albertnet Privacy Policy - For Reals!

Introduction

This post documents my privacy policy for this blog, albertnet.us. I will endeavor to always keep this policy up-to-date and accurate. It probably won’t change much over time but you never know … after all, I had to start from scratch on this after going down a pretty deep rabbit hole recently. My original, necessarily irksome, now obsolete privacy policy is here. My plunge down the rabbit hole, and details of how ChatGPT was involved, are described here. But if all you care about is how I actually manage your privacy on this blog, currently and from now on, just read what follows here.

(A note on the cover art: I’m not sure how to account for it. I generated the above via ChatGPT, giving it a lot of leeway and not specifying what the text, or even the art, should be. With my free version I only get three pictures per day, and the above is the best I was able to get. I like it because the woman looks like both an outlaw and a person who simply wishes to be incognito. Was this A.I.’s intention? Based on the incongruity of the text, I kinda doubt it. I think it just got lucky.)

Use of cookies

I don’t use cookies on this site. The fact of you visiting or not, or anything about your visit (how long you kept the page open, whether you scrolled, whether you clicked on a link, etc.) is not something I am able to track. Of course I’m curious about how much engagement this blog gets from readers, but I have given up trying to extract data about that, and do not want to creep anybody out via tracking cookies. So rest assured, whatever you do on this blog is your own business. Unless somebody is looking over your shoulder or snooping in your web history by commandeering your device, you are completely anonymous and invisible here.

Now, if you do feel like giving me positive or constructive feedback, you can post a comment below, either anonymously or via your Google login if you can figure out how to make that work (though most users, including me, cannot). Or, you can click here to send me a private email nobody else will ever see. Note that if your idea of “constructive feedback” is “Your trying too hard” or “Crickets…” or “Zzzzzzz,” you can keep that to yourself. 

Use of cookie dough

For the purposes of this blog, “cookie dough” refers to advertising revenue that requires the implementation of cookies. This is not a standard industry term, but it really ought to be. It could be slang for the passive income that people dream of getting through their blogs. If you ever hear the phrase “cookie dough” thrown around in this fashion, you read it here first!

That being said, let me be clear that I will never bother you with ads, nor will I use this blog to promote a product based on some kickback or other benefit accruing to me. I am not an influencer (at least not knowingly or on purpose). When I praise a product such as White Lightning chain lube, Halls cough drops, Oster toasters, or Volvo cars, it’s because I like it, that’s all. These companies didn’t pay me, they didn’t thank me, and above all they didn’t even notice.

The only use of traditional, culinary cookie dough on albertnet is as a beer flavoring, here.

Blogger platform stats

The Blogger platform that hosts albertnet gathers its own data to compile certain stats, such as page views, top referrers (i.e., sites that send readers here), top referring URLs, what browsers are used, what operating systems, and where viewers are located geographically. But don’t worry, Blogger doesn’t know or share anything about you—not your identity, not your specific location, not even whether or not you are a human being. Information about your visit is not only anonymized, but blended with so much other data that your individual identity is akin to a single speck of plankton, or even plankton larva. In fact, you’re not even like a larva in a sea of plankton; you’re like a larva in a sea of both real and fake plankton, since a lot of bots visit this blog.

In fact, so many of the visitors to this blog are bots, even the most general trends I might choose to observe are largely illusory. Thus, I don’t even bother to consider them, with or without a grain of salt. As an example, the Blogger stats tell me that in the past week, albertnet has had about 20,000 page views, about half of which were from Singapore. It also claims there were more visits from Estonia than from the UK during that time. So if you think either Google or I be learning anything about you through these stats, think again. (I used the deliberately incorrect verb “be” in that last sentence because I couldn’t figure out whether the verb should be “is” or “am” and chose to slip between the horns of the dilemma.)

To put this another way, fretting about your use of this blog is like worrying about being at a giant music festival and accidentally wetting your pants. There would so many people packed in around you, many of them doing far worse than just wetting themselves, that there is almost no chance your little accident would be noticed.

Booger platform stats

There are no boogers on this blog. If you see the word “booger” anywhere in this policy, that was a typo.

Google Analytics

I dabbled in Google Analytics last month but I have given it up. Not only do I no longer access the Google Analytics platform, this blog no longer transmits data to it. The tag has been deactivated.

Consent and your rights

By using this site, you consent to nothing. If you do not wish to view my content anymore, simply close the browser tab. You can gratify your reading preferences by navigating the albertnet blog archive tree down the right side of the page and clicking only the posts that interest you, duh! And, if you  don’t want to encourage my more sophomoric impulses by clicking on, say, the link to “From Farting Liberally to Liberal Arts – the Flatulence Files,” you can click the link just above it, to that month’s posts:

That way you can scroll down through the four January posts without indicating which, if any, you read. Thus, the fact of you reading the post about farting won’t even be registered in the Blogger stats. But remember, I don’t look at those anyway. How could I know if you read that post, or some bot scraped it? Trust me, I’m intentionally oblivious.

You have the right to visit albertnet from any device and any browser, even one whose cache you’ve just cleared, without seeing any annoying banner about cookies. There is no banner here because there are no cookies in use here. It’s the same reason you don’t see that yellow police crime scene tape encircling a home where nobody has been murdered. If you do see a cookie banner here, it means I screwed something up and I would really appreciate you clicking here and letting me know so I can remove the banner (again).

You do not have the right to visit this site if you are a bot. Of course, if you are a bot, it’s not really your fault you’re here, because somebody created you and set you loose on the Internet and you’re just doing your job, with no more consciousness, I suppose, than a sperm. Nor can I stop bots like you, obviously. But that doesn’t make it okay and you really have no right.

If you are a human, you do not have the right to deploy bots to this site for purposes of scraping, SEO boosting, link farming, link spamming, or any other purpose. Obviously I’m powerless to stop you, plus you’re not even reading this, but just in case you are, or you know somebody who deploys bots, consider this: if there is anything to the whole karma concept, you/they will be reincarnated as plankton. Maybe even fake plastic plankton.

You do not have the right to post bogus comments to this blog, either manually or through bots. Nobody is buying your awkwardly worded, patently phony praise, and the likelihood of anyone clicking your link to “car locksmith Dallas” is infinitesimal.

If you are manually stealing content from this blog and reposting it in any form beyond a brief quotation and/or a link to my post(s), you are in violation of copyright law. If you scroll to the end of this page you will see that my footer explicitly asserts my copyright to all the content on this blog. Immediately desist this activity. If you want to reprint any of my content with my permission and appropriate citation, please email me here.

How I protect your data

The number one rule in cybersecurity is: if you don’t have the data, nobody can compromise it. This is why (for example) Anthem should have deleted all unnecessary user records instead of leaving them around on a server so that a cybercriminal could steal almost 79 million of them.

To reiterate, I don’t get any of your data, so I have nothing to store. Occasionally I do receive other people’s data by mistake, in the form of US postal service mail that lands in my physical mailbox out on my porch. When this happens, I will walk it over to their place, if it’s not too far away, unless it’s addressed to my late father, in which case I will intend to phone up the charity that mailed it and say, “You know the guy’s dead, don’t you?” but I’ll probably never get around to that. (I am not suggesting any online analogy to that last bit, by the way. I’m not even sure why it’s part of this policy.)

How I protect your sensibilities

I am not generally very crude on this blog but it’s not rated G either. I used to put ratings at the top of any post that wandered into PG-13 or R territory, but I gave that up. I do promise never to blog about politics other than to blog about not discussing politics (and that was only once). Also, I am not interested in being a soldier in a culture war so I will never blog about, say, gender identity or cancel culture. Come here to laugh (I hope), to be informed (sometimes), and to see if what amuses me also amuses you. If it doesn’t, just go about your merry way and forget you ever stumbled across albertnet … no hard feelings, I promise.

I occasionally use ChatGPT or ImageFX to create art for this blog. I will never try to pass this art off as my own work (not that you’d ever believe it was mine anyway). As detailed here, I try to prevent ChatGPT from showing a woman’s bare shoulder and/or bra strap when it generates images, but sometimes the current A.I. refuses to comply. It is my policy to always make fun of A.I. when it does this.

I endeavor to never post distastefully risqué art or photos, or distasteful written content either for that matter. If your taste differs from mine, such that you find any of my content unbecoming, undignified, unseemly, or upsetting, I hereby apologize.

How I protect the privacy of people appearing in my blog

You may have noticed that when I mention in these pages a person who is not a celebrity, I tend to use a single initial rather than a first or last name (e.g., “E—’s handwriting is a bit hard to read”). If I write unflatteringly about a person, the initial I use may have nothing to do with the person’s actual name. If you see an actual name spelled out in these pages, it usually means that either the person gave me explicit permission to use his or her name, or the person has passed away. (In the early years of albertnet I was not quite so disciplined about this. My policy has become more stringent over time.)

I often post photos to this blog, and they often feature a person or persons. Usually these featured persons are either a) celebrities who are either out in public or participating in a broadcast sporting event, b) members of my family who have given blanket permission to be featured, or c) dead. Once in a while a person is shown who is just some rando, perhaps in a bar in Ely, such as the guy in the background of this photo:

In this latter scenario,  the rando cannot generally be identified and isn’t likely, I think, to take offense, because he’s just minding his own business, after all. If you do ever find yourself depicted on this blog in some unflattering way, including but not limited to being drunk and/or disorderly and/or having a bad zit or a receding hairline like mine, please contact me and I will remove or alter the photo.

Have I missed anything?

If you feel this policy is incomplete, or fails to respect your privacy in any way, please email me and/or post a comment below. If the “email me” link in the previous sentence does not work for you, manually type or paste the address feedback@albertnet.us into the “To” field in your email app.

Thank you for taking your privacy seriously and making it through this entire post. Perhaps you can now consider whether other websites you visit are also appropriately respectful of your rights. If they aren’t, maybe you can forsake them forever and just come here instead?

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Original, Now Defunct albertnet Privacy & Cookie Policy

Before you proceed...

What follows is my original albertnet Privacy & Cookie Policy, which I created when I was trying to get more usage information about this blog and had enabled cookies. When any website uses cookies, it is responsible for complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defined by the EU. Part of this compliance is posting a policy like this. I created the policy below in kind of a hurry, so it is not very entertaining. Moreover, I have since changed my mind about user analytics and stopped using cookies. Thus, the policy below no longer applies. I am leaving it here as a cautionary tale for anybody who dabbles in the dark arts of monitoring user engagement. It is also, I suppose, somewhat instructional about the general behavior of cookies, etc.

For my current Privacy Policy, ignore everything below and click here instead. That is my actual, up-to-date policy, which is not only accurate but, I hope, a lot more entertaining.

Summary

Brief summary: you will now see a notice about cookies the first time you visit albertnet (or visit on a different device or after clearing your cache). If you quickly dismiss the cookie banner by clicking “I decline,” cookies will not be used on your albertnet sessions. If you click “I agree” or select preferences and manually enable these cookies, I will start getting certain information about your session (e.g., whether or not you’re a return user; how long you spent on the page; what type of device you used; and your city and state) that I never got before. But nothing will personally identify you, and your session info will be like a bit of plankton in an ocean of it. This new website behavior is an experiment and I may go back to the way things were, in which case I will update this post. So, in short: you have nothing to worry about and don’t need to manually opt out of anything! The rest of this post provides details on this, in case you are interested. Otherwise, feel free to bail and go check out a more amusing post!

(If you are on mobile and do not see the notice about cookies, they will not be used. I am still trying to get that part working.)

Introduction

As the sole proprietor of albertnet, I respect your privacy and am committed to protecting your personal information. This Privacy & Cookie Policy explains how I collect, use, and store data when you visit my blog.

Please bear in mind that in general terms, you are not providing much information—certainly no personal data—to albertnet, and you never have. You are just here reading, unless you post a comment. Other than that, only bare-bones aggregate information has ever been gathered in the first place, and I never saw it. What’s changing is that I have recently enabled Google Analytics for this blog. This will make certain data available to me, but again, none of it is personally identifiable. There is nothing you need to worry about, but you can read on to get more detail.

Why I am using cookies (at least for now)

I turned on Google Analytics for albertnet to analyze site traffic, so I can better understand how visitors interact with my blog. I am doing this out of curiosity. Existing stats (i.e., from Blogger, before I turned on Google Analytics) have been giving me perplexing insights lately, such as a steady increase in page views originating from France. This could mean my posts about a week of bicycling and eating my way through the French Alps (for example, this post) really resonated with French readers. On the other hand, it could mean bots, scrapers, or spam crawlers are being routed through data centers in France. Or, it could be somebody is stealing my content to generate their own pages and using a VPN to look like he’s from France, just to be sneaky. Or it could be none of the above.

Above all else, I seek to understand if my page views represent actual humans vs. A.I.-driven malfeasance. What will I do with this information? I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing. I guess it depends on what (if anything) I learn. But I promise I won’t (and actually can’t) use this information to target you for any communication, or to make my blog addictive, or to leverage your data in any way for any personal gain. But I do want you to understand that the Google Analytics platform uses cookies, so that is a change for albertnet.

(To reiterate the message at the very top of this post, I no longer use cookies on albertnet.)

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a service that helps a website owner understand how visitors engage with the site’s content. Google Analytics collects data such as:

• IP address (anonymized)*
• User location (country, city)
• Device and browser information
• Pages viewed and time spent on the site

*A word on IP addresses: I don’t know how or why anyone would seek to fetch these and if there is a way to see this information I won’t be seeking it out. I also don’t know what “anonymized” actually means in this context. Regardless, chances are extremely high that you use a dynamically assigned IP address from a giant pool maintained by your ISP, which could no more identify you than a seat assigned to you on an airline flight. (Less, actually.)

Google Analytics uses cookies to track this data, but that doesn’t mean they’re suddenly seeing you naked or anything. A cookie can tell Google Analytics that you are the same person who came to albertnet last week. It can then report to me that I have x number of return visitors today. It can say what posts you checked out and how long the pages were open. It won’t be able to tell me who you are, or whether you actually read anything, or whether you laughed.

The cookies in place on albertnet are not used for any other purpose than Google Analytics. I wouldn’t know how to use them in any other way even if I could.

Types of cookies used

Google Analytics uses the following types of cookies:

• Essential Cookies: These are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off. I suppose they have  always been used. This would also be a good name for a bakery.
• Functionality Cookies: These are used to enhance your experience by remembering preferences (e.g., language or region). I suppose they have been used in the past as well.
• Tracking Cookies: These cookies allow albertnet to track website usage through Google Analytics, helping me understand visitor behavior. They do not track you across different sites.
• Targeting and Advertising Cookies: These do not actually apply and are never used on albertnet. I used a third party utility for the cookie notification banner and this category comes with it. Leave it off (and even if you turn the toggle to Active, nothing will change).

Consent and your rights

By viewing this site, you consent to my use of cookies for the purposes outlined above, if and only if you consent. As I have said, you are given the choice and the default behavior if you click the Decline button is to turn off all but the essential cookies. You can manage your cookie preferences at any time via the “Update cookies preferences” link at the very top of the page. I do encourage you, if you are comfortable doing so, to enable the tracking cookies, as this will help me learn about your usage. (To reiterate, these cookies do not track you as you move around on the Internet; they only gather metrics about your visits to albertnet.)

I hope you didn’t find that banner annoying. Oh, and by the way, if you’re on mobile, you probably didn’t see a cookies notification banner at all. I haven't gotten that part working yet (which means mobile users aren’t represented in the analytics, so the Brave New World is looking a fair bit like the timid old one).

How I protect your data

While Google Analytics collects data like location and usage patterns, it ensures that this data is anonymized and stored securely. This blog does not collect personally identifiable information unless you choose to post a comment below (which you can do anonymously if you prefer). If you click on a “contact me” link like this one, obviously any information you share in that email is visible to me, but then you know that already.

How I protect the privacy of people I write about

You may have noticed, on this blog, that when I refer to a person who is not a celebrity, I tend to use a single initial rather than a first or last name (e.g., “E—’s handwriting is a bit hard to read”). If I write unflatteringly about a person, the initial I use may have nothing to do with the person’s actual name. If you see an actual name spelled out in these pages, it usually means that either the person gave me explicit permission to use his or her name, or the person has passed away. Like I said, I take privacy seriously. (In the early years of albertnet I was not quite so disciplined about this. My policy has become more stringent over time.)

Your GDPR Rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right to:

• Access any personal data I may hold about you (which in the case of this blog is nothing anyway since I never do web forms and don’t even know how)
• Rectify or update your data if it is incorrect (which also doesn’t really apply)
• Delete your data if requested (though this would be limited to your location, device and browser information, and time spent on the site)
• Withdraw consent for cookies at any time

Grammar errors in the cookie notification banner

Yes, I know there are grammar errors in the language of the notification banner and its various tabs. It is all boilerplate text and I lack the ability to edit it. You get what you pay for, and I have been called the world’s cheapest man.

Updates to This Policy

I will undoubtedly update this Privacy and Cookie Policy from time to time. Please check back regularly for any changes. The last update was on March 7, 2025.

Conclusion

Thank you for visiting albertnet and wading your way through this policy. I am sorry this post has been so boring, but it’s not a scintillating topic, after all; I had to create this policy quickly to reference in my footer, and I had to implement the footer and the cookie opt-in banner immediately upon turning on Google Analytics (to be compliant with GDPR).

If you have any questions about this policy, or if you wish to exercise any of your GDPR rights, feel free to contact me here.

Reminder

If you somehow missed the notice at the top of this post, this policy is no longer accurate. For the current, up-to-date albertnet Privacy Policy, click here. 

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Interview with Santa Claus

Introduction

In his most in-depth and personal interview in years, Santa Claus reveals the trials and travails, the pressure and preoccupations surrounding this most hectic season.

Interview with Santa

Santa Claus breezes through the kitchen into the family room of his North Pole home, rosy-cheeked and jolly and looking very much like he might say “Ho, ho, ho.” No, he’s not rocking a bright red suit with white trim and a wide black belt, and he’s not as rotund as most pictures portray him, but it’s unmistakably Santa. He’s dressed casually in a comfy button-down shirt that turns out to be a Saturday Stretch Flannel from Lucky Brand. His wife bustles in the background, brewing coffee and baking cookies in honor of my visit. Other than the dark windows—there hasn’t been sunlight or even twilight here since October—and the near-chaos in the nearby workshop, we could be in any nice old couple’s cozy home.

Santa, thanks for having me up again … it’s been too long. You’re looking good—have you lost weight?

Well, yeah, I think I’ve dropped about twenty pounds, so I’m getting around a bit easier—but of course, I’m still as old as ever. Older, even!

Are you on some kind of diet? Paleo, maybe? Ketogenic?

Heavens no, I never dabble in that stuff. The main thing is, my contract with Coca-Cola came up for renewal and we just couldn’t agree on terms. Decades of partnership, up in smoke. So I’m not drinking that stuff anymore, which is the only change, but the pounds have just melted off!

Well, that’s good to hear. I’ve always wondered, frankly, how you can be as spry as you are, with millions of families leaving cookies out for you on Christmas Eve. Do you gain a lot of weight on the big night?

Not at all, I’m running around in a frenzy the whole time, and remember, I’m going back up those chimneys as well! And those cookies people leave me … not to sound ungrateful or anything, but I bring most of those back to my elves. They really dig that.

Speaking of the Christmas Eve frenzy, of course the holiday season is starting to build toward that crescendo. How are you holding up?

Well, it’s always kind of terrifying to think of how much has to happen between now and the 25th, but I’m used to it. In some ways I guess it’s actually getting easier.

How so?

Well, to be honest, business is falling off a bit. More and more, the kids are asking for digital products, and that’s never been my bailiwick. And these Gen-Z kids are all about “experiences” which means even less stuff for me to manufacture and deliver.

Does that bother you at all?

No, no … it’s never been my job to shape anybody’s tastes. I just need to make sure that what kids ask for, they get.

Provided they’ve been good, of course…

Oh, don’t get me started on that!

Actually, I was going to wait a bit for the uncomfortable question, but since we’ve stumbled into it, let’s just bash on. You’ve been under some pressure about privacy concerns … would you care to talk a bit about that?

Well, sure … everyone else has had their say, I don’t mind having mine. Look, it’s no secret I have a long tradition of making it my business which kids are naughty, which ones are nice, and so forth, and naturally I’ll leverage technology to do that efficiently. My business is all about scale—I mean, look at the population growth I have to deal with—so efficiency is always front and center. How could I not leverage the Internet for that? But I have never shared any of my customer data with third parties. In principle I collect and use personal data only to the extent necessary to determine which kids get gifts and which ones don’t. I do receive letters from kids via email but I have secure servers and a strict data retention policy around that. And to be honest, this might be the last year I even bother to try to differentiate among these kids anyway.

Wow—that’s kind of a bombshell actually. You’re talking about just giving gifts to everybody?

Yeah, the Santa Claus brand has really taken a beating because of the public’s growing—and, let’s face it, overdue—focus on privacy. There’s so much abuse of personal information by Facebook and Google and all these other platforms, I feel like the baby being thrown out with the bathwater. And don’t even get me started on achieving GDPR compliance … that was a complete nightmare. Honestly, the costs to my business are so high with these regulations, it’s almost not worth it. I can think of worse things than naughty kids getting gifts on Christmas morning. Maybe if I just throw out the surveillance completely, and give presents to everybody, those wayward kids will stop nicking their siblings’ stuff—and I’ll save a bundle on all the effort I’m no longer making, all that data I’m no longer sifting through!

That seems really magnanimous of you…

Hey, I’m Santa! What do you expect?

Since we’re already kind of in the muck here, can we talk about the scrutiny you’ve had around workplace conditions and labor concerns?

Wow, I was kind of expecting more softballs from you! But hey, it’s all good. Look, I run a fair operation here—it’s always been a union shop and I’ve never fought that. I pay these elves a solid living wage year-round despite the highly seasonal nature of our business. I invite you to walk out on the floor yourself and ask any of these elves if they’re happy here. Well, not right now, obviously—they’re busier than a cat burying crap on a marble floor—but hit them up after New Year’s and they’ll tell you how reasonable a guy I am to work for.

Well, I’m sure you’re aware some elves have been lighting you up on Twitter…

Look, any workforce will have disgruntled types … and remember, this is the North Pole. Epidemiologists have long studied how seasonal affective disorder worsens the farther north you get. How many negative tweets from my elves do you get in summer? Go check—I’ll bet you don’t find any. All summer these elves party like rock stars … they don’t even need to sleep!

Fair enough. Now, you have perhaps the most non-diverse workforce in the world … is this by design?

I’m an equal-opportunity employer and if Chris Hemsworth applied for a job I’d gladly grant him an interview. The fact is, I don’t get a lot of applicants and most of my employees are related to one another. You’ve got siblings, offspring, fathers, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, and on and on, some of them third, fourth, fifth generation. Lots of companies talk about being like a family; we practically are. We’re like a family-run business times a thousand. And it works out because we’ve tailored the workshop to the elves’ size, so we’ve got a great ergonomic match there where Chris Hemsworth literally wouldn’t be a good fit.

Have you tried to diversify?

Back in the sixties I hired a lot of Oompa-Loompas, but they didn’t really integrate with our elves, and ultimately just couldn’t handle the conditions up here. The North Pole isn’t for everybody. But I never laid off a single one of those Oompa-Loompas. In fact, I’ve never laid off an elf either.

Let’s talk for a minute about Amazon. You’ve got kind of a love/hate thing going on there…

Well, yeah. It’s complicated. On the one hand, they’re eating into my business like anybody else’s, but since I’ve never had a single paying customer, this just eases my burden operationally. Of course I wonder if there’ll be a day when I become completely irrelevant, but I think the charm of a stuffed stocking and piles of beautifully wrapped presents left under the tree, instead of brown boxes left on the porch, will always have their cachet. And yes, it’s true I’ve partnered with Amazon for certain deliveries which has drawn some scrutiny.

Yes, if there’s an opposite of the halo effect you seem to be getting a bit of that…

Well, exactly. I’ve been delivering gifts to homes without fireplaces for centuries—I mean, think of all those New York and London apartments with radiators, or rural homes with propane tanks out back—but still people are shocked—shocked!—to learn that I don’t always slide down the chimney. So anything that challenges their Norman Rockwell sensibilities is suddenly a crime. The reality is, I’ve used a variety of courier services for ages, and a bunch of them have recently been bought up by Amazon. What am I gonna do, upset my whole system by changing providers on principle? The guy who schleps a hundred packages up the freight elevator on Christmas Eve doesn’t care that the company name on his pay stub has changed, nor does the doorman who knows to let him in. A million details go into delivering a billion packages on a single night and I can’t be reinventing the wheel every time Amazon buys someone. It’s not an ideal situation but in the final analysis, two billion gleeful children couldn’t care less.

At this point in the interview Mrs. Claus comes in with a large tray and serves us fresh-baked star-shaped cookies and hot coffee. She smiles demurely and, without a word, heads back toward the kitchen. “Thanks, Meg,” Santa says kindly, peering at her lovingly over his spectacles.

Wow … “Meg.” It’s funny, but I never knew Mrs. Claus’s first name. I didn’t really think about her even having a name.

It’s short for Margaret.

Would she … should we ask her to join us?

Oh, she has no use for journalists. And the way you’ve been grilling me, I can see why! (Laughs.) But seriously, she is a very private person, even more so than I, which is saying something. She’s perfectly happy to work behind the scenes, running the household and so forth. She’s very old-school.

Speaking of wives, and before I forget: my wife wanted me to ask you what you think of all these shopping mall Santas.

Well, historically I haven’t had any problem with them, as they’re fun for the kids and they mean well. There was always the worry that one would get drunk during his lunch break, then climb back in the chair and do something regrettable that would tarnish my image, but I can’t sweat all the what-ifs. But more recently I’ve started to worry about how skepticism is on the rise everywhere, what with fake news and Internet conspiracy theories and all that, and that kids will start putting two and two together—like, “Hey, I saw Santa at Macy’s last weekend, and then today I see him at Nordstrom and he’s like a foot shorter!”—and will stop believing in me as a result. I’m not a demanding person, I don’t seek a lot of attention or gratitude or anything, but the idea that a growing number of cynical kids are thinking the gifts I provided actually came from Mom and Dad … that really gets me down. So the white lie of mall Santas is starting to chafe a bit more these days, but in the end I just have to shrug it off with everything else.

Thanks Santa. And now I have just one more question. I know I’ve asked some tough ones today, so I’m going to lay off and instead turn it around to you: what’s the hands-down dumbest question any journalist has ever asked you?

That’s an easy one. Some dork said to me once, “Santa, you’re more than 1,700 years old. Almost nobody lives that long, the main exception being vampires. How can you convince me you’re not a vampire?”

I hope you put him in his place!

Of course I did.

Um … what exactly did you say?

Well, duh! I can’t be a vampire because vampires have to be invited in! There isn’t a soul on this planet who enters more homes without a spoken invitation. Didn’t that dickweed see “Let the Right One In”? Besides, I really only leave the North Pole once a year … whose blood am I supposed to drink all year? The elves’?

Wow, great points Santa. And thanks so much for sitting down with me today. And please thank Mrs. Claus for the goodies!

Thank you. And sorry a got a bit worked up just now … as you can imagine, I’m under a lot of stress these days. In fact, I’d better get back to work!

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Original artwork by Lindsay Albert.

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Family Internet Use Policy

Abstract

Generally, parents don’t go snooping around in their kids’ laptops or phones.  We want to respect our kids’ privacy.  And yet, these devices are like mega-megaphones, capable of blasting our kids’ unbridled ideas and photos all over the Internet.  Privacy in this realm is an illusion:  even with peer-to-peer online communication, kids cannot prevent their supposedly private content from being posted publicly or forwarded.  I describe here a way for parents to put much-needed limits on our kids’ online autonomy.

Introduction

My community has been through a serious scandal.  Some high school kids formed a secret Instagram group and, over a period of weeks, posted a lot of racist and misogynistic content (e.g., doctored photos and hateful sentiments).  Only a couple of kids were actually contributing content, but 14 or 15 others followed along, on an ongoing basis, instead of leaving the group.  What’s more, a number of these followers posted supporting comments and/or “likes.”  (It is widely hoped, but impossible to establish, that peer pressure was a stronger force here than bigotry.)  Finally one kid blew the whistle, and the whole thing unraveled, to the great shame of the students and families involved.

This episode has engendered a lot of soul searching among us parents.  We like to think we are instilling proper values in our kids—that we really know these people—but how can we be sure?  It’s easy to appraise the benefits of private music lessons, great schools, and organized sports teams, but how do we measure character and virtue?  At a minimum, how can we feel confident that our own kids won’t be embroiled in the next Internet scandal?

In this post I describe a solution.  It isn’t complicated, but it’s difficult.  I propose that every family establish and enforce a family Internet use policy.  The idea is to put limits on the secret online life that modern kids have, that gives them total freedom of expression with no parental supervision.  If we fail to instill the values and character we’re looking for, at least we can safeguard our kids against shaming themselves, their families, and their community.

A sample family Internet use policy

My family Internet acceptable use policy is based on the one my employer uses.  To wit, “[Company] monitors employees’ use of [Company’s] communications devices, computer systems and networks.”  I have told my kids up front, “I know your computer password and network logins, and reserve the right to read any of your online correspondence.  Consider nothing on your computer to be private.”  (If my kids had phones, those would be fair game, too.)

The premise here is that kids are less likely to post or consume offensive content if they know their parents can see it.  If this seems Orwellian to you, remember than in 1984 it was the government snooping, not parents.  I have a right to know what my kid is doing on the Internet, just as my employer has a right to know what I’m doing with the tools they give me.

Your policy doesn’t have to be this restrictive, of course—but you should have a policy, and something with more teeth than “Do whatever you want and we’ll hope for the best,” or “If you do something bad we might take away your phone.”

Do my kids tolerate this?  Yes, though of course they’re not thrilled.  Fortunately, I got an early start with this policy.  I introduced it before my kids were even online, so they were fine with it initially.  In fact, as they hadn’t yet developed the recklessness of teenagers, they were rightly concerned about accidentally stumbling on gross stuff online.  As they’ve reached their teens, their feelings have changed, but my wife and I won’t budge and they know it.  At least they’re used to the constraint.

So is this a perfect fix?  Probably not, but I’m sure it helps.  Without parental oversight, a kid is bound to be more bold and less inhibited with his or her expression.  I guarantee that the kids in my community who posted offensive photos to that Instagram account would not have printed hard copies and left them around the house.

Isn’t social media visible to parents anyway?

Kids might have you believe you can keep an eye on their virtual life via the public nature of social media.  But this isn’t true anymore.  Snapchat is all about messages and photos that are designed to be temporary. (Of course they’re actually not; your kid’s blunder can be captured for eternity by another kid’s screen grab.  It’s true, though, that once that transmission leaves your kid’s device, it’s too late for you to see it.)

Do parents grasp this?  Not always, as I learned from a workshop given by My Digital TAT2, a nonprofit organization seeking to promote responsibility in the digital era.  The lecturer quoted a teen correspondent as saying, “My favorite thing about Snapchat is that my parents don’t understand it.”  Most teens using Snapchat and Instagram have two accounts each:  one that their parents know about, and one that they don’t.  Many have a third account with which to assume a fictitious identity, which they use for retaliation and/or catfishing.  With all this subterfuge about, doesn’t it make sense to have access to the source of our teens’ online content—that is, their devices? 

Again, the point isn’t that you’re always snooping—it’s that your kids know you could, and behave accordingly.  As I candidly told my older daughter, I have peeped at her online correspondence exactly twice so far.  I explain to my kids that I generally don’t bother checking up, because I trust them—but I have to reserve the right to do so, or my policy goes up in smoke.

A kid’s right to privacy

Is my stance fair and reasonable?  Or am I violating my kids’ right to privacy?  That begs another question:  do kids even have a right to privacy?

Of course they do!  When one of my daughters was ten, she kept a diary.  Although I was sorely tempted to read it (because it was surely very cute), I honored my promise not to.  Likewise, I wouldn’t eavesdrop on my kids’ face-to-face conversations or phone calls, and I wouldn’t read a letter they got in the mail.  But the Internet is a game-changer.  It gives these kids the capability of broadcasting their ostensibly private communications to 3 billion people.  Mistakes are made, due to these kids’ own poor judgment, that of their friends (or “friends”), and by sheer accident.  I consider it irresponsible to give kids total autonomy online.

Setting limits isn’t just a parent’s right—it’s our job.  Are adults allowed to keep loaded guns around the house?  Unfortunately, they are.  Is it a good idea to give kids access to those loaded guns?  Of course not!  But think about Internet platforms like Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter:  they’re dangerous too, in their own way.  You almost couldn’t devise a more efficient way of giving teens new ways to screw up; of catching them in the act of screwing up; of widely publicizing the screw-up; and of documenting, time-stamping, and definitively establishing the fact of the screw-up, and the identity of the perpetrator, for all time.

Consider this scenario:  the year is 1980.  Teen 1, who is stupid and ignorant, tells Teen 2 a racist or misogynist joke.  Teen 2 laughs (maybe not because he even thinks the joke is funny; maybe because he’s uncomfortable).  Teen 3 overhears this exchange, and tells Teens 4 through 20 how racist/misogynistic these two are.  The damage is limited, because it’s all hearsay.  Teen 1 denies telling the joke, Teen 2 denies hearing it, Teen 3 is largely ignored, and Teens 4 through 20 shrug and move on.  Years later, Teen 1, who has become less ignorant, is privately ashamed of having told that joke, and Teen 2 is privately ashamed of having laughed.  They were just stupid kids, and thank goodness they can put that joke in the past and move on.  That’s pre-Internet.

Today, a couple dozen parents in my town—good, respected people, contributors to our community—are suffering deep shame because there is irrefutable evidence that their children consumed and in some cases “liked” racist and/or misogynist online content.  There is no way to repudiate the evidence; about all these beleaguered parents can do is assert that their kids aren’t actually hateful, that they were just swept away by a hateful meme.  That doesn’t go very far … not with the victims, and not with the community. 

Of course this isn’t an isolated case; these scandals are popping up everywhere.  And yet we parents have been standing back and allowing our teens unfettered access to these volatile Internet technologies.

The crux of the matter

Whether or not you agree about the non-sanctity of a teenager’s connected device, we need to help our kids understand something fundamental:  there’s no such thing as Internet privacy.  Once a photo or sentiment leaves your kid’s device, it’s a short step away from the great unwashed Internet.  If copy-and-paste isn’t available on the app that was used, screen grabs always are.  Any content that touches the Internet can be posted publicly and/or forwarded, whether by a recklessly playful or vindictive pal, or by mistake.  And we’ve seen that the law does not uphold the anonymity of Internet haters; consider this landmark case.  If a kid (or adult) thinks he or she can safely communicate his or her darkest thoughts via the Internet, even under some kind of shadow identity, he or she is mistaken.

Why isn’t it considered bad parenting to give these kids unfettered access to fun, easy, powerful online tools capable of permanently disgracing themselves and their families?  Probably because the beloved tech companies behind this Internet revolution are having their way with us.

The Internet and FOMO

I can’t think of a parent who hasn’t complained about his or her kid being glued to a screen all day, but nobody seems to know what to do about it.  In many cases parents are afraid of what would happen if they took away a kid’s phone or laptop.  (Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Veldt,” published in 1950, was eerily prescient in this regard.)  The Internet and its addictive social media trappings weren’t dumped on us; they evolved so gradually we never saw the danger coming.

Meanwhile, to push back against technology is to seem backward, unsophisticated, and out of touch.  Society expects all of us, including students, to use the Internet daily.  As we adults suffer our own insecurity around keeping up with the rapidly evolving online culture, we are tempted to celebrate and emulate our kids’ prowess.  We blithely accept this totally separate virtual world, which becomes a constantly growing blind spot, like a locked door between ourselves and our kids.  In the process we lose touch with our kids’ morals, standards, and character.  Kids are typing things online that we’d shudder to hear them say out loud, and sharing photos that might shock us.

So if parents aren’t policing this, who is?  The Internet platforms themselves?  Yeah, right.  Remember, Mark Zuckerberg’s first online venture was a site where you rated your fellow students in terms of who was hotter than who.  He and his ilk most certainly do not have your kids’ backs. 

Consider this excerpt from a New Yorker article, which describes the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s misgivings about the Enlightenment, and how it threatened the idea of a universal moral code: 

It becomes impossible to settle moral questions or to enforce moral rules; the best we can do is agree to disagree. Such a world falls into the hands of managers and technocrats, who excel at the perfection of means but lack the tools with which to think deeply about ends.

I don’t have strong opinions about the Enlightenment, and MacIntyre was writing in the ‘80s, but that last sentence fits social media companies to a T.  The means of capturing and directing people’s attention are being perfected, but the impact on society is being largely ignored.  Venture capitalists are backing the companies best poised to monetize this stuff; they’re not throwing money at watchdog outfits like Digital TAT2.  Popularity—measured by the number of eyeballs on your app, the number of “likes,” and the number of links to your content—comprise the currency of our era.  (We parents are somewhat complicit here.  I’m sure many a parent dreams of his kid becoming the next Zuckerberg.  I doubt many are hoping their kid becomes the next great moralizer.)

Platforms like Instagram and Snapchat have our kids’ attention.  To an increasing degree we parents do not.  The scale is tipping increasingly toward a peer orientation where our parental influence is marginalized.  Only by reigning in the access to this virtual world can we hope to maintain our crucial role in guiding our children.  Failing that, the least we can do is limit the damage they can do online.

More albertnet posts on this topic

Dopamine, Parenting, & Social Media

Teens, Texts, & the Marshmallow Test

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AI Smackdown - Moto vs. Cortana vs. Siri

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

I already blogged about my Android phone—not the way a professional critic would, but in terms of what’s actually interesting about it, which to me is the Artificial Intelligence angle.  Actually, “artificial stupidity” was the point:  a phone playing dumb so it can play favorites.  I’ve also blogged a bit about AI in general, with Apple’s Siri agent as a case study, but that was before I had an iOS device.  Now, I own all three platforms:  Moto/Android; Siri; and Microsoft’s Cortana.  In this post I compare and contrast them: not because I’m going to help you choose, but to try to make you laugh.  And you might have something interesting to scratch your head about later.

(I’m not going to try to differentiate between the terms Google Now, Android, and Moto.  They all meld in my mind.  If somebody protests that there are massive differences, I won’t be offended if you go read his or her blog instead.)

Cortana

I’ll start with Cortana because it can be dispatched very quickly.  If you type something into the Cortana field in Windows 10, it does a Bing search.  Bing is a little bit like using a Curad bandage instead of a Band-Aid, or using Hunts ketchup instead of Heinz, or wearing Sears Toughskins jeans instead of Levi’s.  It just isn’t done.  I don’t actually care if Bing works just fine.  It’s Bing, which means it’s not Google. “Let me Bing that for you.”  Give me a break.

Moreover, before you can get into the voice recognition stuff, you have to deal with this frightening disclaimer:

Yes, I know all this meddlesome snooping is just to “tailor the experience,” but it’s the online equivalent of your tailor saying, “To get the fit right on these trousers, I’ll have to reach in and fondle your balls.”  The explicit information Windows wants to use is bad enough, but that wide-open phrase “and other information” is just over the top.

Besides, “Cortana” sounds like a new model of Hyundai.  You know what Microsoft?  It’s over.  You lost.  You’re just a PC software company.  Stop trying to act “mobile.”

Android/Moto

I won’t go into a lot of detail about how well my Android phone responds to voice commands, because a) I already did that, here; and b) as I describe the Siri experience, I’ll compare it to Android/Moto as I go.

The really lame thing about Siri

Imagine if, before engaging with a person, you had to go push a button on the person’s chest.  In most cases, this would be absurd.  (With my kids, who never hear my commands, it would actually be an improvement.)

I think it almost goes without saying that voice response is a minimum requirement for any kind of AI.  The Siri demo I watched way back in 2012 did feature voice activation on the iPhone.  But oddly enough, for the Siri voice response to work on the iPad, the iPad has to be plugged in to an electrical outlet.  That is just so bizarre!  I mean, the iPad’s portability is the whole point, isn’t it?  What’s next for Apple:  an iPhone you plug into an RJ-11 jack?  This is ridiculous.  If I’m sitting at a desk next to an electrical outlet, I might as well be using a laptop.

There’s something else really lame about the iPad:  a limitation that hasn’t existed on an Apple product since the Apple II computer.  But I’ll get into that later.  Better to keep you in suspense.

Siri voice response:  up to snuff?

In general, Siri tries to have a bit more personality than Moto.  For example, if I ask my Droid, “Do you love me?” it shows me a song called “Do you love me?” by the Contours.  (My younger daughter, who has not seen “Her,” put me up to asking this question.)  When I asked Siri if she loved me, she responded, “I respect you.”  And when (again at my daughter’s behest) I asked Siri, “Have you ever gone to the bathroom?” she replied, “Who, me?”

Is this cheekiness a good thing?  Well, Siri’s responses may strike you as funnier that Moto’s.  On the other hand, when I asked my Droid about using the bathroom, I got a list of hits pertaining to using the wrong restroom (i.e., the one intended for the opposite sex).  It was a very funny list, linking to some amusing sites.  (You may be wondering:  have I ever used the wrong restroom?  Well, yes, once, purely by accident.  I was in there doing my business and thinking, “What kind of public restroom doesn’t have urinals?”  When the answer suddenly came to me, I hightailed it right on out of there.)

Sometimes Siri’s personality gets in the way.  For example, I asked Siri, “What time is it?” and she responded, “At the third stroke, it will be 16:26.  Beep.  Beep. Beep.”  This was more confusing than amusing, and besides, it was inaccurate:  the actual time was like 4:25:30.  I would rather Siri have a more reliable connection to the NIST Internet time servers than a zingy response.

If your desk is as cluttered as mine, being able to summon your phone by voice is very handy.  When I call out my keyphrase for my Droid, it makes a pretty loud two-tone beep to let me know it’s listening.  The iPad beep is much quieter.  Neither device responds in any useful way to the question, “Where are you?”  Siri says, “Wherever you are, that’s where I am.”  This isn’t that funny, and for most people wouldn’t even be true.  (I bring my iPad, Droid, silverware, and all other valuables with me wherever I go, so don’t bother burglarizing my house.)

 This is where these devices are inconsistent.  Their programmers need to decide if the device should have a sense of self or not.  Siri speaks in the first person (e.g., “Who, me?” and “I respect you”), but when I say, “Hey Siri, how’s your battery doing?” she has no idea what “your” means.  She replies, “My apologies ... I couldn’t find those stocks.”  Pretty useless.

When I tell my Droid, “Find my phone,” it makes this cool sonar sound continuously until I find and silence it.  When I tell Siri “Find my iPad,” she tries to make me turn on Location Services.  Look, Siri, if I could do that, I’d know where you are, and I wouldn’t be asking.

I’ve often thought that one of the most useful features of voice response would be getting help configuring the device.  So I said, “Hey Siri, turn on your flash.”  She replied,  “Who, me?”  I decided some context might help, so within the camera app I said to turn on the flash.  Siri replied, “It doesn’t look like you have an app named ‘flash.’  If you’d like, I can help you look for it on the App Store.”  I just don’t think this is that difficult a concept.  You have a camera.  It has a flash.  Turn it on.

The Droid does respond to “Take a selfie.”  It ought to say, “I can’t,” because its camera is basically its face.  But its reaction, which is to launch the camera, put it in selfie mode, and set a self-timer, is actually fairly useful, at least for the hands-free breed of narcissist.  When I tell Siri “take a selfie,” she says, “You’ll need to unlock your iPad first.”  This isn’t very helpful, and in fact isn’t even true.  As my older daughter discovered, the iPad can be used as a camera even by somebody who lacks my fingerprint and passcode.  And when I follow Siri’s instructions and unlock the iPad, it does go into camera mode, but not selfie mode.  As regards this command, Siri is fairly incompetent.

Something that bothers me about my Droid’s AI is a certain lack of resourcefulness.  When I ask it, “How do I look?” I think it should activate the camera in selfie mode, to use as a mirror.  Or It could really wow me by saying, “Your hair is a mess.”  (When you consider modern digital camera technology, which can tell if a subject’s eyes are closed, this hairdo check actually seems quite doable.) 

I asked Siri, “How do I look?” and she really stumbled.  She kept hearing, “How do I luck,” which she should have automatically revised because it just doesn’t make any sense.  One time, she thought I asked, “How do I lurk?” and replied, “I found something on the web about ‘how do I lurk.’ Check it out.”  That’s really unfortunate.  I wonder what kind of banner ads and spam I’ll get now that the Internet thinks I’m a stalker.

Finally Siri heard me right and replied, “Judging by your voice, I’d say you must be fairly attractive.”  Clever, but also kind of patronizing.  I mean, it’s bad enough asking an inanimate object such a personal question, but to be damned with faint praise ... that’s pretty pathetic.  I think Siri should be generous and say, “I would so go to bed with you.”

At least Siri respects my privacy.  When I said, “Get me home,” she replied, “I don’t know your home address.  In fact, I don’t know anything about you.”  I found this really reassuring, especially after Cortana’s attempted shakedown earlier.  (Yes, Siri did ask me to go into settings and identify myself, but didn’t require it.)

I have to say, though, there’s something a bit creepy about Siri.  When I ask something complicated, such as a question regarding navigation, there’s this little blurry light that bounces back and forth along the bottom edge of the screen, which reminded me of something sinister.  After racking my brain for awhile I realized what:  the single roving eye of a Cylon from “Battlestar Galactica.”  Is Siri some kind of kindred spirit to the AI powering the Cylons?  If so, that doesn’t reflect well ... the Cylons were really pretty stupid.  They always went down like bowling pins.

Another creepy thing:  when I said, “Hey Siri, lock my iPad,” she replied, “I’d like to, but I cannot.  My apologies.”  This almost gave me chills.  It brought me right back to the HAL 9000 in “2001 – A Space Odyssey,” when Dave says, “Open the pod bay doors, HAL,” and HAL replies, “I’m sorry, Dave.  I’m afraid I can’t do that.”  Who is Siri’s master:  me, or Apple?

Feature parity with Moto?

If I were designing Siri, or working on an update package, I’d pay close attention to what the competition is doing.  I’d make sure, for example, that anything Moto could do, Siri could do better.  This evidently hasn’t occurred to Apple, because there are all kinds of commands Moto can handle that Siri cannot.  For example, if you ask Moto, “What’s up?” it will trawl through your appointments, e-mails, etc. and give you an update.  I asked Siri “What’s up?” and she said, “I’m thinking about pie.  Mmmmmm.” 

If you tell Moto, “Talk to me,” it will announce incoming calls and texts for the next 30 minutes.  This doesn’t occur to Siri, who responds, “I’d really prefer it if you talked to me.  Tell me your hopes, your dreams, where you’d like to make a dinner reservation.”  So I told Siri, “I hope my dinner is yummy tonight.”  She replied, “I don’t know what you mean by ‘I hope my dinner is yummy tonight.’  How about a web search for it?”  Not a very good listener, since she specifically asked me to tell her my hopes!  Just lip service.  I said, “I dream of being rich and famous one day,” and got the same “I don’t know what you mean” response.

I said, “Hey Siri, play Beethoven on YouTube.”  She replied, “You don’t seem to have an app named ‘YouTube.’ We could see if the App Store has it.”  Don’t play dumb with me, Siri!

I asked Siri to zap my screen (which is how Moto is told to take a screen snapshot).  Siri kept hearing “zapped my screen” (which resulted in a web search) and then eventually heard “zap ice cream,” and—bizarrely—pulled up a Dairy Queen in Beulah, North Dakota.  I’m not kidding.

Since screen snapshots are really useful to bloggers, I kept trying:  “Hey Siri, take a screen snapshot.”  To my great surprise, Siri didn’t play dumb, but simply refused:  “That’s beyond my abilities at the moment.”  Huh?  No way is this beyond her abilities.  I managed to learn (no thanks to Siri) how to get a snapshot (pressing two far-flung buttons at once).  So it can be done.  Why can’t Siri do it?  Is she a bit ... simple?

You may be wondering how I know so many cool Moto commands.  It’s because you can say, “Get a list of commands,” and Moto provides one.  I told Siri, “Get a list of commands” and though—as you can see—she did hear me right, she decided just to show me a map of the nearest Coast Guard station.  WTF!?

Is Siri the best at anything?

Okay, I’ve been pretty harsh on Siri here.  Is she better than Moto at anything?  Well, yes.  I think her navigation is better.  I just asked Moto, “Where is the nearest pizza place?” Moto replied, “Here are the listings for ‘nearest pizza place’ within zero point eight miles.”  The nearest place—Gioia Pizzeria—was listed first among non-paid entries, but at the top of the screen was an ad for Little Caesars $5 Pizza, which a) isn’t nearby, and b) isn’t even pizza.  (I don’t know what that stuff is, but it ain’t pizza.)  Meanwhile, if I were trying to get this answer without having to look at my phone—like, if I were driving—this written response would be useless.  (At least Moto did better than when I first blogged about this, when it lied and said Zachary’s Pizza was the closest.)

Here, Siri did better.  She replied, aloud, “The nearest one I found is Gioia in Berkeley, which averages 4½ stars and is inexpensive.  Would you like to try it?”  Presumably if I’d said yes, she’d have navigated there.  Instead I said, “Actually, Siri, it’s pretty expensive.”  To which she replied, “I’m sorry.”  Well played, Sir[i]!

It’s in the realm of a more specific request where Siri really shines.  I asked, “Where’s the nearest deep dish Chicago style pizza place?”  She showed me Zachary’s, which is correct.  I’m pretty impressed, especially since when I asked Moto the same question, it showed me Giordano’s and Lou Malnati’s, both of which are in Chicago.  As you can see, Moto clearly heard “nearest” correctly, but somehow missed my meaning.

The second really lame thing about iPads

Earlier I complained about how you have to plug in the iPad to get voice activation, and promised to reveal another huge shortcoming.  I doubt you’ll immediately grasp how lame this next one is, but here goes:  Apple iOS doesn’t support the Dvorak keyboard layout, which is  more efficient than QWERTY and has been supported by Apple since the Apple IIc.  According to Wikipedia, the IIc  “had a mechanical switch above the keyboard whereby the user could switch back and forth between the QWERTY layout and the Dvorak layout.... The IIc Dvorak layout was even mentioned in 1984 ads, which stated that the World’s Fastest Typist, Barbara Blackburn, had set a record on an Apple IIc with the Dvorak layout.”

                                                               

I haven’t been able to find anything on the Internet about why Apple decided not to support Dvorak on the iPad.  I guess the default answer for their product choices—“Because we’re gods, and we can do whatever we want!”—will have to do.  It’s so frustrating, since this has got to be really simple to do in software.  It would probably take some Apple developer about five minutes.

But why should you care, since you type on QWERTY anyway?  Well, consider the security ramifications of encouraging third party developers to create such fundamental utilities as keyboard software.  After installing Fleksy, a free Dvorak-enabled app, I messed about with the iPad a little, wandered off to do something more useful, and then realized, “Duh, I’ve just done something really stupid.”  What better way to steal somebody’s keystrokes than to create an app that quite obviously has access to everything I type?

At first I told myself this was no big deal.  After all, I’m mainly using the iPad to browse the web, and I don’t kid myself that my every move on the Internet isn’t already tracked, and not just by the NSA.  (By the way, keep up the good work, guys!  Thanks for keeping me safe!)

But of course, there’s the little matter of passwords.  I felt like I’d just given away the keys to the kingdom, or at least to the two websites I’d logged into (my bank and my e-mail).  I was all set to go change those two passwords, but first decided to see how hard it is to switch iPad keyboards on the fly, so going forward I could type passwords with the native Apple iOS keyboard.  Perhaps there would be a function key right on the soft Fleksy keyboard to simplify this switch?  And then I noticed this:

It might be hard to tell, but in the first snapshot above, the cursor is in the Username field.  In the second snapshot, the cursor is in the Password field.  The same flag that tells the OS to obscure the password (i.e., showing ******* instead of what’s typed) tells the iPad to switch to the standard Apple iOS keyboard.  So those passwords I typed before? I’d typed them on the standard QWERTY  keyboard without even realizing it.  Those passwords weren’t at risk of being intercepted by the Fleksy keyboard app after all.  That’s pretty clever of Apple, isn’t it?

Of course, when your cleverness only serves the mitigate the downside of your pointless shortcoming, it’s actually a lot less impressive.  Hey Apple, why not support the Dvorak layout to begin with, like you did with the Apple IIe, the Apple III, the Macintosh, the Quadra, the PowerBook, the Performa, the iMac, the iBook, and the MacBook?

At the time of this writing, Apple is sitting on over $200 billion in cash.  Couldn’t they spend a few bucks to match the features of their own earlier products?  Hell, they could probably get an unpaid intern to do it.  I, for one, am not feeling the love ... even if Siri does claim to respect me.

Other albertnet posts on A.I. 

• I, Chatbot
• Almost Intelligent – Part I
• Almost Intelligent – Part II
• Smartphones & Artificial Stupidity
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 1
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 2
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 3
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 1
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 2
• Schooling ChatGPT
• Will A.I. Steal Our Jobs?
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part I
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part II
• What is ChatGPT Great At (and Not)?
• Tech Reflection – Two Sides of AI
• AI Smackdown – ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini
• More AI Smackdown - ChatGPT, Copilot, & Gemini Write Poetry

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