I have been thinking about my characterization of OpenAI and Anthropic as being motivated by greed. This may be unfair, given that greed motivates all of us to some degree, and it is a necessary vice if you are to succeed in the corporate world.
Economists have observed that self-interest and the profit motive are the engines of capitalism. We use legal institutions to harness these basic human instincts for the greater good.
To his credit, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has on a number of occasions mused about the need for legislation in the area of technology. I won’t argue with that, but there is another factor we should keep in mind: fear.
Why is the U.S. military so intent on getting unfettered access to AI models being developed by OpenAI and Anthropic? It’s because they fear their rivals will gain superiority in AI and use it against them. We’re in a new kind of arms race.
Fear often outweighs greed. Entrepreneurs are aware they need a rules-based playing field to keep greed from getting out of hand. But fear on a global scale can prevent this from happening — fear that rivals are not doing the same, and that our side would handicap itself with self-imposed rules.
Would some kind of international agreement work? To a certain extent, yes, but there would always be the fear that others were cheating. Would it even be possible to verify that they weren’t?
A lot of people have been deleting their ChatGPT accounts in favour Claude. It’s their way of choosing sides in the controversy surrounding contracts with the U.S. government.
I was initially tempted to do the same thing until I concluded that Anthropic, the company that runs Claude, is motivated by greed every bit as much as OpenAI.
My first thought was to try Ecosia’s version of AI. I already use Ecosia for search, and like the idea that they use their revenue to fund environmental causes.
But then it occurred to me that Ecosia is very likely using the services of other companies for its AI responses. Sure enough, it pays OpenAI and Google for their APIs — application programming interfaces that allow them to tap into those companies’ models.
They somewhat mitigate this dependency by framing their answers in an environmentally conscious manner. For example, they they tried very hard to make lab-grown meat seem like a good thing — not creepy at all! But still, I wanted to keep looking.
I’m currently trying out Lumo from Proton. They rely completely on open source large language models (LLMs), with no connections at all to OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and the rest of the proprietary bunch.
But open source LLMs don’t come from nowhere. When asked, Lumo cited these contributors: NeMo, OpenHands, OLMO 2, GPT‑OSS, Qwen, Ernie 4.5 VL, Apertus, Kimi K2.
Of these, two might be a bit shady. OpenHands is a Meta project and Qwen is based in China. Lumi promises complete privacy, though, so there should be no worries about your data making its way to the owner of Facebook or the Chinese government.
I have a feeling that many of the switchers to Claude were people who use it for programming. I don’t do much coding these days, but when I do, I might fall back to Claude.
Lumo was able to show me how to centre a div, and it had some good ideas about how to use an app to update a web page. I’m not sure at what point I would need to go for the subscription-based Lumo+ if I really wanted to up my reliance on it for coding.
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.
