Lauren Weinstein's Blog

In 1951 the great science-fiction author Ray Bradbury published a short story called “The Pedestrian”.

You may recall an episode of Rod Serling’s original “The Twilight Zone” called “The Brain Center at Whipple’s”, an episode he wrote himself.

The very first YouTube video, uploaded by one of YouTube’s founders before it was purchased by Google, is called “Me at the zoo”.

I’ve written in the past about inaccuracies in Google’s Search AI Overviews (let’s call them AIOs) that so often seem to provide specific answers to search queries, usually in rather authoritative wording.

Regular readers know that I don’t routinely do product reviews or announcements here, but when something pops up that could have significant impacts to the tech industry and broader society I’ll explore those.

Data centers are now at the heart of a rapidly growing battle between Big Tech billionaire CEOs and ordinary people that those billionaires are used to treating like bugs to be swatted away.

Various AI firms have launched so-called “AI browsers” and in particular what are called “agentic AI” browser features.

UPDATE (3 February 2026): New York State introduces its own utterly impractical and damaging legislation attacking 3D printers and other equipment, similar to the Washington State legislation I discussed in this original post.

An experiment in AI coding with Google Gemini.

Drone leader Chinese company DJI this morning announced a new drone in their economical but powerful “mini” drone lineup, the “Mini 5 Pro”.

Calls for Google’s Chrome Browser to be separated from Google could potentially result in a privacy and security disaster for literally billions of people around this planet.

There is currently what amounts to a “war” between the U.S. federal and state governments against specific Chinese drone makers, with the big target being DJI.

We all want to prevent children from being harmed on the Internet, but exactly how to do this without creating even more problems for them and for adults has turned into quite a complicated and political situation.

For many, many years, the U.S. has been considered to be the world’s technology and science research leader in all sorts of areas of science — medicine and computer science broadly are just two — it’s a long, long list.

UPDATE (May 12, 2025): The administration has agreed to lower its enormous tariffs on China, and China has agreed to lower its enormous retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., temporarily for 90 days, as shipping between the two countries has almost halted.

UPDATE (April 10, 2025): Social Security Administration reverses entirely, says they will permit all claim types to take place over the phone, no longer requiring website use or in-person visits to Social Security offices, as had been previously announced…

I have long held that efforts to tamper with Section 230 from the Communications Decency Act of 1996 are dangerously misguided.

I just had a good laugh.

I’ll use very simple words for these government officials: You ban Chinese drones, you’re putting U.S. lives at risk.

According to reports, in a recent employee meeting, Google CEO Sundar said that (essentially) the entire focus of Google in 2025 will be AI and pushing it out to consumers in a “scrappy” way — with him referencing the early days of Google.

All the talk now is about using AI-based mechanisms to authenticate social media users as being not underaged for access, through analysis of their faces on video feeds.

Is this happening around the world, or is it only here in the USA that everything appears to be going totally nutso?

Ah yes.

Despite my continuing differences with various specific aspects of Google operations that I feel could be straightforwardly improved to the benefit of their users, I can’t emphasize enough what an utter disaster the DOJ proposed Google antitrust “remedies”

Despite my ongoing concerns over various of the directions that current management has been taking Google over recent years, I must state that I agree with Google that the kinds of radical antitrust “remedies” — and “radical” is the appropriate word — app…

“I Am the Very Model of a Google AI Overview” Lauren Weinstein To the tune of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” (with apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan) – – – I am the very model of a Google AI Overview.

Google Search AI Overview answers are clearly not ready for prime time.

The technical term for what’s happening now with Artificial Intelligence, especially generative AI, is NUTS.

Every day it becomes ever clearer.

Let me be very clear about why I am, frankly, so angry with Google over their Account Recovery failures.

Google refuses to create a specific role for someone to oversee the issues of older users, who depend on Google for so many things but so often get the shaft and lose everything when something goes wrong with their accounts.

You may have seen a lot of press over the last few days about Google moving location data by default to be on-device (e.g., your phone) rather than stored centrally (and encrypted if you choose to store it centrally), and how this will help prevent abuses…

As you may know, Google has recently begun a protocol to delete inactive Google accounts, with email notices going out to the account and recovery addresses in advance as a warning.

Last February, in: Giving Creators and Websites Control Over Generative AI https://lauren.vortex.com/2023/02/14/giving-creators-and-websites-control-over-generative-ai I suggested expansion of the existing Robots Exclusion Protocol (e.g.

As per requests, this is a transcript of my national network radio report earlier this week regarding Google passkeys and Google account recovery concerns. – – – So there really isn’t enough time tonight to get into any real details on this but I think it…

Google continues to push ahead with its ill-advised scheme to force passkeys on users who do not understand their risks, and will try push all users into this flawed system starting imminently.

In the 2005 film “V for Vendetta” a fictional UK government has turned into a tightly censored, tracked, and controlled hellscape, with technology used to control citizens in every way possible.

I love YouTube.

Suddenly there seems to be an enormous amount of political, regulatory, and legal activity regarding AI, especially generative AI.

Greetings.

This post could get very long very quickly, so instead I’m going to endeavor to keep this introductory discussion brief, with an array of crucial details to come later.

UPDATE: 24 May 2023: A Proposal for “Enhanced Recovery Services” for Locked Out Google Accounts – – – All, I am doing something in this post that I’ve never done before over these many years.

UPDATE: 24 May 2023: A Proposal for “Enhanced Recovery Services” for Locked Out Google Accounts UPDATE (17 May 2023): An Example of a Very Sad Google Account Recovery Failure — and How It Affects Real People – – – Google has announced that inactive person…

UPDATE (15 May 2023): And … about 48 hours after this original post, bookmarks starting successfully syncing in full to my tablet, after months of failing totally (despite my many best efforts and every sync trick I know).

In several of my past recent posts: The “AI Crisis”: Who Is Responsible?

There is a sense of gathering crisis revolving around Artificial Intelligence today — not just AI itself but also the public’s and governments’ reactions to AI — particularly generative AI.

The new Utah Internet ID age laws signed today — and what other states and the feds are moving toward in the same realm — will destroy social media and much else of the Internet as we know it.

Seemingly overnight, the Internet is awash with controversies over Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) systems, and their potential positive and negative impacts on the Net and the world at large.

Greetings.

UPDATE (31 December 2022): 2023 and Social Media’s Winds of Change – – – – – – Social media as we’ve known it is probably doomed.