Google Scrapes the Barrel

Image borrowed from Quartz

Today, the notification below arrived, and immediately thought to myself, "Wow, Google.  You are really scraping the barrel."

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We are reaching out to notify you of an upcoming update to our storage policies, along with new controls designed to give you more control over your Android backups.

The Policy Update: Effective in 45 days, all data included in your Android device backups will begin counting toward your Google Account storage limit. Photos and videos in Google Photos and MMS data already count toward your Google Account storage today. With this change all other backed-up data such as SMS messages, call history, device settings, and app settings will also count toward your Google Account storage. The storage used by your device backup may increase once this policy takes effect. If your Google Account exceeds its storage limit, your automatic backups will pause until you free up space or upgrade your plan.

New Controls for You: With this change, we are also introducing granular app backup toggles in your Android backup settings. If you are on Android 9 or higher, you can now select exactly which data types and individual apps you want to back up, ensuring you only use storage for what matters most to you.

Your current storage status:

Your estimated increase in Android device backup will be 0.05 GB after this change. 

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Is all this really necessary? I guess they have to somehow recoup all those billions they are throwing at their AI somehow.

When they actually begin to charge a fair price for cloud storage, perhaps I will change my mind.. Local storage is cheaper and folks should turn away from this nonsense.

I maintain that Google is just a like a drug dealer.  They give you services for free for years, then about-face and start charging you.  They were not always that way.  The internet was not always this way.

A Hot Weekend in Arkansas

Heading south into Arkansas again, the weather was clear and extremely hot, with a level of humidity that left things a bit disgusting.  Rain was promised for the entire weekend.  We knew better though.  At this time of the year, it was just as much of a lie and guess as it is in Kansas City.

Crossing Bull Shoals Lake on the Ferry, temperatures hovered around 34°C.  There was not a breath of wind to be found for a little relief, even in the crossing itself, causing us to finally give in to air conditioning for the remainder of the trip.  Pausing in Yellville for an bit of art, we decided to pursue a coarse towards US-65 so that we might intercept sustenance at one of our favorite locations.

Saturday temperatures and humidity were not much different from the day before, encouraging the world to seek shelter indoors or in the lake. A morning hike at Mossy Bluff left me soaked enough that I decided I might as well be in the lake, and subsequently threw myself in as much.  A follow-up detour down to Cabot left everyone in Heber dealing with the promised rain in a fierce little storm we did not have the opportunity to make as much as a passing acquaintance with, beyond the backwash.

It did cool things down, making Sunday a bit more presentable, though only for a little while.  A relatively early jaunt down to wander the perimeter of Woolly Hollow Lake ended in disappointment.  Usually, that hike ends with a dip in the lake to cool things down.  Said water body lacked in the usual depth, showcasing bathtub temperatures, and weird green things floating in the unusually murky depths.  It stood in stark contrast with the previous day at Greers Ferry, where one could easily 2 meters down, and so that is where I returned to quench my thirst for floating about.

Satisfied with good company and good food, we turned our thoughts and vehicle homeward on Monday.  We diverted through the Bluffton Preserve on the Archey Fork on whim, as a previous visit to the location found it partially closed for hunting.  Suspecting that nobody was much interested in chasing beasts through the burning rainforest, we found it perfect for a little off road adventuring, puddle-jumping and rock-skipping.  

Very likely the most satisfying part of the journey turned out to be discovery that a local community had joined forces to take over the land and maintenance of South Mountain Scenic Overlook, thereby thwarting future commercial development next to our favorite little coffee shop and scenic overlook.

Tao Verse 18

"If you need rules to be kind and just ... virtue is absent."

 

CORI, my new App

Completely and accidentally, I named my own Power BI application today.  It started with me trying to give it a title that emphasized exactly what it is, a "Consolidated Organizational Reporting Interface."

It is a word salad of sorts, but after staring it for a moment, I realized it had a name.  "CORI."  Now it just needs representation.

I could have designed something but that would have taken weeks.  AI to the rescue.  Gemini failed and I was truly disappointed, after having considered it much more creative than my other alternative.

Copilot offered up the following results, which were much better than I anticipated. The header image on this post is what Gemini came up with, and could do no better with additional prompts.

Copilot response (above):  Generated.

When asked, "What if it looked like a person?"

Copilot Response (image above):  I generated a personified version of CORI as a professional reporting and analytics ambassador.

I prompted further, "Can you make it race neutral?"

Copilot Response (image above):  I've generated a more neutral, stylized corporate mascot version of CORI that avoids strongly emphasizing any specific demographic characteristics while keeping the professional analytics-focused branding.

I further prompted, "Is is possible to go more gender neutral?"

Copilot Response (image above):  Yes. A better approach for a corporate reporting platform mascot is often to move away from a human altogether and use a branded character.  I generated a version where CORI is represented as a neutral data-avatar/mascot built from the brand colors and analytics theme. This avoids drawing attention to gender, race, age, or other personal characteristics and tends to work better for organization-wide branding.

A Return to Vegas

A return to Las Vegas found it much the same as I had left it two years ago on my first journey into Sin City.  The only remarkable difference proved to be the absence of grandstands for the Grand Prix and the temperature; the latter ensured those not eager to gamble stayed close to the pool only to venture out after the sun fell out of the sky.  October is undoubtedly a better time to visit than June.

For me, conference activities kept me busy through most of the daylight hours.  This engagement carried through to a little pool time in the early evening, before venturing out into the night.  It also prevented much wandering about out of a need to be fresh for more conference activities in the morning hours.  A lack of grandstands offered a better view of The Fountains of the Bellagio and I lingered about that area, primarily.

The hosts of the event offered a bit of sustained entertainment on the final evening there, though not outside of that quarter.  A brief walk through the casino and across the bridge spanning the strip setup an evening of good music, food and beverages under the desert sky.

Very likely, the most interesting part of the journey was as it always is; the view from just behind the wing, high above the earth.  This one activity continually offers the most intriguing sights to be witnessed anywhere and never looks the same twice.