Fred rantings

I spend a l ot of time contemplating and exploring AI (artificial intelligence).  I've recently gotten into Alexa and Google Assistant.  I find it fun, but also with some serious consequences.  I constantly game the algorithms in my news feeds and purposely will click on things to throw off AI trackers. i use duck-duck go for searching, and VPN's with changing locations to throw off harvesters and trackers.   But it's a losing game.  AI is now so ubiquitous and prevalent in our everyday lives that humans don't stand a chance.  Every location ( and almost every movement), every transaction, every search, every conversation and email, every text/twitter/instagram/FB posting is part of your DNA.  We are fast becoming cyborgs.   Elon Musk says we already are.    Our digital selves ( and decades of tracking/recordings of each of us) is way bigger than our physical selves.  In a NYT article about Silicon Valley's 'joda...

What does it mean to win?  Are you winning right now?  At what?    Or, are you losing right now?  How does that feel? Winning means different things to different people.  A lot of it depends on culture, age, background, profession, and ... well, your personal view  Defining winning in sports is easy.  As John Madden said   (or was it Vince Lombardi?)     'winning is everything' .  There's not a single sports team out there that doesn't want to win.  Rare, are teams that require maintaining their ethics, morality, kindness, etc over winning at all costs.  I can think of a few like the Chicago Bulls perhaps?  I can also think of the other extreme like the Baltimore Ravens or Dallas Cowboys or Oakland Raiders at certain points in their history that could care less about their teams members' off-field records like accomplices to murder, weapons & drug charges, domestic abuse, etc.   If winn...