Blurts

This may be the first post ever on this site that has anything to do directly with stock market. Meta (Facebook) is down 20% today after an earnings call that showed a significant decline in revenue. Meta claims the downturn is the result of Apple changes to iOS14 that make it easy for iPhone users to avoid Facebook ads. No ads no ad revenue. This is tough for a free service that depends on ads to keep things going. Investors who need the companies they support to make money are bailing.

The interaction of the various tech companies is interesting. Apple tried ads but gave up. Google has some software of its own but mostly encourages android phone developers. Meta has the users and the content that allows the display of ads. Apple wants to push privacy and the other two major players need to have content with ads and Facebook is such a popular service so a prime opportunity for displaying ads. What next? Facebook could simply pull the free Facebook app from the Apple store. Using a browser to view Facebook on an iPhone is not a good experience. Would that be like threatening a nuclear option?

The relevance for education – targeted ads fund many free online services used in education.

 I explore tech applications wherever I am. Apps that identify flora and fauna are useful when you are in a unique location. iNaturalist is a good example. You take a photo of what you want to identify with the app and then allow it to use its AI to guess or just leave the photo unnamed in your collection and someone will likely take a look and try to help out. The photo I submitted (not this one) had some local geese in the background and someone wanted to know if I needed to know the name of the geese (Nene). 

I usually am more interested in the sophistication of the technology than the identify of a tree so I pick something I recognize. This is a plumeria. It is interesting because it loses its leaves and often flowers before new leaves grow. It produces the flowers that is typically used to create the leis tourists and Hawaiian dancers wear around their necks. I thought it would be a good test for the app because my photo has few leaves.

I have found the best identification can be obtained with the nonspecialized Google Photo. If you bring a photo into Google Photos and open the image, you should locate this icon below the photo. This will apply Google lens. 

Lens seems to work as well as the specialized identification apps and has the added benefit of allowing immediate search for what it returns as possible identifications. Click on one of the matches and it takes you to the source for that photo.

Here is what the Plumeria flower looks like. Early in the season it can be difficult to find one on a low branch to photograph. People have this need to pick them and when I see one often it is not there when I walk by the tree again. I assume this is an annoying tourist thing.

LastPass offers a service that I use and pay for. Recently, LastPass came under great criticism for changing its policy on free accounts. Some of this criticism is fair and some seem unfair. Here is the situation as I see it.

LastPass had a free service allowing users of phones, tablets, and computers to store complex passwords to protect their personal information. At some point, LastPass decided to monetize its service and backed away from its original free service. Rather than eliminating its free tier or perhaps limiting the number of passwords users could store for free, it made the free option available for only one type of device. So when a user might be able to access say 50 different sites from any type of device, now for example that user could access these sites from their phone. They would have to manually enter the passwords from their tablets and computers. This may sound reasonable until you consider the complex passwords that LastPass encourages are many characters long making them impossible to remember and even difficult to enter without error. In other words, the free option based on many complex passwords made it impractical for anyone using multiple types of devices. I assume LastPass recognized this disincentive and it makes the claim of a free option pretty much a joke for most users. Limiting the number of passwords across devices would have been a more reasonable way to encourage users to invest in a paid tier.

LastPass deserves criticism for this tactic, but I think other claims are unfair. It has been suggested that the service has made it difficult for existing users to export their accounts so they can import their data into another service. If true, this would also be a dirty strategy. Users would be forced to make the effort to transfer all components needed to launch a protected account (e.g., URL, name, password, service name) one site at a time. I tried exporting my data and the process was completed within seconds. Others agree that exporting from free and paid accounts has not been made more difficult.

I came across this post LLana Redstone titled the Fallacy of Equal Knowledge. The author, an academic who teaches sociology courses, suggests that many programs assume that by addressing issues with more accurate factual information undesirable behaviors should change. Sometimes, she argues these programs are doomed to failure. She notes that sometimes even an approach with strong information can generate more resistance rather than acceptance.

I guess I have come to the same conclusion, but find this very pessimistic and disheartening. The author suggests that differences in knowledge can contribute to some positions, but so can differences in values. I agree, but I have long felt that values have to be divided into what I would probably describe as consequential and inconsequential values. Differences of opinion (values as contrasted with fact) from a personal perspective are sometimes acceptable and sometimes not. Religious affiliation is an opinion that I can ignore. However, opinions on equity and even something like a COVID vaccination requirement are not negotiable. I think I see opinions held that impact only the self those I can accept even when I hold a different opinion, but not opinions held that produce consequences that diminish or endanger others. The COVID vaccination issue makes a good example. Some see this as a personal right of choice. I agree, but factually, it is also an issue that has an impact on others.