I’m weird
Have you noticed uBlock Origin being a bit hit and miss on YouTube lately? I’ve had it happen a few times lately where the video won’t play, or an ad comes up but doesn’t play. I’ve had to keep refreshing until it gets to normal where it just plays the damn video.
Can you think of any other industry where the mass adoption of a product is untested? Like image airlines adding a new autopilot system that allows a single crew flight - but it’s been untested. Or an electrical appliance that is sold without being tested for shock hazards?
Similar with AI - they already tell us they don’t know exactly how it all works (the black box) - yet are content to unleash it on the masses and see what happens. The social and personal effects this will have are being studied already and it’s not looking great.
It’s not even labelled as a beta test either.
When AI assistants eulogise their work in this fashion, it is no wonder that students find it hard to eschew their support, even when, deep down, they must know that this amounts to cheating. AI will never tell you that your work is subpar, your thinking shoddy, your analysis naive. Instead, it will suggest “a polish”, a deeper edit, a sense check for grammar and accuracy. It will offer more ways to get involved and help – as with social media platforms, it wants users hooked and jonesing for their next fix. Like The Terminator, it won’t stop until you’ve killed it, or shut your laptop.
No wonder people are hooked onto this - it’s a saccharine dopamine machine eroding our critical thinking and cognitive processing. It’s designed to be that way.
Speaking of dependence on AI:
Rohan found his summer internship in the finance department of a multinational conglomerate with the help of Chat, but, with one more year of university to go, he thinks it may be time to reduce his reliance on AI. “I’ve always known in my head that it was probably better for me to do the work on my own,” he says. “I’m just a bit worried that using ChatGPT will make my brain kind of atrophy because I’m not using it to its fullest extent.”
Of course, it’s not all about cheating or using the easiest possible methods to submit essays or papers -
For many, talking to a computer is easier than laying one’s soul bare in front of another human, however qualified they may be, and a recent study showed that people actually preferred the therapy offered by ChatGPT to that provided by human counsellors. In March, there were 16.7m posts on TikTok about using ChatGPT as a therapist.
Reminds me of the OMM 0000 from the excellent THX-1138 - “My time is yours.” And not in a good way. I’d rather talk to a professional human being, and have found it somewhat beneficial in the past. They had a knowledge of local support groups or events that I doubt would have been offered by AI.
Finally, it seems that Google’s Gemini adverts may not be far off the mark for seeing how little common sense and logic processing people have these days:
As I read through the thousands of prompts, there are essay plan requests, and domestic crises solved: “How to unblock bathroom sink after I have vomited in it and then filled it up with water?”, “Preventive Tips for Next Time – Avoid using sinks for vomiting when possible. A toilet is easier to clean and less prone to clogging.” Relationship advice is sought, “Write me a text message about ending a casual relationship”, alongside tech queries, “Why is there such an emphasis on not eating near your laptop to maintain laptop health?”. And, then, there are the nonsense prompts: “Can you get drunk if you put alcohol in a humidifier and turn it on?” “Yes, using a humidifier to vaporise alcohol can result in intoxication, but it is extremely dangerous.” I wonder if we’re asking more questions simply because there are more places to ask them. Or, perhaps, as grownups, we feel that we can’t ask other people certain things without our questions being judged. Would anyone ever really need to ask another person to give them “ a list of all kitchen appliances”? I hope that in a server room somewhere ChatGPT had a good chuckle at that one, though its answer shows no hint of pity or condescension.
Gah. Puke in a sink? Get some rubber gloves and push the gunk out or extract it and throw it in the toilet to flush it. This is not rocket science.
“Trust me bro” or “do your own research”.
The burden of proof is on the person making the claims - and as they haven’t backed it up with sources, I’d say it’s bullshit.
Really? Mine defaults to SMS if they don’t receive it as an iMessage message. I can’t recall it ever failing, only a long while back I would get a failure that prompts me to send as SMS - and I’d do it. It’s automatic now.
Out of my 10 most recent client contacts, only one has used SMS. The rest are all iMessage.
Sure, that’s anecdotal. But I’m in the UK and this is my experience.
Problem is, how do we know that the company is reputable, audited, and so on?
I’ve seen more places requiring verification - and each one of them seems to use a different verification company. How are there so many of these places, and why aren’t they more commonly known? Like Experian for credit, etc.
Sure it might sound good to keep them separate - but all that is doing is absolving the content host from liabilities for providing the adult content (somewhere) on their platforms and sites. Reddit don’t want to get involved, and I’ll bet they found the cheapest and easiest provider, or the first one in the search list and thought “good enough”.
Browser history? Just export as html or something and email it over…
“People can no longer remember passwords good enough to reliably defend against dictionary attacks, and are much more secure if they choose a password too complicated to remember and then write it down.
We’re all good at securing small pieces of paper. I recommend that people write their valuable passwords down on a small piece of paper, and keep it with their other valuable small pieces of paper: in their wallet.
Obscure it somehow if you want added security: write “bank” instead of the URL of your bank, transpose some of the characters, leave off your userid. This will give you a little bit of time if you lose your wallet and have to change your passwords. But even if you don’t do any of this, writing down your impossible-to-memorize password is more secure than making your password easy to memorize.”
I was intrigued by this point:
We replied saying that there’s a lot of scam apps on the App Store, and that there isn’t an easy report scam button. We should have clarified that the relevant button only shows after installing an app, as well as being located at the bottom of the page - a text link saying “report a problem”.
And Apples reply?
Gary … replied with what sounded like, and hallucinated like, a Gen AI answer: “it’s on every single product page for every single app that’s available on the App Store, very prominently”.
No it’s not. The button does indeed only appear on installed apps, which is a problem if you’re already aware of issues with the app.
And it’s not prominent - it’s placed right at the bottom and in the small text like the privacy of policy link above it. You could easily miss it as you could just perceive it be part of the privacy/terms links - and who has time to read those??
Ding! Any gains in productivity will mean more work for less people.
Anyone who can’t see this coming - I have several bridges for sale.
This worldcoin? Yeah, it’s looking real good right now…
Whilst that’s true, it’s a good opportunity to push Linux as a potential alternative in a few different ways - reduction of e-waste, free and private oriented alternative, simple (in some situations/distro) for certain basic users, or even someone who wants to get a little more technical. It’s good to promote the idea that there is more to computers than a monolithic monopoly called Microsoft.
All our clients use it. It’s bloody annoying. I have dozens who use WhatsApp, and like three who use Signal. Ironically, the three that use Signal also use WhatsApp and guess which one they use to contact us?
It’s a problem when it’s got mass market traction to get people to switch. I’m still trying to get off Messenger but some people insist on it… Going to have to get firm about that.
The enshittification process in a nutshell.
Protest on them trying to enact age consent laws.
By showing the message rather than Pornhub’s vast library of adult content, Aylo “is communicating directly with the French people to tell them how dangerous, how potentially privacy-infringing, and how ineffective the French law is”, Solomon Friedman of Aylo’s owner, Ethical Capital Partners, told reporters in a video call on Tuesday.
Paris has this year gradually introduced requirements for all adult websites to have users confirm their age with details like a credit card or ID document.
In a bid to preserve privacy, operators must offer a third-party “double-blind” option that would keep the platforms themselves from seeing users’ identifying information.
Edit - the sauce - Pornhub, YouPorn owner suspends access to French users over age verification law
To the surprise of nobody… 😆
They were doing a business.
We’re aimed at achieving a new level of employee empowerment, enhancing both our team’s performance and the customer experience.
To use an ancient acronym:
ROFLMAO
And nothing will be done about that until it affects the power brokers in charge*.
* - hopefully, I mean we’ve had a series of ministers embroiled in scandals that would have caused immediate resignations in the past whereas now it’s “Fuck off, I’m working here. I’M IMPORTANT!”