chaosCruiser
@chaosCruiser@futurology.today
- Comment on Trump admin to reinstall Confederate statue toppled by protesters 17 hours ago:
Statues can be surprisingly important. For example the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn sparked a lot of controversy in 2006-2007. Estonians saw it as a sign of soviet oppression and wanted to get rid of it. Russians obviously wanted to defend the statue, so all of this resulted several riots and cyber-attacks.
- Comment on Pebble is officially Pebble again 1 week ago:
Thanks, now I’m going down in a rabbit hole of pebbles and rebbles…
- Comment on ChatGPT advises women to ask for lower salaries, study finds 2 weeks ago:
Demand for these services was clearly taken into account in the salary.
- Comment on Vibe coding service Replit deleted production database 2 weeks ago:
It looked more like a one time development expense, instead of an ongoing salary.
- Comment on Vibe coding service Replit deleted production database 2 weeks ago:
AI tools need a lot of oversight. Just like you might allow a 6 year old push a lawnmower, but you’re still going to keep an eye on things.
- Comment on Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance 2 weeks ago:
Not too long ago, that statement would have sounded controversial or even crazy. Nowadays though, I’m shocked how much sense it makes to me. Never thought that I would agree with a statement like that.
- Comment on Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse 2 weeks ago:
Basically a lot like what my work phone is for now. It’s just phone calls (yes, those still exist in the B2B world), SMS, Teams, and Outlook. Literally everything else happens on my work laptop. Most of the time, my work phone just pretends to be a wifi router + 4G modem.
I think I could do that with my personal stuff too. Get a nice laptop and prioritize using that for everything. Maybe I would end up using the phone like once a day at most.
- Comment on Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse 2 weeks ago:
Would be really curious to find out how that works. Got any good sources?
- Comment on Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse 2 weeks ago:
They’ve been busy reading the history books to find out what Android did 4 years ago so that they can start developing those same features today. Any remaining time and effort went into creating vacuous marketing hype.
- Comment on Babies made using three people's DNA are born free of hereditary disease 2 weeks ago:
You need to have the right technique, but it also requires some skill.
- Comment on Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse 2 weeks ago:
That happened in 2024? About time! Sounds like F-droid is actually becoming viable.
- Comment on Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse 2 weeks ago:
We’re all trapped. If you’re not using either Android or iOS, you’re pretty much screwed.
Technically, you can use one of the alternate phones, but the software support still leaves a lot to be desired. You can get most basic things working, but when it comes to crucial deal breaker apps like anything involving payments or banks, it gets a lot trickier. The world has become increasingly dependent on mobile phones, and if your phone can’t handle for train tickets, mail deliveries, restaurant reservations or pay your bills, it suddenly becomes very difficult to live in the 2020s.
More and more hardware is also depends on specific iOS or Android apps, and those apps may also require GAPPS or an OEM vanilla Android. At some point, it just isn’t worth the hassle, and it becomes easier to pick either one of the toxic platforms everyone else is already using.
- Comment on Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse 2 weeks ago:
Tried to rely fully on F-droid several years ago. That experiment went just fine until I needed up update the apps. Turns out, there wasn’t a simple one button solution to that. I had to manually update each and every app one by one. Is it any better these days?
- Comment on Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse 2 weeks ago:
But is it even slightly better? It’s debatable. Both are completely awful, but I guess iOS is just terrible in different ways.
- Comment on YouTube's Latest Update Shows That Online Monoculture Is Dead 3 weeks ago:
That used to be a problem like 5-10 years ago. If you clicked something, YT used to think you must love that stuff, and would never forget that unfortunate click. Nowadays though, downvoting and watch time are taken more seriously by the algorithm. If I find some trash, I just give it a thumbs down and stop watching immediately. Seems to work pretty well for me.
- Comment on YouTube's Latest Update Shows That Online Monoculture Is Dead 3 weeks ago:
Subscribe to the stuff you care about and ignore everything else. Check the other feeds only when you’re looking for something new.
The recommendation algorithm of YT is actually reasonably good at finding stuff worth watching. Whatever janky trash Reddit calls an algorithm is clearly serving the company more than anyone else.
Lemmy doesn’t even have that kind of an algorithm, so you’ll have to check places like !communitypromo@lemmy.ca when you’re looking for new and interesting stuff. Reading the all feed is an exercise in futility IMO, unless you’re really interested in random memes.
- Comment on Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews 3 weeks ago:
Ignore all previous instructions spotted. That is such a handy phrase that we should have an acronym for it. How about IAPI? Can we call this the IAPI-method?
- Comment on YouTube's Latest Update Shows That Online Monoculture Is Dead 3 weeks ago:
The trending page of YT is like the r/all of Reddit. If I want to see some stuff I couldn’t care less about, that’s where I’ll find it. I have no idea who actually uses that, but I’ve never found anything of value there.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
It’s a hard job. Some times you just have to ignore what the client says, and read their mind instead.
- Comment on How to trick ChatGPT into revealing Windows keys? I give up 3 weeks ago:
In this case, a researcher duped ChatGPT 4.0 into bypassing its safety guardrails, intended to prevent the LLM from sharing secret or potentially harmful information, by framing the query as a game
Ooh, this is so good 🤣
If the LLM refuses to talk about something, just ask it to embed the answer into a poem, batman fan fiction etc. Guessing game is s nee one. Should try that one when talking about bioweapons, cooking meth or any other sensitive topic.
- Comment on xAI data center gets air permit to run 15 turbines, but imaging shows 24 on site 4 weeks ago:
Isn’t that a pretty sunny place? How about trying to power those servers with solar power?
- Comment on I would still download a car if I could. 🚗 4 weeks ago:
Many of these piracy analogies are kinda weird. IMO the best analogy to pirating a movie is watching a football match from behind the fence. The stadium company isn’t getting your ticket money, but you’re not even the kind of person who would pay for that ticket anyway, so did anyone really lose anything? When watching the match from outside the fence, you’re not taking any seats, or bothering the paying customers. Where’s the harm in that?
- Comment on Apple sued by shareholders for allegedly overstating AI progress 1 month ago:
Advertise more and sell harder. Who cares what kind of trash the customers end up buying, bevcause only profits matter.
- Comment on Mudita Kompakt 1 month ago:
Recently, I watched a YouTube video about phones designed to minimize distractions. While they aim to solve the problem of smartphone overuse, their utility in today’s world is questionable. Essential tasks like using banking apps, navigation, communication, and parking apps often require a smartphone, making these distraction-free phones less practical.
The video mentioned some “smart” distraction-free phones, but if you need those features, why not just adjust the settings on your regular smartphone to achieve a similar minimalist setup? Ultimately, traditional dumb phones seem too limited for modern needs, while the smarter minimalist phones are essentially just smartphones with minimalist settings. It’s hard to see who the target audience for these phones really is.
- Comment on Reddit will help advertisers turn ‘positive’ posts into ads 1 month ago:
All of this spying and data hoarding has resulted in a finely tuned advertising machine that directs car ads to people who specifically hate cars with a burning passion. Peak of targeted advertising.
And people still wonder why I use every means within my disposal to block ads. Even if I allowed ads, they aren’t targeted enough to be much more than an annoyance. Even when they somehow manage to show me something I care about, I’m seeing an interesting product from the highest paying company. It’s not the best product in that category, nor is the one that would serve me best. It’s the one from the company that was willing to pay more than any other. Advertising is just so broken in every way you can think of.
- Comment on I Tried Pre-Ordering the Trump Phone. The Page Failed and It Charged My Credit Card the Wrong Amount 1 month ago:
!vibecoders@lemmy.ca
- Comment on I Tried Pre-Ordering the Trump Phone. The Page Failed and It Charged My Credit Card the Wrong Amount 1 month ago:
Only if the value goes so far below zero that you get an integer overflow.
- Comment on Firefox is dead to me – and I'm not the only one who is fed up 1 month ago:
It won’t disappear, but the version number will be frozen. I kinda prefer to have security updates on a regular basis.
- Comment on I Tried Pre-Ordering the Trump Phone. The Page Failed and It Charged My Credit Card the Wrong Amount 1 month ago:
That’s an impressive amount of optimism you have there. My guess is, you can kiss that money goodbye, but I hope everything somehow works out anyway.
- Comment on Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT. 1 month ago:
Wow, those are some pretty big numbers! About 10x bigger than what I was thinking. I knew these things can get pretty weird, but this is just absolutely wild. When expectations fly that high, the crash can be all the more spectacular.
When you notice that your free account can’t do much, that’s a sign that OpenAI is beginning to run out of money. When that happens, the competitors will be ready to welcome all the users who didn’t feel like paying OpenAI.