Apple's M2 Pro MacBook

is a wicked fast production machine. The Spy's reader will recall he got one to replace his 2019 MacBook Pro, which has never been very rugged, reliable or power smart, and has now been relegated to recording his lectures and uploading them to Streams. The new machine never gets warm even when in heavy use, and he still does not know what the fan sounds like, if indeed it has one.

On boot it pauses to think for a bit, but once it satisfies itself it knows where it is and what it's doing, the boot process is faster than any previous machine the Spy has used. As day's end he employs Carbon Copy Cloner to back up his files partition to a SanDisk SSD that fits in his shirt pocket (when he can find an old shirt...new ones don't have pockets...what are they thinking?) and typically the examination of some 57K files and subsequent backup of, say from 2.5 to 6 G of changed items for the day takes from ten to twenty seconds total. Nice. He restores that partition to his home machine on arrival home, then repeats in reverse in the morning--using a different backup partition for each machine of course. Both home and office setups also do time machine and hourly, weekly, and monthly backups automatically throughout the day. He does not very often lose files.

However, the machine is not without its awkward quirks. Persuading this workhouse to fulfill its promise to drive multiple external monitors took some time and experimentation. One could hang a monitor off each of the three TB4 ports and the HDMI port, for a total of four. (The Spy uses a mere three external monitors in both home and office configurations.) Note that the older sibling M1 machine can only handle two external monitors. However, four is a lot of cables, and leaves no room to attach that backup SSD, camera, microphone, disk reader, etc.

So, what about a dock? Here the Spy favours the OWC TB docks, which he has used through several iterations. On his hacked 2010 and 2012 Mac Pro towers running Catalina, he installed a "Gigabyte" TB3 back plane card to a TB3 dock, hanging two monitors off that, and taking the third from the card's second TB3 port via an HDMI dongle. This worked, except that his Apple TB2 monitor often forgot it was connected and had to be unplugged from power and re-plugged to find its way most mornings. In addition, the dock itself is not recognized by the system on cold boot with the TB card installed. One must boot, unplug the dock's power, plug it back in, then do a warm restart.

Meanwhile, his older portables were connected to TB2 docks. Monitor output from both docks went through KMS switches for HDMI and DisplayPort, but his one Apple branded TB2 monitor's cable has to be switched back and forth manually as there are no TB2 KVS switches available.

The new MacBook Pro is a little more picky. It wants either a TB3 or a TB4 dock, (not a TB2 with downshifting) and requires that if one has a monitor with a Mini DisplayPort connection, it be hung from the dock, not downshifted directly from one of the computer's TB4 ports with a dongle. So, the Spy picked up a new (smaller footprint) TB4 dock from OWC and rigged it up this way (after experimenting with assorted configurations of cables) and the setup does work, though the machine complains that the USB devices are consuming too much power. He'll feed more into his USB multiports and see if that helps. But he loses one cable, because the connecting cable to the TB4 dock can pull 96W of power one way while sending data the other. Nice. Bottom line: The M2 is a winner, though it is a little raw around the edges as a workhorse and needs some fine tuning on the OS to play nicer with external monitors and to consistently remember that it has an external eyboard. Just a little disquiet here, no great discontent.

AI has provoked much discontent lately,

even panic in some quarters--somewhat akin to the "replacement" mania over immigration, which is not even a veneer over increasingly open and ugly racism. Interestingly, the debate over whether AI could someday become human equivalent has already raged among academics for some decades, the provocative polar views being summarized in Minsky's slogan "the human mind is a machine made of meat" and Penrose's book title on the subject "The Emperor's New Mind". The Spy will go with Nobel prize winner Roger Penrose on this one. It ain't gonna happen folks. Read the book.

Indeed what's currently on offer, though gaining headlines and much angst, is almost laughably incompetent. Asked "Who is Rick Sutcliffe" it managed to come up with the former Cubs' pitcher. Not bad. On narrowing the search by adding first "the computing scientist" and finally "at Trinity Western University" it gradually did better, getting as far as "Science Fiction Author" before listing his book titles, none of which the Spy had ever heard of, all of which were written by authors unknown to him. In short, it fills in information voids by making up easily refuted nonsense lacking the slightest scintilla of fact.

Humans who did the same thing used to be excoriated as liars and treated as pariahs, but now they can rape women, fabricate conspiracy theories out of nothing, get elected to high office, deny a multimillion vote loss of said post, incite an insurrection against the legitimate winning candidate, proclaim solidarity with Putin the butcher, yet not only be praised to the skies, but even be compared to Jesus Christ, and by people who ought to know something about right and wrong, yet persist in believing he will do what they want. AI indeed. Such people never do the will of others, their unbending motto (once said to the Spy by a wannabe Church dictator) is "When I am in charge I do as I please." How about some RI (Real Intelligence)?

...and speaking of VP

one has to shake one's head at the cruel irony of the Capo Kremlin accusing the perps who sent drones against Moscow of terrorism. But, perhaps he has something there. Daily indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas in another nation's capital city does seem like a terrorist act, does it not? How about the thousands of war crimes committed by his troops and hired mercenaries? And now the South African government is considering amending its laws so it need not heed the ICC warrant for VP's arrest on charges of war crimes. Really?

Much more disquieting

is the general rise of extremism on all parts of the world stage. In this regard it is important to keep in mind that to the ordinary Josephine on the street there is no distinction between Fascism and Communism. Are Putin, Xi , and all the other tin pot (would be) dictators communists or fascists? Are their "anti-democratic by force" policies and practices leftist or rightist? Do they care what other types of governments they interfere with or war against to extend their brutal influence? Not in the least. They want power over others, the wrapper label around that power is inconsequential. Fear not the rise of AI; fear instead the rise of those who lay claim to the real thing, but are racists, misogynists, rapists, and liars, who lust after dominance over all within their reach, brook not a whisper of dissent, and who ultimately utterly destroy everyone and everything they cannot control and bend to their will.

The bottom line here is that human civilization is not in imminent danger from AI, but it is in real and present danger from enemies within and without. The Spy's textbook The Fourth Civilization--Technology, Society and Ethics presents a somewhat idyllic view of a "could be" future, but the fifth edition will contain many more warnings about what could go (and seems to be going) horribly, terribly, wrong. Discontent indeed.

QES

Quite enough said.

--The Northern Spy

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author's own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is professor of Computing Science and Mathematics and Assistant Dean of Science at Canada's Trinity Western University. He completed his fifty-third year as a high school and university teacher in 2023. He has been involved as a member of or consultant with the boards of several organizations, and participated in developing industry standards at the national and international level. He was co-author of the Modula-2 programming language R10 dialect project. He is a long time technology author and has written two textbooks and ten alternate history SF novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His various columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (dead tree and online formats) since the early 1980s, and he's been a regular speaker at churches, schools, academic meetings, and other conferences. He and his wife Joyce celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2019 and lived in the Langley/Aldergrove/Bradner area of B.C. from 1969 to 2021, where he latterly continues alone, depending heavily on family and friends to manage.

URL s for Rick Sutcliffe's Arjay Enterprises:

The Northern Spy Home Page: https://www.TheNorthernSpy.com

opundo : https://opundo.com

Sheaves Christian Resources : https://sheaves.org

WebNameHost : https://www.WebNameHost.net

WebNameSource : https://www.WebNameSource.net

nameman : https://nameman.net

General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe's Books:

Author Site: https://www.arjay.ca

TechEthics Site (Fourth edition of text; the fifth is in preparation) : httpss://www.arjaybooks.com/EthTech/index.htm

Publisher's Site: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Richard-Sutcliffe.html