Local morning news anchors just teased a story about blurring your house on Google Street View. I’m here to tell you — DON’T DO IT! It’s permanent. I don’t recall seeing “permanent” mentioned when I played around with it back in 2012. I was curious about what it would look like. Well, I found out and have been looking at a blurred house ever since. There’s no way to get it unblurred. No online form to submit, no way to reach a live person at Google. (Are there any live people at Google, or is it all AI now?) I just hope they changed the info on their page to make it screamingly clear that blurring is PERMANENT. The news story said that while some people might think they are increasing their privacy, hiding from potential crooks, etc., the blurring actually may attract the attention of criminals. Great. To date I’d only thought about delivery drivers or guests trying to find me or realtors someday trying to sell my house.
In another story, the same broadcast said the extremely high mortgage interest rates, currently 5.25%, might soon be coming down. I understand what today’s rate has done to the housing market, but I have to shake my head in amazement because I remember an event from long ago. A young woman I worked with bought her first home in 1981 … with an interest rate of 16.63%! In October of that year, it peaked at 18.63%. (I looked up those precise figures. What I remembered was “about 17%”)
Google is all AI robots — they’re firing the humans and letting the chatbots take over. Skynet is closer than you think … 😉
AI wasn’t in place in 2012 when I started trying to get a fix. I gave up after a few years. I did shoot a quick note to the news station before they got to the story, and they actually read my letter on the air. You’d think Google would be set up so you could preview the results before implementing a change, but it wasn’t. At least not back then.
johnthecook…trusting in AI to be my friend is like trusting a race car on race day with 4 flat tires and expecting to come in First Place. Ney sayers and the doubters abound. The End of America as we have known her is coming, and quicker than we expect it to happen!
I don’t trust AI at all. I’m afraid too many people do. But then, I think the current problems are in large part due to too many people trusting everything on the internet. Technology is certainly a mixed blessing.
Thanks for letting us know. Getting live people on the phone is getting more rare by the day, and when you do get one, they’re likely to have a thick accent.
Too true. I really hate to make phone calls. Always have, but now it’s almost irrational knowing I’ll probably encounter voicemail, phone trees, long holds, transfers, dropped calls, etc.
Gee, I should have put the mortgage rate story first. Wondering if anyone even noticed it, 17%!
OK, let me try again . . .
The first house we bought – 1983 – the interest rate was 14+% plus we had to pay 1.5% because we “only” put down 20%. The total ended up over 16% interest.
I thought 20% was the standard down payment … ??
Hmm . . . I tried leaving a comment, and it didn’t take.
This is a test.
By the way, I’m still subscribed to Cancer: Curves Ahead, but not this blog. I think the last time here was just before switching to Curves Ahead, just before we moved to Hawaii.
I’ll try to resubscribe, but it gave me an error. I’ll keep trying.
Weird . . . it says I’m subscribed, but I don’t see it in my lists of blogs. Trying to resubscribe is giving me an error message.
Yeah, Curves was sort of a side gig. I didn’t want to put all that stuff here.
I think I can add your subscription manually if necessary. MR has been having similar subscription problems.
(Good to see you again!)
Well, I just pulled up the subscriber list and it shows you subscribed one hour ago.