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Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:

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Originally posted by mrvmax:
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I got rid of my IPhone since I was tired of having convos and then seeing ads pop up about things I was talking about.

“convos” = convulsions?

At times perhaps but I meant conversations. We joke at work that we will see targeted ads after any conversation. Sometimes I will say something just to see what ad pops up.

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Originally posted by Jupiter:

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:

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Originally posted by mrvmax:
And they will use it. I cannot drive around town without the flock cameras recording my every move. I got rid of my IPhone since I was tired of having convos and then seeing ads pop up about things I was talking about. Smart tv’s listen in, phones and tablets listen to every convo. People are dumb enough to pay for devices that listen to everything (Alexa and other devices like that). There is no longer privacy even if we want it.

That wasn't an 'iPhone/iOS problem', that was an app problem! Basically all apps are spyware, especially Amazon, facebook, Google, and the like. Unlike Android/Google, at least Apple doesn't sell your data.

Whatever apple tells you regarding their security comes with a big asterisk * beside it.
You cannot trust anything they say.

For years, Apple has had contractors listening in real time to conversations. They ended up paying a settlement of something like 20 bucks per device to eavesdrop on 1% of users for years. That's a lot of people. Who are these contractors? Once again, just imagine the security concerns.

Apple to pay $95 million settlement for Siri listening to your private conversations
https://mashable.com/article/a...rivate-conversations

Apple contractors 'regularly hear confidential details' on Siri recordings
https://www.theguardian.com/te...s-on-siri-recordings

Apple Apologizes for Use of Contractors to Eavesdrop on Siri
https://www.kqed.org/news/1177...to-eavesdrop-on-siri

Apple to stop Siri program that lets contractors listen to users' voice recordings
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a...ersation-recordings/

You got me...Siri! Big asterisk * yes, but you can turn that off though. Of course Siri listens, just like other similar app functionality from Google, Microsoft, etc. People that allow such listening are fools to complain about it!

They are an issue due to their chosen locations and the strain they place on local resources; it’s a mess, honestly. While AI data centers are not necessarily storage-heavy, they are still consuming so much memory and storage that global pricing has skyrocketed for certain components. Even 'closed-loop' water cooling systems at scale can still consume 150,000 to 500,000 gallons a month (compared to the 3 million gallons seen in traditional systems) which is still enough water to support dozens, if not hundreds, of homes. Smaller water districts just aren't ready nor should they be... The issue with closed-loop systems is that the more 'efficient' they are with water, the more power they may need to compensate, further straining local power grids. I think this will level out eventually... hopefully. Most enterprises are realizing that AI chatbots aren't as useful as they had hoped. Mass-scale use cases are shifting and entering another discovery phase; we may find ourselves underwhelmed by solutions that are essentially in search of problems

Most of the data sites are taking over the treatment of sewer water from The cities and states and setting up their own treatment plants. They treat this water to a better quality than the states and cities treat and then release into our water ways. This water is used and recirculated as much as possible then most is evaporated through the cooling towers. This is way better for our environment than what the cities are releasing into our waterways.

Most of the data centers serve online businesses, Google Maps and Waze, and all the search queries. Most of the AI data centers are specialized and way smaller in numbers. The data from Amazon is such a staggering amount data that I doubt they can even tell you how much it is.

Some of the Data centers have reached the point they are only sending 10% of garbage to landfills that means 90% is being recycled or composted.

There is a site in Blytheville Arkansas that has shipping containers with large air conditioners on the roof and are connected to the large transmission lines and use almost the same power as Nucour-Yamato Steel plant down the street. They use all that electricity for Bitcoin mining. No public use just to make the rich people that own them richer.

most people don’t want to go back to life in the 70s and 80s so Data centers are here to stay wether we like it or not.

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:

You got me...Siri! Big asterisk * yes, but you can turn that off though. Of course Siri listens, just like other similar app functionality from Google, Microsoft, etc. People that allow such listening are fools to complain about it!

nhracecraft, my post wasn't meant to be a "You got me" directed at you at all. Sorry if it came across that way. I was just adding some content that many folks probably didn't know about Apple and their privacy. You certainly can turn off Siri and I also have it turned off. Apple's idea of turning it off is more than likely not what we think it is or should be. If I was a betting man, I would say Apple's idea of "turned off" means that customers don't have access to it. There is a lot of fine print in those TOS agreements that would take a full time Lawyer to even begin to understand.

What Would Be Truly Bullish? Actually Fixing What's Broken

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via Of Two Minds,

We've come to an interesting juncture in history, interesting because while we're being assured that AI will solve all problems, including any it creates, back in the real world, AI is incapable of fixing what's broken because too many people are getting rich off the status quo, and since the status quo is the problem, those who own / control AI will use it to maintain the status quo, guaranteeing that what's broken spirals into irreversible breakdown.

Richard Bonugli and I discuss what's fatally broken in a new podcast on what it will take to become Bullish (32 min).

Let's start with what's "obvious": letting what's broken fester until it implodes the status quo is not bullish, and neither is substituting delusion and denial for a realistic appraisal of what's actually broken--the essential observe and orient steps in the OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act).

I've often described the two dynamics that are broken that AI can't fix because those who own / control AI are using it to increase the asymmetrical distribution of wealth and income that are the source of breakdown. Consider healthcare. Everyone except the managers / owners / shareholders of healthcare / pharma cartels agrees healthcare is fundamentally broken and is bankrupting households, employers and the government / nation.

Those profiteering off the status quo healthcare system claim AI is going to reduce costs. They fail to mention this won't reduce the price, it will only serve to increase their profits. Cut costs by replacing human labor with AI tools, yea, we reap even higher profits. Nobody is claiming healthcare will magically become affordable because a truly affordable healthcare system wouldn't be as profitable because it wouldn't be as open to exploitation, fraud, profiteering, extraction and parasitic pricing.

In the same way, AI can't solve the other fatal dynamic--widening wealth and income asymmetry--because it's widening the asymmetry to new extremes. The owners of AI are reaping vast fortunes while stripmining resources to run their AI data centers and laying off wage earners. Rather than fixing what's broken in America, AI is accelerating the endgame of what's broken.

Let's run through why increasing numbers of online comments suggest burning the whole rotten healthcare system down and starting over. Healthcare insurance--which often turn out to be a profitable facsimile of actual insurance--has more than doubled beyond the official rate of inflation. If healthcare insurance had tracked inflation, it would cost $10,000 a year for family coverage in 2026. Instead, it costs $25,000+ annually.

Diagnosis: broken.



Regardless of how you toy with statistics, the reality is administrative costs / bloat / profiteering have soared. Diagnosis: broken.

Meanwhile, back in reality, rapidly aging populations are far from their peak demand for healthcare services. Check out the white line on this chart (courtesy of @econimica) of those aged 65+. While births collapse and the workforce is pressured by AI and the soaring cost of living, millions of elderly retirees are being added to the Medicare beneficiary pool. Diagnosis: broken.

Here is the chart of Medicare costs: parabolic. It's nice we can borrow a few trillion every year, but can we borrow $5 trillion or more every year with no consequence? Diagnosis: broken.

Here is the chart of Medicaid costs: parabolic. Diagnosis: broken.

As for the health of the general populace: it's been declining for two generations as our diet has shifted from real food made at home to ultra-processed goo and fitness has bifurcated into a thin layer of extreme fitness and a majority of the populace burdened with the complex ill health of poor diets, poor fitness and metabolic disorders.

Yes, now we have GLP-1 drugs that reduce weight and the diseases related to weight, but these drugs have side effects in many patients and they must be taken for life. Once the patient stops taking them, the weight returns.

Drugs that must be taken for life are not a substitute for being healthy. Healthy = not needing any medications.

Diagnosis of the healthcare system: broken. Prognosis: bifurcation: the rich will get "the finest care in the world," and everyone else will be in a queue or denied care--basically the same result--or offered extraordinarily profitable meds and a spectrum of side effects.

What's broken is the entire financial-economic system that distributes the pain and the gain: the pain of sharply higher costs of living and increasing financial precarity is distributed to the bottom 80% while the gains are distributed to the top 10%, with a dribble going to the cohort between 81% and 90% who own enough capital to support their claim to being "middle class."

Note to America's elites: when only the top 15% just below the top 5% qualifies as "middle class," that's not a middle class. I know, you don't concern yourselves with such trivia: there are trillions of dollars to be reaped "solving problems" with AI.

The "problem" you can't solve with AI is AI only "solves" the "problem" you see, which is how to increase your wealth and income before the bottom 80% awaken from the 24/7-hyped delusion that credit-asset bubbles (AI!) raise all boats and will continue to do so forever and ever.



Real life has diverged from that delusion, and the radioactive power of AI to extend that delusion has a short half-life. Refusing to recognize, much less actually fix, what's broken hurries our collective rendezvous with consequences.

What would be bullish is actually fixing what's broken. Promoting self-serving illusory "solutions" that only widen the asymmetries stretching the socio-economic fabric to the breaking point is not bullish.

https://www.zerohedge.com/poli...-fixing-whats-broken

Learned a new word, "precarity".
Thanks for the zerohedge post.

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Originally posted by 92fstech:

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All the data on people and the means of rapid processing and access to that data is not a threat in and of itself.

100% true. But people use it. And people suck.

Accurate. The good stuff MAY be in medicine and the hard sciences for coming up with new stuff, unless the bad guys abuse it more than the good guys use it.

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Originally posted by Scooter123:
Remember the push to EV vehicles during the Biden Fiasco. Car makers flushed 60 Billion or a bit more down the sewer for the imagined "Energy savings". These Data centers have pretty much eliminated ANY energy savings.

I can't remember the year but somewhere around 2000 a news report I saw stated the US was using Less energy at that time than in 1970 when the first Earth Day was held. Of course this did take place when people were driving Cars that had fairly good fuel economy. Now everybody want the biggest Truck they can get and insists on moving at a slow walk every time they have to make a turn.

This is NOT the case today. The world is using more energy today than at any other time in History. I find it VERY interesting that the Save the Planet folks are NOT making even a tiny peep about these Data Centers. Per Google a large Data Center consumes enough energy to power 15,000-80,000 homes. Planned Gigawatt centers now being designed can consume the entire output of a large Nuclear Generating facility or near 1 million homes.

And all this is happening so that out Government will know how many times a day we brush our teeth or use the toilet. Forget about Privacy because the NSA and other Agencies know what groceries you buy and every single item you purchase over the Net. BTW they also know about every post you put on the Net and I expect that Faceplant, the X files, and every other social media is monitored 24/7 with AI highlighting every questionable post. Hopefully this post won't send the MIB to check up on me.

The convenience of the "surveillance economy" has opened the proverbial pandoras box. I don't remember the author of the name of that book, but she picked up on this a while ago, a tenured professor iirc. She hit the nail on the head, predicted it in real time, and named it so.

Tucker vs Kevin O’Leary on the Dystopian AI Future Devouring American Energy and Jobs

https://tuckercarlson.com/live-show-may-13-2026

Consider the variables that went into making you who you are. Two parents, Mom only, Dad only, Neither. Siblings, neighborhood, schools, religion, early parent death, divorce, type of school and what classes in what format.
Collect enough data points from a few billion people and you probably have a programming guide to build a specific person.
We will be able to grow a medical caste, a warrior caste, and a political caste. No need for excess riff raff

... but, can we get "Biggie Fries" with that?

don't like these and I think they should be limited

why is it they always want to put them in areas where water is scarce or needed for something more important, or in areas with existing high costs of electricity

I'm in favor of not only a pause, but a closure of existing units

AI is NOT our friend

Feels like 451 degrees in here.

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We will be able to grow a medical caste, a warrior caste, and a political caste.

Don't forget to create the religious and the workers caste.

OK, so some of this is silly, much of it is rage bait.

The rise of a warrior class is a real thing, and frightens my friends in the military.

If someone immigrated to the US post 1970s or so, odds are they will not join a combat MOS.

If someone is a senior officer or senior NCO, odds are, they are multi-generational military - especially in a combat MOS - I think some of this is an educational failure, as much as a cultural issue.

Basically, unless someone's family was in WWII (on the US side), and they're white, or Mexican, or Native American, they will not join a combat MOS.

Housing costs are directly tied to fees, and regulations - gut those, and the birth rate comes back - and people take a bath on their third homes, but houses are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE INVESTMENTS. (If it can't produce money, it's not an investment.)

Insurance has become the world's most inefficient payment processing system. It serves no economic purpose, at this point.

Between co-pays, premiums, and what the doctors have to pay for the billing software, etc it's not actually covering anything, outside of catestrophic coverage.

We need a wild deregulation of it/maybe to go back to only doctors and nurses being able to invest in medical facilities.

Law has been fighting taking outside money for years - and it's in a similar position - both professions generate enough capital to cover all of the capital required, and have strong ethical standards.

AI is completely reshaping coding - and it needs to - most code has become incredibly sloppy and inefficient.

It seems to really get a lot of productivity from me, and keep me from going down rabbit holes - most higher performing individuals seem to really value it.

Mostly, it means producers will have to spend less time dealing with parasites.

It should be used to replace 90% of administration and bureaucrats - anyone who just fills out forms/files and reviews them. Hopefully, it will soon replace most waitstaff, etc as well.

All jobs humans shouldn't be doing in the first place.

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Originally posted by Georgeair:
Feels like 451 degrees in here.

You didn't specify whether that was centigrade, Fahrenheit, Rankine or Kelvin.

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Originally posted by 229DAK:
You didn't specify......