I get the vague impression that this is meant to subtly influence western society into believing that the masses aren’t truly people

Tinfoil hat theory would be that the evil leaders of real life (the ceos, the billionaires, etc) are planting the seeds so that if their plans fail and a revolution comes, they won’t be summarily executed

I read a book about startup stuff at the request of the CEO of my old company. Some of it was at least superficially interesting, but one part stood out as haunting. It casually mentioned how a “founder” at Zoom was trying to get money, and the investors thought it was a stupid idea. It was a “solved problem” that already had big players in the space. But they were personally friends with the guy, so they gave him a few hundred million dollars.

That’s not something to be proud of. Nepotism and bro-driven-investment isn’t the ideal.

But these rich assholes pretend they’re such visionaries. Gatekeepers of the future. Fuck them. Fuck them all. The climate is a disaster and they’re pouring billions into “Cats in the metaverse”? Crimes against humanity.

I don’t think it saves time on net if you have to read it and then go verify it anyway. Might as well go directly to the more trustworthy source in the first place! And if you don’t care if your answer is correct, why even search? Just make something up.

This one is appealing in that they refund the fee even if it’s from some other bank. So you can go to the ATM at the corner shop that charges $3 to withdraw, and get that refunded at the end of the quarter. Most banks don’t have fees at their own ATM, but this is no fees anywhere. For rich people.

I think i meant smart phone. Apparently cell phone adoption was in the 60%+ range in 2005

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

Well, yes, Google has been becoming shittier for years as they prioritize ads and fail to deal with SEO slop. You have to know what’s a good source, but that was true even when we were doing research in libraries.

The AI summary is making the problem worse. The information it provides is not trustworthy. It also deprives site owners from traffic. It’s really bad on like every metric.

Oh yeah I forgot about that. One of the banks here refunds ATM fees if you have a minimum balance of $2500 (and waives the monthly fee if you have $25,000). Like, my guys, the people who don’t have money need that fee waived a lot more. But the bank just wants to make money and that means appealing to rich people.

Sometimes I get mad about how we in practice have basic income for the rich. If you have a few million dollars, you can park it in zero or low risk investments (eg: high yield savings, bonds) and get free money. Then you can just fuck off and pursue your dreams. No risk. Lots of reward.

But if you’re poor? Well you better take any job for any salary or you’re just a parasite blah blah blah. All pain, some risk, little reward.

All other things aside, 20 years is a long fucking time. 20 years ago we barely had cell phones. The iPhone was 2007 I think.

Well, in this example, the information provided by the AI was simply wrong. If it had done the traditional search method of pointing to the organization’s website where they had the hours listed, it would have worked fine.

This idea that “we’re all entitled to our opinion” is nonsense. That’s for when you’re a child and the topic is what flavor Jelly Bean you like. It’s not for like policy or things that matter. You can’t just “it’s my opinion” your way through “this algorithm is O(n^2) but I like it better than O(n) so I’m going to use it for my big website”. Or more on topic, you can’t use it for “these results are wrong but I like them better”

I love this idea. Do you mind if I promote it with some queer folks I know?

Myself I’m pretty straight and don’t have a website, but maybe one day.

If a feature is useful people will use it, be it AI or not AI.

People will also use it if it’s not useful, if it’s the default.

A friend of mine did a search the other day to find the hour of something, and google’s AI lied to her. Top of the page, just completely wrong.

Luckily I said, “That doesn’t sound right” and checked the official site, where we found the truth.

Google is definitely forcing this out, even when it’s inferior to other products. Hell, it’s inferior to their own, existing product.

But people will keep using AI, because it’s there, and it’s right most of the time.

Google sucks. They should be broken up, and their leadership barred from working in tech. We could have had a better future. Instead we have this hallucinatory hellhole.

Dislike:

• poor search engine results
• relatively small

I want it to get to a level where you find the good stuff reddit used to have. Like niche hobbies, detailed analysis, etc.

I’m doing my part, I guess

Possessive is normally done with an apostrophe. The dog’s toy. The apartment’s lobby.

But when possessive goes on the pronoun “it”? No apostrophe.

Look out for the monster. Its fangs are sharp.

If you put an apostrophe, that’s for “it is”.

This bothers me slightly. There’s history illinonating why it happened, but I don’t like it.

Wikipedia is full of pages like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_senators with names, photos, and biographies. The scum bags that are destroying our world are not all a secret cult. They’re just assholes in suits.

I’ve been saying for years that focusing on self driving cars is solving the wrong problem. The problem is so many people need their own personal car at all.

My monthly food bill is typically around $120.

• A lot of beans or other canned vegetables: $30
• Bread: $5
• Peanut butter, $8
• bananas: $10
• rice: $10
• Other fruit that’s on sale: $10
• Some fresh vegetables (usually onions, broccoli, peppers): $10
• Flour: $10 (may last more than a month)
• yeast: $5
• Seasonings: $5 (also lasts more than a month)
• Cheese: $5
• Tomato sauce: $5
• Pasta: $5

I got laid off a while ago so I’m trying to make my dollars go farther. When I had a well paying job, I’d also buy more stuff, but nothing too crazy. I miss hummus the most, I think. I never buy soda.

The other day I was with someone and we decided to order food like old times, and it was like $40 for two of us. I was like, fuck, that’s a third of my whole month’s budget right there. But I don’t want to live like a monk all the time.

This supports my hypothesis that people are mostly emotional. They’re angry and scared so they lash out. They’re not thinking in a calm detached manner.

Somehow we need to direct all the negative emotions towards the people who actually deserve it

Republicans have terrible economic policies. Voting for Republicans for economic reasons is stupid. Even if you’re rich, if you care about the long term.

Larger orgs probably have their own website, and could put it there and/or make an RSS feed. That’s old tech, and probably not as popular because it can’t be monetized like twitter/facebook/etc.

There’s also email, which is typically free. It’s less fancy, but it’s also very open. You don’t get good discoverability, though. Some bands I like send out newsletters and that’s how I keep up with them.

Lastly, the fediverse exists. It has some of the problems of social media, but at least it’s not owned by a handful of rich assholes.