Why Humanoid Robots Make No Sense At All

If my scan rate at UPS was this slow, I would have been fired.

A recent video online shows a humanoid robot sorting packages, mostly just flipping them label side up so they can be scanned.  It was painful to watch because the conveyor was slowed down to at least half normal speed and the "robot" was horrifically inefficient at its job.

Irony Alert:  Before I could play the linked video above, it asked me to "sign in to prove you're not a bot."   Rules for me, but not for thee, I guess.

Warehouse robots exist, but they don't look like ersatz humans.  Rather, they are machines optimized for handling, sorting, and stacking packages and retreiving and packing goods.  They look nothing like the "row-bots" of science fiction because doing so would be pointless.  Why give a package sorting robot legs and a torso and a head and human-like arms, when history has shown that human anatomy is ill-suited to repetitive motions.  Do you want these robots to have tendon and joint problems?  Backaches and arthritis?

But seriously, a humanoid robot might have some specialized uses, particularly when interfacing directly with humans, but for other purposes, it makes no sense.  Imagine an automated car wash that, instead of having rotating brushes and spray wands, had dozens of humanoid robots sloshing around in the suds, hand-wiping your car.   Maybe there is a kernel of an idea there, but why would you give them legs to walk around with, when stationary or wheeled robots would make more sense.  And why make them look like humans?

I suppose the idea of a "general purpose" humanoid robot might make some sense.  It could mow your lawn, wax your car, and then shake up a martini for you at five o'clock.  That seems to be a common fantasy with robot fans - that "Jeeves" the family robot will mix up that martini and light your cigar (and empty the ashtray) while you sit in your smoking jacket in the den and listen to Jazz music.

But as history has shown, it is a lot more effective to make a number of domestic robots, each specialized to a purpose.  Having a humanoid robot operate a vacuum cleaner is an expensive waste of machinery.  Having an automated vacuum cleaner makes more sense, as does an automated lawn mower.

With regard to the latter, such things exist, but never became popular.  I recall a few years back seeing a display at Lowe's of a robotic lawn mower.  The display was broken.  A neighbor actually bought one and I guess it worked for a while.  One day I saw them out on the lawn, looking at the inert machine and then poking it with a stick.  It sat there, motionless, for about a week and then disappeared never to be seen again.  It never pays to be an early adapter.

The problem with the automated lawn mower is obvious - suppose your pet is run over by it?  Or maybe a crawling infant?  The liability is huge and no matter how many sensors you put on it, it may be likely to fail.  For that reason, most automated lawn mowers used string trimmers, not whirling blades, so little junior won't be sliced to death, just slowly whipped to oblivion.  But I digress.

Another problem with humanoid robots is the power they require.  Humans are a fascinating machine - converting calories of food into energy every day for nearly a century before they wear out.  It is just a shame it takes 25 years or so to program their neural networks, and often that goes horribly wrong.

Companies like Boston Dynamics like to show off their robots dancing to music and doing amazing flips and stunts.  In most cases, they are tethered to a power cord, or in some cases, an IC engine powered electrical generator.  The actual ambient sound is rarely shown, as instead of music, you would hear the scream of a lawn mower engine or the sound of electrical or hydraulic actuators.  Lithium-Ion batteries are one solution, but of course add weight to the design and have a limited capacity.  I suspect many of these short videos are short because that is the extent of the battery life.

While Boston Dynamics claims that their robots are for sale, at the present time they are limited to enterprise customers and there is little or no word as to how many have been sold or are in use.  Have you seen one being used? Let me know.

Meanwhile, other more plebeian robots are already out on the streets - quite literally.  No doubt you've seen the food delivery robots on some city streets.  But again, they are not humanoid, but small boxes on wheels.  A humanoid delivery robot could do things like climb stairs and get around obstacles better, but the energy required would no doubt limit their range and the cost would be prohibitive.  Boxes on wheels are cheap - and get the job done.

And of course, robot taxis are a thing, at least on a trial basis in some cities - with mixed results.  When error-prone humans run over a small child, we chalk that up to the cost of doing business - and the driver gets a slap on the wrist.  If you want to get away with killing someone, use your car.  Ask Bruce Caitlyn Jenner.  She got away with it!

Sam's Club and Walmart have a floor cleaning robot that seems to work "OK" - although it has a seat and manual controls.  Not only does it wash floors, but it also takes inventory with a side-mounted scanner.  Again, it is on wheels,  not legs.   No one seriously suggested using a humanoid robot with a mop-and-bucket - it would make no sense whatsoever.

Getting back to UPS and other shipping companies, when I worked there as a nascent Teamster in the 1980s, we were basically human robots.  Bar codes were a thing of the future, and boxes came down a chute in pre-sort where four or five guys would sort each package by zip code.  These guys had the entire zip code structure of the greater Syracuse area memorized and I could not keep up at all.  I lasted a day in pre-sort.

The solution wasn't robots to "read" hand-written addresses and sort by zip code, but to put standardized labels and bar codes on each package.  Back in 1986, few had home computers and printers.  Today everyone does, and if they don't, the local UPS store will print the label for you.  Automation didn't mean creating mechanical men to mimic manual human labor, but to automate the process instead.

So bar codes are read by lasers and mechanical flaps divert packages to different conveyor belts - a much more efficient and cost-effective process than having humanoid robots pick up packages and look at them.  Humanoid robots are not an advancement, but a step backwards.

Similarly, when I worked at Domino's, we took orders over the phone and then hand-addressed each box of pizza using carbon-copy strips.  One went to the line cook to make the pizza (and make a record of the transaction), while two went on the box.  The driver would tear off the pink copy upon delivery.  It was a primitive system, but it worked.  I told my boss there that someday a computer would print out these labels and he laughed at me.  At the time, I had to deal with his shitty handwriting, which almost got me mugged.

Now, I suppose you could use a humanoid robot to pick up the receiver on a landline phone and take orders and write them down on slips of paper, but that would be dumb.  Instead of automating human actions, they automated the process.  Customers order online using an app and the pizzas are made after the labels were printed automatically.  Addresses can be verified (and customers tracked for loyalty rewards) and phone numbers confirmed through automated call-backs.  Automating the process makes much more sense than using a humanoid robot to mimic what was done before by humans.

In warfare, the same is true.  Much has been made of humanoid "soldiers" replacing men in the field. A bipedal robot can walk through ditches and climb over fences.  But what we are seeing in Ukraine is that flying robots (actually, remote controlled drones) are far more effective, efficient, and less costly than some clanking monstrosity from Boston Dynamics.  Seaborne and landborne drones also exist, the latter tending to be of the wheeled variety.

The idea of autonomous mechanical warriors, however, should give everyone pause.  Some drones are deemed "semi-autonomous" in that they can continue their mission even if cut off from their operator by jamming signals.  Even these are controversial, as without a human-in-the-loop, it would be all-too-easy to bomb a school or create a friendly fire situation.

But again, with drones, the idea of a walking humanoid fighting drone seems dead in the water, at least for now.  Masses of cheap and lightweight drones - often "suicide drones" - makes more sense than an expensive walking-talking doll.

Perhaps I am wrong about this, and instead, in a decade's time, my personal robot will clear the dishes after cooking my meal, mow the lawn and drive my car.  I kind of doubt it, only because I can't afford such nonsense.  I also wonder whether humanoid robots are really solving a problem that exists - is it really cost-effective to replace low-wage jobs with robots?  Or are we just chasing a tech dream?'

Already we are seeing incidents where "AI" ends up being more costly than replacing human workers.  And as a "tool" it seems highly flawed.  At least from a consumer standpoint, it is of limited use - and if you rely on AI answers to basic questions, you may end up in trouble.

For example, our van has a problem in that the switch or sensor that detects whether the sliding door is open, isn't working.  Not only doesn't the dome light come on (grammar?) but the "auto relock" feature kicks in, if you unlock the van with the remote and open the sliding door.  The system detects if a door has been opened after unlocking.  If no detection occurs within 30 seconds, it assumed you hit the button in error and re-locks the van.  Since the sliding door sensor is broken, it doesn't detect this as an opening and re-locks the van.  No big deal, unless you set the keys on the counter and then re-shut the door.  Congratulations, you just locked the keys in the van!

And no, there is no way to turn off auto re-lock.  :(

Anyway, Google AI keeps cheerfully informing me that a 2015 Mercedes Sprinter 3500 high-top has a simple plunger switch "on the B-pillar" and it costs only $4.95 on eBay.  No, it does not.  Mercedes chose instead to put a switch on the door latches (all doors) including the sliding door.  It is a PITA to get at and guess what?  It costs a lot more than $4.95!

I've tried rephrasing the question (the "prompt" I guess) many times, with the same result.  The information provided is clearly wrong, every time.  And sadly, this seems to be true of many technical questions, regarding cars, computers, or whatever.  AI merely skims the surface and provides the most facile responses.  Did you try unplugging it and then plugging it back in?  Gee, thanks, Sanjay!

I guess I take some comfort in this - that our robot overlords are as clueless as we are (indeed, we "trained" them, no?). In the future, there will be robot counterparts of all the inept and clueless people in the world, including robot Karens and robot BMW drivers who refuse to use turn signals.

Or, God forbid, Robo-Trump.  Maybe we are already there - after all, he died of rabies!

Why The Richest Man In The World Isn't (Do The Numbers!)

SpaceX stock has sagged a bit since its early peak, but that's not why Musk isn't a trillionaire.

Market cap, as I have noted time and time again, is just eye-candy bullshit.  Financial news sources want to generate clicks and capture eyeballs - as all modern "journalists" today want to do.  Our whole information infrastructure today has been corrupted by fast cash and special interests.  In our world of high-tech and "information economy," belief in UFOs, flat earth, moon landing denial, anti-vaxxing, etc. ad nauseam, is at an all-time high.  Hold on tight, AI is going to make it much worse!

Sadly, few have the capacity to do anything more than a superficial analysis.  Take this recent article online - a bit of schadenfreude click-bait for Musk-haters, claiming that people are "losing money" on the SpaceX IPO because it has dropped to "only" 30% over its IPO price.  Most folks didn't lose money, though.

Buried in the article are a number of comments which should be the 100-point type headline:

A further decline in SpaceX shares reduced CEO Elon Musk’s net worth by $67.8 billion to about $1.2 trillion, according to Forbes’ estimates. His fortune hit a record high above $1.4 trillion amid SpaceX’s three-day winning streak, and Musk still ranks well above Google cofounder Larry Page ($300.8 billion) as the richest person in the world.

Morningstar analysts lowered its fair value estimate for SpaceX to $62 from $63, citing a “sizable dilution” of SpaceX shares following the Cursor deal, noting a best-case scenario would price shares at $169 should its AI revenue improve.

It’s a cooling from the record-setting demand since its debut: Investors purchased $369.8 million in SpaceX shares over its first three sessions, accounting for more than quadruple the funds poured into Nvidia ($88.2 million) over the same period, according to a Vanda Research note on Wednesday.

Wait. What?   We are talking about Billions of dollars - Trillions even, and the amount sold to the public was a paltry $369 million?  A little more than a third of a billion?  No, that can't be right.  They actually raised $85.7 billion, which is a lot of money, but represents only 4.7% of the stock of the company.

As I noted time and time again, the purpose of an old-fashioned IPO was to raise capital to build factories and fund a business.  A modern IPO, however, is structured to sell off a pitiful fraction of the company in order to create a market for the company stock so that founders can cash-out and make real money.  This is particularly true in the tech field, where founders want to run for the exit before everyone discovers that the "tech" is just bullshit.

There are 13.5 billion shares of SpaceX outstanding, according to Google AI (consider the source!) and Musk holds about 6 billion shares.  The IPO sold about 639 million shares at the IPO or about 4.7% of the outstanding shares, which is typical of a modern cash-out IPO.  If that was not enough, these new shares have only one vote each, while Musk's shares have 10 votes each.  He clearly is not worried about any potential proxy fight down the road.

So why isn't Musk a trillionaire?  Again, "market cap" is nonsense.  It is just a number generated by basic math - the number of outstanding shares multiplied by the latest share price (the price the "last sucker in" paid for his paltry investment).  It is "wealth on paper" not in real life, with only one or two real exceptions.

For example, if a company is severely undervalued and someone wants to buy it, they may make a takeover bid and offer the shareholders an attractive buy-out price above the trading price for their shares.  For example, many years ago, I bought a small number of shares in Winn-Dixie, the grocery chain.  Shortly thereafter, there was a takeover bid of $2 a share more than I paid and in a matter of a few weeks, I made a thousand dollars.  Whoop-ee!  In that case, the "market cap" of the company actually represented a number slightly less than it's actual value.

But in most other cases, market cap is meaningless, particularly with tech companies that are trading at 100 or 200 times their earnings (EPS).   Tech companies also - like SpaceX - have huge blocks of shares held by a few prominent investors or founders.  If those folks started selling off their shares to generate cash, the share price would drop precipitously, for two reasons.  First, the market could not absorb the sheer volume of sales - more supply than demand, and thus the price would plummet.  Second, even if these principals sold off shares in small lots (so as not to depress the price too much) people would notice this and wonder why the founders are bailing out on their own company.

Real wealth doesn't exist on paper, but in cold hard cash, or at least cash equivalents.  If Musk held a trillion dollars in a diversified portfolio of real estate, stocks and bonds, commodities, and the like, he would be a trillionaire, as he could liquidate any one of these assets (or combinations of each) without tanking their market value.  But when your entire portfolio (or a substantial part of it) is tied up in closely held speculative tech stocks, your net worth is just that - speculation.  He cannot cash-out of these positions, simply because he owns too large a share of too few companies.  That, and the "market cap" of those companies is far and above the actual value of the companies themselves.

The "last sucker in" share price only represents what some small retail investor, likely ill-informed and mostly gambling, paid for his share.  I am sure a number of buyers of the SpaceX IPO - like many before it - bought a small amount of stock (a few grand at most) on the thought that they could then flip this after the stock "pops" out of the gate - as it appeared to do, dropping off after peaking shortly after the IPO dropped.  This share valuation does not represent an actual valuation by the market of the underlying value of the company, anymore than financially stressed consumers, paying $15 for doordash delivery of $15 of fast-food means that fast food is now worth $30. It just means the little guy is often uninformed and driven by emotion, not logic.

Of course, it could all go the other way, provided that SpaceX stops losing money and starts making a shit-ton of it, instead.  Given the current state of the AI business, the recent Anthropic disaster, and the public's general distaste and distrust of AI, it seems that the entire industry is over-valued, over-hyped, and long due for consolidation.  And the ultimate winner might be.... the Chinese, who are far ahead of the US, far less stressed by regulations, and offering AI products today for 1/60th the token price of American AI companies.   In other words, even if AI is a "thing" it likely will end up a "thing" made in China, like so much of everything else (including electric cars!).

Another way to look at Market Cap in situations like this is to ask, "where did all the money come from?" and the answer is, it didn't come from anywhere because it didn't exist to begin with.  No one plunked down two trillion dollars in the SpaceX IPO, but rather only 4.7% of that amount - the amount of money people actually paid hard cash for shares.  The rest is "wealth on paper" which is speculation, not actual wealth.  When the real estate market crashed in 2008, some idiots actually posted online, "where did all the money go?" as the real estate and stock markets lost billions, if not trillions of dollars.  What was lost was not cash money in circulation, but the idea of what these things were worth.

My house has doubled in value since I bought it, but while this might be added to my "net worth" it doesn't amount to actual wealth until I sell it.  And who knows?  Maybe we are on the verge of another speculative housing bubble or interest rates, or insurance, or property taxes, or just demographics, may tank the value.   After all, I live on a retirement island of boomers, who are dropping like flies, going into assisted living, or moving back home to be close to their children.  Will the next generation be in a position to buy these vacation homes (and RVs and motorcycles, and hobby cars)?  Bear in mind, the next generation is smaller than the boomer set.  Throw in a hurricane, a property tax spike, and a general recession, and, well, today's market valuation means nothing.

Ditto for SpaceX.  Right now, the market valuation is mere speculation. If it were a traditional company - making products and selling them at a profit and paying dividends - you could put a more realistic valuation on the share price.  If your company pays $5 per share in dividends every year or has retained earnings in the same amount, you can quickly and accurately calculate a target price for that stock.  But technology stocks, which often never show a profit, or if they do, have a P/E ratio in the hundreds, and rarely, if ever, pay dividends, are much harder to quantify.  The only real number is the amount the "last sucker in" paid for his one paltry share.  And given how the Internet has been used to influence people and turn the markets (and everything else) into a casino, I would not put much faith on the valuation by "the last sucker in" as his valuation is not based on any informative valuation, but emotional response.  After all, Musk owns Twitter, and I am sure he didn't use that lever to hype the share valuation of SpaceX.

Right?

Of course,  it could all go South in a hurry.  Twitter is breaking even - in good years.  And Elon pledged his stock in Tesla and SpaceX to buy Twitter - while paying a billion a year in interest.  Hope they don't call in that note! (Hmm... maybe that is why he is doing the SpaceX IPO?). Tesla is leveraged by cash incentives that Trump has cancelled, and makes more money from selling carbon credits than from cars. Since Trump promises to loosen EPA requirements, what are those carbon credits worth? The market for EVs is saturated and many manufacturers are pulling back or going bust - and the specter of cheap Chinese EVs is always on the horizon.  SpaceX traditional rockets seem to be doing well, but the "Starship" concept is proving to be unworkable, other than as a really big firework.  NASA has basically told Elon to fuck off with his proposal to fly the Starship to the moon as a lunar lander (wtf?) as the darn thing has failed to meet a number of milestones.  And the AI thing?  Well, a race you enter at the end isn't one you are likely to win.

Speaking of the Starship, I just got done reading Jame A. Michener's Space (1982) which was on my pad device (along with thousands of other books).  The idea of launching a huge-ass rocket, rendezvousing in low earth orbit to refuel, and then taking the whole kit and kaboodle to the moon and back was proposed by Von Braun and the Peenemünde gang back in the day.  It was shot down then as too impractical.  It was deemed easier for a rendezvous in lunar orbit (between the CSM and LEM) with staged rockets that would dispose of each stage (and weight) when no longer needed.

It was an interesting discussion and, according to Michener, an issue that divided the space community back then.  People were quite vehement that their way was the correct way.  The lunar docking model won out, but of course was more of a one-and-done deal.  Those proposing earth orbit rendezvous claimed it could be used to create a platform for long-term exploration of space (as illustrated in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey).  Perhaps they were right, but then again, the budget just for the Apollo missions turned out to be too much, with three later missions (18-20) scrapped due to budget concerns.  A permanent base on the moon?  Seems like a fantasy then - and now - when we can't even balance our budgets as it is.

So, Musk is chasing an age-old dream.  And in order to make Starship work, he would need to expand funding for NASA by a factor of ten.  No problem there - he has a close friend (or use to) in the White House. lol.

Catering To Our Weaknesses

This is how I feel these days, watching any form of media or visiting any website.Source.

All my banking apps and websites have "updated" recently.  Of course, the big new feature I am supposed to love and cherish is the new AI assistant!  He will tell you your bank balance and whether a payment was made!  You know, stuff you can find more easily with a click of the mouse or a swipe on the phone.  But its AI, so it's better, right?

Bank of America cheerfully announces they've "improved" the payment feature for your credit card.  Instead of hiting "make payment" you have to "initiate a transfer."  Hey, we don't want people actually paying off their credit cards now, do we?  If you do make a payment, the system acts like you ruined their day.  "But, but, your payment isn't due until July 3rd!  Are you sure you want to pay now?  Maybe buy a new pair of shoes instead!"

That tactic not working, they try another angle - "You are already signed up for autopay!  Any payment made today will surely cause catastrophe!" Or something along those lines.   The message is not very subtle - here you are, offering to pay back a loan in full and they act like it is a horrible thing to do.  And from their perspective, it is.  Banks make more money today by ruining their clients than by working with them.  In the old days, when loans were used to buy a house or start a business, when the bank profited, you profited as well.  Today, they want you to run up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, consumer debt, and student loan debt, and then watch you struggle for years to pay it all off - at exorbitant interest rates, of course - before you throw in the towel and declare bankruptcy.  Even then, they get their pound of flesh as you have to "work out" the debt over a number of years.

Welcome to The United States of Go Fuck Yourself.

And it isn't just BoA, but other banks as well.  Capital One has similar roadblocks to payment - reminding you that payment isn't due yet and hey, you're already in autopay anyway, so why bother?  We took out a bridge loan with BMO - the Bank of Montreal.  What a shitshow that bank is.   They have offices all over the place and no one seems to know what is going on.  They lost the title to the van and then accused us of having it.  I had no luck trying to call anyone, but finally got someone in Dallas (I think) who knocked some heads together in Idaho (?) and figured it out.

I sent in a big payment to reduce the balance on the account and they sat on the check for a month before cashing it.  There is no way to make a "principal reduction" payment online.  If you pay online, they just assume you are prepaying for the next ten installments (!!).   Gotta get those interest payments, right?  Worse yet, on two occasions, I sent in payments (to the correct "principal reduction" address) with the "principal reduction" box checked off and written on the check, only to discover that, once again, they applied the amount to future installments.  Bastards.

The comic above summarizes how I feel about America these days.  Watch any streaming service with ads and you will be bombarded with pleas to play online casinos - everyone is making money this way, why not you?  Gamble! Gamble! Gamble!  Are there really that many gamblers in America?  How many casinos can our country support?  How can the economy survive if everyone is gambling themselves into the poorhouse, particularly those who are already poor?

The Supreme Court decided that in the name of "freedom" we should be allowed to gamble on sports - or just about anything from a coin toss to whether it will rain tomorrow.  Of course, it quickly became apparent why sports betting was illegal to begin with - it is a trivial matter to fix sporting events by bribing players or blackmailing them.  And of course, when players bet on their own games, what's not to like?

You might as well bet on professional wrestling - where the outcomes are predetermined.  Oh, wait, apparently you can - the height of idiocy!

The messages in these ads are clear - they want to normalize gambling as a fun activity that ordinary people engage in, and not some life-destroying monstrosity that can bankrupt you and cause you to lose your family and everything else you hold dear.  The upside?  Occasionally they let you win - just enough to keep the addiction strong and the dopamine flowing.

Yes, dopamine.  I recounted before how a drug tested to cure Parkinson's caused some users to gamble compulsively.  We like to think we are in control of our destiny, but we really are just a bag of chemicals.  Funny, too, that at the Mayo clinic, they asked me whether I was gambling or made any major purchases lately.   I didn't tell them about the Mercedes van.

But seriously, it seems that more than ever before, our society is catering to our weaknesses.  Advertisers want you to order out for food using Doordash or Uber Eats - financial transactions that make no sense whatsoever.  $15 fee to deliver $15 of food?  Stupid! Or how about our neighbor at the condo in Virginia ordering one donut delivered, from a donut shop across the street from our condo?

We are weak, to be sure, but trying to be strong is what makes our lives better.  It takes willpower to get your finances into shape - and keeping them there.  The things that are good for you are hard to do, while the things that destroy us are as easy as falling off a log.

It is akin to the casino we visited in Vegas, some 20-30 years ago now.  A conveyor belt whisked us from "the strip" right into the heart of the casino.  After some time, we tried to leave, and could not find the exit.  We asked one of those beefy-looking guys in a suit who was wearing an electronic earpiece.  "You see that next room? Go in there and then the room beyond, and beyond that, two other rooms.  On the last room, on the left side, behind the large potted plant, is the exit, behind a curtain.  Good Luck!"

No wonder so many die in casino fires - they are roach motels.

Time was - in my lifetime - that Vegas was the only place where gambling was legal.  Now there is a casino of one sort or another within 30 minutes of your home - or on your phone.   It is easier than ever to ruin yourself.  Or ruin yourself at the ultimate casino - the stock market - where speculative stocks trade at hundreds of times their earnings, and stocks are hyped online and CEOs treated like celebrities.

And of course, there is good old fashioned predatory lending - something that also didn't exist when I was young, as consumers could stiff the banks by declaring bankruptcy.

Of course, you could argue - and I do - that one can avoid all these financial traps by being smart.  You can avoid gambling debt by not gambling.  You can avoid credit card debt by not spending on stupid things like delivery food and $5 $10 coffee drinks, and by paying off your credit card balance once a month.  If that requires too much discipline, use a debit card or pay cash - I see many people do, and there is no shame in it, only virtue.

But alas, not everyone has that level of self-control, and even those that do, rarely have it all the time.  We all fail at life from time to time - no one is perfect.  And when you fall, the banks and casinos won't be there to cushion the blow, but rather kick you in the nuts and steal your wallet.

We no longer, as a society, look out for one another.

Battery-Powered LED Lights - A Waste of Money?

Depending on the features, the batteries may last only a few days or weeks.

We are flooded with cheap products from overseas, mostly Asia (formerly "The Orient" but that is now considered a slur for some reason).  Some products are real values - low cost, well made, and supported by a company that stands behind their work.  Others are shoddy merchandise, barely functional, but inexpensive.  Still others leave you scratching your head, "why would I want to buy this?"

LEDs have revolutionized the lighting industry.  Our gallery has maybe 100 or so "halogen" track fixtures that had 50 Watt bulbs in each fixture.  That's 5000 Watts! And the heat generated, while welcome in the winter, was oppressive from Spring onward.  It was like standing under a heat lamp!  We had the same problem in our kitchen at home, on a smaller scale, of course.

Today, we have replaced all the halogen bulbs with 3600K warm white LED bulbs, drawing 5W each.  That not only reduced our power consumption for lighting by a factor of 10, but also reduced the heat load on the building, reducing air conditioning costs somewhat. Well, actually more than somewhat - about 15,000 BTUs, or enough to run three small window unit air conditioners (!!).

So LEDs are here to stay.  No, they generally don't last ten years (as was promoted) in my experience, but they do last longer than incandescent bulbs, and now that the cost has come down, are economically competitive even without the energy savings advantages.

Of course, we had to learn a whole new lexicon of LEDs - lumens, Kelvin, and so on.  Gone are the days of the 100W Warm White.  It has been replaced by a much more efficient LED.  And some lights are programmable to different frequencies.  Want soft lighting for your living room?  Flick a switch and you have 2000K or 3600K for that cozy look.  Need bright light for a work space?  Flick the switch back and you have 5000K.  Neat!

Even more fun are LEDs that change color, either on demand, or in patterns of pulsing disco lights.  This is where it gets interesting.  The big-box stores often have "puck lights" (as shown above) that come in a 3- or 6-pack and run on three AAA batteries each.  Accompanying them is a remote control that runs on a CR2025 "button" battery and allows you to turn the lights on and off and select colors, patterns, or brightness.  Since they are alarmingly cheap, they are often an impulse buy - and conveniently placed near the checkout.

Don't buy them.

Why?  Well, any battery powered LED light that relies on a remote control to work is a non-starter.  Even when "off" the lights are still "on" in that the control circuit in each "puck" is running - waiting and scanning for commands from the remote.  It it wasn't, the remote would not work.  So after a week or two, the batteries wear down, and chances are, you've already spent more on batteries than the darn things cost to begin with.  Disgusted, you throw them out.

Of course, you could use rechargeable batteries, as I do.  But these are Nickle Metal Hydride types that put out a slighly lower voltage than the disposable alkaline type.  By the way, avoid Duracells - after Berkshire Hathaway bought the company, they tend to leak, which deposits noxious goo in your electronics, often corroding contacts or just frying circuits.  Be warned!  Rechargables work OK, but you just end up recharging them again and again, in these LED puck lights.

LED puck lights that have a simple ON/OFF switch seem to work OK - the batteries lasting months, with infrequent use.  Since the device is OFF when you turn it off, there is no battery drain.

Mr. See wanted another kind of LED light, a pair of wall sconces with shades.  Again, they were alarmingly cheap, so I said OK, as this keeps the peace, and I think he needs to buy crap like this on occasion to remember why it is a bad idea to buy crap like this.

They look like this, only in black

They were, however, interesting lights.  First of all, they were cheap - $39 at WalMart - but many other sites advertise them for $179 or more (!!).  The actual fixtures are U/L style 110V fixtures, right down to the mounting hardware (designed to attach to a circular or hexagonal wall box).  It would take little effort to wire them for 110V.  Even the lamp "socket" was a U/L approved style socket with an "Edison Thread" (talk about the Mother of backward compatibility!) ready to accept a 60W Incandescent.

But of course, it was not wired.  Instead, it came with two "bulbs" that mimicked the look of an incandescent bulb, right down to the Edison thread.  But here's where it gets weird.  The bulb came apart in two pieces.  The bottom part threaded into the fixture and was just a mounting point.  It attached to the top part by magnet.  The top part had the LED light and circuitry and battery, with a USB-C charging port.  So, to charge, you just yank the top part of the bulb out of the fixture and charge with your cell phone cable.

So far, they haven't needed a charge, probably because they use a Lithium-Ion battery and not alkaline batteries.  There is a remote, and yes, you can select from a rainbow of colors or patterns (Why?  For parties, I guess).  So, over time, they will discharge themselves.  It will be annoying, as what will happen is we will go to use them one day, only to find the batteries dead.  So we will charge the bulbs and put them back, and forget about them until months later - when the process repeats.  This is how puck lights get thrown away.

At least these fixtures are readily convertible to 110V with a little wiring.  So there's that.

We also found some motion-sensor LED cabinet lights for $5 each at Dollar Tree.  The cabinets in the camper are dark inside and these lights attach with velcro or even magnets.   They are long and narrow and very bright.  They have an internal Lithium-Ion battery and USB-C charging port.  When you open the cabinet, the motion activates the light.  Close the cabinet, the light goes out.  Easy to install (no wiring needed) and cheap.

But again, the motion sensor is always "on" so after a few weeks, the batteries go dead and I have to remove them and plug them in.  I suppose if I was ambitious, I could snake some really long USB cables (like the old ones I bought at a truck stop years ago) to a USB power supply and they could continuously charge when the camper is plugged in.  But that just smacks of effort.

Anyway, I came to realize that almost every battery powered LED light we've bought that has a remote control feature (particularly those that use alkaline batteries) are pretty worthless.   Sure, they are cheap to buy, but you'll spend more on batteries just right out of the box, than you did on the lights themseleves.  And when you really want or need to use these lights, the batteries will be dead.  You can buy new batteries and double-down on this idiocy, with the same result.

Go Lithium-Ion or go with an LED light that doesn't have a sensor or remote control - or forgetaboutit!

Online Cards, Invitations, Etc. - Just Don't!

The latest scam going around Old People Island is the fake Punchbowl invite.

We call it "Old People Island" as the average age here is (or was) 74 when we moved here in our virgin 40's.  Well, now we are the old people - has it been 20 years already?  It seems we measure our time from trash day to trash day (is this week recycle?) or by the monthy changeover to a new show at the gallery.  Right now, we are at the "sweet spot" where the weather isn't too hot and the tourists seem to have fled.  Evening buggy rides in the cool weather to watch the sunset are sublime.

Mark gets an e-mail with an "invitation" to a party through a third-party site called "Punchbowl" - yet another "silicon" valley startup idea that solves a "problem" no one has - how to invite people over to your house for drinks (I dunno, maybe call them?  Too obvious, I guess).  Anyway, it seems the invite was  fake, even though the return address was from a friend of ours - the first sign it was a scam.

You see, if you stoop to using "Punshbowl" (why, dear God, why?) they will send out "invitations" to the people you select, but the return address for the invite will be from a Punchbowl e-mail server.  I mean, after all, if they used your actual e-mail address, the guests would simply hit "reply" instead of going though Punchbowl!  And we can't have that - people socially interacting without using some sort of social media intermediary.  The horror!

It was a pretty slick e-mail, which sounds hard to do, unless you have an ounce of computer savvy and realize that anyone can copy an html page and then paste it to their own website.  So it looked "legit" until you get to a page asking you to "login" to your e-mail by providing .your username and password.  Sadly, many fall for this gambit, and now the "hackers" have all they need to log into your e-mail account, unless you have multi-factor authentication.

But even then, there are ways of "social engineering" that data - by sending another e-mail or text, saying they are the ones sending the code to "verify" you and would you please enter it now?  And sadly, people do just that - and the bad guys win.

Like any good virus, the first thing it wants to do is replicate.  So, once they have your login information, they login, and then send the same fake "invitation" to everyone on your contacts list.  If even one in a hundred bite on the apple, well, the thing will spread like wildfire, globally.

But a virus isn't a virus unless it causes some sort of harm or damage or changes things, right?  What are they after other than a desire to spread?  Well, just harvesting valid e-mail addresses is one "win" for them, and knowing which targets are vulnerable (read: willing to fall for the scam in the first place) is also a win.  By reading all of your e-mails they might be able to glean some demographic data, for example, which banks you do business with or maybe even a credit card number - if the victim is dumb enough to put that in an e-mail communication.

Of course, changing your password right away is one way to try to shut it down.  Problem is, a bot may have logged in and scraped your contacts list and even read all your e-mails (and scraped more e-mail addresses from that!) within minutes, so the damage is already done.  They usually don't try to change your login credentials (which would lock you out of your own e-mail) but that's not to say it has never been done.

Even after you change your password, they may still send SPAM to your friends in your name.  About a year or so ago, a company that managed our condo for us got hacked, and even today, I get e-mails ostensibly from "Joe Smith" (not his real name) but from a nonsense e-mail address, exhorting me to open attached documents with "recent photos" or our "upcoming itinerary."   I cannot unsubscribe from these, of course, so they keep popping up in my SPAM box, for years, each message a gentle reminder that Joe Smith (or his assistant) is not very net-savvy and maybe it is best we sold that condo after all.

I suppose there are other exploits a scammer could try, once you give them your username and password.  Google (gmail) in particular, wants you to do one-stop shopping, and links your credit card information to your Google account.,  The hacker would still need the CVV2 security code, of course, but no doubt social engineering would yield that.

EDIT: I realize the main goal of the scam isn't to target the initial recipient, but the contacts extracted therefrom.  The person who clicks on the Punchbowl scam becomes the virus carrier.  The real infection is the scam e-mails I get from "Joe Smith" exhorting me to open virus attachments.  Since the e-mail appears to be from a close friend or business associate, we tend to let our guard down.  "It's from good old Joe!  He would never send me a virus!"  But the e-mail isn't from him, of course.  And the virus attachment could be a keyboard logger that captures the login information for your bank the next time you login.

Worse yet are sites that allow you to log in through Google (don't ask me how that works!) and once in, they can buy things and hit "buy now" and it will automatically charge your credit card.  Looking at you, Amazon and eBay!  However, most e-commerce sites recognize a  new device and ask for multi-factor authentication.  So, I presume one is safe there - let's hope, anyway!

So maybe there is no real danger to these phishing attempts, other than harvesting your e-mail address (and those of your friends).  That, and the social embarrassment you will get when people realize you fell for a scam.

But how to avoid this?  Online sites exhort us not to click on links, enter passwords, etc. - the obvious stuff, of course.  I could go one further and say, JUST STOP USING THESE STUPID INVITATION AND E-CARD SITES!  And yes, I am shouting.  There is really no legitimate reason to use these sites and services - the "inconvenience" of writing down a guest list and sending out invitations is not that great.  Send out an e-mail to yourself and bcc your invitees!  How hard is that?

And I wonder, if you read the "Terms of Service" of these sites, if they don't agree and you consent to them harvesting your e-mail address as well as those of the addressees to your soiree, to be sold or whatever.   It just makes no sense whatsoever.  And no, it is not personal, in fact it is more impersonal.

We get the occasional Christmas or Birthday card this way, and every time, we are reluctant to "open" them for fear of a scam. Some sites notify the sender that you didn't read the card, and the sender may e-mail you haranguing you to do so!  (Why not send an e-mail in the first place?).  So we click on the link and hold our breath as we carefully navigate through pirates' cove, hoping to avoid rogues and bandits.  What's not to like?

Sadly, it seems like so much else coming from "silicon" valley (which is now bullshit valley) are business models like this which make little or no sense - solving trivial lfe problems or problems that no longer exist.  Perhaps sites like Punchbowl are the reason people no longer have cocktail or dinner parties, but instead meet up in bars and restaurants.  Perhaps.

Of course, this "AI" fad is just more of the same, on a much, much larger scale.  It is sad, but so much money is being thrown at AI with little to show for it.  Moronic chatbots provide little or no information - or flatly wrong information.  The user ends up talking to Sanjay ("Chuck" he calls himself) in Bangalore or, better yet, Steve in Manilla.  Watch out, India, the Philippines are in your rear-view mirror, catching up fast!

Companies are laying off workers in favor of "AI" and running up huge bills with AI providers (if they are not in fact, creating their own "agents.")  The staggering cost of data centers far outweighs the cost of blood-and-bone humans, who at least are accountable for their errors.  The whole thing just smacks of the "blockchain" hysteria of a few years back (whatever happened to that?).  CEOs are desperate to latch on to the "latest-and-greatest thing" lest they be viewed as retrograde or their stock options tank along with the share price.

But I digress.  If online invites are "technology" then we all need to spend more time offline.