Lvxferre [he/him]

“Now”, right? Well…

It’ll also output SATOR squares that are all wrong, instead of either giving up or providing a real one.

That’s disgusting. Almost like school doesn’t care about informing and empowering little human beings for their future, it cares only about shaping them as cogs for the machine… actually, disregard that “almost like”, school is like this.

This will be a source of woes for the following decades.

Google’s own argument would also “significantly diminish” the benefit of the feature, the court noted, if the overview were “generally recognized as unreliable.”

That’s an important detail, and I’m glad the court caught it up — Google tries to eat the cake and have it too.

The model was tweaked to vomit certainty. Its output is in a page you’re hitting as you’re looking for answers, and this implies the output contains an accurate answer. Everything screams “trust me” = “be gullible” from a distance. Except of course when the model gets something wrong, then it’s your fault for being gullible/trusting.

And this is not just Google, mind you. Every single corporation behind large “language” models does the same shit: “believe me”, then “lol you stupid you believe me lmao haha”.

Reminder: fooling suckers is still fooling people.

I’m so really glad I upgraded my computer mostly in late '24. A lot of things got more expensive, like:

RAM sticks are, like, 4x the price. That’s bloody madness.

*sigh* and then people wonder why I’d rather use a computer, and my phone is basically… well, for telephoning.

But yeah, this sort of trashy dev beelines towards mobile.

I can relate to the author. Software nowadays is developed as if telling the user, “We told you to use $feature, and yet you’re too stupid to understand basic obedience, so we’ll smear $feature on your filthy face until you swallow it.” That includes all of Big Tech, and even software from some small/mid devs who ape Big Tech.

Cue to how “not now” became the new “no”. Frankly, it makes me respect when a dev includes a “no, and don’t ask again” option.

Google is a privacy / data protection hellscape and, regardless of all this ruckus, it’s sensible to drop GMail to reduce the exposure as much as you can. Frankly I probably should do the same with my Yahoo account, even if it’s older than some adults so migration becomes hell annoying. Plus I got a Proton address already for some years.

Oh well, life is suffering. But at least the suffering is bearable if it includes cats 😺

Sometimes I feel like Kika (my cat) might be doing this when I’m sleeping, because of all CLASH KLANK MMMRRRROOOOWN MRRRROOOOWN KPFAF! It’s usually because she rummaged my paper bin for new toys.

Sadly no amount of forehead kisses will prevent it. The most it’ll do is to make her look at disgust, as if saying “EEEEEWWW HUMANS HAVE COOTIES”.

Surprisingly sensible [for HN standards] comment:

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. // The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. // So is the next phase of “Democracy” electing who controls technology?

This is the question that led to the communist movement in the 19th century.

Yup, pretty much. Even with all our (left-wingers) differences, I believe all serious communists and anarchists agree on one moral goal: power should belong to the masses, not to a small caste of individuals at the top.

I’m aware of that list. I mean names used exclusively as placeholders. Like “thingamajig” or “ACME” but for people.

Because, for example. Let’s say I told you a story about “Alice”. Without “Bob”, “Charlie” etc. to offer you context, it’s ambiguous if I’m talking about a real person called Alice, or if it’s just a placeholder name. The same wouldn’t happen with PT “Fulano” — because it isn’t a personal name like Alice, it’s used exclusively as a placeholder.

Some also use John Doe, I guess. Or John Smith. But the same issue. (Or perhaps I’m just babbling about language as usual, sorry.)

Go to DDG → Settings → AI Features → Search Assist and turn it to “Never”. It’s functionally equivalent to the noai address. Note deleting cookies clears those settings, but it’s a good option if you usually don’t clear cookies.

Yup, pretty much. It’s that dumb enforcement of the rules for the sake of the rules, instead of what they were made for: to ensure the community thrives. In the meantime they turn a blind eye to behaviour that technically doesn’t violate rules, but harms the community — it’s Charlie mini-modding, Ed showing disdain with “lol” and “lmao”, Fran adding noise with that “ackshyually” without addressing the matter at hand…

In Stack Overflow, large subreddits, and some old-fashioned BBC forums all this shit compounds, until the only users “surviving” there sound like pieces of shit.

I wish English had “placeholder names” like Portuguese (Fulano, Beltrano, Sicrano — they work like a charm for situations like this, where you want to represent some random nobodies).

In a smaller or larger degree, any internet environment where you can ask questions has the same problem, attrition. It looks like this:

[First thread]
Alice: “How do I shot web?”
Bob: “You just HDGLKSKTR the DLASFD in the SKSTGA”.
Alice: “Thanks, Bob. What’s HDGLKSKTR?”
Charlie: “Please do not ask separated questions in the comments. Open another thread to do it.”

[Second thread]
Alice: “What’s HDGLKSKTR? I need it to shot web.”
Dan: “It’s the FGDJ of the DSKFD. You config it through SFDH.”

[Third thread]
Alice: “Whats FGDJ?”
Ed: “why do you want to know it? lol lmao.”
Alice: “I asked how to shot web. Then someone told me I need to HDGLKSKTR the DLASFD in the SKSTGA. Then I asked what’s HDGLKSKTR. They told me it’s the FGDJ of the DSKFD, configured through SFDH. I don’t know any of those acronyms, I just want to shot web.”
[Radio silence]

[Fourth thread]
Alice: “Whats FGDJ? I need it to shot web.”
Fran: “You don’t need FGDJ to shot web lol lmao.”
Gerald: “Such basic question lol lmao. Use the search.”
***⟨blink⟩Jean Niteur⟨/blink⟩*** ==[MOD]==: “Your question was removed as duplicate.”

Then Alice spends two days searching the site for “FGDJ”. No other thread about the topic pops up, except her own. But in the meantime, she notices someone else answered the second thread.

[Second thread, again]
Fran: “Actually it’s «shoot», not «shot».”
Alice: “OK. And what’s HDGLKSKTR? I need it to «shoot» web.”
[Radio silence]

[Fifth thread]
Alice: "Why is this site so fucking shitty? I’ve been trying to shoot web for three days, some people tried to help me (thank you, Bob and Dan!), but when asking follow-up questions it’s like everyone went out of their way to waste my time without helping me.
Gerald: “entitled lol lmao X-D”
Hector: “toxic”
***⟨blink⟩Jean Niteur⟨/blink⟩*** ==[MOD]==: “Your question was removed as not-a-question. Additionally, you’ve been banned for 3d for incivility. Make sure you read the FAQ, the Code of Conduct, Posting Guidelines and Commenting Guidelines.”

My nephew does~ because guess who gifted him a programming book? I got my sis snitching which book he wanted, and gifted it for his birthday. And I know he has been reading it, because sometimes he comments on the content.

Experience: I found a cat in my garage — now I’m her self-heating pillow.

I saw the couple with the baby then I was like, “little guy got lucky”. Then I saw the other picture, of him adult, and now I can’t call him “little” any more, right? He’s visibly taller than both his fathers. Still lucky.

I also love how his fathers were like “noooo, we aren’t ready yet”, living apart and full of debt, but the kid was the final kick to build a family.

This might be fake but goddammit it’s still funny.

Note nVidia is the only in that list not making believe they’ll dig gold — it’s selling the shovels instead. And once you remove it from the data, it gets even more ridiculous:

• spent: $1.2T
• revenue: $240B

Revenue is 20%. It’s a hilarious fiasco.

The underlying tech is interesting, but that clearly does not justify the costs. And seriously I do hope most of that list gets bankrupt, including all GAFAM and nVidia. (They won’t, I know. But hey, one can dream.)

Problems, you say? Not in my end.

I use mostly DuckDuckGo, but I also got a bunch of extensions that make Google search more bearable: Disable AI, Google Search Ad Remover and Customizer, uBlock Origin, uBlacklist.

I can’t recommend Disable AI enough. Seriously. Those “AI overviews” are trash, they often output incorrect information (as any large model), and there’s no “official” way to block them out, unlike in DuckDuckGo.