I’m doing more writing for Silverlinings and the upcoming Fierce Network site and looking for news, feature and trend ideas related to cloud infrastructure and platform, networking and AI for the enterprise. Hit me with your pitches and ideas at mitch@mitchwagner.com.
Whenever I talk with someone with a New York/Jewish accent, I start reflecting it back to them. One minute I’m just a regular middle American dude, and the next minute I’m Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Here's why AI search engines really can't kill Google
AI search tools are improving but they don’t match how we use search. [David Pierce / theverge.com]
Search can be divided into three types, says Pierce: People primarily use search just to find websites.
… my favorite fact of all: … a vast number of people every year go to Google and type “google” into the search box.
People also use search for specific facts, such as who won last night’s big game.
And the third type is the “exploration query.”
These are questions that don’t have a single answer, that are instead the beginning of a learning process. On the most popular list, things like “how to tie a tie,” “why were chainsaws invented,” and “what is tiktok” count as explorational queries. If you ever Googled the name of a musician you just heard about, or have looked up things like “stuff to do in Helena Montana” or “NASA history,” you’re exploring.
I needed to get my glasses repaired, but I couldn’t remember what you call the person who does that. I came up with “optimist.”
📷 Good morning! Here’s something I see on my walk every day.
She says she has been a good dog and would like a treat now.
Overheard: “My teacher told me years ago not to worry about spelling because in the future there will be autocorrect. And for that I am eternally grapefruit.”
Death and typos: Writer/musician David Safran describes his six strange years screening online obituary comments. His job was overwhelming and rich in errors. And it drove home one message: we’re always on the clock. [theguardian.com]
Elon Musk has fully bought into the ‘great replacement.’ Musk thinks Democrats are using immigration to bolster a favorable voting demographic. But that’s not how immigration works. [theverge.com] — It is, at most, a short step from “great replacement” to “The Jews will not replace us.”
Margaret Atwood on Stephen King’s “Carrie,” which turns 50 and is still relevant today. Like much of King, it’s about the white underlcass in America. [nytimes.com]
First impressions of my new MacBook Air, after using it just a few minutes
- Holy cow, this thing is fast compared with my 2018 MacBook Pro. I did a thing where I open 30+ tabs simultaneously. Took a couple of minutes on the MBP, but is virtually instantaneous on the MBA.
- Migration Assistant seems to have worked flawlessly. I had to authenticate and give permission for a few things, but that only took about a minute.
- Unexpected benefit: With a 15" built-in display, I now have a usable second display for my desk. My previous 13" display wasn’t usable when the MBP was on my desktop attached to the external Cinema Display, keyboard and trackball, except under limited circumstances. I hadn’t considered that when I decided on 15".
- Hmmm… I hope this thing fits into my favorite computer bag. If not—MOAR shopping!
- I can switch back to Safari from Vivaldi now, but I don’t know if I will. I’ve come to like Vivaldi.
Before upgrading to my new MacBook Air, I am being responsible, updating the operating systems and making sure my backups are all up-to-date. But really I just want to hold-my-beer this bitch and let Migration Assistant rip.
My new MacBook Air is here!
My current machine is a 2018 MacBook Pro. It works fine,although of course it’s slow. But I have to reboot several times a week—twice in one morning last week—and this suggests to me that it’s going to die on me at any moment and leave me possibly unable to meet deadlines. Better to arrange the transition on a schedule more under my control. So I pulled the trigger on an upgrade last week.
The old Mac has just 8 GB of memory and a 13" screen. The new machine is 15"/24GB/2TB. I’m looking forward to having that bigger screen to spread out on when I take the MB off my desk and use it elsewhere.
But now I’m on deadline and don’t even have time to open the box!
Excellent post from Cory about how widespread corruption in public institutions leads to anti-vax, MAGA and other conspiracy theories.
“Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis: We may not know what’s in the box, but we can tell if it’s been damaged in transit.” pluralistic.net/2024/03/2…
The revolving door of senior personnel between regulatory agencies and the companies they’re supposed to regulate means that the agencies don’t do their jobs.
The FAA has been overlooking problems with Boeing planes for years and we’re seeing the damage in headlines now.
Likewise, while vaccines are safe and powerful enablers of public health, Big Pharma lied for decades about the safety and efficacy of opiods, so it’s reasonable for people to disbelieve everything Big Pharma says.
Few of us are qualified to judge the safety of vaccines, medications, buildings and airplanes, but we can look at the regulatory process and see if it’s sound. And that process is broken. Corrupt.
Facebook and TikTok aren’t to blame here, the fault lies in the failure of government.
If the Biden Administration has been tackling this problem, I’m not aware of it. That doesn’t mean I support Biden’s re-election less, because Biden’s done a lot of good and in areas where Biden has failed, Trump would be a thousand times worse.
Roman Mars Describes Santa Fe As It Is [99percentinvisible.org] — A podcast tour of Santa Fe. Beautiful city. We visited a few years ago and loved it. Love that New Mexican food.
It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Pandemic. Joe Biden is paying the price for America’s unprocessed COVID grief. [theatlantic.com]
Photos of the original McDonald’s in in Illinois, which opened in 1955, and has been preserved as a museum, showing what it was like to dine there back then. [businessinsider.com]
A third and final “Downton Abbey” movie is in the works. [collider.com]