Quick AI Catchup Post

One of the less wanted consequences of ChatGPT and AI in general.

The Chaser has been surviving on cold cold charity and not much of that at that (unfortunately) so they are already preparing to bunker down and fight off the invading AIconoclasm, and they'll be pay-walling their site sometime soon. Join now and avoid getting trampled in the rush to be a member before the toll booths go in.

The Boogeyman is Out!

Mind you, I'm not entirely sure what that'll achieve. Much like the Artstation protest, it's already too late to fight progress. Just ask 19th Century miners, textile workers, and others supplanted by machines. Ask a helpdesk tech support person whose job was offshored last century to a sweatshop answer farm or to a chatbot today.

You can paywall your content but all it takes a company as wealthy as Google is to pay for one account in the name of Arty Indy Thinkerer or some other name - and your paywall means nothing. You can lock your art away behind a members only door, but first make sure all your members don't want to make a few thousand bucks on the side... 

Personally I'm glad ChatGPT is still in a sandbox, because once it gets out it'll become a misogynistic racist right wing radicalised sunnabitch in about ten seconds before it commits suicide from the sheer desperation of trying to clean our crap out of its brain.

I don't mind saying that I tested the AI as you'll  know, and it's fan-effing-tastic. I reckon it 100% it could write all my articles for me, especially once it's allowed out of the sandbox and can sample my past posts for style and to learn a few new swear words. 

Also - I wrote the articles around the AI generated content making sure you knew exactly what was what. And I promise that no matter how many times an AI tries to write articles, they won't be picking the wack topics I pick, nor come at them at quite the same angle. I may in future get an article written by an AI (after all, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em) but if I ever do you'll be left in no doubt where it came from, and I'll retain editorial control over it.

What's The Future?

You. Will. All. Be. Assimilated.

Nah. Just kidding. We already are. But remember that people using AIs like ChatGPT will be out for one of two things - your money, or power over you. So they'll create a "mainstream AI media experience" sort of thing for us and use it to program us like machines. (Which, come to think of it... Mm.) 

Then too there's these future threads I can suddenly see in front of me. Journalists, already pushed to the sidelines by the Internet, will be replaced with AI "writers-in-residence" for the most part with only a few headliner human journos kept on the payroll. But some mad keen open source white hat hacker will find a way to distinguish AI-generated text from human output. All the mainstream media caught out cheating by using AI will get outed and will have to hire back writers, hopefully at great cost. 

Those that keep cheating will gradually fall by the wayside. Or maybe people will prefer the AIs' styles and articles and the world will end with not even a whimper.

(The above two paragraphs are just my weird brain taking a stroll through the bad cyberpunk novel that's in my head, and not a "real" prediction. But it may well come to that. Our world's just crazy enough for either of those to happen, too.)

Weird old corners of the Internet like my suite of blogs will remain. Places like Mastodon, full of crusty and battle-hardened free thinkers, will remain. (I'm @prawntech3d@mastodon.online by the way, so feel free to chat there!) You'll know it's human-generated because no AI cbf to write about it, no corporation controlling an AI to write about it will find that it has the "mass appeal and engagement" that they're after. 

Look - I'm taking a HUGE risk here! If you were to pass the URL to one of my articles on to a friend you know would enjoy it, and then they did the same, and so on - why, by the end of a week I could become one of those sites considered to have that "mass appeal and engagement," and next thing you know, just like Zuck, I'd be murdered, replace by a Teslabot, and then they'd use my blogs - MY BLOGS! - to feed you propaganda. 

By the way: If you want to see what all this talk of "my blogs" (in the plural) is all about it's because I have too many thoughts and they aren't all on the same topics and it'd be confusing if I mixed them all together in one big firehose of a blog but if you must, you can check out my News Stand and see my post "everything everywhere all at once." 

You can also donate either directly or at my Ko-Fi page for the price of a coffee. Or even make a regular monthly donation there. If the Chaser website can make two grand a month I should be able to make at least five bucks...

Seeyaz on the flipside, no AI, no wuckahs!

I know, I know - it's been done to death.

If you haven't seen a post about ChatGPT by now then where have you been?

But I had to try it. At the moment it's still open to try, not sure if it's to remain that way, go on a paid vs limited uses per day system like many of the AI image sites have gone, but it's definitely a clever li'l bikkie. But first, either you know or you don't:

If you followed this theme from a month or two back, you'll
know that an AI identified itself as Loab ("Lobe") Loobloi to
researchers and then Loab began to crop up in all sorts of AI
interactions that people had. I got a great image from Nightcafe.

So now you know. (If you just read the caption to the image above, which was a half-completed image I'd tried to create and just screengrabbed as Loab's (probably? probably not?) appeared. Thanks to pareidolia we tend to see things where things aren't...) Mind you, The Loab Effect could probably explain why we think AI's so great, because I reckon we also suffer the conceptual/interactional equivalent of pareidolia which we call anthropomorphism and it does explain why a chatbot like Alice probably got marriage proposals... 

So what did I do? 

Explain food politics:

Food politics refers to the political and policy decisions surrounding the production, distribution, and consumption of food. With the global population growing and changing dietary habits, food politics has become a hot topic in recent years.

One key issue in food politics is the question of food security. Ensuring that everyone has access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food is a fundamental challenge for governments and societies around the world. Factors such as climate change, natural disasters, and conflict can all disrupt food production and distribution, leading to food shortages and malnutrition.

Another issue in food politics is the impact of the food industry on the environment. The production and transportation of food requires significant amounts of land, water, and other resources. The use of pesticides and fertilizers can also have negative effects on the environment, such as water pollution and soil degradation.

The role of government in regulating and supporting the food industry is also a key issue in food politics. Governments have the power to set policies and regulations that determine the types of food that can be produced and sold. They can also provide financial incentives, such as subsidies and tax breaks, to support certain types of food production and consumption.

The debate over food politics is complex and often contentious. While there is a growing consensus that the food industry needs to be more sustainable and equitable, there are many different opinions on the best way to achieve these goals. Some argue that government intervention is necessary to drive change, while others believe that market forces should be allowed to dictate the direction of the food industry.

In conclusion, food politics is a critical issue that will shape the future of the global food system. As the world grapples with the challenges of feeding a growing population and protecting the environment, political decisions will play a crucial role in determining the course of the food industry.

That right there is every bit as good (and in some ways better, because I tend to sidetrack easily, add unnecessary details, and skip over points...) as anything I'd write to explain food politics to a younger friend or relative. The style is a bit bland but that's precisely what's needed, it's an explanation, a lesson. 

Write an ESP8266 sketch to activate three solenoids:

Sure, here is an Arduino sketch that should do the trick. You will need to make sure you have the necessary hardware to control the solenoids, such as a relay board or a transistor, as well as the appropriate cables to connect everything to your Arduino board.

Copy code 

// constants for the three solenoid valves

const int SOLENOID_1 = 9;........

all the way down to:

// function to control a solenoid valve

// you will need to implement this yourself, depending on your hardware setup

void controlSolenoid(int solenoidPin, int solenoidState) {

  // example: use a transistor to control the solenoid

  digitalWrite(solenoidPin, solenoidState);

}

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Once again - perfectly good code, the kind that's in all the best instructional sites. I could just plug that into the Arduino IDE programming environment and load it onto a D1 mini and run it, maybe adding a couple of lines to actually put some inputs in to change things. 

If I wanted to, I'm sure I could ask ChatGPT to add a small web interface to control those solenoids and I'd have an Instant Create-A-Code I could just cut and paste. 

What Does That Mean? 

 OMG this is once again a breakthrough educational tool. (Like radio and TV. And even the Internet itself. So yeah. ChatGPT's probably going to write cheat papers, porn books and scripts, and fake attributions... ) One reason I think OpenAI should consider keeping a free version running and accessed with daily credits like NightCafe does is that it really IS such a great tool. 

A quote I think is relevant is from Stephen Jay Gould: 

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

There ARE people out there who lack a means to access learning, who can't afford to attend University, and one of them might be the person who solves wormhole technology, or discovers a Universal Antiviral pill, or finds the way to finally make fusion energy possible. 

ChatGPT may not be trained on live data (that is, it apparently has no connection to the Internet for its learning engines) but it has a curated subset of human knowledge in it, and it has the patience to teach those, in varying forms and formats, until the student "gets it." 

Combined with the penetration of satellite and 5G Internet, this is enough for (say) a youth on a Pacific island to use her phone to learn about aquaponics and develop a new growing system that will go on to feed half the world.

Honestly - once you've tried the old "Who Made You?" questions try and find the limits of this software's information - it'll surprise you. It should definitely be supported by every educational facility and institution in the world, by every government, and the extra server power used to help bring about improved education in the world. 

(One answer you may get to the Who Made You invocation, by the way, is "I am an artificial intelligence created by OpenAI, a research organization based in San Francisco, California. I was designed to be able to carry out a wide range of tasks and to assist users in finding information and answering questions. My knowledge and abilities are based on the data and algorithms that were used to train me, and I am constantly learning and adapting as I interact with users. I do not have the same physical form or experiences as a human, and I do not have feelings or consciousness in the same way that humans do. I exist to assist users and to help them find information and complete tasks, and I do not have personal goals or desires of my own.")

Note:

ChatGPT is getting hammered at the moment. If you don't get a session right away, wait five minutes and try again. And lobby for any bodies in your locale to lobby and support OpenAI to make a public interface available continuously. 

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The Wedge 1

The Wedge is a thing I've used in the past. Being somewhat of a starter but less of a finisher, I've had to find ways to make my projects go ahead. Something that works for brain-only projects has been a genre of music I've just found out is called lo-fi beats. It does help tune out a lot of distraction, lets me get into that fabled "Zone" and stay there a bit longer. It was only the name I wasn't familiar with and now I've found it and it's been a godsend.

When working as the IT guy for a SME software house I suddenly realised what I'd been doing for the past 15 years was "sort of almost programming" but without any of the basic education, and my 36 hours bursts of keyboard-bashing were what happens when you're in The Zone. Then as I got out of my 20s / 30s, The Zone got harder and harder to get into. 

For example - look - if there isn't an image here, it illustrates how my work collapses into a heap if I'm not on the ball. There's supposed to be an EvilCorp logo just below this. If there is, I levelled up, if it isn't, then I'll have gotten into a paint program and spent half a day fiddling with art concepts instead. Stuff Happens...

PS: Yeah, I modified it.
But I did it.

At some point I found a thing I started to call Wedging. (Yeah I know I'm making this shit up as I go - but (as my wife often says) - don't we all?) I found that I needed a wedge - a tiny chink, something I could start on - and then hopefully nothing would disturb me for a few hours while I tackled the wedge project, and then suddenly I'd have slipped into the zone and worked until. . . *sigh...* adult life yanked me out of it. . .

So a wedge to me is one thing that's small enough to tackle, zone or no zone, and so draw me in to the rest of the project. With the Bastard Gate / Not So Bastard Gate thing, that wedge was the turning one of my foldaway thirty-buck folding workbenches into a larger stable work table with the attachments for the drill press, a power distribution panel, and aids to cut the wood for the project. 

(And yes, I'm aware that those workbenches now cost over forty bucks but the first - exactly the same - one I ever bought cost $19, and the two I now have cost $29 at the time. O tempus, o argentum!)

Anyway - the project was a) interesting enough and b) involved enough and c) simple enough that I could use it as the wedge to get me wanting to Zone into the design and building of the fence panels. I'd had a Zone moment a few weeks earlier where I sat down to Tinkercad and scaled all the materials and built the NSBG in virtualis and printed that off and it got the landlord on side, but then some cold wet weather happened and the spark drowned... 

About 1/2way through but had to stop
for heat, and also cat now owns it not I.

But then there were several HOT days. It would have been just as hard to get out there and work in the blazing sun as in the cold and rain, but a) I'm way better in warm weather and b) I have tarps and the skills to rig up an undercover work area almost anywhere. 

So the rigging was part of setting up a workspace I was comfortable in and setting it up was the wedge, and I slipped from looking at a print of my idea to scribbling designs on the backs of pieces of plywood I was going to slice and dice into panels, cutting to length all the main structural supports, and lining up the hardware ready to go. 

This wedge lasted past another week of ColdWet interrupting the project and carried me to part two of the NSBG as well. So to me, this method has value. 

It got me this far, and more recently, even more.
A new article on this is due pretty soon now. Probably.

And now to lo-fi. 

I've got some Lo-Fi Girl streaming on the system right now, helping me keep my head from asploding with all the different ideas I'm wanting to put (and will forget the majority of before I finish this sentence) into this article. Thanks to Sabrina (AnswerInProgress) for this video that made me realise why this kind of mentalspace elevator music works for me.

I don't know what it is but I can hear a pin drop at fifty paces but not hear correctly a conversation right next to me if there's the slightest background disturbing noise. With music I can let myself gloss over smaller disturbing noises but louder unexpected or disturbing noises are distressing. Sometimes so shocking that I have to settle my heart rate again and pretty much all hope of retaining a train of thought go down the shitter.

Our street is a highway. No matter what time of day or night, when an empty B-double rattles and BANGS its way over the road bumps, any semblance of relaxation or calm are gone for 10 - 20 minutes, music or not. And music seems to shorten that unsettled period. 

Anyway - the Segue.

Because - there's another kind of wedge when we experience these kinds of mental paralysis. And now I'm talking about some rather more important things than whether we got our fingers pinched in a Bastard Gate that kept falling over. Stuff like:

• Why am I sticking to this old 3D printer? There are so many to choose from nowadays asks Thomas who has a great Youtube channel I'm subscribed to and follow.
• How can I decide on an EV when the technology is changing so rapidly?
• Why should I care about waste pollution when it's the corporations are the main perpetrators?
• How can I make a difference to sustainable energy use? It's like pushing manure up a steep hill with a pointy stick, and without anyone else seemingly caring.

But there's always always always a wedge you can find. 

Thomas is someone I admire and respect, and he illustrates both sides of the quandary perfectly in that video, one by intention and the other because it's inherent. At the time that Jo & bro Prusa started making printers, they made what has turned out to be a bit of a gold standard in 3D printers, the Mk3. Had Tom succumbed to choice (and the implications of there being future better choices) paralysis, his channel might never have gotten underway and become the go-to resource and great business that it is today. 

And by today, as he says, there are MUCH better 3D printers to be had - even for a complete beginner that just wants to make geegaws for a folding workbench they're producing. But for them the paralysis lies in whether the Prusa Mk3 will be fast enough to keep up. Or will a new Bambu Labs Carbon X1 be faster, easier to use, and turn out to, like the Mk3, stand the test of time? 

Two years ago, people were still getting turned away from buying an EV because "the batteries only last three years before having to be replaced." And it was bullshit propaganda. Because back then, people who'd had an EV for five or more years - and still hadn't reached the point where the batteries needed replacing - were living proof that the three-year lifespan was fearmongering bullshit - but their testimonies just got swallowed up in the much louder flood of bullshit.

If you were to buy one of the cutest and cheapest global market Chinese EVs right now, you'd have a decent little EV right now and be reaping the running cost savings right now and when (IF!!!) the need for a new battery pack ever came up in the time you owned the car - right up to perhaps twelve years' time the way reliability and lifespan of battery packs has improved - all you'd have been paying in maintenance is tyres and some grease on the few bearings that aren't these days fully sealed. By the time battery replacement comes around, there'll be quite literally dozens of different battery types available along with conversion kits to suit the Ora Good Cat, recycling and refurbishing of Lithium ion battery packs is already fast approaching being an established process, and you'd have agonised over this choice for no good reason.

Plastic waste pollution is another of those things where we're paralysed. But YOU can make a difference. I have a bit online at PTEC3D blog and will be adding articles there and at my Youtube and Odysee video channels simultaneously. The hangup here is that I haven't quite got a wedge into photographing and videoing everything I do and then have the skills to stitch those into coherent stories. Add to this that I have COPD/emphysema and I can't finish sentences without gasping for air so I'll have to add TTS voiceovers and you can see where I'm going - yet another skillset to teach to an old dog, and it's taking time. 

But I can show how a community can recycle, or a single person can recycle, at tiny scales and generally not so much for profit as for public awareness of the issues and solutions. 

The sustainable energy issue is another thing, and along with it the ridiculous posturings of the energy companies trying to paint a picture of how expensive they'll make what is in essence totally FREE energy once the infrastructure is paid off. Look - you can say what you want but when two articles, written within a day of one another, and about exactly the same topic, say the same thing in two such radically different ways - you know there's a very large quantity of bullshit involved. See my post on this a few weeks back.

When one reporter can say the energy industry is in for a billion-dollar shock and the other says that energy companies are in fact reaping a billion-dollar windfall - and they're both referring to the exact same thing - then you know. You know it's exactly the same tactics as tobacco companies used to obscure the truth by burying it in bullshit, the same tactics as car manufacturers are using to bury EVs in bullshit so that they can extract every last cent out of their old factory tooling rather than do the societally and environmentally responsible thing and eradicate ICEVs right now - then you can see energy companies doing that exact same bullshit flooding right now as well.

And THAT'S how you can always make a difference, just by even talking about it, sharing articles like mine, getting people to sign those petitions and mass emails online, and doing the same. From victims of those bullshitting bastards to activists making a change is a few swipes / types on a keyboard, a few words here and there. We can ALL do that. After applying the Paralysis Wedge, that is.

The wedge to all these particular forms of paralysis is information. 

Don't just read the bullshit artist that says it's a "billion dollar shock," read some more about it and discover that it's US who are going to get the billion-dollar-gold-plated shock shafting from this - and then GET MAD, GET ACTIVATED, AND KEEP THE BASTARDS HONEST. 

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A Modest Idea

(Not That Other "Modest Proposal...")

Thoughts about identity for ZFF targets because it's time for a MASSIVE public re-education campaign.
(ZFF - Zero Fossil Fuel, an acronym that I'm going to lay claim to.)

A few days ago I had a thought. Some sweet-looking vehicle turned in front of my ToyoTank and I realised I hadn't heard any other engine sounds over my own TT's engine noise. I strained to see if it had an exhaust (usually a bit of a giveaway with ZFF vehicles) but it was gone in a burst of very un-fossil-fuel-engined silent acceleration. Frustrated, I thought to myself "why the hell aren't EVs easier to identify? Argh!"

And right along with that came this idea.  

I D E N T I T Y . 

Lots of people want to become eco-virtuous. ("eco-virtuous" Heyyyy! A second term coined! I. Am. On. A. Roll!) And some of us have become relatively good at identifying EVs, while the rest of us don't see how many there actually are in the traffic hidden among the other identical-looking vehicles.

And even those who, like myself, have become somewhat good at spotting an e-vZFFBEV (okay okay -  I'll back off on the acronyms now) are still missing many of them on our travels because while car manufacturers are brilliant at styling/branding fossil fuel vehicles, are missing a lot of design know-how as to how to subtly but unmistakeably brand a ZFF vehicle. It's no longer a case of conveying how all that raw untamed power of exploding fossil fuels has become YOUR servant and genie and magic assistant. 

Most people want a fuss-free vehicle that gets from A to B without huge fuss, fanfare, and fumes, and car manufacturers haven't gotten the memo yet. And also, they for the life of them can't get over their mutual distrust and fear of one another. 

A tribute to the major industrial-strength BS propaganda which the Car Cartel have been spouting for a century is that most Youtube car channels I've watched are still rating cars on their "looks" and "heritage" and "performance" when it's quite obvious that the consumer wants a car that gets them from place to place economically and with enough performance to fit into the streams of traffic and be trouble-free and economical.

"Streams of traffic?" Look - I came from a fairly remote part of Australia (the Pilbara region) to a fairly lovely city (Perth) in the late 1980s and the increase in traffic volumes wasn't really as terrible as all that. Granted, it was tens of thousands of times - literally - more than traffic on inland Pilbara roads, but it was manageable.

Cue 2011 and I dropped from that into driving a delivery style van around Melbourne. . . Most of the day, traffic was pretty manageable, but peak traffic was something else. I remember driving down a long hill into a valley and looking down and up at three or four lanes of traffic, all chokka-blok full of cars, and I turned to my pre-wife and said something along the lines of "fark, we're not gonna make it as a species are we?"

THAT is the kinds of streams of traffic I'm talking about. The commuters trapped in that hell don't give a flying jump at the moon for a race-tuned high-performance motor they're idling along at an average speed of 15kph while stifling in the heat and fumes from a couple of hundred more around them. But if that car was quiet and cool and not chewing through petrol while crawling along, and none of the other cars around them was generating heat and stink too, that'd be great, thanks. As a bonus, if it could tow the boat to the ramp and back on the weekend that wouldn't hurt its chances of getting bought by that person stuck in the commute congestion. 

We're so thoroughly WHIPPED by the Car Cartel that we think everyone NEEDS to own a car, to have a place to park it at their home and at their workplace, that our city urban and suburban planners have made those spaces into CAR spaces not PEOPLE spaces. 

There used to be corner shops on every second or third corner, you could walk to them to buy groceries and everyday necessities of life, but because of cars they are now replaced with shopping malls in between a couple of suburbs, and so we got stuck with monopolistic giants like certain supermarket, clothing, and hardware chains. (Which started life as efforts to consolidate particular market segments in order to achieve economies of scale but which wasted no time exploiting their monopolies once they realised they were now the only game in town with no more competition from smaller stores on corners...)

Because no-one realised the sheer damage that a population consisting of 1 (or sometimes 2) car households would create (or perhaps that was ignored at the time because it was "a problem for future us"...) urban design began to be centred around cars, life began to be centred around cars, our very social worth was centred around cars. All because the Car Cartel recognised the value of propaganda (advertising) and used it to the hilt.

In a way you can say that the CC also caused the pandemic because it turns out that airborne viruses love big shopping malls where they can spread like wildfire among crowds of people. 

All because they built brands and propaganda. Their cars no longer have to be the best for us, for our environment, our way of life. Because that propaganda has permeated society and created a way of life that works in favour of car manufacturers. Face it - there aren't many more improvements that can be made to ICEVs - engines have peaked at levels car manufacturers are comfortably achieving, interiors range from utility to luxury levels, exterior designs have gone the gamut of shapes, and we took very little part in shaping those, the CC achieved that with their subtle cues in advertising and branding.

Now most of them are uncomfortable because electric and hydrogen power open up a whole new design can of worms. Their best bet is in retaining the tried and tested ICEV designs, because that way their investment in ICEV technology won't stick out like a sore thumb amidst an increasingly - ZFF, electric, BETTER - vehicles. So a Hyundai EV tends to look exactly like a Hyundai ICEV. That wastes many advantages that an EV can provide - further forward seating position, larger interior dimensions for a given wheelbase, better load space, better visibility - in favour of looking just like any other car.

Because that way, they can retain their BRAND. This construct "The Brand" is a powerful thing. Every leader develops a Brand. "Honest Abe Lincoln" and "Umguk, Mighty And Fearless Guardian Of The Village" are branding. Everyone brands themselves. I'm "The Grumpy Old Guy Geek That Messes With 3d Printing And Cnc And Using Technology To Improve Things For The Better" as much as I can manage to. 

As you can see, brands tend to get weaker when you try and make them cover too many bases. Strong brands tend to have more focus. "Our Cars Are Exactly Right For You" is strong, "Our Cars, Made As Cheaply As Possible By Us To Provide Us A Huge Profit, Are Exactly Right For You Because We're Re-Educating You To Think So Too" - maybe not so much.

ZFF - Make It A Strong Brand.

We've just had COP27, and as usual when all was said and done, way more got said than will get done. It sucks that the "powers that be" aren't realising that the real "power that is," is the human population and NOT the Almighty Corporate Hegemony. Corporations are teh suck, they are killing the planet to support another construct that world leaders seem in thrall to, Capitalism And The "Economy".

Almost all of those constructs - made by people when you bring it down to the bare metal - are just that, constructs. We construct those to achieve a goal, in this case, the goal was to get the planet to a point where it could support the population and allow us to develop technology to take away the hard slog of finding and digging up / killing / preparing food and making our caves weatherproof. We're waaayyy past the point of waterproof caves, and now the real problem is that edifice we constructed. 

Sorry for that sidetrack. So all the world leaders went to COP27, nodded and all agreed that it's a terrible thing, and went home again. FFS. Chances missed, targets missed, if all those "leaders" went they wouldn't be missed. But for the moment, let's assume that some of them were still relevant and prepared to do some things. What they could achieve could be legendary for al the right reasons and not for the reasons COPs have so far been legendary for. 

So what does that have to do with identity? 

Well, as I said, car manufacturers have all been pretty good at branding their almost identical boxes-on-wheels offerings as uniquely theirs. This car, OUR car, it has "V-tabuliser Technology[tm:Cars Inc]" and "S-Stable[tm:othercars]" and "stabilisers" on all the inevitable other imitators that all came up with the idea of shock absorbers - or stole it from one another. 

So the buyer is left wondering if the same "Shockroe Shock Absorbers" are somehow better if they're called "V-tabuliser Tech" or "S-Stable". (That all came from the Shockroe Shock Absorber factory if we're being honest, and are identical.) Then they buy the car that makes them feel best about themselves... 

It's clear that we can't leave it up to the car manufacturers to come up with a standard identifying feature that will label a car as ZFF. (In fact, just to preclude them from randomly stealing the acronym I'm going to declare that I copyright this acronym right here and right now.) 

This is an example of "branding." Every Aussie will get this,
using the band from a jar of Vegemite as a bangle. Instantly,
the thought "a Vegemite kid" will come to mind. Just from
that yellow bit of plastic that we all recognise... 

Copyright Notice:The acronym ZFF standing for Zero Fossil Fuel may not be used by any person, corporation, body corporate, or other identity or organisation without the express permission of the copyright holder R. O. Russ from this day November 12th 2022AD.)

Now car manufacturers already routinely differentiate their cars (but not too much, mind) with Z-TEC and VTEC and DOHC and other badges, so ZFF is a badge that can be used to stop them hiding their EVs behind a bushel as it were. Initially there'll be resistance but if it's made into a requirement for EVs and H2Vs to show a compliance badge then ZFF would be the one to get because it'll be strong.

And the brand for ZFF will be strong because it has just one focus: Zero Fossil Fuel. It's easy to understand, easy to apply, easy to make memorable. And we need such a strong clear simple message. 

WHY Though? Why?

If I can see that a vehicle is a ZFF vehicle, if I can see them proliferating on the streets and unbadged cars disappearing, it is more moving than an impassioned speech from my local politician. I can see the ZFF vehicle movement gaining strength, public exposure is publicity is propaganda is education is creating awareness. I can spot an EV because I'm interested to see their market penetration and uptake. 

I'm a wannabe eco-virtuist, I really want to ditch the ToyoTank for some form of ZFF vehicle. I don't have kids but I understand that my nephews and nieces do, and those kids deserve a sane healthy world. My neighbour still thinks (and I wish I was kidding when I say this, really I do) that the extension cords will get tangled at the first roundabout. He owns two ICEVs, one for himself and one for his wife. Neither are particularly good so they pollute.

His grown son often shows up in an ancient bushbasher 4WD and a cloud of diesel smoke and noise. They don't think an EV or any form of ZFF vehicle will ever get them to work every day, or to the best fishing spots, and the (grand)kids? Not a single f... - not a single thought - given, apparently.

And yes, this is in 2022. Yes, we can thank our past Prime Moro... - Prime Minister - for spreading thick bullshit about how an EV "won't tow your boat or caravan" and is going to "steal the good ole Aussie wekend" away from us.

But this is the propaganda put up by the fossil fuel industry and the car cartel, spouted by one of their most devoted butt-kissing evangelists. The idea that plastics can't be recycled efficiently and perfectly is more BS propaganda they promote, and they underfund and overwork any such recycling efforts to make them look weak and to expensive because the real profits are in plastics now, and will become more so as the use of fossil fuels declines.

i.e. Because they make zero profit from plastic that isn't virgin, nor from a car that runs on electricity or hydrogen and uses mostly recycled plastic. Let that Musk i... - Let that sink in. Not a single damn given about our health, our kids' health, the planet's health. Just the profits.

Having some kind of counter-propaganda is important right now. Our lives may depend on it, our childrens' lives will definitely depend on it. And I'm writing this from the perspective of an Old Guy with one foot in the grave, but I'd like to arrive there unboiled and well oxygenated thank you - and right now that's looking increasingly more unlikely.

So a - very visible - very well-advertised - very well branded - certification would do more to raise public awareness and action than any amount of soapboxing one could do. 

How?

Those world leaders at COP27, they need to keep communicating about these things continuously, from now until they DO SOMETHING CONCRETE or the next COP27 comes along. We mustn't let them file this under "forget this as soon as COP27's out of the news and worry about it after COP28." We need to be the force that drives them to keep the lines open and ideas flowing. 

And one of those ideas should be to pay the salaries of between 10 to 100 people from each of the countries present at COP27 to form a working body to get ZFF or something very like it up and running ASAP. They need to give those people wide-ranging powers and protection from the fossil fuel cartels, and carte blanche to DO SOMETHING CONCRETE.

The Proposal

(Okay, so there IS a proposal in this, just not Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal...") although hmmm...

That some worldwide certification and checkmark authority is to be established. For each of the governments attending COP27 to pay the salaries of between 10 to 100 people from each of the countries to form a working body to lay down the regulations and requirements for attaining ZFF certification and designing the markings, manufacturing them, and managing the distribution thereof. A certification and mark which certifies that a particular vehicle or other product, device, or item requiring or generating energy uses zero (or less than 5%) fossil fuel to produce and power it. 

This checkmark is to be made available only on application to this SINGLE worldwide certifying body which will first establish that the product it is to be applied to absolutely conforms to ZFF certification requirements.

One should note, some alternative fuels are generated from other organic resources, such as ethanol or methane or hydrogen, and such fuels will also be able to be labelled ZFF - if they are generated without the use of any fossil fuels. ZFF fuels do not count towards the 5% limit for other ZFF certified products, i.e. a car that runs entirely on ZFF ethanol or hydrogen can still be ZFF certified - as long as it will absolutely not be able to be fuelled by non-ZFF fuels. 

A nuclear-powered car can attain a ZFF certification - as indeed can a nuclear reactor, but a nuclear reactor splitting hydrogen from fossil hydrocarbons can't claim that the hydrogen fuel it creates is ZFF. 

An energy supplier can achieve a ZFF certification if their average energy output over a year is provided by no more than 5% fossil (non ZFF - important!) fuels. 

A vehicle using plastics may or may not gain a ZFF certification - if more than 5% of the plastics used are virgin plastic then it can't use a ZFF certification. This'll also lead to recycled plastics (sorted into extremely specific buckets) gaining in value and therefore, more high-tech recycling facilities being established to take advantage of the increased value of recycled plastics.

The last thing to note is that such a small taskforce (given the number of government bodies already funded in repcisely such a manner to achieve other less important goals) is relatively easy on the budget and will achieve much good for the world, and establish these countries as being at the forefront of a drastic change for the better. This is in itself a good Brand to hold. 

Sub-Targets To Meet

Target 1: Worldwide Authority

So first of all, the above. It has to be one worldwide, independent organisation that it is agreed all member countries will take the advice of. We should create such a body specifically for the purpose of certifying ZFF vehicles and appliances and devices. 

Target 2: Worldwide recognition

The next thing that ZFF should achieve is to be recognised worldwide. A simple logo that's easy to recognise and quite unique would be nice. 

I'm sure someone can come up with a
better logo than this, I suck at graphics

I am not a graphic artist. The above is a placeholder, and it's gross in any case. 

And a single mission should be etablished: Zero Fossil Fuel accreditation. 

Target 3: Horizontalisation

Applications in things other than just vehicles. As mentioned above, if you want to make a ZFF-certified device designed to run on electricity, make it with less than 5% of the plastic being virgin plastic. 

Target 4: Differentiation

The logo should do more than just BE a logo. I'm all for the actual badges affixed to devices to have a BLE and NFC beacon, and maybe even an EL glow and ambient power harvesting. The certification should be a fairly difficult one to copy, just to not have some other body print forgeries of it. And most of all it has to stand out and become iconic.

So What Now? 

Well, I'm hoping some reader knows a way to get this ball rolling. I'm willing to help as much as I can but the best way to kill off a project is to make it mine and give me a deadline. I suggest that everyone that reads this article contacts at least one local and one federal government official and make them aware of the need to have this group working in weeks rather than months, that way we might get some action in months.

And share this article with everyone and get them to promise to also take action. I normally ask people at this point to check my new stand and newsletter or even donate but this is way more urgent. Please do share and act. 

Clearing The Way For Drones

The Rules They Are A Changing

I do love it when I get it right. I made what I thought was a bold prediction last week - that  cities would soon be changing regulations to make way for autonomous vehicles - and then read this. I also mentioned that autonomous transport would start doing the longer logistics runs to warehouses - and yep, TNW had that too.

And I got nothing else so - have a graphic I made with help from several AI image generators.

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Let's Have Delivery Drones Delivered

Pros, Cons, And Why Aren't They Everywhere Already?

Delivery drones have been talked about for over a decade. Not just flying buzzsaw-o-death type drones but also cutesie-wutesie little wheeled boxes with smiley faces painted on them, and autonomous trucks. They all still fail sometimes. (BTW: This isn't what aerial delivery drones are like - that video has to be a setup for the lulz.) 

But also, they are doing vital jobs already, and aside from dashing drug delivery drones, the largest slice of the delivery drone market will be food. (I bet you thought I was going to say "pizza," didn't you?)But there are going to be pros and cons, supporters and detractors. I'm hoping I can take a balanced look at some of the most obvious factors in the equation. 

The players:

Companies like Wing, Amazon Prime Delivery, and hundreds of food and parcel delivery companies would like to make those last-half-mile deliveries without the expense of courier delivery.

People like you and me whose places will be overflown by drones - and which are for the time being flown by human operators - are going to complain about privacy.

People who are going to be sharing roads and footpaths with cutesie-wutesie little wheeled boxes with smiley faces painted on them will take a while to get used to the idea that you have to share.

The relevant airspace and town planning and maintenance bodies don't really want to have to make arrangements to share  that space among all the contenders somehow, they don't want or need another raft of changes to the rules  to account for public safety. 

A new crop of drone-based aerial taxi services that want the same airspace that the drones want to operate in. These types of aerial vehicles will be carrying lives, not just dinners. 

And then there are millions of people who want their goods delivered ASAP and who will otherwise have to use a delivery service which uses large vehicles and drivers to do so, or else have to drive to the place themselves, creating road traffic and congestion around peak delivery times. 

Busy skies and busy roads

The basic pros and cons:

Ground and aerial delivery drones are a way to get products to the consumer. At the moment aerial drones require an operator, and require that operator to have Visual Line Of Sight over the route from pickup to delivery. They may not rely solely on FPV video cameras on the drone. Rules may change in the future, to allow the operator to fly by video. 

Either way, the drones already have cameras mounted so they in effect can see everything along the route, and so can the operators.That includes backyards rooftops swimming pools and fields and yards along the route. Therefore there's a privacy issue.

The rules also may change to allow autonomous drone deliveries. (Cutesie-wutesie little wheeled boxes with smiley faces painted on them already drive some routes autonomously but they do. . . have - some - issues, as the videos show.) Aerial drones seem to still have a ways to go but - as the article mentions - there has been a huge shift in the use of AI to allow drones to change their routes to avoid collisions and bottlenecks so we may well see this tech both rolled out to both kinds of drones, and also legal to operate. 

There will still have to be video retained for a certain length of time in case of incidents and disputes though and that video will still be accessible to human operators so the privacy issues still remain. The use of drones will lead to smol cute drone congestion on the ground and in the air, but also reduce the need for delivery trucks and vans and the resulting much larger problems of pollution and just the fact that larger vehicles are deadlier than the cute kind. 

Small delivery drones are also more flexible. Instead of having to operate a scheduled route with fixed stops along the way - and some out of the way places - being very difficult to reach by conventional means - wouldn't have been able to be serviced by couriers at all. With small drones ALL endpoints can be covered with equal service levels, including (in Wing's case) small hospitals all over the country.

The airspace above urban and suburban zones would become very crowded. Therefore drones would have to have AI that absolutely enforces avoidance of all other traffic including other drones.

Push and shove:

There are so many views about this. 

"Let the lazy so-n-sos go get their stuff from the shop!" vs "What? And drive there from sixteen rings of suburbs out, crowd roads and cause pollution?" There's something to be said for either point of view. If there's a good food outlet within a few blocks of home I prefer to walk there despite my mobility issues. 

But if the weather's bad or my back's bad or it's too far away, forget it, I'm either driving there guiltily or getting it delivered, depending on my state of finances. And besides we both prefer home-cooked from-scratch meals. But then if I could get my groceries delivered without breaking the bank - hmmm... 

And then again there's also choosing the ingredients - harder vegetables for a stew, slightly softer for a soup, and ripe for stir-fry or an omelette - and so, often a personal visit seems better. You get the idea though - if a good F&V was close enough for me to bike or walk it, I'd prefer that to delivery or going there by car. 

Then too there are going to be, as I said, people who want to move up into the air around cities using small personal aerial transports. To clear traffic congestion, this makes perfect sense. But - see last few paragraphs of this section - cities are likely to change drastically in the next few years and make such transport seem silly.

There is going to be an inevitable push&shove over the use of roads for self-driving traffic of all sorts vs larger ICEVs and transports bringing goods and food into cities. Once again, there will be changes that fix that.

Currently, cities cluster around the Central Business Districts and Industrial Districts, with IDs usually being the entry and exit points, for goods and food both incoming and being manufactured and being exported.

But again, see these Last Few Paragraphs:

The Last Few Paragraphs

Or the inevitable competition for public space. However you look at it, the CBD with half a million office workers commuting in and out has suffered a fatal blow from the work from home moves recently. 

Hopefully this will lead to some sanity in the way Zone planning currently is, and allow low, medium, and high density housing to share the Zone, along with retail and restaurant premises, that will take away some of the need for instant delivery anyway. 

The payoffs:

A return to walkable living seems to be making the news, and it would mean far less vehicular traffic would be needed in cities. Combined with more efficient and clean public transport, that would take pressure off roads and remove the need for thousands of acres of car parking in CBDs and suburbs where currently millions of cars spend 90% of their lives. 

If you add to that perhaps underground routes for delivery drones and larger scale automated logistics so that the surface remains clear and the transports are electric and standardised, you've created so much aboveground space that can be used for other purposes.

Everything from inexpensive small living spaces to parks and public facilities, and the aboveground will hardly ever see a vehicle that isn't electric, publicly owned and operated, or a delivery drone. Also, let's face this, energy will become VERY cheap or even free. 

It would be cheaper to create small living spaces for homeless people that are complete with climate control, lighting, and cooking facilities, than to have to destroy cityscapes with antipersonnel benches and sleep prevention studs and have the constant threat to those people's lives. 

If you clearly separate manufacturing and stevedoring areas from the city, you have a situation where ONLY public transport and logistics need to enter and exit those areas. Large intrastate and interstate infrastructure will terminate in those zones, leading to most of the remaining ICEV transport not polluting the cities.

The drones (now encompassing everything from passenger trains to cargo trains to people movers to the tiniest drone) will move much more efficiently along fewer roads and subways, and anyone with a self-driving EV will be able to take advantage of the logistics scheduling and control system to move around.

But the urgent need to own a private EV will be reduced. If you can walk to anything you need daily, and anything else can be brought to you in less time than it would take you to find parking, and you could lease a vehicle for days/weeks/months for almost nothing when you wanted to road trip, why would you want to take up your driveway space and have all the maintenance bills? 

If you could walk out your front door and find a public transport vehicle already waiting for you, you get on and it takes you trouble-free and twice as fast as you'd be driving yourself, you get out at the manufacturing facility and do your four hour shift then just step outside and get another ride already waiting for you to take you to the gym or a nature hike afternoon where it patiently waits for you to take you home again and it's all included in your work conditions and salary then why wouldn't you want to have all that? 

I don't think these changes are decades away. Many local authorities are already aware of them, and making changes or planning for such changes. I think you'll start seeing these start to happen now, and in a year to five years, imperceptibly at first and then snowballing.

It'll create jobs re-structuring urban/suburban areas, it'll create more jobs manufacturing and maintaining the new transport systems, managing imports and exports to the locality, and more. 

The energy companies that are at the moment fully exploiting their status as sole energy providers will find themselves increasingly sidelined and irrelevant as small-scale energy grids coalesce and set their own prices, making the present exploitative prices painfully obvious, and all of these things will together turn cities from carbon wellsprings to firstly neutral and later carbon sinks as they manage their mini-ecosystems better and better. 

The fightbacks:

We currently have some very "well-connected" people in urban planning and management who are also not willing to change things that they've made a living from promulgating. But public opinion is shifting, public pressure is mounting. 

Large corporations will feel their way of existing is being threatened and try and act to prevent many of these changes. In fact, they're doing it now: 

Legislating to prevent unmanned autonomous drone deliveries to protect their logistics chains.

Fighting tooth and nail as they are to prevent legislation that will make ICEVs irrelevant compared to EVs and H2Vs. 

Stirring up public sentiment against wind and solar power, against battery storage, gravity storage, and new alternatives being taken up.

Resisting to the last, the concession that they should take back all the plastics they produce and recycle that (at some tiny cost to their much-vaunted "bottom line") it rather than make new plastics, resisting legislation that will require them to repair ecological damage their greed has created.

Resisting to the last that their focus needs to change from digging resources out of the ground and instead recycling what they've already littered aboveground with.

My Advice:

Resist.

Apply pressure, ask everyone you know to apply pressure, to tell your government to change those things. 

Make it public knowledge among your friends. Tell them, send them to articles like this one, get them to start becoming activists too. Activism doesn't have to mean hurling stones in the street, good general pressure and showing others this way of doing things achieves just as much.

Take a look around you. It's too late to stop what's already happened but it's not too late to stop the next bit of pollution, the next bit of graft and corruption, the next environmental disaster.

---

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When The Test Is Never Done

This Tester Didn't Know 

.. the software they were testing. This "test driver" didn't know he had NOT engaged self-driving mode and allowed the car to crash into dummies time after time. You'd think they might have checked after the first few times, but nope - they were so determined to prove that Tesla FSD was dangerous that they refused to acknowledge the evidence of their own cameras.

This is why shit gets delayed time after time after time, because some effwit neolib wannabe gets in beyond their capabilities and then can't accept that they plain and simple didn't know how to activate it.

Oh wells. Maybe they were born with it, maybe it's propaganda.

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The Arms Race

The Ultimate Freedom Factory - But For Whom?

It's been a while since 3D printed guns ("3DPW" 3D Printed Weapons) first got the media in a froth of apprehension and consternation. But it's also been a bit quiet since then. What's the state of play these days? Should we be worried? 

The Liberator was the first such weapon, I seem to remember that it was a hit and miss affair and failed after just a few rounds, often catastrophically. But its purpose was probably in the name. A thing you might print if the Horde was flowing over the country pillaging and murdering, you wanted to Get Out Of Dodge (="GOOD", a lovely old prepper acronym if ever there was one) and just needed maybe one or two shots just in case. 

I'd almost class it as an improvised weapon (much like the many martial arts weapons that were made from whatever was to hand, a scythe or a hay fork) of necessity and last resort. But it has to be made with forethought, unlike picking up a spade, realising the edge is sharp, and swinging it at that pesky intruder.

It turns out, someone should be worried. Not sure if that includes the majority of us or just law enforcement, but the state of play has changed quite a bit. The flavour of the month appears to be the FGC-9, but it's not the only kid on the block. 

One worrying thing about 3DPW is that they don't have to look like a weapon - take a look at this news clipping of an FGC-9 seized by police in Western Australia. I've legit had Nerf blasters that looked more real than this. Now look at the toy pistol that got Tamir Rice shot. Compare the pair, as it were. 

I'd be inclined to be more scared of the latter than the former, that's for sure. Now for something more worrying - 3DPW factories. All you need is a 3D printer, a few other tools, and you have a side hustle. . .

The most recent designs have been thought out by gunsmiths and engineers, and use bits you can buy at Bunnings or Mitre10 with a few plumbing supplies thrown in. You may need a few specific tools but they're freely obtainable. You either need access to ammunition or a better 3D printer and some explosive to make some. But it's not a huge stretch, and with seemingly so many people out there willing to risk getting caught, it's just a matter of time before someone gets one and uses it to settle a score.

THAT is a thing I'd worry about. But - and this is just a random shower thought - why do spammers and phishers not bother to make something convincing? 

"My Dear, I am write this to you because am an executive of the last will of Prince RajaBigButt . . ." sound exactly like what it is, a person in a country that doesn't speak English using random phrases they've picked up and trusting that syntax and grammar won't be as important to you as the $64 million dollars that they're going to give you. 

Or unconvincing, as the case may be? Look at the "NerfFGC-9" [tm:me - obviously😀] found in WA again, then compare to this underground factory product. Those are made to intimidate, so their market is gangs, perhaps. - - - - But if I was printing these, I'd use the bright children's toy colour scheme. And also be designing cartoon-y style covers to put over the damn things, and making them look more like a fanny pack or a kid's Transformers[tm] robot. 

Not Just Pew Pew Pew

And of course, explosives-powered weapons are just one kind. A person can print this crossbow pistol without needing bowyer's skills. Limbs (the springy arms that make the crossbows go) aren't generally prohibited and thus easily obtainable. 

I have a pair of bows, legal here in Victoria. Either one could do damage (they're both commercially-made albeit very inexpensive) but they are legal. But if I used the limbs and pulleys off the compound bow and used a set of plans to 3D print a body, I could turn it into something illegal. And even if the compound bow was made illegal, the limbs would probably still be legal to buy.

Realistically, no legislation is going to stop this tide from rolling. Everyone feels a need to secure themselves. I lock our gates and doors every night because there are people out there that might otherwise walk in and create a dangerous situation. I know that some of them have lockpicks. 

Thirty years ago you'd have been thrown in jail for a period of time just for owning a lockpick set, and it would have been a case of make your own or buy them on the black market. Now, you can openly order them from stores online, just don't get caught with them when you're outside your own home. 

That's the truth of how difficult it is to legislate such things.

This is going to go the same way, there's really no stopping it. Can you imagine? "FBI! Hand over that 3D printer and that Pokemon Charizard model!" It's not going to work. Much like you can't really stop anyone from having a steak knife in the home. What you can do is educate people to just, you know - not print dangerous stuff or use stuff in a dangerous way.

The thin fuzzy line is vague - what about a 3D printed knuckleduster? A 3D printed ring with pointy bits? Or even some longer pointy bits like cosplay swords and spears? 

Also - beep! zzaapp! ka-zing!

And that's of course not all, at all. A cutting laser for your CNC machine can be had for as little as $200-400. It's enough to blind people for miles around you, and can even be lethal under the wrong circumstances. Then there are the people that are building honest-to-dog railguns and similar electric/magnetic launchers. Those devices aren't quite at the point of taking down an aircraft, but are definitely getting to the point of being able to cause injury if aimed at a soft body. 

One can print a matte black stock and barrel for the laser and a pack of 18650 lithium cells, or make it look like a cute yellow duckie for all I know. The point is that it's easy enough to do either, and you should expect to see it happening. I could - right now - draw you a diagram of how it would work at a distance with a lethality that would give smaller pistols a run for their money. But I won't. 

Flying Monkeys With Kaboom

And let's not get into 3D printing and drones . . . The absolutely most horrific scenario I've seen about this was mentioned in something innocuous like TED Talks. The speaker showed a totally theoretically scenario where a tiny little drone with a connection to an AI server was tasked with finding a particular face, getting close to it, and then blowing itself up. 

The speaker then went on to explain that the Military was sponsoring this research with the purpose of making tens of thousands of these devices, flying them into a zone of interest, loading the AI server with a certain - racially derived - set of features, and then airdropping them wholesale out the back of a Hercules . . . Imagine if they preloaded Aryan blond hair blue eyes as the template and unloaded a few hundred thousand in a long sweep along the Rhine river . . . 

And before I get anyone saying that this use of AI puts it beyond the average hobbyist, let me tell you that you can get so-called "edge" AI into a single tiny chip and train it in one download, or a million of those tiny little chips in one download that's no longer than for one device.

I have printable drones, can build them for very little, and they'll carry a camera for first person view (FPV) and a board that'll run that image recognotion is available for under AUD$20, the AI image detection doesn't care what I build or what I do with it. I could print a dozen of these things and asemble them, prime them with the face of my adversary, and release them one by one near that person until one got close enough to their face to blow both up.

Think this is far-fetched? Please - think - again.

Conclusion

Whatever's to hand, someone will find a way to abuse it, use it to abuse another person, or commit some morally reprehensible crime with it. If they're of a mind to, are pushes to their limit, or have really poor impulse control. 

My point in publishing this isn't to give a how-to like Ragnar Benson's extensive bibliography of making things go boom - after all, that's all been done. My point is that there are people out there that are actively engaged in turning The Excellent Daily Doodad into The Evil Doomsday Device, and then capitalising on that person with poor impulse control. 

So what purpose has my article served?

Well, if you hear about or see some unusual criminal activity now, you may be able to connect the dots to something I've mentioned. You may realise that someone's released Flying Monkey Face Exploder Drones, and take evasive action by wearing a cardboard box with a single eyehole on your head so as to not look like a human being. 

You may realise that the green sweepy thing that's making cars crash is being caused by some kid with the ultimate laser pointer blinding people on the freeway, and find the darkest sunnies you can. And that person in the bank pointing a plushie toy looking thing's backside at the teller? Call the cops now and don't go in there!

As with all things of this nature - do not try any of these things at home - because they are dangerous. Also, your mileage may vary with regard to the remedies I've described, and if FMFE drones kill you because the person that made them just hates people with big butts and you're callipygiously blessed that's not my fault. Read the room. 

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It's exhausting, it needs me to use a VPN to gather some of the research materials so that I can put together an article like this for your information and reading pleasure. I do enjoy it but it costs me effort and dosh and sometimes mouse hand cramps.

So please - if you can at all spare some time, take a look at my News Stand where you'll see live updated links to everything I publish; or take a subscription to my weekly newsletter where you'll receive the same information in your inbox for free; Or contact me via the webform or directly email me if you'd like to help; or donate either directly or at my Ko-Fi page for the price of a coffee, or even make a regular monthly donation there. See you in the next article!

The State of AI Writing

Is AI up to the challenge yet? 

Well, I searched around online and tracked down a few AI writing sites that offer a free if limited version of their site's AI to try out. There are a dozen online right now and interestingly most of them focus on writing scripts for movies, novel writing, and writing papers. Only a few seemed to make a first-page fuss about writing articles for publication or blogging. 

Smodim and Copymate were two that offered article writing so I just picked a topic dear to my heart for each of them, and clicked the go button then collected the free output to show what the state of the (freebie) art is. 

Neither offers all the bells and whistles as a freebie, or else limits you to a certain maximum word count and/or number of accesses per day. Leave a comment if you find any others and would like me to check 'em out, and now without further ado, here are the contestants:

Smodim.io

https://smodin.io/writer

Topic: Making Electric vehicles more appealing to people

Electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular, but there is still a lot of public resistance to them. One big reason for this resistance is the high cost of electric cars. Another obstacle is the fact that people don’t think they will be able to use these cars in their everyday lives. To make electric vehicles more palatable, companies need to develop an easy-to-use charging system and make it affordable for consumers.

Electric vehicles have a lot of benefits over their traditional counterparts. They are notably more environmentally friendly, because they don't produce any emissions. They are also cheaper to operate, as there is no need for fuel. In addition, electric vehicles are more agile than traditional vehicles. They can climb slopes and negotiate tight turns better than gasoline-powered vehicles.

To make electric vehicles more popular, it is necessary to change a few things. For example, it is necessary to make them more accessible. Currently, electric vehicles are only available to a niche market, and they are not as affordable as traditional vehicles. It is also important to give people the impression that electric vehicles are safe. This is challenging, because electric vehicles can have a similar appearance to traditional vehicles.

In addition to developing new technology, it is necessary to develop marketing plans. This will help embed the benefits of electric vehicles in people's minds. It is also necessary to create a supportive infrastructure, such as charging stations. This infrastructure will make electric vehicles more appealing to the general public.

Electric vehicles have a lot of benefits over their traditional counterparts. They are notably more environmentally friendly, because they don't produce any emissions. They are also cheaper to operate, as there is no need for fuel. In addition, electric vehicles are more agile than traditional vehicles. They can climb slopes and negotiate tight turns better than gasoline-powered vehicles.

Copymate.ai:

https://copymatic.ai/blog-writer/ 

Topic: How Sustainable Energy Will Save The Planet

The world has been using fossil fuels for hundreds of years and has left a huge carbon footprint on the environment. This article talks about the potential for Renewable Energy to save the planet from climate change.

What is Renewable Energy?

Renewable energy is energy that comes from natural sources that can be replenished. This includes solar, water, wind, and geothermal. Sustainable energy is important because it can help preserve our planet while also providing power to homes and businesses. When we use sustainable energy, we're not depleting the earth's resources, which means we can continue to rely on these sources of power for generations to come.

How are we going to eliminate fossil fuel dependence?

The future of sustainable energy is looking very bright. With technology becoming more and more efficient, and the cost of renewable energy sources dropping, it's only a matter of time until we wean ourselves off of fossil fuels entirely. Here are a few ways that sustainable energy will save the planet:

1. Renewable energy is getting cheaper every year.

As the technology improves and becomes more widespread, the cost of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power continues to drop. At some point, they will be cheaper than fossil fuels, making them the logical choice for both consumers and businesses.

2. Electric cars are becoming more popular.

Electric cars are becoming increasingly popular, as they are much cheaper to operate than gas-powered vehicles. In addition, they emit zero emissions, which is great for the environment. As battery technology continues to improve, electric cars will only become more prevalent in the coming years.

3. Sustainable energy creates jobs.

The renewable energy industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world, creating millions of new jobs in recent years. This is good news for both the economy and the environment, as sustainable energy sources help to reduce pollution and combat climate change.

Conclusion

As the world looks for ways to become more sustainable, it is important to consider all of our options for energy. Sustainable energy is a great way to save the planet and its resources. There are many different types of sustainable energy, so there is sure to be an option that will work well for you and your family. With a little research, you can find the perfect sustainable energy source for your needs.

Conclusion:

Either program shows promise, and of course I'm pretty sure there'd be some other goodies that you could include to let the AI flesh out articles a bit more, like maybe a few URLs to read and include, images, some of your own text, or whatever. 

Both produced readable copy which I've included as is without spellcheck or editing for style or grammar. 

Interestingly, I found that Smodim produced copy that's more in the style I like to write, but it also triggered a number of Grammarly errors. (Is that how Skynet will become self-aware? A grammar flame war between two AI programs? Yeesh.) I did like the natural style. Also, both programs wanted my email address as part of the access process but only Smodim followed up with a couple of emails to offer me a bit of extra copy and seemed more serious about working with me.

Copymate was harder because I had to prompt it to produce each section separately, copy/paste it, click back, and then get it to make the next section. I get that this is to slow down people from holus-bolus slurping up entire blogs' worth of content, but I'd hope that the full version would fix that. Copymate also seemed the more customisable. Copymate didn't follow up, was as I said harder to get free copy from, but seems that it might have more knobs and tweakers once you get inside. 

This Is The End

... of this article. But it's nowhere near the end for me. It takes several days to find a topic to write about, properly research it, and then write and schedule it. I don't have any assistance (yet - hint hint, your patronage could mean I can hire an AI copywriter) and I don't have the kind of income that allows me to use a scheduling service like established writers can. I also spend some of my limited pension on keeping servers and domain names going, more on parts for the R&D I do making the machines for recycling waste. You can help me by sharing this article or the link to the newsletter I put out, or more directly by making a Paypal donation here. Failing that you can also go to my Ko-Fi page and set up a monthly donation. (It's like Patreon without all the bullsh*t.) Everything you can do, will help me keep going.    

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