My 2023 AI recap, privacy on Google Bard, why I bought a new Apple Watch in a big hurry, and more
Plus, sharable links in ChatGPT, New Year's resolutions, a flying Santa, an insider look at a top game, the early days of a long-forgotten tech, and biting commentary from three of ZDNET's greatest
I’m David Gewirtz. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. It’s been an exciting week. Let’s dive in.
Happy Holidays!
The Advanced Geekery newsletter will be taking the holiday week off, but will be back with an exciting new issue for January 5. The following image was created in DALL-E 3. For the full story, read this.
My articles
Let’s kick it off with a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET:
Generative AI filled us with wonder in 2023 - but all magic comes with a price: Chatbots spun our prompts into gold this year - or something like it. Figuring out which is which and what else we need to watch for is next year's problem.
How to improve your privacy on Google Bard with this one simple setting: Are you making this common mistake with Google Bard? Here's how to fix it for better privacy.
Why I suddenly rushed to buy an Apple Watch from Amazon (that I didn't really want to buy): The current legal tangle Apple faces has halted Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales. The race is on to grab the remaining stock, making my quick purchase not just an option but a necessity.
How to get a shareable link to a ChatGPT conversation: Even though I used my paid subscription to ChatGPT Plus for this session, anyone can click the link and read the conversation.
Are you making a New Year’s Resolution?
Here are the resolutions Statista says are the most important for Americans in 2024.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
This is an interesting and frank discussion by the developers of the new Cities Skylines 2 game about developing and launching an amazingly complex simulation. The launch did not go smoothly and they openly address those issues as well. Personally, I think it’s a fantastic game.
Let’s travel way back in time to the early 20th century. Here’s a video of a Western Electric recording introducing dial phones. From the film: “Soon as man gets used to one thing, by golly, they want to take it away from him,” and “They're going to take out all our phones and put in them kind with dials on them.” And wow, those early dial tones were terrible. But it’s a fascinating look at an early new technology launch.
Interesting reads
Here’s some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth reading. This week, it’s all from my fellow ZDNET contributors.
It's always fun to read something from Ed Bott when he is righteously annoyed. Here he writes: New report claims your phone, TV, and smart speaker are spying on you. But is it real?
Chris Matyszczyk is back with more biting commentary, this time on AI. Go ahead and read his I went to Microsoft to talk about AI. I'm still a little startled (but hopeful too).
Did you know Elon Musk was launching his own “woke” chatbot as a premium on X (the superstar formerly known as Twitter)? [Insert dismayed head shake here] The intrepid Lance Whitney checked it out: I tried X's 'anti-woke' Grok AI chatbot. The results were the opposite of what I expected
Reader projects
I’d like to regularly spotlight a reader project or two here. Your project doesn’t have to be a big Kickstarter launch. If you’ve built something cool, it has some pretty pictures, and you’re proud of it, I might be able to share it here.
If you have a photogenic reader project, send an email to me at david@zatz.com with the subject “READER PROJECT,” a few pictures, and a short one-paragraph description. If you have a social media link or a link to the project, include that, too.
More clicky
I’ve got a lot happening all over the web. Here are links to my various stuff:
House of the Head: home for my published music
ZATZ Labs: where I host my published software projects
Feel free to dig around, visit, and say hey!
Leave some comments
Substack supports comments, so feel free to leave some. I promise to read them. Just, please, let’s keep our personal politics out of any discussion.
That should do it for this week. This newsletter is really starting to pick up subscribers. Please help it out by sharing links on all your socials.
Have a great week!