https://www.idoc.idaho.gov/content/prisons/resident-client-s...

Some of his blog posts in the past several months also highlight the dismal state of prison tech, which I suppose is on-point for this thread:

https://www.sevarg.net/

The same way this sort of thing has always been accomplished: Government regulation.

Vote, write reps, donate to the ACLU and EFF, socialize.

The Waymo rides were near-perfect. At one point when a delivery truck was blocking 3 lanes, the vehicle assertively merged over into the free lane to get around. A couple of people on e-bikes were all over the place, but at no point did I feel that the vehicle put them in any kind of danger. Starts, stops, and turns were all smooth. End-to-end time was good, the ride itself was comfortable, and the price was reasonable.

On the other hand the Uber driver picked me up in a Tesla that had regen cranked up. They continually accelerated and decelerated the entire way to the airport, rocking the car back and forth the whole time, as if it were a nervous habit to continually press and release the accelerator or something. I felt sick by the time we got to my terminal.

For me at this point, technology like Waymo can't carpet every metropolitan area quickly enough.

One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.

I run GrapheneOS on an older Pixel. It does everything I need it to do: alarms, offline maps and navigation, end-to-end encrypted communications, podcasts, audiobooks, music, photos, weather, and even phone calls. All without any DRM or spying.

Now let's talk about the downsides in this article: shopping discounts, parking, entertainment, fast food, and banking.

Shopping discounts: The deal is that they get to track me and advertise to me, and they cut some percentage off a purchase here and there. No deal. I've discovered so many great products by moving away from big retail shops that engage in this kind of activity. I mostly shop at Trader Joe's, which has no coupon/discount/loyalty nonsense. For the occasional trip to another supermarket, I simply key in -867-5309. Works every time.

Parking: I ride my bicycle or take public transportation almost everywhere, so parking is a moot point for me. But for the rare occasion when I drive to a place where I have to pay for parking, most everything accepts a credit card. If it doesn't, most everything else has a website that I can go to in Vanadium or Waterfox. It's actually very rare that I find I actually have no choice but to download and install a DRM'd app in order to park somewhere. In fact I don't recall that ever actually happening to me. Not to say that's not a possibility in the future.

Entertainment: I despise large crowds, and almost everything that's exclusively done through Ticketmaster et al. is of absolutely no interest to me. If I'm not sitting down in a cozy venue within 10-15 or so feet from the performers, I'm just not interested.

Fast food: I don't eat fast food. Discounted Big Macs isn't my idea of a good time.

Banking: My bank's web site works fine on Waterfox. But if I'm going to be managing my money I'd much prefer to do it on my computer. If I want a reasonable return on my deposits I simply park most of my cash in a money market ETF. It's plenty convenient and is simply not a big issue for me.

I'll add a few more.

Rideshare: I find traditional taxis are everywhere I've recently visited, tend to be driven by more interesting people, and they accept cash, no problem. I've had plenty of bad experiences with rideshares and have never had a bad experience since switching to traditional taxis. Knock on wood.

Audiobooks: I get ODM files from my local library. The audio files you download via ODM aren't DRM'd.

Ebooks: My offline Kobi reader works great. Kindles can be cracked with WinterBreak. Again, the library. DeDRM is your friend.

Email: Fastmail app from apkcure.com.

Chat: Signal.

Airlines: Check in on Waterfox, take a screenshot of the ticket/QR code. If that doesn't work, check in at the airport and get a printed boarding pass.

Those kiosks are gone from many airports. You're going to have to wait in line to get anything printed. And if you fly Ryanair it will cost you over 50 euro.

And yet for me one time earlier this year said QR code on my Graphene OS phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but refused to scan at the gate, leading to mayhem as the crew couldn't figure out for nearly an hour why the number of people sitting on the plane wasn't equal to the number of people who they registered as boarding.

I think I held up an entire flight for nearly an hour because the QR code on my Graphene OS Android phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but didn't scan at all at the gate. They ended up letting me on the flight without properly registering that I boarded in their system. That triggered some crazy security hold that prevented the crew from obtaining permission to pull back from the gate.

I was about to respond, "No way this is true. I don't believe you." But then I found an article claiming that yes, indeed you can be fleeced like this for simply showing up and asking for your boarding pass. Unreal.

https://www.the-independent.com/travel/news-and-advice/check...

Just last week I flew back home from SFO. I needed to change the flight at the last minute. The app failed to update with the new flight. The airline had removed all the boarding pass kiosks from that airport and only seemed to have luggage drop service. I asked an airport employee how I could get a boarding pass printed, and he pointed to a poorly-marked lane with a sign about "special accommodations" or something, like I was blind. I waited in that line for about 20 minutes along with people who were trying to check their bags. Eventually I got to someone who seemed really put out that I hadn't checked in yet and that they'd need to push a few more buttons on their computer to do that for me.

It's just about the most cynical dining experience I've ever had the misfortune of enduring.

> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).

The last time I tried parking in downtown Salt Lake City the city's app wouldn't even install on my phone, complaining about being built for an older Android version. Fortunately the web site still worked. Sort of. I had to try a couple of different browsers before I found one that functioned with the site.

When riding Caltrain I get charged for the maximum amount I could possibly pay (all stops) when I board. Then when I get off at my stop I tap again and get refunded for all the stops I ended up not getting to. It works fine. Seems a meter could be a "tap in/tap out" thing. If it's 5 hours until it's free to park, put a hold for 5 hours of time. If you get back in 2 hours, release the hold and only charge for 2 hours when you tap out.

It's even possible to do this with cash. Imagine a machine that calculates your change and spits out bills and/or coins. Oh wait, yeah, we've had that technology since around 1959. It would just need to print out a ticket with a bar code or something to authenticate that you're the one who paid in the first place. Did you lose your ticket? Sorry, looks like you're paying for the rest of the day. But that's still a lot cheaper than a citation.

I suspect it's not "pay max/get refund" because municipalities can't stop milking those sweet sweet citations from people who fail to correctly guess how much time they'll need up front.

Purposes and goals come from you and me. An LLM is a tool, and we get to decide what the tool is good for or how to use it.

If you want "a smart creative," there's nothing wrong with that. It's as good a purpose or goal as any.

However for me I don't want an LLM to try to be "a smart creative." I instead want it to give me cold, hard facts in precisely the format I want them, in precisely the context I am interested in, and with precisely the conciseness that I require to make a specific decision or learn a specific thing. Traditional web search can eventually get me what I want, but I have to sift through the cruft and make associations among a plethora of content to get to the meat of what I want.

I've found that using a good web search (Kagi) together with an LLM processing the results has given me information I needed and then pointed to the sources so I can validate those statements. I wouldn't exactly characterize those results as a "simple" summary. They're usually synthesizing a variety of sources to generate something that no one source had, exactly.

Meanwhile in the Wild West (a.k.a. the United States) we have children hurling 100+ lb 750W throttle-controlled motorcycles (I'm sorry, "e-bikes") at up to 28 mph on mixed-use pedestrian trails. The best we can do is put up plastic signs on the trail begging them to slow down and be careful around other people.

Me: Who is Trump's paternal grandpa?

Based on the available information, Frederick Trump is Donald Trump's paternal grandfather. Here are some key details about him:

Born as Friedrich Trump on March 14, 1869, in Kallstadt, Germany (then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria).

He immigrated to the United States in 1885.

He was a German-American businessman who amassed considerable wealth during the Klondike Gold Rush by running a restaurant and brothel for miners.

In 1901, he returned to Kallstadt and married Elizabeth Christ the following year.

He is considered the patriarch of the Trump family.

He passed away on May 30, 1918.

Interestingly, the Trump last name has been recorded in Kallstadt since the 18th century, and Frederick Trump is credited with being the founder of the family's initial fortune.

Me: Who is Trump's maternal grandpa?

Based on the provided information, Malcolm MacLeod (also spelled Calum MacLeod) is Donald Trump's maternal grandfather. He was born on December 27, 1866, in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland

While the information provided is limited, it confirms his identity and place of birth. Unfortunately, the passage does not provide additional details about his life or occupation.

---

That looks pretty good to me. Of course Kagi's strategy seems to be to retrieve search results first and then bias the LLM with those results. The LLM then parses, distills, and contextualizes the answer in a succinct and easily-consumable manner. In my opinion this is The Way to go about doing it at the moment.

Due to the prevalence of the practice this is tantamount to suggesting constructive unemployability.

People were up in arms about widespread doping during the Lance Armstrong era. But the only viable alternative to doping at the time was literally to not compete at all.

In any other professional field that would be grounds for termination for incompetence. It's so weird that we seem to shrug off that kind of behavior so readily in tech.