There’s nothing in this email that has to do with skiing, other than the really cool pic of Lindsey Vonn. She’s getting back to ski racing with a titanium knee, and I wonder if I got one of those, whether I’d be able to ski like this. The only connection I have to her in terms of skiing is that when I bit the big one ten years ago next Friday, the surgeon upon first seeing me asked “was this a Lindsey Vonn-like wipeout?” And yes, it was.
Other than skiing, there will be four hours of ads on Sunday evening with 18 minutes of actual gameplay. I’m sick of the Chiefs and I don’t care for the Eagles, and the quality of play will be far better than I’m used to from watching the Browns… so count me in for the ads, and let’s hope for a tie.
Something about ...
AI Assistants
I’ve not yet gotten in the world of AI, but various people here at Ashton use different solutions throughout the course of the day. Whether it be taking notes and providing summaries of hour-long Teams meetings, or writing the next blog post for our website, there are definitely a lot of uses. And rather than the “sky is falling” folks who think AI is going to take away everybody’s jobs, I see AI (so far, anyway, until it’s mated with all too realistic robots) as making people more efficient by allowing them to focus on the truly important things that they do. If you’re looking to figure which AI solution (ChatGPT, Deepseek, etc.) would be best for you, here’s a great comparison from The Wall Street Journal.
Valentine's Chocolate
You still have a week to buy your Valentine’s chocolate, but prices are up. At least according to this article, which starts by saying the cost of a metric ton of cocoa was $13,000 last year, and only $11,000 this year. That would make it seem like prices should be down from last year, right? Reading on, the article explains that West Africa is the leading exporter of cocoa, and that the government there has price controls in place that have led many farmers to getting out of the industry. And bad weather in West Africa hasn’t helped. But Hershey’s invested $500M in the country to create better cocoa farming opportunities. But wait, does that matter, if the government sets prices? All in all, it seems like something other than the price of cocoa is effecting the price of chocolate in the U.S. But what do I know?
Applebee's
TI’ve never been a fan of Applebee’s (ate there once and then moved on), and while I do like to eat out, I wouldn’t want to go to the same place 52 times in one year. Especially Applebee’s. But, there’s a couple that just did it and the WSJ has all the details on the why, how, and where.
Anomalous Activity
Proving that our public school systems have the same disregard for personal data as do financial firms and others who’ve been breached, new research shows that schools who have been hacked would rather deny, hide, or ignore the incident, than letting affected parties know. And rather than even referring to a ‘cyberattack’ (because their PR firms “prefer to avoid that language”), they call the hacks “anomalous activity” or “irregular activity”. This is a long one, but pretty interesting to see all that schools do to cover up their breaches.
Super Bowl Ads
I’ve only seen two so far (not sure why they need to be released in advance- it’s not like they need any more hype than they already get), and they’re both a ton better than any of those in the recent past. Let’s hope the rest are this good.
Matthew McConaughey for Uber Eats and Matt Damon/David Beckham for Stella Artois.
And if you’ve ever wondered why the Super Bowl uses Roman numerals, now you can find out.
AI and Cybersecurity
Our security partners at Sophos are presenting a webinar on “Navigating the AI Hype in Cybersecurity“, on February 25th. You’re welcome to sign up, whether you’re an Ashton client or not; for those who are Ashton clients, you know that we have you locked down tight against hackers. I did check with the folks at Sophos to try and understand whether this is getting down in the technical weeds, or if people who don’t understand all the mumbo-jumbo (like me) would find benefit in this, and I’m told that anybody interested in AI and cybersecurity will find this to be an interesting topic.
I’ll leave you with the Mercedes race car from 1955 that recently sold for $53M. Too bad it only has one seat! Next time you’re trading in a car, you better stop and think twice- if you hold onto it for a while longer, will it become a collector’s item?
Have a great weekend.
Abbey