A.C. Flory's Blog

Analogue to digital and back to analogue again

I’ve made no secret of my hatred for the current versions of AI, but I actually love the idea of AI. Innerscape is built around the idea that in the future, AI will power almost every facet of life. But that concept only works if we own the AI, because only then will it work for us instead of for some Big Brother corporation.

Well, read this quote I transcribed from the video about China’s development of an analogue chip:

‘Because these chips use so little power, you can run AI inference and training directly on devices. Your smartphone, your car, medical wearables, drones. No cloud connection needed. No data leaving your device.’

No data leaving your device. That is the key, and I could not be happier!

Even if your eyes glaze over at the mere mention of computers and chips, I highly recommend watching this video because it is pointing the way to the future. How that future turns out will depend on how Western powers react to this seismic shift in technological power.

Cheers,
Meeks

Google covers WordPress login

This is what I should see when I try to login to WordPress:

Yet for months now, as soon as I start to open WordPress, Google muscles in and covers up the login button:

Yes, I can, and do, click the ‘X’ button to get rid of the Google login, but why do I have to?

Why do I have to put up with the frustration of yelling at Google to eff off every time I log in?

Google is already one of the login options I can choose once I click the WordPress login button:

so WHY is WordPress allowing Google to steal a jump on the other options?

In supermarkets, manufacturers pay a premium to have their products displayed at ‘eye level’. It gives them an advantage over products that are located higher or lower, and hence less immediately visible.

Is this what’s happening with WordPress and Google? I wonder how Apple and the other ‘options’ feel about it.

The only Google ‘product’ I use is Youtube, and that’s only because Youtube was bought out by Google. Everything else I avoid like the plague, but I guess ‘freedom’ only matters to these corporations if it’s their freedom to make obscene profits. Sadly, WordPress content creators are simply disposable ‘products’…

Meeks

Just because…it’s beautiful

Cheers,
Meeks

To Rural Australia

The reality of renewables:

Renewables destroy good farming land? No. Mining destroys good farming land.

Renewables can restore poor grazing land!

If you really cared about Australia, you’d embrace renewables instead of voting for politicians who are in bed with the mining industry.

Nett Zero by 2050 could be the making of Australia. But I guess you’d have to believe in Climate Change first. You clearly don’t.

Meeks

Solidarity! Boycott Black Friday

This message is for all NON-AMERICANS. US corporates are slowly squeezing the life out of ordinary Americans like you and me. Ordinary Americans are fighting back by boycotting those corporations. Let’s help them by showing those corporations that they are not as powerful as they think. Only by joining forces can ordinary people fight back.

Help Americans fight back and we help ourselves as well.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T!

Meeks

Grok and ‘MechaHitler’

The examples used in the video below are predominantly about how and why Grok, Musk’s AI went off the rails, but the underlying problems apply to all of the AI currently out there. More worryingly, those problems also apply to the AI still in development as frontier companies push hard to take advantage of the goldrush that is AI. Speed is the operative word, and any pretence at caution is mostly cosmetic.

To put the speed of change into context, this video was published ‘one month ago’ [sorry Youtube doesn’t give a precise date]. As today is November 6, 2025 here in Australia, that means the actual date would have been on or near October 5 in the US.

That date is telling because, as part of the video, there is a clip of Sam Altman [OpenAI] being interviewed [minute 34:48]. In that interview he makes a point of saying “…we haven’t put a sexbot avatar in ChatGPT yet.”

That ‘yet’ says a lot because at 3:02am, October 15, 2025, Altman tweeted on X:

Click on the screenshot to see it in full screen.

So, essentially, some time in December of 2025, ChatGPT will be allowed to…tickle your fancy. I wonder what the porn industry thinks of that?

The thing that worries me is not that people will be able to indulge their most erotic fantasies, it’s that OpenAI is so desperate to make money that it is happy to turn its flagship AI into a pornbot. Or perhaps the strategy is to make ChatGPT so ‘indispensable’ that people will keep paying for the privilege even as the price goes up and up and up?

Given that OpenAI and all the other AI developers are bleeding money and not earning even close to break even, they will have to make money somehow or go belly up when investors finally stop believing in the hype.

And, of course, if the sexbot gambit works, every other AI developer will have to provide something similar or get left behind.

AI slop? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Meeks

Celine Dion & Barbra Streisand Duet

I’m on a bit of a music kick at the moment so I hope you enjoy this glorious duet as much as I do:

cheers,
Meeks

Kalaji – Mark Cole Smith

I said once that Australia had inspired the unforgiving geography of Vokhtah. Well, today I discovered the soundtrack to my imaginary world, and it was created by actor and musician, Mark Cole Smith.

Smith recorded the sounds of the Kimberley and fused them into a music that even white bread people like me can recognise and enjoy. I hope you enjoy this trailer as well:

If any Aussies are watching, you can enjoy Smith’s magnificent documentary about the Kimberley on ABC iView. Unfortunately you do have to login, but it’s worth the aggravation! This is a Short about the series:

Have a great weekend everyone,
Meeks

Stories that stay…

I quite enjoy the odd murder mystery or police procedural, but most of the time I forget what they were about two days after I finish reading them. Then there are the stories that stay, lingering in my memory and becoming refreshed whenever life presents me with a situation or an insight that mirrors fiction.

The Weight of Snow and Regret, by Elizabeth Gauffreau is one of those books. I finished reading it last night, and I found myself completely agreeing with this review by Audrey Driscoll.

Rather than re-inventing the wheel, I’ll hand you over to Audrey. Cheers!

Book Review: The Weight of Snow and Regret by Elizabeth Gauffreau

Uplifting

I don’t know the name of either runner, but I wanted to save this moment for me, so that when things in the world seem most bleak, I can take hope from this moment. Courage and Compassion. We are not a complete waste of oxygen.

Hugs,
Meeks