Who’s afraid of AI? Not I

July 28, 2024
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Start a check in with Francesco
Let them know when you arrive at your destination.

— Siri Suggestion

A few days ago, out of the blue, I got this notification on my iPhone. Siri has been a constant letdown for me since its introduction 150 technology-years ago, and the few Siri suggestions I’ve received over time have never, ever been remotely useful. The most pattern-recognition work Siri has ever done to display a modicum of smartness was a year or so ago. For a few weeks, my wife and I started a habit of eating home-made pizza for dinner every Thursday. When the moment came to put the pizza in the oven, I would start a timer on my iPhone. Then it ceased to be every Thursday: one week was on Wednesday, another week on Friday, etc. But for a month, every Thursday at about the same time, I would receive a Siri suggestion to start the timer for the oven.

What struck me as particularly hilarious about this quoted Siri suggestion was the utter randomness of it all. First and foremost, Francesco is one of my best friends, but he lives in Italy and I live in Spain. We rarely communicate via phone, preferring Google Meet chats. ‘Starting a check in’ with him is probably the last thing I would need to do, given the circumstances. Let them know when you arrive at your destination is also hilarious, because that’s the kind of notification you would expect to receive while driving, maybe at night, maybe when you’re going back home after a night out. When I got this notification, it was mid-afternoon, I had headed down in the parking lot of my building to retrieve from the car a few items I’d forgotten there after the move. From a geolocation standpoint, I had not even left home. There really wasn’t a ‘destination’ I was ‘arriving’ at. 

I know I’m being very pedantic about this. It is, of course, not a big deal at all. But this is what you get out of Siri today. A supposedly smart assistant. Something that was introduced as being quite innovative.

Now let’s look at the first paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry for ELIZA. ELIZA is not a person, and I’m not shouting her name in Caps Lock. ELIZA is

…an early natural language processing computer program developed from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no representation that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party. Whereas the ELIZA program itself was written (originally) in MAD-SLIP, the pattern matching directives that contained most of its language capability were provided in separate ‘scripts’, represented in a lisp-like representation. The most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school (in which the therapist often reflects back the patient’s words to the patient), and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs. As such, ELIZA was one of the first chatterbots (‘chatbot’ modernly) and one of the first programs capable of attempting the Turing test.

ELIZA’s creator, Weizenbaum, intended the program as a method to explore communication between humans and machines. He was surprised and shocked that some people, including Weizenbaum’s secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program. Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those with psychological issues, and that it could aid doctors working on such patients’ treatment. While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, it could not converse with true understanding. However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA’s intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum’s insistence to the contrary. 

What’s happening with ‘AI’ today is pretty much the same thing. On the one hand, ‘AI’ tools — despite all the technological advances made since the 1960s — are at their core essentially, functionally the same as ELIZA. They are more sophisticated, sure, but simply because they have been fed enormous amounts of data which has been processed by much faster chips. On the other hand, there’s also the alarming similarity in how such tools are perceived. Some people project sentience and understanding on these ‘AI’ tools, but there simply is none. 

I’m not afraid of ‘AI’ not because I think it’s a positive thing, but because there simply is nothing behind it to be afraid of. There is no intelligence, no sentience, no technical innovation. Only what people project onto it — both the companies producing such tools, and certain segments of their userbase. In a way, what I find concerning about ‘AI’ is what surrounds it and how gullible people can be.

Arthur C. Clarke’s third law is the oft-quoted, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It’s a perfect fit for what ‘AI’ might look like today for some people. Language models, and large language models (LLM) are fascinating, but there isn’t any magic behind them. Just data processing. Which, thanks to the inexpensive, powerful hardware we have today, provides incredibly short computing and response times. 

‘Artificial intelligence’ is a marketing label applied to what is actually just machine learning. And machine learning, per se, isn’t really a sellable product. The problem is, in fact, finding a purpose for these ‘AI’ tools, and finding useful applications for them. The ‘bet on AI’ — unlike past ‘bets’ in the tech industry — isn’t a direction tech companies are deciding to follow after some technological discovery, innovation, or breakthrough. This bet is based on fooling enough consumers and tech-oriented audience into believing that ‘AI’ is the future and has some meaningful impact or utility in people’s lives. And while I don’t deny the developments and progress in the fields of large language models and neural networks over the past decades, ‘AI’ as it is today is more marketing than actual technology.

‘AI’ is the product of one of the most stagnant periods I’ve witnessed in the tech industry since the 1990s. I’m necessarily simplifying matters here, because the scope of the discourse would be otherwise deserving of an entire book, and a rather thick one too. The ingredients of what’s off in tech today are roughly these:

  • A lack of a proper breakthrough technology or product with an actual, useful, meaningful impact on common people’s lives.
  • A lack of visionary figures in tech, people with enough experience, brilliance, and acumen to come up with The Real Next Big Thing. Call me a Steve Jobs fanboy all you want, but after his passing, the void he left behind is only expanding.
  • The shift in focus on the part of most tech companies, where providing good-quality tools and user experiences for their customers doesn’t seem to be their primary concern anymore, whereas their obsession with growth has been increasing, reaching alarming and ultimately unsustainable levels.
  • A consequence of the previous bullet point is that, when a tech company reaches a point where it has little to offer but still wants profits and growth, it will hype whatever little it has to ridiculous proportions.
  • This in turn makes the tech landscape filled with a lot of smoke but little to no fire, so to speak. There’s a lot of empty talk, a lot of marketing pitches, a lot of buzzwords, a lot of hype for whatever product looks vaguely different and ‘out of the box’ at first sight — but very little substance behind.

It’s amazing to me that, after the huge hype-wave surrounding cryptocurrencies, web3 and stuff like that, that after all the empty promises and the actual, severely-damaging frauds perpetrated by some ‘crypto gurus’, we are expected to treat ‘AI’ as something different or useful, when it essentially is a similar plant growing out of the same kind of soil.

‘Artificial intelligence’ is a potentially more appealing label than ‘machine learning’ because it is quite evocative. People are familiar with the concept through all the science fiction they’ve been consuming for years. Artificial intelligence is the spaceship’s central computer that can be queried using natural language, that promptly analyses and understands all kinds of data in a situation, and provides solutions or at least meaningful guidance to solve an issue or prevent a disaster or gain some deep insight. Artificial intelligence is the sentient, helpful cyborg or android offering assistance or even doing all kinds of automated tasks that are too numbing or time-consuming for a human; again, fully understanding everything around it, perfectly contextualising tasks and queries, and acting accordingly. (But, as a comedian whose name now escapes me aptly put in a stand-up routine, Artificial intelligence is also HAL 9000 in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and why would we want that!?) 

The way AI works in these fictional scenarios is pretty much identical to the way human intelligence works; it’s a scenario where the singularity has already occurred and machines are self-sufficient pieces of equipment capable of researching data on their own, internalising it, elaborating it, and making deductions and projections. There’s a sort of implied omniscience, objectivity, and infallibility about them.

But there’s a fundamental problem the ‘AI industry’ is trying to sweep under the rug as quickly as possible, in the hopes that people won’t notice: ‘AI’ today is nothing like those evocative examples of ‘true’ artificial intelligence as depicted in many sci-fi scenarios. Companies and ‘AI gurus’ desperately want people to believe that we’re getting closer and closer to those scenarios, because they want people to buy into the idea of ‘AI’ — and the imperfect, unreliable, practically useless tools they’re presently concocting. If you want any proof of the extreme lack of vision in the tech industry right now, just look at how every tech company, no matter their size, has mindlessly jumped on the ‘AI’ bandwagon by either ‘developing’ or slapping some kind of ‘AI’ product or service or feature onto their current products or offerings. Instead of focusing on real technological progress for the betterment of humankind, they’re trying to legitimate the ‘AI’ Snake Oil by making it widespread. But a placebo is a placebo: the fact that you can find it everywhere doesn’t make it an actually effective cure for an illness.

I’ve only recently subscribed to the excellent Where’s Your Ed At? newsletter by Ed Zitron, and in the 16 July issue, titled Put Up or Shut Up, he makes great point after great point on the subject of ‘AI’. Subscribe and read the whole issue, which is definitely must-read material. I’ll quote some bits for now (there are a lot of links in the original text, which I have omitted here; subscribe to Zitron’s newsletter for more information):

These stories dropped around the same time a serious-seeming piece from the Washington Post reported that OpenAI had rushed the launch of GPT-4o, its latest model, with the company ‘planning the launch after-party prior to knowing if it was safe to launch,’ inviting employees to celebrate the product before GPT-4o had passed OpenAI’s internal safety evaluations. 

You may be reading this and thinking ‘what’s the big deal?’ and the answer is ‘this isn’t really a big deal,’ other than the fact that OpenAI said it cared a lot about safety and only sort-of did, if it really cared at all, which I don’t believe it does. 

The problem with stories like this is that they suggest that OpenAI is working on Artificial General Intelligence, or something that left unchecked could somehow destroy society, as opposed to what it’s actually working on — increasingly faster iterations of a Large Language Model that’s absolutely not going to do that. 

OpenAI should already be treated with suspicion, and we should already assume that it’s rushing safety standards, but its ‘lack of safety’ here is absolutely nothing to do with ethical evaluators or ‘making sure GPT-4o doesn’t do something dangerous.’ After all, ChatGPT already spreads election misinformation, telling people how to build bombs, giving people dangerous medical information and generating buggy, vulnerable code. And, to boot, former employees have filed a complaint with the SEC that alleges its standard employment contracts are intended to discourage any legally-protected whistleblowing. 

And:

The reality is that Sam Altman and OpenAI don’t give a shit, have never given a shit, and will not give a shit, and every time they (and others) are given the opportunity to talk in flowery language about ‘safety culture’ and ‘levels of AI,’ they’re allowed to get away from the very obvious problem: that Large Language Models are peaking, will not solve the kind of complex problems that actually matter, and OpenAI (and other LLM companies) are being allowed to accumulate money and power in a way that’s allowed them to do actual damage in broad daylight. 

And my favourite bit, later on (emphasis mine):

Generative AI’s one real innovation is that it’s allowed a certain class of scam artist to use the vague idea of ‘powerful automation’ to hype companies to people that don’t really know anything. The way to cover Thrive’s AI announcement [or any ‘AI’-related announcement — RM] isn’t to say ‘huh, it said it will do this,’ or to both-sides the argument with a little cynicism, but to begin asking a very real question: what the fuck is any of this doing? Where is the product? What is any of this stuff doing, and for whom is it doing it for? Why are we, as a society or as members of the media blandly saying ‘AI is changing everything’ without doing the work to ask whether it’s actually changing anything? I understand why some feel it’s necessary to humor the idea that AI could help in healthcare, but I also think they’re wrong to do so. 

[What’s Thrive? Zitron explains: “Last week, career con-artist Arianna Huffington announced a partnership between Thrive Global (a company that sells ‘science-backed’ productivity software(?)) and OpenAI that would fund a ‘customized, hyper-personalized AI health coach’ under Thrive AI Health […]. It claims it will ‘be trained on the best peer-reviewed science as well as Thrive’s behavior change methodology,’ a mishmash of buzzwords and pseudoscientific pablum that means nothing because the company has produced no product and may likely never do so.”]

And finally:

The media seems nigh-on incapable of accepting that generative AI is a big, stupid, costly and environmentally-destructive bubble, to the point that they’ll happily accept marketing slop and vague platitudes about how big something that’s already here will be in the future based on a remarkable lack of proof. 

This quote above is essentially the better-worded version of an observation I independently wrote down a month ago, before I was made aware of Ed Zitron’s newsletter, but I prefer to quote him because he delivers the punch much more effectively than I would.

As I recently wrote on Mastodon, the greatest trick tech companies are trying to pull is convincing the world real AI exists. I can’t wait to see the reckoning, especially when the markets come knocking at these companies’ doors. Every time you see some unspecified AI-related ‘accomplishment’, the correct reaction should be “Yes. And?” The AI house of cards can’t withstand 2 or 3 rounds of “Yes. And?”

Like, “Look what this chatbot is capable of!” 

(A chatbot that’s been fed literal millions of data bits and still comes up with bad approximations and incorrect answers. But you play along and just ask:)

“Yes. And?”

It all trails off. There’s nothing there. What’s the point of this tool that just wastes insane amounts of energy by vacuuming an insane amount of information, mostly stolen from the Internet without permission or compensation?

Last year I was starting to feel bad for having an increasingly unenthusiastic and cynical overlook on tech. Now more than ever I believe more people should share this outlook and attitude. I’ll always cheer the indie developer coming up with great ideas for software. I’ll always cheer anything that is actually good, useful design, in hardware, software, and UI/UX — I’m not entirely blind to good stuff in tech. But people should really stop drinking the kool-aid from the big names in tech, and should look past the big plates of bullshit they serve on a daily basis. The current situation is very much similar to Hans Christian Andersen’s famous folktale The Emperor’s New Clothes. People should cultivate a healthy skepticism, avoid buying into the ‘AI’ hype and pretence, and focus on what ‘AI’ actually does (very little), not what it is said it might be capable of in some unspecified future. ‘AI’ in its current form, is like Andersen’s emperor — it has no clothes.

Oh great, another personal update

July 8, 2024
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Ever since I started writing online, one kind of post I always tried to avoid publishing on my site is the Sorry for the lack of updates post. As the excellent CM Harrington reminded me a few months back on Mastodon, Remember you don’t owe anyone anything. I think in this era of social media, there’s a pressure to ‘engage’ — but that’s a false pressure. We’re human beings, being social. We’re not entertainment to be consumed and monetised, so don’t ever feel like you’re not keeping up, or not holding up your end. It’s not a job, it’s a conversation.

This is very true, and in fact one of the core principles behind my online writing — as I’ve often said — is that I publish something when I have something to say. That’s why I never liked those Sorry for the lack of updates posts.

But hiatuses happen. Often they’re ‘time-outs’ a writer or creator decides to take. Sometimes they’re caused by stuff behind the scenes that’s a bit out of our control. What happened here is the latter. And I feel that certain hiatuses warrant an explanation. Especially if you’re a new reader here and have decided to add my blog to your feeds after discovering me through the interview for Manuel Moreale’s People & Blogs series. As this was almost two months ago, you might have been wondering why I haven’t posted anything since.

In a previous personal update back in February I mentioned that my wife and I were apartment hunting because our landlord and her brothers weren’t interested in renewing the renting contract, wanting to sell the apartment instead. After a couple of stressful months we finally found and purchased a new apartment at the end of April. At that point we entered the subsequent stage: moving our personal stuff to the new place. Given our poor experiences with removal firms we contacted in the past, we decided to move 95% of what we own ourselves, then leave only the most cumbersome furniture to a removal firm. If this method guarantees nobody breaks any of our items, on the other hand it makes the whole process longer and more fatiguing. In fact, it took us two months, May and June, to bring our many belongings to the new apartment, making daily car trips.

Having to go through everything we have, putting it in boxes, bags, backpacks and suitcases, loading the car, making the trip, unloading the car, rinse and repeat, was of course exhausting and time-consuming. And since I also had to keep working during all this, I really had no time left to follow tech topics (or any topic, for that matter) and therefore no time left to write anything here.

And to be perfectly honest with you, what little I was able to follow about the tech world did not particularly excite me. Here are a few quick notes I shared on social media about Apple’s recent stuff, for instance:

About the M4 iPad Pros — So, new iPad Pros. Better than the old iPad Pros. It’s the same song since 2012. Better specs hardly solve the conceptual and identity problems of this device, which remain unchanged iteration after iteration. I’m sure there are people ‘delighted’ with an M4 iPad Pro. I’m sure there are people who see it as a ‘worthwhile update’ if they’re coming from an M1 iPad Pro. I’m just tired of this carousel.

About the ‘AI’ stuff Apple introduced at WWDC24 — I haven’t seen the WWDC24 keynote yet. The only two things I’ve learnt for now by skimming my timeline are Apple embracing AI in some form, and the name Mac OS Sequoia. I used to proudly display my loyalty and support of Apple, but this company is losing me, event after event. Apple went from Think Different to being just another big tech company. I used to recognise myself in that “intersection between technology and the liberal arts”. Apple’s intersection, today, is between tech and profit. No thanks.

I only had time to watch one video recapping “Apple Intelligence” (LOL), and it was by the always excellent Dave 2D. Now that I know a bit better about it, my reaction is even more visceral. I don’t need and I don’t want that crap on my devices. But also: what a colossal waste of resources just to stay in the game (and we’ll see how long this game will actually last…). But also: all this ‘AI assistance’ regarding text is a depressing and all-too-modern way of treating the written word as throwaway shit we shouldn’t bother wasting brain cells on. By relying on AI tools to change, summarise, manipulate the written word, we end up being even more inept at creative thinking/ideation and communicating. “Siri, just send Frank an auto-generated birthday message with an AI-generated image, because I can’t be arsed to do that / I’m too busy.” It’s maybe a silly example, but that’s bleak all the same. That’s not the help I need or want from technology. Technology is supposed to help with soul-crushing, repetitive tasks, so that we humans can — among other things — do better what makes us human: being creative and contemplative. ‘AI’ today is treating creativity, reflection, contemplation as the ‘boring stuff’ that should be automated, so that… what? So that we can be better at being idiots with one another?

That Apple is willing to jump on the AI bandwagon is as disappointing as it was predictable. I’m fed up with this “Us too!” attitude. Apple is too big to fail, and yet suffers from Fear Of Missing Out like a startup. Apple should use its success and resources to continue being a trailblazer, not the company that gives you an AI chatbot and more emoji. And don’t even reply to me with “But Vision Pro…”.
 

 
Now the move is over, and the next and final stage has begun: settling in the new place, unboxing everything, reconfiguring spaces and so on. I should have more time to update this blog, but first I’ll need to catch up with roughly six months’ worth of tech news and unread feeds. I hope to be able to write more (and more thoroughly) about what Apple has introduced so far this year, what the company is doing, and ultimately why I feel increasingly let down by them. Now I need to get back to work. Thank you for your patience and understanding. And if you’ve been showing me support on social media and on private channels through this stressful period of time, know that it is very appreciated.

People & Blogs: Interview with yours truly

May 13, 2024
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

Back in March, talking about the People and resources added to my reading list in 2023, in the ‘Tech blogs’ section I wrote:

This category was this close to remaining empty. However in November 2023 I discovered Manuel Moreale — or rather, he discovered me through another person, and got in touch. And I, in turn, was made aware of his very good blog. I really like his down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach, and I’ve been enjoying one of the main features of his website — the weekly interviews for the People and Blogs newsletter. 

Full disclosure: Manuel interviewed me as well, and at the time of writing this my interview hasn’t been published yet. I’m not highlighting Manuel’s blog as a favour to him, or for self-serving purposes. I genuinely like his blog, and I think it’s a worthy addition to your RSS feeds. Simple as that. 

That interview was eventually published a couple of days ago: People & Blogs: Riccardo Mori. Check it out if you want to know more about me, my interests, my history when it comes to online writing, and have some recommendations for further reading, both online and offline. And make sure you start following Manuel’s blog which, I’ll reiterate, is worth adding to your feeds.

You’re also welcome to get in touch if, after reading the interview, something piqued your interest and you want to ask further questions.

Brief review of the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid Smartwatch

April 30, 2024
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid Smartwatch

On a whim, on April 3 I bought this smartwatch. As you can see in the title of this article, its name is a bit of a mouthful: Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid Smartwatch. You can look at an overview of the entire line-up and their main features on this page at Fossil’s website. The model I chose is called Machine, in all black colourway.

My wife and I had already noticed these Fossil smartwatches some time ago, but were put off by their price, which at the time was €259. I’m still rocking a Pebble as my main smartwatch, and use a Fitbit Versa 2 to track additional things such as heart rate and sleep (the Fitbit seems to do a better job than the Pebble at this). Spending that kind of money for yet another smartwatch made little sense to me, though I did find the all-black ‘stealth’ look very attractive. My wife had her eye on another model (all digital, not hybrid) and was tempted, but when she asked the store clerk for a demo of the watch’s features, the clerk told her she couldn’t show her much because all the watches were turned off and not charged. We thought it was a bit lame, and left.

Then, about a month ago, I was browsing watches in the same store and noticed the huge discounts for the whole Fossil smartwatch line-up. I told my wife, Weren’t you interested in one of these? Look, they’re only €99 now. She jumped at the opportunity and purchased for herself the model she had previously been after. And I looked at this hybrid variant and said Why not?

I don’t usually make impulse purchases, but this — spoiler alert — turned out to be a good one.

This page on TechRadar explains clearly and concisely what a hybrid smartwatch is:

Put simply, a hybrid smartwatch blends a traditional, mechanical watch design with modern smartwatch technology that can track fitness, send notifications, monitor your heart rate and much more.

That’s why it’s called a hybrid, because it sits somewhere between a regular watch and a smartwatch. Although, some are more smart than others.

[…] One of the biggest differences between a hybrid smartwatch and a regular smartwatch is in the design. Generally, a hybrid smartwatch doesn’t have a bright touchscreen and looks much more like a regular watch than all-out smartwatches like the Apple Watch or the Fitbit.

In the case of this smartwatch, it definitely looks like a rugged field watch, with a chunky appearance that almost gives Casio G‑Shock vibes from a distance. But the Fossil’s case is all stainless steel and feels hefty and solid in the hand (it weighs approximately 150 grams). Amazingly, once you put in on your wrist, it feels somewhat lighter and you don’t really notice its presence (it’s still a big, manly watch with a case diameter of 45mm).

The ‘hybridity’ of this smartwatch is very well executed from a visual design standpoint. While the bezel, the hour markers, the outer ring of the dial, and the watch hands are physical and don’t change, the rest of the dial is an e‑ink screen. There are a few watchfaces you can choose from, and also compose your own, like I did here.

The beauty of the e‑ink screen is twofold. On the one hand, it blends very well with the physical elements of the watch, especially when you choose a dark watchface, to the point that the smartwatch just appears like a regular mechanical watch at first glance. On the other hand, from a functional standpoint, the e‑ink screen gives the watch the advantage you’re probably thinking of: long battery life. With thoughtful notifications management, the watch can last up to 2 weeks on a single charge, according to the manufacturer. But I’ve found out that this estimate is very conservative. More on this later.

Feature-wise, while hybrid in design, this Fossil smartwatch has pretty much all you need. Again, you can see an overview of the features here, but in short they include step tracking, automatic workout detection, sleep tracking, calorie tracking, heart rate, and estimated blood oxygen measurements.

The companion app is really well made, well designed, and easy to use. The pairing process was fast and flawless, as is syncing. Through the app you can have an overview of your health and fitness stats, and customise both the watchface and the two pushers located at two o’clock and four o’clock. The main button, located on the crown at three o’clock, is always used to access the main menu. When you enter the main menu or any submenu, the watch hands align and become a sort of analogue indicator you use to point to the desired menu item. You use the other two pushers to navigate ‘up’ and ‘down’ (or rather, clockwise and anticlockwise) through the entries. It’s a very tactile and organic experience overall. The three pushers are well built and have a positive feel and feedback. The only (minor) disappointment is that the crown doesn’t move and isn’t used to scroll through options (it does on the other, regular smartwatch models by Fossil).

Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid Smartwatch - Main menu

Here’s how the main menu looks when you push the button on the watch’s crown. You navigate the options with the other two pushers and use the crown button to enter your selection. The watch hands join together in this view, and act like a single pointing hand as you select the various options.

Due to its hybrid design, and the fact that the e‑ink screen is only black & white, there aren’t many custom watchfaces to choose from. The app offers 19 unique faces, but — and I like this a lot — it also lets you design your watchface by assembling the base elements the way you want. If, for example, you like one particular face among those provided by Fossil, but you want fewer complications, or none at all, you can create a more stripped-down version of that watchface. The process can be a bit fiddly in places, but it’s generally easy and intuitive.

When I posted a couple of photos of this smartwatch on social media, someone asked me if it was solar-powered. That would be really cool, but no, you charge it just like any other smartwatch. It has a round, magnetic attachment on the back, a bit smaller than the one for the Apple Watch. It doesn’t charge very fast, but at least you don’t have to charge it every day or every 2 days. In fact, let’s talk about the most astonishing feature of this smartwatch — battery life.

As I said, I purchased it on April 3. The battery was completely drained. I charged it fully that same evening. At the time of writing — April 30 in the afternoon — the battery is at 18%. I haven’t charged the watch in 27 days, not even for a brief top-up. In normal use, it essentially loses about 3% charge per day. Which means that if it’s now at 18%, it can keep going for approximately another 5–6 days before the battery is completely discharged. An entire month on a single charge is rather exceptional for a modern smartwatch. And note that I haven’t enabled any kind of power-saving measure, and that this watch also tracks heart rate and blood oxygen. It’s not like, say, a Pebble that only tracks your steps. There are more sensors to power here.

There are actually two aspects, intrinsic to the e‑ink screen, that become sort of built-in power-saving measures anyway. The first is that the data displayed on the screen, such as heart rate, steps, distance, calories, isn’t constantly refreshed in real time, but updates with a flick of the wrist. Here the watch acknowledges your gesture by having the watch hands make a complete rotation to then return to the current time. The second aspect is that the screen isn’t backlit. It’s front-lit by four LEDs you turn on by double-tapping on the watch’s crystal.

Overall, I’m very pleased with this purchase. After almost a month of use, I haven’t really found anything bad about this Fossil hybrid smartwatch. It’s well built, and looks and feels premium. Its metal strap, with a tight mesh similar to certain Milanese loops I’ve seen in other watches, is the most pleasant to wear I’ve tried in a long time; I’ve worn the watch non-stop for days, and didn’t experience any kind of skin irritation or wrist hair pulling. Its step tracking and heart rate measurements appear fairly accurate or at least consistent (I simply performed an informal test by wearing both the Fossil and the Fitbit Versa 2, and both gave similar readings). Its interface, while bare-bones, is clear, intuitive, and out of the way. Its companion app is well thought-out, elegant, and again, easy to use. And its battery life just blew me away. At the discounted price of €99, this has truly been a bargain, and a great bang for my buck.

I’ve been told that the reason for all these discounts is that it’s likely Fossil is leaving the smartwatch market. If true, that’s a real pity. Sometimes the best ideas come from companies that are not Apple, Google, Samsung or any other major player in the smartwatch sector.

Brief review of the Logitech G413 TKL SE mechanical keyboard

March 24, 2024
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

When I purchased my M2 Pro Mac mini, I didn’t want to reuse peripherals I had lying around for my new setup. I bought a new display, new keyboard, and a new mouse not because I was feeling wasteful, but because I wanted to create a specific setup that could prove useful for my type of work, and which could have a minimal footprint because space is always at a premium on my main desk.

I talked more at length about this setup back in June 2023; what I can say after 9 months is that, overall, I’m quite satisfied with it. The portrait LG display has been a particularly good choice, and it’s great to work with a lot of text documents with such a display.

The Razer Basilisk V3 X Hyperspeed mouse has served me well, too. I knew it would because I had already purchased one for my Legion 7i gaming laptop. However I must add that it’s not the sturdiest I’ve owned. One day it accidentally fell from my desk. It was just a 72cm drop, yet the impact caused an internal component (the metallic part that comes in contact with the negative pole of the AA battery) to become loose. The mouse is still functional, I just need to be more careful when replacing the battery and ensure that a proper contact is established.

The major letdown has been the keyboard. The Razer Blackwidow V3 Mini Hyperspeed (which I’ll refer to as “Razer B‑V3-MH” for brevity from now on) is an attractive 65% keyboard with nice-feeling linear and silent switches. Created as a gaming keyboard, it is supposed to be sturdy and have several gaming-friendly features, such as anti-ghosting, ultra-responsive input, durable keys and switches, and so forth.

Unfortunately, after three months or so, this keyboard developed an annoying issue that only got more and more annoying over time, to the point that I couldn’t work with it or around it anymore: keys began to repeat randomly, leading to dual typing or triple typing even. I had to slow down my typing speed to avoid hhavving seentenncess lloook likee thiis. I need precision for my work. It’s also a nightmare with passwords, as you can imagine.

This issue is not isolated. Some using the Razer B‑V3-MH on PC claim that a firmware update greatly mitigated the problem, others say it didn’t. Someone else in that afore-linked forum thread said:

I finally found a solution for that. This is not a software issue but a mechanical one. Just remove the keycaps (keyboard off), and put few drops of isopropylic alcohol on the switch and spam it so that the liquid penetrates well. Let it dry 30/40 min. The operation work fine for me (double E typing every time). If this could help some and prevent them from throwing away their keyboard or worse buying a new one from razer.

If razer reads this: beautiful keyboards shouldn’t hide a shitty conception, no need to guarantee 50M hits when they barely do 10%.

Exactly. We’re talking about a €180 keyboard. Not ultra-deluxe or artisanal mechanical keyboard pricing, but not cheap either. A keyboard like this shouldn’t present these issues so early.

And don’t get me started on the fact that Razer refuses to provide their software applications for the Mac platform. Good thing I also have Windows PCs, otherwise updating this keyboard’s firmware would be a problem.

Anyway, last month I decommissioned the Razer B‑V3-MH for good. Maybe I’ll try the trick quoted above, when I have time. With the Razer keyboard gone, I had to find a replacement, and quickly.

I love mechanical keyboards, and I know there are a lot of well-made models out there that are superior to Razer’s products. I constantly keep an eye on Drop’s mechanical keyboards section and I receive the latest updates via email. I could lose hours or even days patiently sifting through custom mechanical keyboards, but the cold truth is that I hate group purchases and I hate to basically pre-order something that I can’t personally try and have to wait 4 months before it gets to my doorstep.

On the other hand, finding suitable keyboards in local brick & mortar shops hasn’t been easy either. Typically you find a lot of inexpensive ‘office PC’ membrane keyboards, some flat, Apple-looking offerings, and gaming keyboards from Razer, Corsair, Steelseries, and similar brands.

I was looking for a small-footprint mechanical keyboard, possibly with wired and wireless connections, to avoid cables and having a USB port on my Mac mini permanently taken. The hunt was proving fruitless. Then I found a good-enough candidate, the Logitech G413 TKL SE. I was able to try one at a local department store and — while I still think the keys of the Razer Blackwidow keyboards feel better — I found the G413’s keys to have a surprisingly good feel and feedback; and I found the G413’s build to be surprisingly good for a keyboard that costs €68. It’s about 1/3 of the price of the Razer B‑V3-MH, but honestly the latter doesn’t feel like a three-times superior product.

Logitech G413 TKL SE mechanical keyboard

The store was out of stock for the G413, so I turned to Amazon, and I was lucky enough to find it for a slightly discounted price. I paid €59 and got it the next day.

This is a tenkeyless keyboard, meaning it’s like a standard extended keyboard except it doesn’t have the numeric keypad. This makes it slightly bigger than the Razer B‑V3-MH, though its general footprint doesn’t make it that much bigger. The G413 is slightly lighter, too, at 650 grams against the 725 grams of the Razer B‑V3-MH. It’s nonetheless heavy enough that it doesn’t move around as you type.

It only comes with a wired, USB 2.0 connection, and while I would have really preferred a wireless option, at the end of the day this wasn’t a huge deal-breaker.

As per the manufacturer’s specs sheet, the Logitech G413 TKL SE features tactile mechanical switches, 6‑key rollover anti-ghosting, PBT keycaps and durable aluminium alloy build. It also has only white backlighting. Compared to the Razer B‑V3-MH, it’s a less sophisticated product if you will, and has a more spartan feel, but I actually don’t mind it. Having only white backlighting is okay for me, I’m not really a fan of and I don’t quite understand the RGB backlighting obsession in gaming products.

About the switches, I’ll steal this quote from The Verge’s review of the keyboard:

The Logitech G413 TKL SE might use Cherry MX-style switches, but they’re not original Cherry models. Instead, they’re Longhua switches made by Kaihua. There’s also only one choice of switch, “Tactile,” which is roughly equivalent to Cherry’s MX Brown switches. There are no linear or clicky options here, and nor is the G413 TKL SE hot-swappable, meaning you’ll have to use a soldering iron if you want to change its switches.

The part of that review I most disagree with, however, is about the typing feel:

Unfortunately, these switches simply don’t feel as nice to type on as more premium keyboards and are the main place you feel the Logitech G413 TKL SE’s affordable price tag. As a whole, it can feel a little rattly. Keypresses generate hollow thuds rather than crisp taps, and the switches just feel off in a way I struggle to put my metaphorical, if not physical, finger on.

Sure, there are a lot of better mechanical keyboards out there, with better switches and better typing feel, but after a month of use, I can’t say this feels like a cheap keyboard. I don’t find it ‘rattly’, and while it’s true that keypresses can sound a bit hollow, the switches don’t feel particularly ‘off’ to me. And more premium keyboards can be hit-and-miss too. Perhaps most mechanical keyboard nerds won’t consider Razer keyboards premium products, but they certainly don’t have consumer prices. And they have their share of issues.

What’s important is that I’m finally back to typing quickly and accurately, and I haven’t encountered any issues with the G413 TKL SE. The keys feel homogeneous, both when pressed and in the acoustic feedback they produce. The font used for the keys is nice and legible (no sci-fi themed gaming crap). And overall I’m liking the tenkeyless layout more than Razer B‑V3-MH’s 65% layout. I like having separate Function keys on the upper row, and the little island on the right with the arrow keys and the Insert/Delete, Home/End, Page Up/Page Down pairs.

€59 is the least I have paid for a mechanical keyboard, but even at €68 or $70, I think it’s still good value for the money. It may make a mechanical keyboard connoisseur raise their brow, but from a pragmatic standpoint, I find the G413 TKL SE to be an honest, dependable, functional option.