It’s all moving fast out there. This thing they call Artificial Intelligence. It’s like everything else that’s technology. It’s moving quickly. Too quickly.

Something shows up. Some new blip or bleep and all of a sudden you look around and somebody is doing something, but now they got AI doing it faster and better and you’re still doing it the same old way so now you’re the chump. Nobody needs to be a chump.

It’s why we’re launching The Skelley.

But it’s more than that. It’s also about remembering the past.  The retro rewinds of all the cool stuff that started it all. The stuff we grew up on.

So, the Skelley is about that too.

And it’s why I come into work and bust the staff to give you those nuggets of news.

It’s all of that.

So, yeah, that’s it.  Hope you enjoy this thing.  Let us know what you think and please tell your friends.

Hell No We Won’t Waymo! 🎥 🚕

Our friends over at TechCrunch—well, they still haven’t returned my calls, but I’m totally not stalking them—have written a piece about Waymo, “The world’s first autonomous ride-hailing service.” It’s like an Uber, except there’s no driver who you think will think badly about you after you “forget” to tip them. The story raises a very serious concern around Waymo recording riders who might be unaware of the policy. The article points to researcher Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmhane) who has called attention to a possible new draft version of Waymo’s privacy policy.

There has long been this sentiment among many tech elites that privacy is dead. Even back in 1999, when launching a new product, then founder and CEO of Sun Microsystems Scott McNealy stated, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” Less than a decade later both Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and Mark Zuckerberg dropped their respective turds in the privacy punchbowl. Since the late 90’s our society has evolved like the proverbial frog in a boiling pot of water regarding the erosion of individual privacy. The frog doesn’t notice the temperature changes if it only goes up one degree at a time. When it’s too hot, it’s too late. Any who, it appears that these Waymo guys are just following the route paved by their predecessors. So, maybe wearing a mask while riding in a car by yourself is a good idea after all? -LC

Get Your LLM Off My (Smart) Iron, Man! ✋

New App Sizzles for Online Cooking Fanatics 👨‍🍳

I love cooking and I am touched (my wife says “sprinkled”) with ADD and OCD. The result is that on any given day you can find me scrolling through Tik Tok, finding new dishes to cook and then texting the video of these culinary creations to myself for future reference. If I really like a dish, I can then be found watching said video a few dozen times in hopes of decrypting a grocery list. Not ideal but, again, I am sprinkled.

Now, of course, someone has thought of a better way. Meet Sizzle, a new app designed to grab online cooking videos and translate them into a neatly organized shopping list. Oh, and by the way, if you want, Sizzle can send the shopping list to your friendly neighborhood Door Dasher.

Good news is that my culinary pursuits just got a hell of a lot faster. Bad news is that I suck for not thinking of Sizzle first! Damn these entrepreneurs and their better mouse trap. -EB

Smart Snippets

• No mouse jiggler required. Google might be paying it’s former DeepMind Employees not to work as part of their noncompete agreement after they leave the company. 🖱️

• But is it faster than my Bambu XC1? Japanese company 3-D prints railway shelter in 7 days. That’s a lot of PLA. 🖨️

• Hanna-Barbera created 249 cartoon SERIES without the aid of AI?! Once this AI capability goes public I don’t want to even think about the Tom & Jerry fanfiction you weirdos are going to make. Gross! 😼 🐭 🤮

• Wait, what about Bob? Microsoft’s hated Clippy predecessor launched in 1995 and was subsequently cancelled in 1996, but Bob returned in 2001 for a secret mission. Eh, he’s still lame. 🤓

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DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice or any other kind of advice for that matter. This is strictly for entertainment and fodder for occasional thoughtful reflection. The owners of The Skelley may benefit financially when readers click on links in the publication.