Which public chatbots collect information on you? Meta AI, Google Gemini, and ChatGPT are top data collectors. No surprises there. Gotta be careful using these things.
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But this one borders on criminal, I think: You told BetterHelp your deepest secrets. You had no idea who was listening.
Mental health care in America has a gatekeeping problem. Traditional therapy is expensive. Insurance claims create paper trails. Some employers have access to health records. For a lot of people the barrier isn't willingness. It's exposure.Remember: your doctor is a HIPAA entity. These chatbots are not. HIPAA doesn't apply to them. Really too bad for people who thought what they typed in or said was private.
BetterHelp launched in 2013: therapy on your phone. Licensed therapists. Affordable. Private. Nothing leaving the app.
By 2020: 30,000 therapists. 2 million users. $240–$360/month.
People chose BetterHelp because it felt like the safer option.
That's not what was happening.
Meta and Google found liable in landmark social media addiction trial. These companies are now being held liable for making children addicted to them.
I also read Neal Stephenson's criticism of Zuckerburg's wasted investments in the Metaverse and Meta's Glasses.
But then I read that Trump names Nvidia, Meta CEOs to science and tech council. Why would Trump want to get Zuckerburg's advice? Is it like when law enforcement enlists criminals on tips to prevent crime?
And Washington state passed a law trying to protect kids from chatbot harm. "...companies like OpenAI and Anthropic will have to include new disclosures in their popular chatbots for Washington users." Seriously? They think those companies will create special user experiences for users in one particular state? It's like telling Google that when someone in Washington does a search, there needs to be a message on the screen telling them to watch out for false information.
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And if you think that's ribald: Bernie Sanders and AOC unveil data center moratorium bill. I wonder if Bernie knows what an LLM is. Or if AOC knows what datacenters do.
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Love it. SCOTUS decides Missouri vs Biden in favor of free speech. No longer can the government collude with social medial to silence and censor those who have opinions counter to the orthodoxy. This is why the COVID propaganda was allowed to fester.
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Can a mouse be cloned indefinitely? The answer is no. DNA defects accumulate. The Hayflick Limit still holds.
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Colleges are now turning to oral exams to counter AI. Good. So we don't have more college students like this. I'm not paying off their student loans.
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The Hubble Space Telescope just snapped a picture of the Crab Nebula. At first, the image looks like it's of poor quality, but it actually depicts the changes that have occurred since 2024. At this rate, I'm not sure how much of a Crab Nebula there will be in 50 years. It's really degrading.
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AI coding agents are running on your machines — Do you know what they're doing? The problem is that agents can't tell data from instruction. A malicious hacker may insert code in the middle of the data that the agent brings back home, and next thing you know, you're compromised. The field is still young, and so far I haven't seen reports of any exploits.
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Wow, the skeleton of D'Artagnan might have been found. I think of him as the fourth Musketeer.
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Brain organoids (mini-brains) are doing more. No longer just playing DOOM. But can they negotiate a deal with Iran yet? Maybe tomorrow.
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Google bumps up Q Day deadline to 2029, far sooner than previously thought. Q-Day is when quantum computers can solve public key cryptography encryption. Expect the stock market to move a bit when that happens. Unless mathematicians can come up with something better in the meantime.
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Erebus. Someone is working on an AI project where an AI model just observes a system. No rules or explanations. Just observations and self-training. Until the model learns invariants and figures out how the system works. The thought is that this kind of AI isn't going to evolve from LLMs, which are just stochastic next-token predictors. It requires a special neural net that can teach itself. Kinds like autoencoders. This can have many applications.
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Fully agree. There Really Was a ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in Reading. States Should Learn From It. So why couldn't it work in Oregon? What the state did was focus on literacy coaches, universal screening, and third‑grade retention. But in Mississippi, although there were teachers unions, the legal environment was weak. For example, the state bans collective bargaining and they are legally not able to strike. So the teachers unions have little power in determining education policy. Not so in Oregon, so the state will always be near the bottom.
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Sleep patterns change as you get older, but what do these changes mean? This article basically says that it's only time to worry, when you see worrying signs. Yeah, I kinda knew that.
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Blue state blues. Oregon has the fourth highest gas prices in the nation. Just behind California, Hawaii, and Washington.
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The question should be "Is Waymo ready for Portland?". Portland is deciding on whether to have Waymo driverless car service in Portland. This is Antifa's dream. Summon a car. Set it on fire! Get the optics you want for your live stream. Hey, they have insurance, right?
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