Month: January 2025

I just had a good laugh. Someone asked me this morning how they could reach the “Google Ombudsman” for help with an account lockout issue. And I laughed not because their situation was funny, but because of the sad fact that I’ve been pushing for Google to establish an Ombudsman (or these days, often called Ombudsperson) role, for … well … decades. I’ve pushed from the outside. When I had the opportunity, I’ve pushed from the inside. Obviously, I never had any luck with this.

But I did get curious again today. For years, my essays on this topic ranked very high on Google Search. What about now?

Another laugh! I searched for:

google ombudsman

and a blog post of mine on this topic from 2009 is still on the first page of search results — 16 years later!

This was actually superseded by my more recent posts about this, such as 2017’s “Brief Thoughts on a Google Ombudsman and User Trust”:

https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/06/12/brief-thoughts-on-a-google-ombudsman-and-user-trust

But the story is still exactly the same as it was originally — Google has never been willing to budge on this issue, even as the need for such a role (or roles) has dramatically increased over the years, not just for issues related to account lockouts and other traditional Google user problems that cry out for valid escalation paths, but of course now related to the rapidly rising range of AI-related controversies.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Very sad.

–Lauren–

I’ll use very simple words for these government officials: You ban Chinese drones, you’re putting U.S. lives at risk.

Congress with bipartisan support very recently passed what is effectively a ban on import of (and perhaps, but less likely, the use of existing) Chinese drones such as those from market leader DJI, taking effect in a year against the firm if DJI can’t convince a government agency to certify that they are not a security risk — and of course, how DJI is supposed to accomplish this isn’t spelled out.

So now it gets even worse. The U.S. Commerce Department is considering its own Chinese drone bans, and has opened a public comment period through early March.

The absolute bull-headed STUPIDITY of these bans is beyond belief. There is no evidence extent that DJI drones present a security risk — only theoretical. politically-motivated speculation from both political parties that make virtually no sense at all.

The organizations and businesses that depend on these drones — law enforcement, search and rescue, agriculture, utilities, and a long list of others, have not found practical alternatives to DJI drones in the vast majority of cases. DJI dominates the market because they make the highest quality drones at prices these entities can afford, and provides world class support for them.

The politics of this situation are beyond disgusting. Is it too much to hope that the Trump administration will be more reasonable about this? Yeah, probably not a good bet, but being more sensible than both parties in Congress — and the current administration — on this score is a very low bar at this point.

Here is the current official Commerce URL with their announcement. This was not easy for me to find — not a single media source I saw bothered to include this crucial information!

https://www.bis.gov/press-release/commerce-issues-advance-notice-proposed-rulemaking-secure-unmanned-aircraft-systems

Absolute insanity. -L