$1.56 For a Single Electronic Mail

Concertina Wired Shorts

Something to chew on:

I'm a fairly curious person. When I hear about new technology, like the AI-generated images, I want to play with it and gain a better understanding than all the babbling and drooling around me will provide.

People have this nagging worry that AI is going to put everyone out of a job, that the machines are going to take over, that the world is ending. While the last one is theoretically true, I'm not here to discuss that. I'm here about AI and AI Accessories, and my name's not Hank Hill.

Recently, I asked of my cohort, my sphere of care, about one of these generative AI models that makes anthropomorphic art -- you know, non-humans, given humanoid attributes. I wanted to see how well it could capture a given concept, and one member of my sphere sent me three images.

This costs him $1.56 to send what was effectively an email (39¢) with three small image attachments ($1.17, or 39¢ each). Small, because Securus crushes the :poop: out of images, no matter the size -- I'd say the images arrive with JPEG compression, 40-50% quality at best, scaled down to a maximum of 800 pixels by 600 pixels, enough that you can see the echoes of artifacting in the image.

Likewise, when I use the kiosk to send a photo of myself to my sphere of care, I pay 39¢ for the message, 39¢ for a super low resolution image.

If only there were developers who could implement some of the new image compression algorithms that give more of a picture without inflating the file size or possibly compromising the security of the system!

:V