So I got access to Bard, Google’s AI. And I thought to ask it about the upcoming Greek elections which were announced today.
So far so good. Up to date and pretty good summaries. But it made me suspicious, so I delved a bit deeper.
The problem became apparent. Based on popular articles on the internet, Bard is starting with what is the official line (propaganda) of the Greek government. Makes sense. But as soon as I insist on a specific topic, it reverses that summary.
In fact not a single of the positive initial claims in its summary stood up to a simple second question. I particularly enjoyed its extremely accurate summary of how far back Greece is in terms of e-government, a sector in which most Greeks have believed government propaganda.
In fact the harder you push, the better a summary you get.
In all I am impressed. Sure, those not bothering to ask a second question, or those not asking something specific will only get a superficial answer. But Bard is amazing at locating the real issues and answering them succinctly. I used to consider Wikipedia the best source of balanced answers but Bard is now my No1.
As many wonder if anything will be done to avoid another tragic train collision in Greece I can already answer this with certainty: nothing at all will change. How do I know? Because many Greeks still think we did “great” in the COVID pandemic!
Source – Worldometer – 9 March 2023 totals (but the ranking has been like that for a while)
You can choose various metrics to measure how well a country did but deaths seems the most solid one to focus on. Over time there aren’t really many ways to count them like cases. Greece is the 14th worse country on the planet in terms of COVID related deaths. Quite an achievement. Above Italy, the Italy we all pitied at first, above Brazil, above the USA and UK who many made fun of at various stages of their response. Excess mortality, quite a clear figure to work with, does not lie. Greece failed. Big time.
Source: Our world in Data
Greece didn’t fail on a single instance. Sure, at first nobody knew what to do. Even Sweden (with much lower death rates than those in the chart above) made a mistake initially in how they handled elderly care homes, it was a brief upshot of deaths. But no, Greece systematically did worse than most countries. So many Greek politicians tried to blame other factors like the slightly higher average age of Greeks. But with no data to back their claims of course. And very similar countries like Portugal systematically faired much better.
And then when we look at the vaccination graph, it is the inverse. Portugal was doing better almost all the time. That blimp in December where Greece had an upshot was the rare occasion when the government actually did try to do something to force health workers and the elderly to get vaccinated. But they didn’t insist of course, then they retracted and people kept dying in the long term.
Others try to blame the Greek psyche, as if we are naturally problematic in following rules. But again the data is clear. Greeks are less rebellious than many other countries that did better in terms of deaths.
There are many specific mistakes to point out, such as the changes to the health system which suddenly made the case fatality ratio much much worse for Greeks. Which they never fixed even though the entire planet could see from the data that something was very very wrong.
The red line rises , then starts dropping, then in Greece – and only Greece – it shoots up again suddenly after the government had essentially crippled the health care system with irrational changes.
From a governmental point of view it takes some skill to consistently make bad decisions. Even by chance we could assume they would occasionally get one right. But the data shows something quite different. The Greek government systematically did the wrong thing at the wrong time or the right thing at the wrong time.
The Greek government was not only totally incompetent in terms of protecting its citizens’ health, it also wrecked businesses by shutting it down in ways and for long periods which were clearly not necessary. How do I know? Because we can compare European countries’ responses and again the Greeks did the wrong thing at the wrong time or the right thing way too late or way too early. It is as if most European countries were in sync and the Greeks simply refused to listen to everyone.
And this is how I know with certaintly that nothing will be done about train safety. Because despite this proven total failure of the Greek government that let to thousands of deaths there isn’t even a committee (like in other countries) retrospectively allocating blame and making suggestions for the future.
We can argue about minor or major methodological issues, specific Greek government responses or anything else you like. But the simple fact remains that this Greek government is responsible for a lot of deaths. You could call it simple incompetence. When matched with the fact that not a single retrospective correction has been made and all these deaths are not leading to a greater readiness for the next pandemic, I would call it murder.
It has featured in lists named like “Top 100 things to see in your lifetime” or equally click bait sounding titles from prestigious travel magazines. Half a volcano submerged, leaving a magically enchanting scenery which is truly breathtaking. But spending more than a day or two on Santorini is simply stupid. Here are the things worth doing, they all fit in a day:
Of course the sunset at Oia overlooking the caldera is magical. Unless there are too many people which is of course what happens at sunset. In fact it happens all day long at popular Instagramable photo spots. And try not to notice the rubbish which is everywhere even off season, you would think somebody would care but they don’t. In fact there is a huge rubbish dump with the same view!
The paths from Pyrgos to ancient Thira and Perissa, preferable with a sunrise included as they look East. Everybody raves about the sunset, unfortunately the idiots that run archaelogy in Greece keep sites closed instead of making it a thing. Signage is mediocre and the local buses a joke if you want to get back to where you started somehow. But you will get to see Pyrgos and Emporeio which are pretty and slightly less destroyed by tourism. (Which isn’t saying much.)
(Sure you can walk along ancient paths in Santorini. So do idiots that hunt little birds with no repercussions or control.)
Here are the things NOT to bother with:
The pathetic boat trips to the pretty miserable “volcanic” island. A desert rocky walk with a few smelly gasses and an equally disappointing swim in cold water which is slightly warmer here and there.
The famous Akrotiti buried ancient city. An incredibly important site which would be interesting if they hadn’t completely ruined it with the new cover and structure. I was lucky enough to walk in it with the older arrangement and it was infinitely more exciting. Now you just look over it and we weren’t even allowed to go down to the old city level “due to lack of staff”. If you do go, make sure to go to the equally disappointing museum of Prehistoric Santorini first so you at least get to see all “the good stuff” which they didn’t leave at Akrotiri. Strange how Greeks keep going on about the Elgin marbles being in London as they do exactly the same thing to all their antiquities, sending the most important finds to Athens or other more central museums.
Pretty much anything else anywhere on this horrible island. Terrible roads run through a poster child of how tourism completely destroys an area. Complete anarchy with rooms, villas or any other description of places to stay a night thrown anywhere they can, rubbish everywhere and a barren scenery with none of the magic of the Cyclades.
(Donkey dung, rubbish and one hell of a view: Santorini in a nutshell)
I would not put Santorini in my Top10 best Greek islands to visit before you die. Probably not even the top20. It is an environmental disaster with no water or power supply of its own, no infrastructure for the huge amounts of rubbish or other waste. In fact power and water outages are common in the summer. A day excursion from a cruise ship is more than enough to see the caldera. Move on after that to somewhere worth your money and time, somewhere without people that have such a short term approach to tourism. In many ways Santorini is the perfect illustration of modern Greek tourism. Everyone we spoke to, over worked, underpaid employees crammed into terrible housing and getting paid 600-700 euro a month, marvel how the tourists keep coming. A small dose of tzatziki can set you back 9 euro or more and room prices are even more crazy.
The whole premise of visiting this island hangs on a shoe string thanks to it’s one saving natural grace, the only thing they can’t destroy. So come see it before they find a way to ruin even that.
I enjoyed a recent Google blog analysis of the changes to advertising due to cookies being phased out. Google had tried something different, it didn’t go far enough for privacy advocates, now they are trying again. That’s life, a give and take between interested parties. Well, unless you are Apple. The Cupertino approach is to dictate anything they like, whenever they like, usually without advance warning. They have been doing it with everything from the plugs to their machines, to other standards, to features they simply kill suddenly.
Let’s take an example like Maps. Pretty essential tool. Does Apple think it will get away with just buying up some companies and occasionally updating maps of, well, North America? Amongst the gazillion things Google Maps does better is a simple callibration whereby you lift your phone, it looks around and figures out where you are. Why? Because Google bothered to drive around the entire planet. It has the images and the technology to process all that. And then it went a step further by crowdsourcing a constant stream of updates through it’s Google Maps contributor scheme. These aren’t just “nice little touches”, these are very serious stepping stones in achieving faster, better, more meaningful experiences to users.
Let’s take Siri. While the planet shoots ahead with voice search for more and more users, Apple is stuck in American English and an extremely limited real world application. Home automation? While Apple copies Tile (badly) and plays with a few retails sales, Google has paved a way through Google Home for thousands of developers and manufacturers to work together.
It is easy to say “we are dropping Flash next year” like Steve Jobs did so prematurely. What is hard is coming up with real world solutions so that stuff actually works, millions of websites and web developers need to find a way to do what they do tomorrow as well. “Oh Google is so dominant in search, it is easy for them” says anyone too lazy to think it through. Have you seen https://crowdsource.google.com/ ? Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are organized by Google to actually work on making AI what we all imagine it will become. A trillion data points can only get you so far. An army of volunteers are helping to get us a bit further, a bit faster. That takes community building, events. It takes transparency and information moving around freely. Things Apple never has done and shows no intention of ever doing.
They think that they can fool stockholders and markets with tricks like the M1. Some of us remember the last time they left Intel though. We all know how this ends in 3 or 5 years. Stunts like that can only go so far. In our globalized and extremely complex modern world even simple solutions that work need nurturing, explaining, selling to multiple interested parties. Real world problems take work to analyze and adress. It is more like gardening, yet Apple still wants to attack with a chainsaw all the time. Stop drinking the Kool Aid. It may not have cyanide, but it sure as hell has less and less of anything much better.
A trillion market cap is pretty impressive for a company that mainly sells to Americans. It’s not just the 8.5% global market share for computers that is pathetic. Nor the equally laughable share of global smartphones. Android is the defacto global standard, iOS is a joke. Yet for people living in Callifornia or New York (and them alone) it is important. And they are the people writing in tech magazines and blogs, they are the people in the media. They are the ones keeping the stock price so high for absolutely no reason.
It takes a lot to make a truly global company. Google develops its products in local languages, it makes tools we all rely on. Really rely on, not fancy toys. Things you can’t live without anymore. HP has local support. You know real support, real sales people, real local offices in every country in the world. Apple? Not even close! And they have never seemed to care. Too big to fail, too close to an all American symbol.
This does in fact present a real problem to users. With such a small loyal user base Apple doesn’t need to care about backwards compatibility, to take just one example. Unlike Windows or Android, they can just leave old users in the dust and demand you upgrade. It is amazing that I can still use a computer with Windows 95 for a lot of things (even running DOS applications!) or and old Android 4 phone. It will connect and work for most things unlike Apple devices. This is the real world of real responsibility. When major corporations, governments and institutions around the world rely on you, that is what you do, you care about connections and standards. You talk to other companies, you collaborate, you commit.
Not Apple. Despite popular perceptions, Apple doesn’t actually innovate. At all. They are great at marketing. Design maybe. Innovation? Not really. Not at all. If we talk purely tech they have nothing. The very public and obvious failures of their Maps app or Siri or anything that demands you to – well – actually work seriously on something, they simply can’t do it.
It’s a one horse pony. For a single market. And it’s time we all started treating it as such.
Clever street promo in Berlin which pops up at night. You know normal marketing from companies that sell computers that actually do the work the world runs on
Did Novak Djokovic really contract COVID? A simple antibody blood test would tell us. But it won’t happen. Because we failed on a global scale to curtail forgeries and tricks that render pandemic controls meaningless.
How easy is it to get fake proof that you have COVID? In most countries it is the same cost as any other COVID test. The person or lab doing the test is willing to write “positive” as the result. After all nobody can retrospectively prove otherwise, it may have been a false positive.
How easy is it to get fake COVID vaccination proof? Harder but also not impossible. After a long battle with Greek authorities, my partner just walked into a pharmacy in Berlin at the airport and got her American (genuine) vaccination paper converted to an official European certificate. 10 euro and 2 minutes in total. Could she have done it with fake papers? Hell yeah!
The tennis player just made public what we have all suspected from the first days of the pandemic. There is no way to force people to do anything unless you live in a dictatorship or an incredibly cohesive society. The country I lived in during the pandemic is a prime example of massive hypocrisy. Through a variety of measures the Greek government crippled the economy, destroyed most small and medium size businesses and managed to also kill an amazing number of people. Here is a small comparison during the time AFTER we all received vaccinations.
That’s right. Greece had more deaths compared to its population than similar countries. Or even countries we made fun of as inept. Since all European countries received the same number of vaccines, this was a clear test of governments and Greece obviously has one of the most useless in this respect.
An excellent example is the SMS lockdown measure. For a long time Greeks had to (theoretically) send an SMS before leaving their house. There were categories of reasons to leave the house and (theoretically) after receiving an SMS reply you had to show this to any policeman that stopped you during the curfew. In practice everyone went pretty much wherever they wanted. That is to say us law abiding people sent SMS and followed the lockdown rules but anyone not wanting to follow the rules, pretty freely roamed the land. Some people got fake excuse papers, others didn’t bother knowing that there was no way the police could stop and check everyone. Many of us law abiding citizens also bent the rules when “necessary” to be honest. Essentially let’s admit it, there was no actual rule being enforced.
This is pretty much what was happening globally. At every airport I visited during the pandemic the measures are laughable. In every line I waited to show my papers or flash some “proof” on my phone I couldn’t help but feel certain that a good percentage of the people in front of me have forged theirs. It is too easy to do and too difficult, if not impossible for the thousands of unqualified people suddenly thrust into being pandemic police to actually perform a proper check.
I only once got denied entry and that was incorrectly! A junior gate agent from Turkish Airlines incorrectly denied me entry to the airplane because she didn’t realize that the antigen test I showed her was in local United States time. I don’t blame her. She was alone, trying to figure out the complex rules for each country and receiving conflicting information from her superiors who are also trying to make sense of ever changing rules and regulations from every embassy in the world.
And therein lies the problem. A globalised world with insufficiently globalized information. Europeans managed to coordinate their vaccinations certificates eventually but it is by no means a safe, complete or conclusive system. Because we are dealing with medical data, anyone can throw a spanner in the works by claiming it is personal and sacred. Google and Apple built something amazing at the start of the pandemic but nobody wants to trust them. Politicians can’t deal with uncertainty but that is what science should always thrive towards.
Novak Djokovic raised a middle finger to all the people in the world who have been trying to keep a lid on the pandemic. He also raised the rally cry for antivaxxers and antisocial elements who can now scream “the king has no clothes”.
Moving the goalposts is an excellent phrase. Religions have got away with it for centuries. And in sport, when discussing who is the greatest player of all time is how the rest of us indulge. So taking basketball as an example, and the common “LeBron James vs Michael Jordan” debate, here are a few goalposts for you to use next time you play with someone:
“Basketball was different back then”. True. Also irrelevant. Unless you are trying to prove a point regarding some particular statistic, in which case it is so self evident that it is pointless. 0-0
“Jordan/LeBron had a better supporting cast”. LeBron changed many teams and built up different teams. Some use that against him with the “superteam” argument, most admit that the 2016 Cavaliers championship was one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports. In any case you have to give LeBron points for flexibility if nothing else. 0-1
“Republicans buy sneakers too”. It doesnt matter whether Jordan actually said that or not, the fact is that he never had the audacity to take on politically divisive issues like LeBron. Nowhere close. Even if you despise him as an athlete you have to bow in respect for what he dares outside the court. 0-2
It has also been well argued that the way that Michael Jordan was used as a token African-American athlete was in fact a form of white-washing that he was happy to go along with. LeBron on the other hand is always on the cutting edge of race relations, not letting anything slip by in terms of popular culture. 0-3
“Even Michael Jordan, with his gambling habit and ultra-competitive, combustible personality, could only live up to the image when certain of his traits were ignored.” (Bleacher report article) In this age of social media it is pretty clear that Jordan wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. Too many dead bodies in the closet at a time when the NBA was happy to be more like Disneyland. 0-4 (Jordan was super lucky to get away with all he did)
Philanthropy is an excellent example of their differences. LeBron from his early days was constantly making large and meaningful contributions to society, cullminating with his truly groundbreaking educational system which is being copied around the world. Jordan only recently started some minor give aways. 0- 5
5-0 to LeBron and you can only really counter possibly in point No2 regarding the supporting cast. Which is partly why I haven’t even included backetball statistic type arguments. Some sneaky sportscasters simply wait for any LeBron average to come down below Jordan’s to make a big fuss. That is not how it works. At the equivelant number of games LeBron is still ahead in a number of meaningful statistics and/or it is too close to call.
What is clear is that LeBron is a better rounded player, succesful in a number of roles with more rebounds, more assists and more of well everything that Jordan never bothered doing. Saying that Jordan was GOAT because he is higher up in one or another stat is like saying that Senna was the greatest F1 driver because he did really well in the rain.
Many LeBron haters try to downplay his statistics by saying he simply stuck at the game longer. Which is an easy (and important) 6-0 in this scoring system. LeBron is central to the NBA and world basketball for more years in an active and energetic way. More than anyone else. Even as the NBA actively tries to build up more superstars in these past years as a central marketing strategy, LeBron manages to remain not only relevant, but a key part of every re-invention the league thinks of. Michael Jordan was crucial to the NBA at a particular point in time, helping it reach new audiences. LeBron has been doing exactly the same thing , spanning multiple eras. And for longer.
And that is the easiest definition of a G.O.A.T. anyway you look at it.
We have a lot of forest. Since the second world war Greece’s forest coverage has increased. I remember the first time I went walking in England with an Ordnance Survey map how shocked I was that every single tree was on the map. This would be impossible in Greece, we have a lot of wild forests, vast forests even near big cities like Athens.
People and property are (thankfully) rarely truly in danger. Sure, in Mati a few years ago, a unique combination of inept politicians and other issues caused a tragedy. But in general, even though fires go near houses, they rarely burn them. Partly because in Greece we build earthquake resistant houses with cement, not wooden toy houses like in America.
Fires are started by either the power company (pylons in forested areas badly maintained causing sparks), people burning old fields or spare material and cigarettes which are often thrown out of cars awaiting the right heat and wind combination. There has been very limited and not really convincing evidence of foreign powers or other conspiracies.
Greece has awesome firefighting capabilities. If you could see the recent fire that came within 500meters of my home you would be impressed. Watching the scene from above I almost pitied the fire, it was like a scene from a film with a constant stream of firefighting helicopters, airplanes and drones attacking it. Targeted shots right on whatever little flame dared appear. It never had a chance. Also importantly the coordination of these vehicles and land firefighters is much improved recently.
The media always hypes things up. They will do anything for an impressive shot. Go to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere and title it “houses burning” or find an old car someone left in the forest to say that “property destroyed”. Anything you see on the news…cut it by half at least. Also combine it with increased risk aversion on the part of government officials, the “better safe than sorry” approach which I guess is justified. We get evacuation messages even if there is very very little danger.
Yes, this is global warming. Of course it is. Erratic rains late in the summer ensure a lush undergrowth and then extreme heat turns it into tinder. Get to Greece on holiday as soon as possible, last chance to see before it gets turned into one big desert. Unless we all think of something clever (and DO something) we have maybe 10-20 years of it still being the paradise that it is.
Me and the media. They are looking for a dramatic shot and I am looking for trouble trying to persuade them to be more accurate in their reports
Look at the market share. Globally Android has 73% of the mobile operating market and iOS 26%. But in Africa it is more like 83% vs 14%. Only in North America is Apple ahead. And this has repercussions which I am amazed the rest of the world puts up with.
Unlike Google that tries to build products for humans all over the world, Apple is simply catering to its locals. It’s not just the languages it doesn’t bother including. It’s entire distribution and support is focused on the US, UK, France and a few other countries. That’s it. Apple has always acted – and still acts – as if it is a little Callifornian company that made it big. In America. And it doesn’t care about anyone else. The rest of the world can adapt to the products.
Is it working? Sure. The profits speak for themselves. Is it good for customers? Only if you are American. Here in Greece where I live, if you have a Mac computer you are the proud third minority after Windows (84%) and Linux (9%) as Apple only has 3% market share. Good luck getting any sort of support for your product, most Mac owners struggle to find a friend that knows what they can do about any issue. And they end up paying through the nose for good tech to help them out.
Globally OS X commands just 15% market share, even in the United States all those iPhone users aren’t buying as they total just 28% compared to 62% Windows users and even Chromebooks are making an attack and becoming popular. Yet somehow Apple isn’t irrelevant. Is it through innovation? Heck no! I would disregard their recent relative success with their own chipsets, it is a short lived fluke much like all those years when they were going to “burn Pentiums to the ground”. M1 is a party trick that fools only Apple die hards. No IT manager is falling for it because we all know Apple never sticks to anything long term. It is a marketing company, not a tech pioneer.
Is it important? I would say that it is a problem we need to take care of. It skews the market in a big way. A bad way. There are plenty exciting technologies that get shelved behind all the media focus on Apple adding a new button to its iPhone or something equally stupid as that in Apple’s constant efforts to copy Android whilst making it look like it thought of something up on its own.
So is Google better? Hell yeah! While Apple spends ages dreaming up of new ways to get their phones to use a different dongle that costs 80 dollars for no good reason, Google is out there making products for the entire planet. Saving lost languages. Making useful products we all use everyday like Search, Maps, YouTube and so many more applications of its advanced Artificial Intelligence that actually helps the planet. They are giving away protein databases to scientists and the infrastructure on which so much of the modern world progresses on.
Google is global, Apple is American.
And there is nothing wrong with being American. As long as they don’t try and sell their extremely limited in purpose and use case products to the rest of the world. In fact the way Apple refuses to follow international standards and constantly blackmails developers into their walled garden is costing the world economy every day. We live in a globalized world. Amazing collaboration such as what we witnessed recently with the COVID-19 pandemic can only be achieved though open standards and transparency.
If Apple was into pharmaceutical vaccine and developed a vaccine, it would be ten times the price of competitors, incompatible with anything else, they would not reveal their research results and would expect everyone to pay every year for an update. So why are you letting them control the devices you use every day?
“…so ….efficient!” The sportscaster was struggling to find the right words after the Bucks won the championship. Giannis Antetokounmpo had some pretty impressive stats. But other than a few blocks was he spectacular? No, of course not. He never is. Despite his unique physical gifts, the man can’t even make a cool dunk. Unless you are Greek or a Bucks fan, the game he plays is boring. It is…European. As an NBA fan I am disappointed. I think Adam Silver is worried. This game can not just be about winning and…efficiency.
Everyone goes on and on about how Giannis worked hard and made it through adversity. Rightly so, it is an amazing true story and he is an awesome human being. But I didn’t sign up for a subscription to Reader’s Digest. I want my NBA back. The one with the show above all, the one where players focus on giving the crowd something unique to watch. Other than a few blocks, the Greak Freak is no freak at all. He is boring as hell. Ten years from now they will struggle to find anything to put in a show reel from his highlights.
Is it important? It is to me and it is to many of the NBA’s target demographics. We want stars that are stars, not “amazing hard working people”. I could go to a factory floor and watch that if I wanted to. Antetokounmpo is an anti star. He doesn’t hang out with other NBA players, he doesn’t train with them, he doesn’t know how to make an inspiring speech or even a fun meme. Already in the United States, rich white parents take their kids to soccer, not basketball. Giannis may be black, but he plays like a boring white person who wins through being gifted and working hard. Admirable. Not NBA though. It will make the rift even bigger.
In a strange way it is similar to the election of Obama. Despite the rhetoric, a simmering racism ensured that in the next elections Donald Trump won. There were many more racists annoyed at Obama’s presidency than could publicly vent during his tenure. Something similar is happening now with NBA fans. Giannis doesn’t feature in rap songs because well, he is boring, he is an anti star, he does nothing like all the true NBA stars that built the league. True NBA fans are sad today. We are simmering with rage. We are not racist of course. But we hate “efficient”, boring players like Antetokounmpo. When Kevin Durant slogs it out alone in Game7 it is epic. He generates stories, this is what the NBA is about. Giannis has one story, always the same story as his game does nothing to add to it, it is awesome, the boy that sold trinkets at traffic lights who went to the NBA. Fantastic. Let’s make it a movie. For DISNEY, not for the NBA.
I am Greek. Everyone here is ecstatic. I am sad they missed the whole point of what makes the NBA special. He was lucky to get a ring, now just watch as he fails spectacularly to even make it past the 1st or 2nd round in the playoffs the next years. Giannis Antetokounmpo should move to a European team as soon as possible and leave our league as we like it.
