I think if I found out my country was doing a genocide with an unimaginably higher ratio of civilians murdered, I’d decry both acts, and not actively support the ongoing justifications made for a genocide by an apartheid based regime.
I find those kinds of chatbots useful, but those aren’t the ones I encounter 90% of the time. Most of the time, it’s a chatbot that summarizes the help articles I just read, giving faulty interpretations of the source material, that then goes on to never direct me to a real person unless I tell it multiple times that the articles it’s paraphrasing aren’t helping. (and sometimes, they have no live support at all, and only an LLM + support articles)
TLDR; “weak people have to conform to social consensus otherwise they get hurt I guess?”
I, on the other hand, am a big, strong, high T alpha male, that isn’t worried about what anyone thinks! I am a free thinker, and I know my opinions are correct because I instantly based this entire opinion on a subjective, anecdotal view of the world that I then extrapolated meaning out of, the best evidence! /s
Oh yeah, it’s definitely useful for that!
Since LLMs are essentially just very complicated probabilistic links between words, it seems to be extremely good at picking the exact word or phrase that even a thesaurus couldn’t get me.
I primarily end up using LLMs through DuckDuckGo’s private frontend alongside a search, so if my current search doesn’t yield the correct answer to my question (i.e. I ask for something but those keywords only ever turn up search results on a different, but similar topic) then I go to the LLM and ask a more refined question, that otherwise doesn’t produce any relevant results in a traditional keyword search.
I also use integrated LLMs to format and distill my offhand notes, (and reformat arbitrary text based on specific criteria repeatedly for structured notes,) learn programming syntax more at my own pace and in my own way, and just generally get answers on more well-known topics a lot faster than I would scrolling past 5 pages of SEO-“optimized” garbage just designed to fill time for the ads to load before actually giving me a good answer.
I have never once found an “AI” feature integrated by a corporation useful.
I have only ever found “AI” useful when it’s unobtrusive, and something I chose to use manually. Sometimes an LLM is useful to use, but I don’t need it shilled to me inside a search bar or in a support chat that won’t solve my problem until I bypass the LLM.
There are people who think that “positive” or “negative” words have a magic-like effect on natural processes.
From what I’ve seen, this was originally popularized in 2004 by Masaru Emoto’s book “The Hidden Messages in Water,” where part of his claims were that snowflakes would develop differently in containers labeled with negative or positive emotions.
Naturally, this turned out to be a complete lie, but many people, such as those in the original post, still believe that words can somehow influence things like mold development on food.
I feel like this says more about these students’ schools, rather than the students themselves.
How have I never heard of this before!? I’ve been looking for exactly this for ages now.
Already spinning up a docker container!
You will eat here, and you will be happy about it! 😡
it’s getting so hard nowadays
It’s definitely not easy, but sometimes we just do the best we can, even if it’s not the most that could be done.
Everyone has their own unique threat model. A random everyday person will have less need for personal privacy than, say, a government employee that works for an intelligence agency. Do what you can to protect what matters most to you, but don’t stress if you can’t upend your entire life to improve your privacy.
there are so many more important problems
You can support multiple solutions to world issues at the same time, without needing to make any individual one the most important one, or completely throwing out your other beliefs.
Privacy protects you from anything ranging from annoying ads, to targeted election misinformation, is key to dismantling the surveillance state that is regularly used to silence opposition to current political powers, and protects your right to free speech in a world where every government wishes they could control you just a bit more.
Privacy protects you from self-censorship. It keeps you safe from people who might want to harm you or your family for your views. It lets you protest oppressive policy.
Companies make money off your data. And what are these companies contributing to? Global warming through ever-expanding datacenters running AI models you didn’t ask for. Political campaigns that endorse monopolies. The exploitation of third-world countries.
By taking away their ability to sell you for profit, you indirectly reduce numerous other harms.
I just can’t remember why I thought it was something worth fighting for
The world is crazy. It’s not weird to let things like privacy fall to the wayside when seemingly larger problems pop up, but privacy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Everything is interconnected, and privacy directly impacts these other issues.
It’s okay to just do what you can. the world isn’t perfect, and neither are we.
Privacy directly helps dismantle systems of power, surveillance, advertising, and manipulation. So if that’s worth it to you, then keep fighting.
And recently, Mozilla has been trying to develop a privacy-preserving ads business.
I’m not a big fan of ads, but if Mozilla can actually make ads that don’t track users, and are uninvasive, they might be able to garner some market share in the ad space, and distance their revenue from Google even further.
I was happy when they used an entirely on-device AI to generate alt text for photos, but this is just ridiculous. They quite literally already have an extension that does the exact same thing this new “feature” offers.
Firefox was supposed to be a less bloated than chrome, but all they’ve done now is continued to add more and more to the browser that nobody actually asked for.
Give me bug fixes, UX and performance improvements, not entire sidebar popups for review checking that only works on 3 stores on the entire internet.
I think we’ll probably see a phone comparable to at least 2022 specs in the coming years, since they seem to release a new model every 2-3 years, with pretty decent improvements each time. Especially with their growing partnerships with chip manufacturers, it might even be possible to keep prices more reasonable too.
I currently use a phone released in 2022, and it’s perfectly functional for all my needs. Would more performance be nice? Sure, but yeah, I don’t actually need more than that.
If Fairphone could reach that mark, I would consider my next replacement phone being a Fairphone, although the lack of GrapheneOS support is kind of a deal-breaker for any phone purchase for me right now.
Even if you buy a phone that isn’t a pixel, then you just end up giving money to a different privacy-invasive corporation that will continue to partner with Google for search deals and surveillance advertising.
Pixels have wide aftermarket repair parts available, relatively reasonable pricing, and the largest support from custom roms since they all test on Pixels as a standard device. (same with app developers)
Pixels often have longer update periods than other brands, and many custom roms provide extended security updates on top of that.
Android development is guaranteed to continue supporting at least the Pixel phones over all others, it’ll be easier to repair down the line, and the money Google makes from the sale is nothing compared to the money they’ll lose by having less power to surveil you.
And as much as I like Fairphone, the specs just aren’t worth the cost currently, although they are catching up as time goes on.
I personally use a Pixel with GrapheneOS, and it works better than any phone from Samsung I’ve owned in the past. (plus it’s usually a bit easier to unlock the bootloader)
Just make sure that, no matter what phone you buy, you don’t buy it through your carrier, as that will make your bootloader un-unlockable unless you pay off the full payment plan and have a carrier that supports unlocking the bootloader in the first place.
It’s because they’ve conditioned their audience to believe a few key things:
Let’s break that down.
They want money to be more important than voting, because they understand that their political demographic does not win the popular vote in most cases, and their policies are inherently not popular with the majority. But when they can get money instead, then use that to influence votes and policy, well, that just might get them the policies they want without substantial votes from the public.
They want people to fear giving money to “woke” corporations because it makes them seem like the only source of real truth, and objectivity. They’re the voices of reason in a world that’s all against you. Then, you’ll be willing to pay for their subscription streaming service, and their subscription streaming service for kids, and their merch, and their chocolate, and their razors, et cetera et cetera.
They want you to associate buying products as the way to define yourself, because when you so strongly identify with their politics, you’ll spend as much money as you can signaling to those around you that you don’t support the “woke” agenda through your wallet, you only support those who truly embody your cause. Giving them money becomes a symbol of your values.
And of course, they wouldn’t get any sales without this as a selling point. If they just start a razor brand, not affiliated with their political ventures, who’s gonna buy? Their razors are effectively the same price as Gilette’s, just without the likely higher standard of quality and availability in physical retail locations.
But when they combine all three of those tactics I mentioned to make their target demographic believe they need these razors to display their values, stop a perceived evil agenda, and make their voice heard… well, then you’ve got a good revenue stream.
Both jokes can be true 😅
ONE in ten? Man, they’re even bad at cherry picking statistics 😂
They even cite a study with only 1,000 participants for their statistic that “32% OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN VICTIMS OF FRAUD”
In the title, at least. The body of that claim’s card says that it’s the people, or someone they know that have been victims of fraud.
Gosh, I hate dishonest scare marketing campaigns.