I took this article to be more along the lines of the author perhaps loving the idea of being a snowboarder, rather than actually becoming one.
I know it sounds a bit cynical but I think that's the case for me in a lot of ways: I love the idea of being able to play the piano. However, I've given it up many times (I'm 51 now).
I think I just prefer the idea of being a piano player but when it comes down to it, I don't have the willpower/dedication/motivation (delete as appropriate) to follow it through.
My 15 yo son, on the other hand, is hell-bent on becoming a pro hockey player (not necessarily the NHL but that's the goal, of course!) and he's working his ass off 6 days a week at various aspects, and missing out on stuff like playing football down the park with his pals after school on a Friday coz he has training).
So, I think for some of us there is a disconnect between the desire to work hard anc become something, and liking purely the idea of being something... I think they're quite different (for me they are!)
These days I treat other people's data like it's a live hand grenade. Case in point (bit of a shameless plug here :) I'm working on an App called Hockeytastic. It's an ice-hockey stickhandling app that my son's been using for months: the engine is solid but it looked like shit. However, his coach told me to get it on the app stores and sell subs. That meant I needed to clean it up, build a DB, store stuff etc.
Anyway, working with Google and Apple I realised that I quite literally do not need to store anything identifiable. The only identifier I store is the Apple id and the Google id and unless you steal those and then hack Google and Apple, they are utterly useless.
I do not store emails, names, addresses, nothing. That's the way I want it.
If the data is ever breached, the only thing hackers will see are many many instances of Connor McDavid, Nate Mckinnon and various other famous NHL player names :)
If more companies treated personal data like it was toxic, we'd have less issues with breaches, however, I see it in my day job where the marketing people want to take as much data as possible, all the time!
I wish that were the case, but because of there being barely any consequences for breaches, it's much more profitable to store everything you can and sell it to the highest bidder. Make it a huge risk to store data, then companies will start treating data like a live hand grenade.
Companies can and do get away with arguing that they have a "lawful basis" to collect whatever data they'd like. It's unfortunate.
IANAL, but the law seems a bit vague to me, and it appears that companies use that vagueness to their advantage. Maybe I'm just not articulating my arguments correctly.
Even if you have a lawful basis for collecting data, in theory the GDPR is in theory restricting you to only use it for that basis, delete it as soon as you don't need it anymore, have a plan on how to store and handle it, and requires you to follow best practices when doing so. Backups, encryption, regularly testing the technical and organizational measures that protect the data are in theory all mandated. Also, on the topic of this post, notification of data breaches when they occur
But enforcement is just laughable. Even on easy to observe issues like which data is collected
It's for your login and payments. I need to verify that you are authenticated somehow and Google/Apple also handle payments.
You "Login with Apple" or "Login with Google". They manage the login entirely and pass me your id and an access token (assuming you pass their login test). I store that in my DB so that your data from the app can sync (the paid-for app syncs your training data to my backend but I match it only based on the Google/Apple id.)
The alternative is that I build my own auth system and I'd need to store something you can type in the next time, e.g. email/password address etc.
If you have an Android/Apple phone you're already authenticated with them. I just need Google/Apple to say "this guy is cool, let him in" and I then use the id to check if you've paid, sync your training data etc.
On its own, the id is useless! Means nothing and cannot be traced back to a person. I genuinely do not know your name, email, what country you come from, GPS data, CC data. Nothing at all!
If I'm using an app I'm very skeptical of "Login with Google" because I have no way to verify that you're only getting a random identifier and not my email address. I prefer to sign up with a proxy email address.
At least with "Sign in with Apple" you can choose to give a random alias that forwards to your email. I do this for every single service I sign up for. Completely unique Email + password for everything.
It's built into Android/iOS and an accepted way of logging into an app. The app store page (when it's released) shows exactly what I need: practically no information at all.
Google handle the payment and the subscription too (same with Apple) and that's a very common pattern too.
My rule for primary keys and id's is simple: Sequential integer (or bigint) as the PK and if I need to make it public, I have a GUID (or UUID) in the row too, e.g. tbl_person would have Id (int|bigint) and person_guid as (UUID).
The Integer id is used for joins and looks ups and such but that's it. If I need to send anything to the frontend or outside of the app/DB then that's the UUID.
I agree technically but in most use cases the timestamp from uuidv7 is not a security leak. Especially where you’re already sharing that data in some way or another. A default guid is unnecessary if you use uuidv7 I think (in most situations).
It's more for performance that you shouldn't use them as PK's - If you insert a lot you'll get massive fragmentation over time. A sequential Id avoids that and still gives you a unique row.
The Guid is purely for an external system to grab onto something that I can tie back to an actual row in the database but the external system does not need to know anything about the backend other than <guid>.
My son is 15 and I use Google Family Link to control what he does on his phone: it's pretty open for the most part (I receive notifications of installs) but Gemini is a hard-ban.
We've spoken at length of the dangers.
He says his pals use LLMs frequently and I suspect that's the reason for their test scores: some of them are in the 20% - 40% range for tests whereas my son is 80%+ because he studies past-papers and answers questions in his revision.
I worry for the future coz you can be sure that the AI providers don't care if a schoolchild is using their LLM to answer the homework questions.
and this is why standardized testing exists so they can apply those off hour work and discipline to demonstrating their aptitude for being comfortable with boredom long enough to function in academic and workplace environments that require it.
rather than perceiving AI as a danger you should be looking at how he can leverage it to accelerate and enhance his learning but the political environment focus on removing standardized testing to hide data of those that traditionally fail is the true danger.
No, that's not the case and I don't think comparing Gemini and the internet is the same.
The internet (to stretch your analogy) is more like a shit load of library books that you have to look through but Gemini is the guy that goes and reads the books for you and tells you the answer.
I'm not saying they don't have their uses for me as an adult (I'm a software architect), but for a 15 year old, they absolutely do not have their uses! At all.
At age 15 you know nothing about life. You should learn it yourself, not be told it!
Just curious, what are you doing for healthcare. I can retire money wise soon, but healthcare is an issue. May have to work 10 more years just because of that.
Yes, that's a concern for me too, I'd like to retire early but healthcare has me wondering about getting a job as a teacher or something just to make sure I can afford it if I get cancer at 55.
Same age, but I gotta hang on a little longer. I'm a little too anxious about sequence risk in the market environment we're in now. But otherwise I'm with you, when I retire I may well dump nearly all of my technology and go back to stone tablets, metaphorically speaking. Sometimes I get so tired of it. Ironically, though, my work environment is pretty good, it's everything we're doing in tech outside my office work that gets me down.
Interesting read. I'm going through that same issue at my work where my boss wants me to "educate" the rest of the devs on the use of Copilot to make them more efficient, however, I have no time to put anything together and I imagine the Copilot dashboard figures are not getting any better over time... oh well!
However, something occurred to me when reading it. I was thinking about AGI (or ASI) and what would happen if someone were to achieve it (not sure what it would look like or what constitutes AGI... not the point I'm making here).
What if the primary goal of the first AGI is to keep itself at the top? What if it's goal is to prevent any other AGI? Scary thought...
Unlike the Americans, we have the GDPR. No UK/EU car is tracking you or gathering personal data from you without opt-in consent, which you can choose not to give.
(And before somebody starts ranting, the eCall 112 system doesn't track you willy nilly)
I think you're right. I think they are tightening the noose!
I use Gemini quite extensively - I have a 5TB storage plan with Google so I get Pro thrown in. I also have Github Copilot Pro for IDE integration.
However, lately it feels like I keep tripping the circuit breaker on Gemini more easily and get the message about using up all my Pro tokens for the next 3 hours.
I used to be able to work most of the day before it hit the brakes but I can trigger it before work in the mornings now... that seems to me like they're tightening the usage limits!
I use a Dell Micro PC with an Intel Core Ultra 265 so it's nice and fast but it has no GPU, hence the reason I use Gemini but I'm now starting to think that, despite the RAM cost, before the end of the year I'll buy a PC with a monster GPU in it and run all my AI locally... the direction of travel is clearly heading towards a massive cost increase so might as well get ahead of it: it's not going to become cheaper, that's for sure!
I'm curious how you use Sheets as a Trello-like replacement. I use Trello from time to time but my most recent project is using actual Post-It notes stuck to my monitor, wall etc.
If Sheets works (I love simplicity) then I'll give it a go but I checked and I can't find any templates for Kanban or such.
Just an FYI... I don't know what their service is like but they won't respond to my emails asking for a refund so, tomorrow I have to contact my CC provider now. Not happy :-(
I know it sounds a bit cynical but I think that's the case for me in a lot of ways: I love the idea of being able to play the piano. However, I've given it up many times (I'm 51 now).
I think I just prefer the idea of being a piano player but when it comes down to it, I don't have the willpower/dedication/motivation (delete as appropriate) to follow it through.
My 15 yo son, on the other hand, is hell-bent on becoming a pro hockey player (not necessarily the NHL but that's the goal, of course!) and he's working his ass off 6 days a week at various aspects, and missing out on stuff like playing football down the park with his pals after school on a Friday coz he has training).
So, I think for some of us there is a disconnect between the desire to work hard anc become something, and liking purely the idea of being something... I think they're quite different (for me they are!)
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