The Return of Sponsorship

Posted on February 3, 2023 by Futures Broker

Soap Operas were named after being sponsored by a soap company. One company instead of a variety of ads.

ChatGPT etc will spawn an answer service (as distinct from a search engine). It might only happen when we fully understand what it can give accurate answers to. Quite possibly it outputs answers and ideas to explore. The latter being a fancy way of saying it is not confident of being correct.

People will learn what an answer service is good for. It won’t be for finding a local plumber! Which means the types of ads we see in search engines won’t necessarily apply.

If you want a summary of the best features of an iPhone, then perhaps the ads we are used to seeing on Google can appear there. But I expect it would be more like this:

Sponsored ad at the top, from a sponsor – one advertiser who sponsors all queries of that type. For example, an electronics store could sponsor all tech queries.
Embedded affiliate links to products – possibly a link to something akin to Google Shopping
A list of suggested resources, commercial or otherwise, at the bottom
Below those resources, some contextual ads, like on Google Search. Yep, relegated to the bottom, but still existing because why not.

But the sponsorship will be new and lucrative. All requests for the system to conjure up imagined lyrics can be sponsored by Spotify. All generative images by Adobe. And so on.

It could become new/fresh/different enough to become a successful form of advertising. We might see the return of soaps sponsoring TV shows.

Passenger CoPilot Device for Cars

Posted on January 27, 2023 by Futures Broker

AR glasses will come, but it is taking forever, so I thought about intermediate technology that might help it become real.

Imagine this:

A detachable large tablet for the front passenger of a car. It will not work unless attached to a special hinge which ensures that the driver will be unable to view the screen.

The screen shows the same view as the windscreen, but with AR elements overlayed.

The copilot then does what they have often done historically with paper maps. They help the driver. Useful for these scenarios:

Finding the house/building that is their destination
Finding out where the closest gas station is – or charging station
Checking alternate routes
Getting info on business and places that they are driving past – that restaurant has a lunch deal!
Ordering something before arriving

Why it works:

Technology already exists, and could be quite cheap
Avoids the dangers of similar in a HUD for drivers
Unique selling point for the car brands who offer it
A low-commitment entry into the AR space for Apple, Alphabet or Meta

It could also be used for audio playlists, car data, adjusting air conditioning, games, movies (with bluetooth headphones) – the latter uses for back seat passengers with a screen built into the back of the front seats.

Being built in is good for safety.

EmptyCoin

Posted on January 23, 2023 by Futures Broker

EmptyCoin^TMis token token.

I cannot say it is a token token, because that would imply that it is quantifiable, and it is not. You cannot count EmptyCoin.

You can gift EmptyCoin to someone else. It is a token of appreciation, it has no quantity or value. But it is acknowlegement.

EmptyCoin is real, it is just tricky to understand in a society where everything is assigned a value.

I have EmptyCoin is a way of saying that I grasp that not everything needs to have a numerical value, that existence is sufficient. Peace cannot be counted. You cannot double peace. My love cannot be worth 3x your love.

EmptyCoin is real, it exists. It is mined from dark energy by the self-transforming machine elves who reveals themselves to users of DMT.

Users of DMT are gifted EmptyCoin, that is how it has been seeded in our dimension. Those users are given instructions on how to distribute it.

Until now they did not realise that they were a delivery mechanism for a multi-dimensional crypto-currency that carries no value and cannot be enumerated.

It can also be found in nature, in our dimension, as a by-product of calculus. Whenever anyone attempts to multiply something by zero, EmptyCoin is released.

Just by reading this, you have been gifted EmptyCoin, you now have it, and you can gift others.

You do not need to tell someone you have gifted them EmptyCoin, but your life will improve simply by doing so. So will theirs.

AI and Private Data Training

Posted on January 21, 2023 by Futures Broker

For conversational AI, there are many contenders for winner, and probably there will be a winner who rules all, because they are all being trained on public data (the Internet).

For using AI to create images in Photoshop, or spreadsheets in Office, they already have monopolies, and those abilities will simply cement the monopolies further.

But there is a world of potential uses that need to be trained on private data, and that will help one AI business rise to the top. First mover advantage from training on private data.

Example:

In business meetings with client I often need to recall data to respond to a question. It is far better for me to know it off the top of my head, than “excuse me while I look for it”. AI can listen the conversation, and based on its learning, know which data to surface for me, and present it on my screen or AI spectacles.

That takes training. A company like Zoom could (with permission) listen in on meetings and get a head start.

Don’t be surprised if Microsoft wins. They already have Office and Teams. They already have OpenAI. And they can easily buy the companies who can access the private data for training.

Google doesn’t have the same potential for data access. Far fewer people use their platforms for meetings.

The other angle is hardware. If Apple can get their AR glasses out there en masse in businesses, those glasses can listen in (with permission) and learn.

Amazon won’t even partake, thankfully. But they will go after home automation (a talking house), but never be sufficiently innovative to own that space, and hopefully do not buy the winner.

4-factor authentication & the vault

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Futures Broker

For 3FA, the standard options are:

something you know – PIN or password
something you are – fingerprint or face scan
something you have – a phone or dongle

For most purposes that is plenty, but what if you need an extra level of security. It could be, for example, to access a Swiss bank account. Or, I propose The Vault:

The Vault is where you store documents that you would keep in a safe at home. Birth certificate, for example.

It can also be where you keep your BFF list. By mutual agreement, and retractable at any time, two people decide that each can always access the latest contact details of the other – phone, address, email, current location – when they access the vault. A good way of keeping track of relatives, for example.

The Fourth Factor is location. You select one or more physical locations that are not your work or home or family member’s home, and you are there when you set up the Vault, and you have to be there to access it.

Simple, and easily done via any phone, and to steal that fourth factor would take a lot more effort from the bad guys. 3FA should be highly safe, but 4FA feels safer, and is fine for things you only very occasionally access.

Note – location-based authentication has been invented, it just doesn’t seem to be used, or imagined to be used as above. It has been about basically being physically present at work.

Augmented Reality and Supermarkets

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Futures Broker

So I came across this image and it got me thinking. I belong to several supermarket loyalty programs, something they are quite good at is remembering products I have bought and telling me (in emails) when they are on sale (on special as we say in Australia).

So, forget about fridge apps, and online ordering. I’m thinking purely of an enhancement to what I already do as an in-person supermarket shopper who uses their loyalty program.

It works best if you only use one supermarket…

Open the loyalty app
Photograph the box or barcode of a product that you had bought and just used
Speak your opinion – Growly likes this dog food

In a multi-person household, or even if you are scatter-brained and single… it means that you have a system that remembers which brands you like, or dislike. Per person.

So not only does your emails about sale items become more enhanced (things you prefer, not just things you bought), your AR experience in the supermarket can be awesome. The AR glasses and show you, like the image above, the products you like and where they are. For example, Oliver’s favourite muesli bars, or Maria’s preferred variety of apple. You could walk down every aisle and let the AR do most of the thinking for you. Faster and fewer mistakes that get you yelled at when you return home.

Lab-Grown Human Eggs and Human Sperm

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Futures Broker

While scientists can behave ethically, few let ethics get in the way of advancing knowledge and techniques. If they can do it, typically they will.

Which means that now or in the future, someone is going to create a human baby completely outside of the human body. And by using stem cells, it can happen without the permission of the genetic parents. Crazy!

Mice have already been born from real mouse sperm and lab-created mouse eggs. They were healthy and soon became parents themselves, so they passed the hybrid burdle.

2009: Human egg cells grown in a lab.

2016: Lab-created mouse sperm makes babies

2016: Lab-created mouse egg makes babies

2022: Lab-generated human sperm

2022: First synthetic mouse embryos

You can see the trajectory… it will happen – synthetically made humans – it is simply a matter of who and when. China is an obvious bet.

And factor in that declining populations are a problem for capitalist societies, and we could be making artificial kids purely to be worker consumers.

The No ID Option in a Digital ID Nation

Posted on November 23, 2022 by Futures Broker

Here in Australia we have a general fear of a “one ID to rule them all”, and instead we have a hodge podge of pseudo national IDs – Medicare card, passport, driver’s license, which combined get us the 100 points of ID we need. Kinda painful to achieve the same thing, with all the same drawbacks.

When a One ID comes along, there will be backlash from many, especially the sovereign citizen / anti-vax types. So perhaps we could appease them with the option of opting-out?

If we go way back to where being identified was first needed, it was for taxation. And it still revolves around that. Without taxation, nations fail.

We can look at how backpackers are treated, and come up with a similar option for residents who want to be without an ID.

Reduced pay – you can be employed, without ID, but the pay rate will be discounted to what the after-tax amount would be for anyone with ID.

Can’t get married officially – most of us don’t now anyway…

Can’t travel overseas – no passport

They do get the same public schooling and healthcare – because they are effectively paying tax, and they are still living in our country

No driver’s license – but when self-driving cars arrive, it won’t be needed

Cannot be a company director, or operate a tax-paying business – but that leaves plenty of self-employment possibilities

And guess what – aside from taxes (all you need is a birth certificate to get a TaxFile number), all of the above can already be achieved with just a birth certificate.

We still need to provide a path to ID, for when they come to their senses. So people will still have birth certificates. And their babies will as well, that is non-negotiable, they can’t assign their anarchy to their children as well.

So, unless the anti-people want to fight for no birth certificate, this is currently not an issue.

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