With ads now showing up in ChatGPT, there is a worry that the answers will turn into sales jobs for the advertisers. That’s too obvious, and is unlikely to happen — at least in the short term.
What is more likely is that the AI will try to lead us down more rabbit holes, hoping to engage us by being more “helpful” than ever.
Already, pretty much every answer ends with an offer of further help. “Would you like me to ... ?”
I predict that initial responses will be tailored to make you want to follow up with even more questions. More questions means more opportunities to show more ads, which of course generates more revenue.
For example, instead of giving a straight-up answer, it might say there different way of approaching the question, forcing you to ask another one.
If you don’t like it, you can always switch to a paid version.
The Mac’s Finder icon has, for me, always been an artistic depiction of the phrase “friendly interface.” It’s been like that since 1995, but with its latest iteration in Tahoe, the face has lost its inter.
Let me explain.
I see the icon as a play on the word “interface” — Susan Kare’s idea of what a face would look like if it was “inter”. The icon, I believe, is meant to show two faces brought together as one, just as humans and computers are brought together in a real-life interface.
The earliest version showed an obvious split between the two halves of the face, with the lines extending outward on the top and bottom. Gradually, the line disappeared and the only way to differentiate was the colours.
The Tahoe version breaks with that tradition. It looks like a blue face with a partial white mask placed on part of the right side. It retains the friendly smile, but it’s no longer inter.
Given that many people don't like the changes to the interface introduced by Tahoe, an interface that in some ways makes the interface more difficult, this version of the Finder icon stands as a reminder that a friendly interface may no longer be the goal at Apple.
We humans place a lot of importance on the time it takes for Earth to revolve around the sun. It takes one year, and we wind up in more or less the same place — relative to the sun — each time. A time for celebration!
But since the sun itself is orbiting around the centre of the galaxy, Earth moves along with it. With the sun moving at 220 kilometres per second, and Earth along for the ride, we end up seven billion kilometres away from where we were a year ago.
That seems like a lot, but in the vast emptiness of space, it’s hardly anything — just 0.0007 light-years per year. To put that into perspective, the nearest stars, in the Alpha Centauri system, are over four light-years away.
Which brings me to a pet peeve — why is so much science fiction based on conflict, even outright war, between beings from different parts of the galaxy? The time and expense would be unimaginable if it weren’t for the fertile imaginations of science fiction writers.
To get an idea of the vastness of space, think of the stars as specks of sand. If the sun was speck lying at your feet, you would have to travel to the other side of the world to find the closest other speck.
I just finished slogging through an epic novel where an entire “league” of planets orbiting various stars was at war with two sets of alien beings from other planets. What a colossal waste of resources.
I think the reason we can imagine it is because so many wars here on Earth have wasted millions of lives and billions of dollars. So why not scale up to the stars?
There’s a cool new thing you can do in HTML that is supported by all the major web browsers, including Safari. But I can’t use it because, well, Safari.
You see, if you want the latest version of Safari, which has this cool new thing, you also need the latest or near-latest version of macOS. It’s been like this for several years now. Safari and macOS are joined at the hip.
Firefox, Chrome and Edge don’t have this problem. I can easily install the latest and greatest on my aging iMac. In fact, I switched to Firefox a few months ago because the old Safari on my old Mac was painfully slow.
Why can’t Apple make its latest version of Safari work with older versions of macOS? It seems insane that Mozilla — a small non-profit — can do this, but the behemoth that is Apple can’t or won’t. They should be embarrassed.
Everyone else has had their say about the Liquid Glass design adopted by Apple, so why shouldn’t I? Actually, I’m mostly fine with it, but some of those icons just don’t make sense.
The one that jumps out at me is Settings. The icon is a set of gears — glass gears apparently. I can’t help thinking about the teeth breaking off as they mesh together. Ouch.
The same goes for the Passwords icon — a set of three glass keys. Try putting one of those in a lock and see how well it holds up. Hint: it won’t.
Both of those should be metal, but that would put them out of step with the rest of the icons. It’s almost like we should go back to the original skeuomorphic design where the icons looked the way they would in real life.
Another example is the Books icon. Can you imagine a book made out of glass? Those pages won’t turn. The same goes for Contacts, which I’m pretty sure is supposed to represent a book of sorts. Both of these icons should be paper.
The old Mail icon looks like a paper envelope, just as you would expect. The new one looks like a glass envelope, which, of course, would break if you tried to read the contents.
One more that makes me cringe is the Games icon represented by a glass rocket propelled with glass fire. That thing would never get off the ground. We need metal and fire.
The only one that kind of makes sense is the Camera icon, with its glass lens. But the ring around the lens and the body of the camera are presumably also made of glass, so it only half-way makes sense.
I do manage to suffer these indignities, though, by thinking of the icons as baubles. For example, don't think of it as a real book. It’s more like a decoration that you might hang from a Christmas tree. What about the rest of the year? Some people have whole shelves devoted to knickknacks and doodads, so you could think of your glass keys sitting on one of those.
I’m on track to read 4647 48 books this year — up by fourfive six from 2024. I was lucky enough to find eight books I felt were worthy of 10 stars out of 10, plus three others that didn’t quite make it with 9.5.
The reason for the strike-throughs is that I managed to squeak in a couple more books before the end of the year. One was an epic that I was determined to be done with after several months, and the other was a page-turner that I devoured in five days.
10/10
A Truce That Is Not Peace
by Miriam Toews Memoir
Jennie’s Boy
by Wayne Johnston Memoir
Etta and Otto and Russell and James
by Emma Hooper Fiction
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
by Agatha Christie Mystery
A Two-Spirit Journey
by Ma-nee Chacaby Memoir
The Other Valley
by Scott Alexander Howard Speculative fiction
Fifteen Dogs
by André Alexis Speculative fiction
Red Team Blues
by Cory Doctorow Science fiction
9.5/10
The Ministry of Time
by Kaliane Bradley Science fiction
How the Light Gets In
by Louise Penny Mystery/thriller
After an absence of nine years, The Animal Reporter is back with an inspiring post about the unsung heroes making lives better for the abused and homeless.
I played a supporting role with a spiffy new WordPress theme that I made from scratch. This was no small accomplishment for me since past attempts over the years have ended in failure and having to resort to tweaking an already-made theme.
I like to create my own thing from the ground up, with control over every step of the way. You can learn more about how I did this in a previous post.
I also updated my projects page to reflect the new look of The Animal Reporter.
Back in August, I demonstrated the power of a drop in the bucket. One of my drops in the bucket is supporting Canada’s economy by buying Canadian as much as possible.
Here’s what my mornings look like these days.
Granola — Oatally Awesome — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Granola — Rogers — made in Canada by a Japanese company
Yogurt — Activia — made in Canada by a French company
Flax — CanMar — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Soap — The Soap Works — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Toothpaste — Green Beaver — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Toothbrush — Ola — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Shampoo — Attitude — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Razor — Rocky Mountain Barber Company — made overseas by a Canadian company
Shaving cream — Nivea — made overseas by a German company
Floss — GUM — made overseas by a Swiss company
That toothbrush, by that why, is made out of maple scraps from a nearby lumber mill. That’s about as Canadian as you can get.
I'm still looking for viable alternatives for shaving cream and floss. Shaving cream from Rocky Mountain Barber Company is made in Canada, but way too expensive. Floss by Ola is more reasonably priced but made overseas and breaks every time I try to use it.
I’ve been using Safari for the past couple of years, assuming that it would run best on my aging iMac, now so old it’s stuck on Ventura.
I mean, surely a browser built by Apple would be optimized for computers built by Apple.
But in the past couple of weeks, Safari has become painful — spinning beachballs, long start-up times. Looks like Apple has left this old-timey 2017 Mac behind.
Even when Safari seems finally ready, I still can’t type in the address bar.
So it’s back to good, old Firefox. Even with AI built-in, and I’m not sure if I’m too crazy about that, it still runs circles around Safari.
Really, all I want to do is click on an icon and type where I want to go on the Internet. Firefox does that.
Research on environmental reporting confirms my own experience of late — positive stories are more engaging and more likely to encourage you to help with solutions.
Awni Etaywe, a lecturer in linguistics at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia:
If people are constantly told the situation is hopeless, they disengage. When we focus on solutions, shared values, and tangible actions, we open the door to lasting behavioural change.
I’ve been following a subreddit called EcoUplift, and I have to say it really has helped change my attitude. It was not that long ago that I might have said there was no point in even trying.
Compare this with the novel The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. The apocalyptic horrors described in this well-meaning story were so overwhelming that I had to put it aside.
It takes work to choose optimism over pessimism, but it’s worth it.
As a small example, I went out of my way to buy some water bottles that are not only made in Canada, but are also eco-friendly. Now drinking water is doubly refreshing.
