AmbitiousProcess
@AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social
- Comment on It just keeps getting worse - Firefox to "evolve into a modern AI browser" 1 day ago:
The problem is, it’s not unobtrusive.
When I right click and I instantly get an option silently added to the list that sends data to an AI model hosted somewhere, which I’ve accidentally clicked due to muscle memory, it’s not good just because there’s also the option there to disable it. When I start up my browser after an update and I am instantly given an open sidebar asking me to pick an AI model to use, that’s obtrusive and annoying to have to close and disable.
Mozilla has indicated they do not want to make these features opt-in, but opt-out. The majority of Mozilla users do not want these features by default, so the logical option is to make them solely opt-in. But Mozilla isn’t doing that. Mozilla is enabling features by default, without consent, then only taking them away when you tell them to stop.
The approach Mozilla is taking is like if you told a guy you weren’t interested in dating him, but instead of taking that as a "no." he took it as a "try again with a different pickup line in 2 weeks" and never, ever stopped no matter what you tried. It doesn’t matter that you can tell him to go away now if he’ll just keep coming back.
Mozilla does not understand consent, and they are violating the consent of their users every time they push an update including AI features that are opted-in by default.
- Comment on It just keeps getting worse - Firefox to "evolve into a modern AI browser" 1 day ago:
Because google only pays Mozilla because of:
- Maintaining search dominance
- Preventing anti-monopoly scrutinyThey don’t want Mozilla to compete in any AI space, because there’s already a ton of competition in the AI space given how much money gets thrown around, so they don’t benefit from anti-monopoly efforts, and there’s so many models that they don’t benefit from search dominance in the AI space. They’d much rather have Mozilla stay a non-AI browser while they get to implement AI features and show shareholders that they’re “the most advanced” of them all, or that “nobody else is doing it like we do”.
- Comment on It just keeps getting worse - Firefox to "evolve into a modern AI browser" 2 days ago:
WE. DON’T. WANT. THIS.
Mozilla, for the love of god, stop cramming AI into the browser when the vast majority of your users just want a privacy-respecting browser that works.
I’ve said it before, and I’ve said it again: I will not donate any more money to the Mozilla foundation until they stop cramming AI into everything, and you should too.
- Comment on We can play that game too 1 week ago:
Fun fact, the guy who posted that (Caleb Hammer) is a YouTuber that allegedly hired actors to pretend to be broke people making bad financial decisions to get money off selling you a budgeting course when real people weren’t shocking enough for the audience, and also allegedly pressured a guy into doing OnlyFans after touching him inappropriately. Fun! /s
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beware-austin-based-creator-caleb-hammer-victor-vulcano-bjzaf
- Comment on We can play that game too 1 week ago:
*specifically boomers between years 1946 and 1964, which have actually paid more than they’ll get in benefits.
The others are still taking more than they contributed. It’s fair to say that some current boomers have paid for their Social Security, but many others have not, and the situation isn’t getting any better.
To put it simply, there are just fewer workers paying in to the system than there are people taking money out, and that number only grows as people get older.
imageThis means only about 80% of existing benefit rates are expected to be paid to people when they retire later, and many of those benefiting from existing rates are already taking more from current generations than they paid in.
I don’t think we should universally hate boomers just because the economic situation they were in happened to favor them in some ways, after all, I want my grandma to keep being able to afford her retirement care right now before she dies, but it’s also just not true to say that all current boomers have paid for their social security in its entirety.
Only some of them have, and with the way things are going, it’s not looking like we’ll be any better as we grow older, as rates will have to decline just to prevent draining the entire fund, while people continue to pay the same % of their income into the system.
- Comment on [The New Republic] Arrest Mark Zuckerberg for Child Endangerment: Shocking new revelations about Instagram in a lawsuit against social media companies should pave the way for an ambitious prosecutor to file criminal charges. 1 week ago:
Videos, images, and text can absolutely compel action or credible harm.
For example, Facebook was aware that Instagram was giving teen girls depression and body image issues, and subsequently made sure their algorithm would continue to show teen girls content of other girls/women who were more fit/attractive than them.
the teens who reported the most negative feelings about themselves saw more provocative content more broadly, content Meta classifies as “mature themes,” “Risky behavior,” “Harm & Cruelty” and “Suffering.” Cumulatively, such content accounted for 27% of what those teens saw on the platform, compared with 13.6% among their peers who hadn’t reported negative feelings.
https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114054/documents/HHRG-117-IF02-20210922-SD003.pdf
Many girls have committed suicide or engaged in self harm, at least partly inspired by body image issues stemming from Instagram’s algorithmic choices, even if that content is “just videos, and images.”
They also continued to recommend dangerous content that they claimed was blocked by their filters, including sexual and violent content to children under 13. This type of content is known to have a lasting effect on kids’ wellbeing.
The researchers found that Instagram was still recommending sexual content, violent content, and self-harm and body-image content to teens, even though those types of posts were supposed to be blocked by Meta’s sensitive-content filters.
https://time.com/7324544/instagram-teen-accounts-flawed/
In the instance you specifically highlighting, that was when Meta would recommend teen girls to men exhibiting behaviors that could very easily lead to predation. For example, if a man specifically liked sexual content, and content of teen girls, it would recommend that man content of underage girls attempting to make up for their newly-created body image issues by posting sexualized photos.
They then waited 2 years before implementing a private-by-default policy, which wouldn’t recommend these teen girls’ accounts to strangers unless they explicitly turned on the feature. Most didn’t. Meta waited that long because internal research showed it would decrease engagement.
By 2020, the growth team had determined that a private-by-default setting would result in a loss of 1.5 million monthly active teens a year on Instagram, which became the underlying reason for not protecting minors.
https://techoversight.org/2025/11/22/meta-unsealed-docs/
If I filled your social media feed with endless posts specifically algorithmically chosen to make you spend more time on the app while simultaneously feeling worse about yourself, then exploited every weakness the algorithm could identify about you, I don’t think you’d look at that and say it’s “catastrophizing over videos, images, text on a screen that can’t compel action or credible harm” when you develop depression, or worse.
- Comment on Everyone in Seattle Hates AI — Jonathon Ready 1 week ago:
This whole article is just a condescending mess.
“Why does everyone who has been repeatedly burned by AI, time and time again, whether that be through usable software becoming crammed full of useless AI features, AI making all the information they get less reliable, or just having to hear people evangelize about AI all day, not want to use my AI-based app that takes all the fun out of deciding where you go on your vacation???”
(yes, that is actually the entire proposed app. A thing where you say where you’re going, and it generates an itinerary. Its only selling point over just using ChatGPT directly is that it makes sure the coordinates of each thing are within realistic travel restrictions. That’s it.)
- Comment on After nearly 30 years, Crucial will stop selling RAM to consumers 2 weeks ago:
I’m tempted to hope that this is going to be better overall, as having one company highly focused on making memory for specifically AI datacenters will probably be a bit more efficient than every memory company doing both at the same time, meaning the other companies could theoretically focus more on consumer markets…
But I think we all know the reality is that they’ll probably just end up convincing other businesses to do the same, RAM prices will inflate even higher, memory costs for AI datacenters will multiply as well, but the infinite money pit of AI investment will just lead to the chips being bought regardless.
- Comment on Finding people who vibe with you is so hard 2 weeks ago:
There’s a reason so many people who suffer from chronic loneliness are told to first join some kind of socially-integrated hobby, activity, or group: Doing something you already enjoy, in the company of other people who enjoy the same thing, is likely to bring you people you are more likely to vibe with.
One of the best possible ways to start actually finding people you enjoy being around is to go to activities that involve people with a similar set of interests to you. For example, if I go to my local hackerspaces/makerspaces, I’m going to find a fuck ton of people who are interested in the same technology as me, and that means I’m probably gonna find people that have similar interests overall.
The main problem is that with the major reduction in third places, and with things becoming more and more costly to do, (e.g. my nearest makerspace costs over $100/mo to be a part of) it’s hard to actually get into those social circles where you can meet people that you’ll actually like being around.
- Comment on I signed up for Trump Mobile two weeks ago and I still don’t have my SIM 3 weeks ago:
And it’s more expensive than the most expensive US mobile plan, which would have faster speeds, whereas Trump Mobile’s drops off after a certain (lower than T-Mobile’s own plans) amount of GB data usage since they’re solely using T-Mobile as an MVNO, and also has deprioritized data speeds during periods of network congestion.
It would also get you the ability to switch underlying network providers if you’re in a dead zone, international calling and data in more locations, better customer support given all the experiences we’ve seen from reviewers, and unlimited hotspot data, plus better bundle deals for families or people with smart watches that need separate data.
Hell, even T-Mobile’s own own plans, which are usually substantially more expensive than other companies they solely act as an MVNO for, like Mint Mobile, (which is actually owned by T-Mobile now) which will get you the same value as T-Mobile’s $50/mo plan in a $30/mo plan that is just $15/mo for new users for up to a 12 month period.
Trump Mobile is just $2.55 cheaper than T-Mobile’s $50 plan.
- Comment on Racism restaurant 3 weeks ago:
I went to her profile expecting her to be the usual brainbroken conservative, and instead she’s like, complaining about a reply getting removed because it had the F slur in it, but she also replied to one of Elon’s AI-generated videos about his Tesla robot saying “Get the fuck out of here with this clanker bullshit”, so I respect it.
- Comment on *Yawn* 4 weeks ago:
Increase alertness
Decrease alertness
lmao
- Comment on *Yawn* 4 weeks ago:
Apparently there isn’t much consensus on what the actual reason(s) are for yawning. Apparently fish yawn though, so that’s cool.
- Comment on Introducing SlopStop: Community-driven AI slop detection in Kagi Search 4 weeks ago:
It runs autonomously to a degree, but a lot of these sites operate via posting a wide variety of content on the same domains, after those domains have previously gained status in search engines.
So for example, you’ll have a site like epiccoolcarnews[.]info hosting stuff like “How to get FREE GEMS in Clash of Clans” just because previously they posted an article about cars that Google thought was good so they ranked up the domain in their ranking algorithm.
Permanently downrank the domain, and eventually they have to start with a new domain that, as is the key part here, has no prior reputation, and thus has to work to actually get ranked up in search again.
They’re also going to be making this a public database, and have said they’ll use it to train AI-generated content detection tools that will probably be better at detecting “AI generated articles meant to appear legitimate by using common keywords and phrases”, rather than just “any text of any form that has been generated by AI” like other AI detection tools do, which would make them capable of automating the process a bit with regard to specifically search engines.
- Comment on The House Of The Guy Calling You A Libtard 5 weeks ago:
That’s how I read it, too.
- Comment on Are physical mail generally not under surveillance? If everyone suddently ditched electronic communications and start writing letters, would governments be able to practically surveil everyone? 5 weeks ago:
Physical mail generally isn’t under surveillance past occasional package inspection (e.g. an X-ray of a suspicious package), and the rare targeted government surveillance operation on an individual or group, at least for the contents of mail.
The U.S Postal Inspection Service has a number of data sources they do collect from, though. If you make a USPS account, for example, then they can get info like your credit card number and IP address. If your package has a tracking number assigned, they can tell where exactly your mail is in transit. And if your address and the sender’s address is on your mail, then they will of course know who sent you which piece of mail when. Pretty standard stuff.
In terms of actually inspecting what’s inside people’s mail, that’s very difficult, because mail isn’t standardized. Some envelopes will have one small sheet of paper. Some will have a larger folded one. That might be folded into 2 pieces or 4. It might be 3 sheets of paper. Maybe it has a smaller paper card inside as well. You get the idea.
Whereas internet traffic is based on actual standards, and so if they want to know the contents of the data in an HTTP request, for example, they know exactly which parts of the packets to look at, every single time.
It would make surveillance more difficult, for sure, because individually opening, scanning, and putting back any possible variant of mail in envelopes is very time consuming and difficult, but it would do absolutely nothing to stop targeted surveillance of given individuals, and would also make individual associations more apparent.
To give another example, the government doesn’t know which people are communicating with which other people if you use Signal, because not even Signal knows, so not even a court order could allow them to find out. If you were sending mail between all those people, the government now has a list of every single time you sent a letter, and to whom.
Using that same example, with Signal, the contents of your message is encrypted. With mail, it’s in plaintext. Anybody could read that. If they intercept the data from your Signal chats, they get encrypted nonsense. If they intercept your mail, they get your entire conversation.
The smart decision is to use tools that preserve privacy and anonymity, making surveillance near impossible, rather than a system like mail, which just makes surveillance annoying and time-consuming.
- Comment on The Economist on using phrenology for hiring and lending decisions: "Some might argue that face-based analysis is more meritocratic" […] "For people without access to credit, that could be a blessing" 5 weeks ago:
the article says they’re comparing it to their earnings and likelihood to switch jobs among other things.
Two things that are coincidentally lower (in terms of pay) and higher (in terms of propensity to switch jobs) for black people, rather than white people.
- Comment on The Economist on using phrenology for hiring and lending decisions: "Some might argue that face-based analysis is more meritocratic" […] "For people without access to credit, that could be a blessing" 5 weeks ago:
They just use the buzzword “AI”, but in reality it’s probably going to be a machine learning algorithm.
Take the dataset, split out the groups of people you do/don’t want to hire based on whatever criteria, train the model to be more likely to pick faces with characteristics from the “do hire” group, and less likely to pick those from the “don’t hire” group.
Then, use it on real people, and it will provide similar outcomes based on faces.
- Comment on The Economist on using phrenology for hiring and lending decisions: "Some might argue that face-based analysis is more meritocratic" […] "For people without access to credit, that could be a blessing" 5 weeks ago:
The study claims that they analyzed participants’ labor market outcomes, that being earnings and propensity to move jobs, “among other things.”
Fun fact, did you know white men tend to get paid more than black men for the same job, with the same experience and education?
Following that logic, if we took a dataset of both black and white men, then used their labor market outcomes to judge which one would be a good fit over another, white men would have higher earnings and be recommended for a job more than black people.
Black workers are also more likely to switch jobs, one of the reasons likely being because you tend to experience higher salary growth when moving jobs every 2-3 years than when you stay with a given company, which is necessary if you’re already being paid lower wages than your white counterparts.
By this study’s methodology, that person could be deemed “unreliable” because they often switch jobs, and would then not be considered.
Essentially, this is a black box that gets to excuse management saying “fuck all black people, we only want to hire whites” while sounding all smart and fancy.
- Comment on The trauma. The terror. The humanity!!!1!!1! 5 weeks ago:
I don’t think so, but he did say while testifying: “He did it. He threw the sandwich,” that the sandwich “exploded all over” his chest and he felt it through his ballistic vest, and that “You could smell the onions and the mustard”.
The sandwich never left its wrapper.
The defense attorney finished closing arguments with “This case, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is about a sandwich”
- Comment on The Guy Claiming That You Have TDS 1 month ago:
We even have fucking Marjorie Taylor Greene getting angry at Trump and blaming the shutdown on the Republicans.
If that doesn’t show anyone how common this type of thing has gotten…
- Comment on The Internet is Dying. We Can Still Stop It 1 month ago:
A great Medium article on the topic that analyzes the entire situation: (coming to the conclusion that no, Proton does not really seem to be in favor of Trump/MAGA at all given their actual actions, and how the original statement was misinterpreted)
- Comment on xkcd #3163: Repair Video 1 month ago:
deleteduser said: [deleted]
randomuser said: “It works! Thanks OP!"
(posted 12 years ago) - Comment on Got my invite 1 month ago:
I fucking hate that emojis of all things are now a sign of AI-generated text.
Like come on, the ONE thing that’s meant to better pass on human emotion and visually represent things in a more fun format just HAD to be co-opted and become so generic and AI-related that people, including me, don’t trust it anymore.
- Comment on a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service 1 month ago:
And even if it’s never political, so what?
Someone uses it to promote a dangerous supplement, with thousands of fake, AI-generated videos of people taking it without issues, and suddenly a bunch of people buy it, take it, and suffer severe consequences, or even die.
But good thing it’s not gonna manipulate who you’d vote for amirite? Totally harmless! /s
- Comment on Load bearing Tupperware 1 month ago:
I can see why your account is marked with two red marks on PieFed for low reputation, because man do you come off confrontational.
How many banks didn’t work? Which ones? You have a source?
Search engines exist. Use them before acting as if I"m making shit up.
The list of financial institutions that had issues, as far as I can tell from industry reporting and downdetector graphs, is Navy Federal Credit Union (~15 million members), Truist (~15 million customers), Chime (~8-9 million customers), Venmo (~60 million users), Ally Bank (~10 million customers), and Lloyds Banking group (~30 million customers).
Assuming no overlap, that’s nearly 140 million people that lost banking and money transfer access.
Sounds like you’re just trying to exaggerate around an edge case that frankly isn’t the end of the world even if it were common for 4 hours a year
The outage lasted for 15 hours in some cases, due to many AWS services recovering after the outage, yet having a backlog to work through, which took many more hours. Many services also depend on AWS in a manner where AWS coming back online doesn’t instantaneously restart service. These systems are complex, and not every company that relied on them could instantly start back up the moment the main outage was resolved, let alone when many services were still marked as impacted for hours and hours later as they worked through their backlog.
Why aren’t you blaming the bank for having redundancy outside a single DC? How many banks do you know if that were out susessfully using other providers that have a higher SLO/SLA?
I also blame them for not having additional redundancy. I blame both them for not having a fallback, and AWS for allowing such a major outage to happen. Shockingly, more than one party can be at fault.
- Comment on Load bearing Tupperware 1 month ago:
The outage also took down people’s banks, which stopped many of them from doing things like buying groceries 💀
I don’t think saying it’s good for us “touching grass” is a good argument here when AWS hosts such a substantial portion of all online services.
- Comment on The Discord Breach Might Be Worse Than We Thought, As The Hacker Is Said To Have Two Million Age Verification Photos 2 months ago:
Oh, of course the legislation is to blame for a lot of this in the end. I’m just saying that Discord could have already partnered with a number of identity verification services that do already have this infrastructure up and running, with standardized and documented ways to call their APIs to both verify and check the verification of a user.
At the end of the day, Discord chose to implement a convoluted process of having users email Discord, upload IDs, then have Discord pull the IDs back down from Zendesk and verify them, rather than implementing a system where users could have simply gone to a third-party verification website, done all the steps there, had their data processed much more securely, then have the site just send Discord a message saying “they’re cool, let ‘em in”
- Comment on The Discord Breach Might Be Worse Than We Thought, As The Hacker Is Said To Have Two Million Age Verification Photos 2 months ago:
In my opinion, they’re still somewhat at fault, because this was them failing to find and configure their software to work with a third-party identity provider who’s infrastructure was built to handle the security of sensitive information, and just choosing to use email through Zendesk because it was easier in the meantime. A platform that I should note has been routinely accessed again and again by attackers, not just for Discord, but for all sorts of other companies.
The main problem is that legislation like the Online Safety Act require some privacy protections, like not collecting or storing certain data unless necessary, but they don’t require any particular security measures to be in place. This means that, theoretically, nothing stops a company from passing your ID to their servers in cleartext, for example.
Now compare this to industries like the credit card industry, where they created PCI DSS, which mandates specific security practices. This is why you don’t often see breaches of any card networks or issuers themselves, and why most fraud is external to the systems that actually process payments through these cards. (e.g. phishing attacks that get your card info, or a store that has your card info already getting hacked)
This is a HUGE oversight, and one that will lead to things like this happening over and over unless it becomes unprofitable for companies to not care.
- Comment on The Discord Breach Might Be Worse Than We Thought, As The Hacker Is Said To Have Two Million Age Verification Photos 2 months ago:
These were images of people’s ID’s, along with photos of their faces to check for a match, not stock photos or even just real selfies on their own.
