Robots. Cyborgs. Artificial intelligence. AR glasses. Here’s my Computerworld column on why employees are about to get heavily augmented.
And beef, chiles and cheese sauce.
In this exciting episode of Mike's List, I talk about my experience using a highly conversational and highly personalized AI chatbot via my Ray-Ban Meta glasses while walking around Mexico City.
Everything here in Mexico City was barricaded against vandalism by Women’s Day marchers; my Mexican friends advised caution (in a past March, my son was threatened with a taser by a protester). But nothing bad happened except defacement of the barricades themselves.
New trend: Chilean criminals are getting tourist visas to come to the United States for the purpose of burglarizing L.A.-area homes. The visas are easy to get and the homes are easy (and lucrative) burglarize — no bars on the windows, no fences, etc. Police are calling it “burglary tourism” and the perpetrators “crime tourists.”
My Computerworld column in which I make the case that AI glasses represent the technology revolution of the decade.
I’m just not going to stand for this.
HEADLINE: "TikTok is encouraging its users to call their representatives about attempts to ban the app"
ALT HEADLINE: "TikTok, which is a threat mainly because of its power to sway public opinion, is swaying public opinion to affect US lawmaking"
Bonus nugget: TikTok users are asking: "What's a Congressman?"
The Spanish company Multiverse Computing just raised 25 million Euros at a 100 million Euro valuation. The company makes software that uses "quantum-inspired tensor networks" to compress LLMs. "Quantum-inspired tensor networks" work by leveraging tensor network structures, which are mathematical tools originating from quantum mechanics, to develop efficient and interpretable machine learning schemes.
This cocktail, by the way, is jamaica (hibiscus tea), lime juice and mezcal with worm salt.
Which took 250 years to build starting in 1573.
In the Gastronomad Experience Journal newsletter and blog, I talk about why travel is a necessary. (Spoiler: Because most of the best and most interesting wines are never exported and because wineries, cellars and vineyards is where a real wine education happens.) Read the blog.
We travel the world in search of the most incredible food, wine, human connection and other joys of the table. Along the way, we find ourselves transported — spiritually, emotionally and even transported in time.
Our Gastronomad Experiences always bring us to a thrilling state of mind, a feeling of being cast back into centuries past. Sometimes the modern world, with its technology and stress and industrialism is suddenly…. nowhere to be found. We can’t see it. And we can’t even feel it. And we ask ourselves: What century is this?
Our friends Dylan and Jessica, plus Amira and I, had a great weekend in Tasmania's upper east side. The Bay of Fires has incredible beaches and famous orange rocks. We stopped off at a gourmet shop and picked up some cheese, bread, wine and other goodies. Jessica also found a really nice picnic basket. The friends, scenery, shade and food made this an absolutely perfect picnic.
From Mike's List: "We know from its history of patent applications that Apple thinks different about smart rings. In addition to all the health tracking applications, Apple also sees smart rings as a gesture-controller for TVs, iPhones, iPads and Apple Vision Pro."
I'm on TWiT with host Leo Laporte and fellow guests Janko Roettgers and Alex Kantrowitz!
We cover recent events from Nvidia, Google, AT&T, Walmart, Wyze, Reddit, Microsoft, SpaceX and more!
A wallaby looks like a small kangaroo. They're everywhere here in Tasmania, which does not have kangaroos.
The place was a super nice organic bakery called Summer Kitchen in Ranelagh, Tasmania.
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He stood there looking at me and chewing for a minute before hopping off.
I selected "Not sure."
We all know by now that many business leaders want their employees to work in the office instead of at home. But most don’t understand why.
And we know that many employees want to work from home instead of the office. And most don’t understand why, either.
As a result, we have a standoff at many companies where corporate leadership is imposing return-to-office (RTO) mandates, and employees are resisting.
It’s time for everyone to really understand what’s driving the standoff.
The newest entry into the AI glasses category comes from Brilliant Labs, the company that brought us that funky “Monocle” product I told you about last year. (I told you about it because someone customized it by adding ChatGPT functionality.) The product, called Frames, weigh 39 grams, which is an average weight even for ordinary prescription glasses.
Like Ray-Ban Meta glasses, Frames cost less than $400 — in this case, $349 — and also support prescription lenses. But unlike Ray-Ban Metas, these have a see-through screen interface visible to the wearer in the right frame only. Unlike Apple Vision Pro, where visual objects appear to be anchored in the real world, Frame glasses are heads-up displays like Google Glass, where the visual objects move with the head.
Augmented reality glasses like Xreal Air 2 can act as a screen for TV, video games and smartphones. This is different.
Frames show you AI content — specifically enabling interaction with the Perplexity genAI product I told you about in the last issue of Mike’s List. They give you “AI superpowers,” according to the company.
No matter what, the meetings you attend are about to get… weird. In the short term, some of the people you meet with will become cartoon characters. In the long term, people will look like they’re streaming video, but will in fact be synthetic media avatars, and the person behind the avatar will be optional.
And, of course, if you’re willing to wear a headset, you’ll be meeting with holograms.