Hello.
I didn't start the fire, but stuff still happens.
So what's up?
Ah, bummer.
Fair warning.
I'm sorry. It's bummers today, but it's an important bummer.
We should talk about the earthquake in Morocco.
A massive earthquake has hit Morocco, and it's not good.
Jokes.
The earthquake was somewhere between a 6.8 and a 7.0 magnitude on the Richter scale,
depending on who you ask,
and it has unfortunately already claimed at least 2,400 lives.
That number is expected to continue to grow.
Hey, take care of yourself.
Like, there's not really much you can do about it, you know?
Like, it was an earthquake, and people who woke up just thought that they were going to go about their lives,
and, bleh.
I am genuinely speechless and do not know what to say here,
but I have included some links for if you want to donate, you can check them out in my newsletter.
Um, let's...
Um, alright, vibes.
Vibes, everyone.
Bring them up. Stretch them out.
Alright, stretch them out.
Okay? Stretch out those vibes.
Let's talk about technology.
Damn it!
This one's... This one's a bummer, too!
Uh, so it turns out that all those AIs that all these tech companies are erasing each other to have...
Take a heavy toll on the environment.
A report from the Associated Press has come out talking about this,
and apparently between 2021 and 2022 alone,
Microsoft's water consumption rose 34% to 1.7 billion gallons of water.
For reference, that's more water than I drink in a day.
This water is pumped into the facilities that are used to train these AIs and cool them off so they don't overheat,
as they're processing millions upon millions of probably stolen documents.
The water and energy requirements to train these AIs is astronomical,
and tech companies are aware of this.
They literally are like,
Yeah, we know. We'll fix it later.
The amount of money that they see floating around in the AI space right now is just too much for them to give a shit about the ramifications.
And so they're racing as fast as they can to trying to get the biggest cut of that pie,
and they're like,
I mean, we're gonna look into how to optimize this.
Trust us.
Like, they're working on new chips and stuff that are going to improve efficiency,
but just because they improve efficiency doesn't mean that they're going to reduce their footprint.
You can improve efficiency and then just scale up.
So Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, all of them, they're burning through water and electricity at an alarming rate.
And in Microsoft's case, they're literally siphoning water from the Des Moines River,
just diverting that water from farmland to AI land.
Also, these AIs can remix copyrighted materials and hallucinate stuff and whatnot.
But on that topic, Microsoft said that they'll take legal responsibility for if you get in hot water from like using their AIs
and it pumps out copyrighted information or something.
Like they straight up said that they're going to take legal responsibility for all the people who are getting caught using AIs to do stuff,
because that's cheaper than revealing the sources that they stole all their information from.
Anyway, speaking of tech companies doing sh- I'm so su- I warned you.
I told you about this.
More bummers, but it's more tech bummers.
So it's not like huge bummers.
And like this time you have control.
If you use Google Chrome, your entire web browser is spyware.
Google is rolling out a new quote-unquote feature called the Privacy Sandbox.
Sounds real good.
It's actually just a new way for Google to spy on you.
You know cookies?
That thing that you're constantly having to accept on websites?
Well, those are the things that they use to track you around the internet, right?
And those are the big bag boogeyman.
And so here comes Big Daddy Google saying, oh, we're going to get rid of the cookies.
Instead, use our Privacy Sandbox.
To be clear, the Privacy Sandbox is a replacement for cookies that gives them more control and just furthers the whole surveillance capitalism thing.
It's just now baked directly into your web browser.
Privacy and security experts, as well as foundations like the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, have been pushing back against this for literal years.
Google has changed the name on it multiple times to try to throw people off.
It was originally called Flock, and then it was called the Topics API.
And now it's the Privacy Sandbox.
But look, it is genuinely not a big deal to change your web browser.
Like, it's really just not.
There exist other browsers that are a lot like Chrome and are 100% compatible with Chrome extensions.
I would recommend Vivaldi or Opera.
You could also try Brave.
I don't highly recommend Brave, but it's good enough.
They've got a lot of crypto ties and a history of some shitty stuff.
But what I would ultimately recommend actually is Firefox.
Firefox is good.
It's fine.
If you go into deep nerd stuff, there are many more options.
But for the common consumer, I would recommend one of those.
On this day.
I think I'm going to skip the history fact on this one.
Lightning round.
The co-creator of PowerPoint has died, which is really weird to think about.
Ron DeSantis is supporting the state surgeon general of Florida in saying that residents of Florida should not get vaccinated against COVID.
Because that's a thing that happens now.
Nancy Pelosi has announced that she's running for reelection.
I do not know why.
Hurricane Lee, while not a direct threat to land right now, is gaining strength and meteorologists are like, what's going on there?
So if you live on the East Coast of the US, just keep an eye out for updates about Hurricane Lee.
And finally for today, I'm just going to let me get hype.
Let me get hype about one thing.
I just want to be hype about City of Skylines 2.
There's been a lot of good games this year and City of Skylines 2 is going to hopefully continue that trend.
If you haven't played the first game, big city simulator and home of Lane Man and City of Skylines 2 just makes it bigger and city-er.
And I'm very excited about that.
I tried so hard to find like fun positive stuff this time.
But I mean, next time, I promise.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to StuffKeepsHappening.online for sources, bonus content, and I can guarantee you it's not going to be AI generated bonus content.
My name is Endeavorance.
I'll be back on Wednesday.
Take care and be well.