to that? Or installing headless Plexamp. Then I've got my entire music catalogue available to me via my Plex media server. And if Plex ever gets shit I can just switch to a different Media Server because I've own all my own music. It's catnip for a digital vegan like myself. Oh, and my Sonos roam just totally died of me just outside warranty recently. We should really let the user solve their own problems but one generally needs to step outside these ecosystems to do that.

I've probably linked to Edward Zitron's 'Never forgive them' piece before but it's even more pertinent now that the tech oligarchy are lining up behind Trump. I don't know why it surprises me as much as it does, but there has never been a better time to move everything away from the big tech giants as much as you can.

And as a side note, I don't know why, but the person I was most surprised and disappointed to see at Trump's inauguration was Tim Cook. Not that I think he's special or particularly principled but Apple is the one company I find myself being least appalled by.

Speaking of Fascism, Origin Story has an excellent take on exactly what Fascism is which is well worth a listen.

Finally January 26 has come and gone again. Celebrating the day New South Wales was founded as though that's all of Australia and marking the beginning of a centuries long campaigns of violence, massacres, Stolen Generations and active campaigns to destroy the oldest continuous living culture in the world. I enjoyed Celeste Liddle's history of resistance on January 26.