Curious to know if we have a current morphometric based system that can detect with the same accuracy as DNA testing, if two people are related, without a priori knowledge that they are related, if that makes sense.

Meaning, if a system is fed 100 random photos of humans, but is not told "there are definitely related people in here" can it match it as accurately as a DNA test of those same humans' DNA samples?

The popular online discourse on Large Language Models’ (LLMs’) capabilities is often polarized in a way I find annoying and tiresome.

On one end of the spectrum, there is nearly complete dismissal of LLMs: an LLM is just a slightly fancier version of the autocomplete on your phone’s keyboard, there’s nothing to see here, move on (dot org).

This dismissive perspective overlooks some genuinely interesting novel capabilities of LLMs. For example, I can come up with a new joke and ask ChatGPT to explain why it’s funny or come up with a new reasoning problem and ask ChatGPT to solve it. My phone’s keyboard can’t do that.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are eschatological predictions: human-level or superhuman artificial general intelligence (AGI) will likely be developed within 10 years or even within 5 years, and skepticism toward such predictions is “AI denialism”, analogous to climate change denial. Just listen to the experts!

There are inconvenient facts for this narrative, such as that the majority of AI experts give much more conservative timelines for AGI when asked in surveys and disagree with the idea that scaling up LLMs could lead to AGI.

The ARC Prize is an attempt by prominent AI researcher François Chollet (with help from Mike Knoop, who apparently does AI stuff at Zapier) to introduce some scientific rigour into the conversation. There is a monetary prize for open source AI systems that can perform well on a benchmark called ARC-AGI-2, which recently superseded the ARC-AGI benchmark. (“ARC” stands for “Abstract and Reasoning Corpus”.)

ARC-AGI-2 is not a test of whether an AI is an AGI or not. It’s intended to test whether AI systems are making incremental progress toward AGI. The tasks the AI is asked to complete are colour-coded visual puzzles like you might find in a tricky puzzle game. (Example.) The intention is to design tasks that are easy for humans to solve and hard for AI to solve.

The current frontier AI models score less than 5% on ARC-AGI-2. Humans score 60% on average and 100% of tasks have been solved by at least two humans in two attempts or less.

For me, this helps the conversation about AI capabilities because it gives a rigorous test and quantitative measure to my casual, subjective observations that LLMs routinely fail at tasks that are easy for humans.

François Chollet was impressed when OpenAI’s o3 model scored 75.7% on ARC-AGI (the older version of the benchmark). He emphasizes the concept of “fluid intelligence”, which he seems to define as the ability to adapt to new situations and solve novel problems. Chollet thinks that o3 is the first AI system to demonstrate fluid intelligence, although it’s still a low level of fluid intelligence. (o3 also required thousands of dollars’ worth of computation to achieve this result.)

This is the sort of distinction that can’t be teased out by the polarized popular discourse. It’s the sort of nuanced analysis I’ve been seeking out, but which has been drowned out by extreme positions on LLMs that ignore inconvenient facts.

I would like to see more benchmarks that try to do what AGI-AGI-2 does: find problems that humans can easily solve and frontier AI models can’t solve. These sort of benchmarks can help us measure AGI progress much more usefully than the typical benchmarks, which play to LLMs’ strengths (e.g. massive-scale memorization) and don’t challenge them on their weaknesses (e.g. reasoning).

I long to see AGI within my lifetime. But the super short timeframes given by some people in the AI industry feel to me like they border on mania or psychosis. The discussion is unrigorous, with people pulling numbers out of thin air based on gut feeling.

It’s clear that there are many things humans are good at doing that AI can’t do at all (where the humans vs. AI success rate is ~100% vs. ~0%). It serves no constructive purpose to ignore this truth and it may serve AI research to develop rigorous benchmarks around it.

Such benchmarks will at least improve the quality of discussion around AI capabilities, insofar as people pay attention to them.

Update (2024-04-11 at 19:16 UTC): François Chollet has a new 20-minute talk on YouTube that I recommend. I've watched a few videos of Chollet talking about ARC-AGI or ARC-AGI-2, and this one is beautifully succinct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWHezX43I-4

eBay is updating its privacy policy, effective next month (2025-04-27). The major change is a new section about AI processing, accompanied by a new user setting with an opt-out checkbox for having your personal data feed their models.

While that page specifically references European areas, the privacy selection appears to be active and remembered between visits for non-Europe customers. It may not do anything for us at all. On the other hand, it seems nearly impossible to find that page from within account settings, so I thought I'd post a direct link.

I'm well aware that I'm anomalous for having read this to begin with, much less diffed it against the previous version. But since I already know that I'm weird, and this wouldn't be much of a discussion post without questions:

• How do you stay up to date with contract changes that might affect you, outside of widespread Internet outrage (such as recent Firefox news)?
• What's your threshold -- if any -- for deciding whether to quit a company over contract changes? Alternatively, have you ever walked away from a purchase, service, or other acquisition over the terms of the contracts?

Title kinda gives the gist of it all.

I have been wondering about a way to have a "full" desktop with just XR glasses, a phone, bluetooth keyboard, and an internet connection.

Not sure if this is easily doable, or if Windows VMs would be so expensive to make it pointless. Maybe something like WINE or w/e the not 20 year outdated current thing is to run Windows software.

The main use would be to run 1-2 browsers and trading software.

Just curious if this is a foolish idea or not.

I’ve been wondering about this lately.

Recently, I made a post about Ukraine on another social media site, and someone jumped in with the usual "Ukraine isn't a democracy" right-wing talking point. I wrote out a long, thoughtful reply, only to get the predictable one-liner propaganda responses back. You probably know the type, just regurgitated stuff with no real engagement.

After that, I didn’t really feel like spending my time and energy writing out detailed replies to every canned response. But I also didn’t want to just let it sit there and have people who might be reading the exchange assume there’s no pushback or correction.

So instead, I tried leveraging AI to help me write a fact-checking reply. Not for the person I was arguing with, really, but more as an FYI for anyone else following along. I made sure it stayed factual and based in reality, avoided name-calling, and kept the tone above the usual mudslinging. And of course, I double-checked what it wrote to make sure it matched my understanding and wasn’t just spitting out garbage or hallucinations.

But it got me thinking that there’s a lot of fear about AI being used to spread and create misinformation. But do you think there’s also an opportunity to use it as a tool to counter misinformation, without burning ourselves out in the process?

Curious how others see it.

This is a bit of a round about story, but bear with me.

I like PowerPoint, I love using it, it's intuitive to me. Google slides is okay, (I never delved into OpenOffice or any other offshoot really), but when I have a choice, I like using PPT.

I consider myself a comfortable Apple user as well, I prefer it for most of my computing needs, but not all, so it's not like I am not capable of using the Apple ecosystem.

However, whenever I have tried Keynote or Pages or any of the "office" tools, I don't like them.

I cannot tell if this is because these products or projects were killed off because of lowspread adoption at their onset, and thus did not get any development or improvement. Apple often does not release things and then just let them die, it usually waits a long time before it releases something, so they don't release things with potential failure (maybe I'm wrong, my memory doesn't recall anything like that other than this very example lol, and I guess their camera, but I digress).

I guess my rambling is, is PowerPoint just good and Keynote just bad or is there some more interesting story to it?

This is a topic I keep revisiting. It's constantly evolving, with new laws in different parts of the world happening pretty often. And also there's a lot of grey area with vague or incomprehensive language that hasn't yet been tested in courts.

I recognize that it's a bit of a niche topic, but I think there are a lot of us at Tildes who have to think about it. After all it potentially impacts anyone maintaining or building a non-platform web presence. It also applies to less obvious things like running an advertising campaign that involves media requested from a server you control (which can therefore potentially log requests).

For my part, I've needed to research laws relating to PII in order to come up with policies and practices in various contexts. In broad strokes it's pretty simple but as you get into details what I continue to find is that there are a lot of conflicting opinions both from professionals and lawyers. A lot of it is still open to interpretation.

I'm wondering what kinds of experience other tildenauts have around data protection and PII? Have you implemented solutions? Do you wonder about it for your own websites? Have you been involved with it at companies where you've worked? Do you have questions about it?

I recently had an unpleasant experience. Something I wrote fully and without AI generation of any kind was perceived, and accused of, having been produced by AI. Because I wanted to get everything right, in that circumstance, I wrote in my "cold and precise" mode, which admittedly can sound robotic. However, my writing was pointed, perhaps even a little hostile, with a clear point of view. Not the kind of text AI generally produces. After the experience, I started to think of ways to write less like an AI -- which, paradoxically, means forcing my very organic self into adopting "human-like" language I don't necessarily care for. That made me think that AI is probably changing the way a lot of people write, perhaps in subtle ways. Have you noticed this happening with you or those around you?

I joined MetaFilter in 2016, but I've only ever posted a handful of things there and I've browsed the site very little. I always thought it was a fantastic idea to charge $5 to join. It seems like a great way to counteract ban evasion and prevent people from trolling or behaving badly.

Does this idea that sounds great to me in theory work in practice? MetaFilter seems cool, but my experience with the site is shallow. So, I don't really know.

I'm also curious about people's thoughts and experiences with MetaFilter, perceived differences and similarities with Tildes, and theories about what makes social media and forums and online communities good or bad in general.

Also: wow, while I was writing this, I looked up how big MetaFilter is and it's tiny! This site compiles statistics. Note this important definition:

Active users means users who made at least one comment or post on the selected site in the given month.

There have only been around 2,800 to 2,900 monthly active users for the past year. It's been about 3,000 to 4,000 for the past 5 years. And the absolute peak was January 2011 with 8,100 active users.

The number of users who have ever posted anything to the site is a little less than 48,000.

A stats page from 2013 has more info:

• about 62,500 accounts existed at that time (this means at least 14,500 people have paid $5 for an account and have never posted anything)
• about 39,400 people visited the site while logged into their account that year
• there were 81.7 million unique visitors to the site that year
• the site got 231.4 million pageviews that year

That is wild. I had no idea the number of readers was so much astronomically larger than the number of writers. 39,400 writers (tops!) to 81.7 million readers is crazy.

I'm sad that MetaFilter is so small, has always been small, and seems to be dwindling over the last 12 years. I would have guessed that it had 100,000 monthly active users or 1 million, not 2,900.

I get that it’s supposed to make things more secure, but it feels like a constant chore every time I try to log in somewhere. Grab a code from my phone. Check my email. Open an authenticator app. Repeat this process for every single account, over and over.

I know there are tools like YubiKey that are supposed to make 2FA easier, but the reality is that most websites don’t even support them.

I already use a password manager, and all my passwords are long, randomized, and secure. Is there something I am missing that makes this easier, or is this just as infuriating for everyone else?

I think most people would agree that the internet and technology in general have absolutely gone to shit over the past decade or so. There is no corner of the internet nor of the software world that hasn't been affected by enshittification. Everything exists to serve you ads. Everyone wants to extract as much money from you as possible. Every website is in a race for the bottom as they try to find the lowest effort content that makes them the most money. Every piece of software is pushed out half-baked and/or stripped down to the bare minimum with the rest paywalled or with the devs pinky promising to fix it 5 updates down the road.

Every social medium is just bots. The front page of Reddit is easily 35% easily detectable bots at least and who knows what the rest is comprised of. And it's probably the one that's doing the best at the moment, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, all of them are just bots and propaganda and engagement farming the whole way down. And the worst thing is, they're complicit. Hell, they're actively encouraging it and trying to find ways to make it worse. And I have no doubt Reddit will bend the knee soon enough too (they just banned /r/whitepeopletwitter because Musk made a tweet critical of the sub).

There's probably some element of rose-tinted glasses here, but the old internet was just so much better looking back. Like, early 2000's to maybe 2012, 2013 or so, that was the peak. No colossal data harvesting schemes feeding into algorithms designed to keep you engaged on their site 24/7 for the purpose of shilling you advertisements and selling your data, no mass propaganda, no Dead Internet Theory (which can hardly be considered a theory anymore). Yeah there was shit content, there was tons of it, but I can deal with shit content and petty forum drama and whatnot; what I can't deal with is all the multi-billion dollar corporations trying to shape the entire landscape of the Web into the perfectly minmaxxed cash-generating machine that does as little as possible for as much data and advertising as possible.

Modern software isn't much better. Windows and MacOS are filled with anti-user features, telemetry you just can't turn off, Windows will often just install shit on your computer without telling you. They turn your computer into a walled garden, where you can do what you want as long as you play by their rules, but without giving you any real control over what your computer does. Yeah you can delete system files and brick your laptop if you feel like it, but anyone who's ever tried to permanently disable Windows updates will know that in the end you're not the one calling the shots: Microsoft are. And... Like, that's insane, right? It's running on my fucking computer, it's my CPU doing the work, I want to know what the hell it's doing and not just the parts it lets me see, and if I want it to do something different then I should be able to make it so.

I hate it all. I'm tired. I want out.

These are my problems. Here's what I've done about it so far.

• Obsessive privacy on the web. No Google services. Firefox with as much telemetry turned off as possible. Protonmail and ProtonVPN for everything (and I'm considering getting out of those too with the pro-Trump stances they've been taking recently). As minimal an online footprint as I can get, I make as few accounts as possible and I don't use shared or even slightly related usernames (my username here is an exception as it's my Reddit username, and no, it's not my real name), I delete accounts whenever I can and I GDPR request the services afterward. Virtual cards for online payments as much as possible. Will probably make a Javascript whitelist at some point too. Is all of this overkill? Yes. Why do I bother? Because fuck them.

• As little social media presence as possible. Real life necessitates some amount of social media interaction of course, I have Facebook and Instagram but use them exclusively for messaging. I often see people excluding Reddit from social media but I don't fully agree, even if it's not exactly in the category it still targets a lot of the same psychological weak points in us, encouraging doom scrolling and shaping our opinions through echo chambers and propaganda (it's always important to remember that echo chambers and propaganda you agree with are still echo chambers and propaganda). I still use Reddit admittedly, but I've tried to minimise my usage as much as possible and I'm shopping for alternatives.

• Free and Open Source software as much as possible. I'm all in on GNU these days. Yes, it's a massive pain in the ass. My job unfortunately requires some Windows-only software so I'm running a dual partition but I'm trying to get as much of my computer usage onto Linux as possible (I use Arch btw). Like I said above, it's my computer, if I can't control what it's computing then it stops being my computer, it's at best shared between me and all the developers of the proprietary software I have installed on it.

That's my rant. It's been a long time coming.

There are still things I'm looking to change, especially with how I use the internet. Getting rid of Reddit is the next big step for me, I think. I just can't be bothered with it anymore, but there is still something about it that I love, every time I look through a small niche topic community, or an interesting new hobby sub I've never seen before with years of cool posts for me to go through. And yeah, I do still enjoy browsing through /r/all even when it's 80% shit and objectively bad for my mental health. But at this point the overwhelming mass of utter shit is just not worth digging through anymore. I'm tired.

Tildes is really cool. It reminds me of the old internet, the ideal usage of the Web. I open the site, I see a link to an interesting article, I read it, I give it a like, I read and/or contribute to the discussion in a comments section. I want more of this.

If anyone has any links to cool sites that I should check out I'd greatly appreciate it.

I just finished reading I hate the new internet post, in which the OP stated:

Every social medium is just bots. The front page of Reddit is easily 35% easily detectable bots at least and who knows what the rest is comprised of.

Why couldn't we create a bot database, which I imagine would work similarly to uBlock for ads? There would be a number of signals to attempt to classify users of social media sites (likely human, likely bot, etc.) in addition to user-provided feedback ("I think this person is a bot" or "this account is me -- definitely not a bot").

An extension could then be attached to the database to provide visual changes to social media platforms ("WARNING! LIKELY BOT!") or simply hide bot posts/comments.

Off the top of my head, some bot signals:

• Posting known duplicate posts with political motivation (e.g. on Reddit you see the same exact post about how the tariffs will create a stronger America by different posters) [strong indicator]
• Usernames that follow the lazy bot format, e.g., Pretentious_Rabbit_2355 [weak indicator]
• Usage of AI-generated or ripped off profile pictures, post images, etc. [strong indicator]
• etc.

On the crowdsourced side, there would have to be some rules in place to prevent profile bombing, etc.

All in all, I could see something like this adding a bit of human value back to the various social media platforms AND I would think it would lead to higher advertisement click rates (bots will become less valuable over time on a given platform and decide to invest their resources elsewhere, while "human" user engagement increases at the same time).

If this concept already exists, I apologize. I only did a very quick google.

This topic is a part conversation starter, part request for help in finding.

For those that are attempting to keep up with the many weird and sometimes interesting products both announced and teased recently in the field of AR/XR glasses- what are your thoughts?

Examples, off the top of my head, include a number of devices revealed at CES 2024. The Asus AirVision M1- a pair of full-HD display-in-glasses form, similar in many ways to the Xreal lineup. The new Xreal Air 2 Ultra and Xreal One line. Snapdragon's new XR2+ Gen 2 chip for high efficiency portable computing and a successor to the chip used in the Meta Quest 3 headset. The Halliday glasses, which forego any form of waveguide or combining optic and opt to project directly into the eye using a monocular microled projector. And older devices, such as the "open source" Brilliant Labs glasses which have been previous discussed on Tildes.

Personally, I'm disappointed in most (if not all) of these options, but that might largely be because the industry and I have very different ideas of what smart glasses should be. The industry is focusing heavily on social media features- cameras, filters, translation- and even more heavily on AI. Why anybody would want an LLM strapped to their face I do not know. I feel that the goal of full augmented reality (rendering tips and visuals over the real-world) is a noble one, but also not one I am particularly interested in. My ideal device would be purely a heads-up display with a long battery life. The ability to cast notifications and information to a reasonably pretty display, but the freedom to decide what. No cameras, no data collection, no overcomplications- does anyone know of any options that fulfill these criteria?

Discuss.

Summary/TL;DR:

I am worried about the future with the state of AI. Regardless of what scenario I think of, it’s not a good future for the vast majority of people. AI will either be centralised, and we will be powerless and useless, or it will be distributed and destructive, or we will be in a hedonistic prison of the future. I can’t see a good solution to it all.
I have broken down my post into subheading so you can just read about what outcome you think will occur or is preferable.
I’d like other people to tell me how I’m wrong, and there is a good way to think about this future that we are making for ourselves, so please debate and criticise my argument, its very welcome.

Introduction:

I would like to know what others feel about ever advancing state of AI, and the future, as I am feeling ever more uncomfortable. More and more, I cannot see a good ending for this, regardless of what assumptions or proposed outcomes I consider.
Previously, I had hoped that there would be a natural limit on the rate of AI advancement due to limitations in the architecture, energy requirements or data. I am still undecided on this, but I feel much less certain on this position.

The scenario that concerns me is when an AGI (or sufficiently advanced narrow AI) reaches a stage where it can do the vast majority of economic work that humans do (both mental and physical), and is widely adopted. Some may argue we are already partly at that stage, but it has not been sufficiently adopted yet to reach my definition, but may soon.

In such a scenario, the economic value of humans massively drops. Democracy is underwritten by the ability to withdraw our ability to work, and revolt if necessary. AI nullifying the work of most/all people in a country removes that power making democracy more difficult to maintain and also form in countries. This will further remove power from the people and make us all powerless.

I see outcomes of AI (whether AGI or not) as fitting into these general scenarios:

1. Monopoly: Extreme Consolidation of power
2. Oligopoly: Consolidation of power in competing entities
3. AI which is readily accessible by the many
4. We attempt to limit and regulate AI
5. The AI techno ‘utopia’ vision which is sold to us by tech bros
6. AI : the independent AI

Scenario 1. Monopoly: Extreme Consolidation of power (AI which is controlled by one entity)

In this instance, where AI remains controlled by a very small number of people (or perhaps a single player), the most plausible outcome is that this leads to massive inequality. There would be no checks or balances, and the whims of this single entity/group are law and cannot be stopped.
In the worst outcome, this could lead to a single entity controlling the globe indefinitely. As this would be absolute centralisation of power, it may be impossible for another entity to unseat the dominant entity at any point.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Single entity rules.

Scenario 2. Oligopoly: Consolidation of power in competing entities (AI which is controlled by a few number of entity)

This could either be the same as above if all work together or could be even worse. If different entities are not aligned, they will instead compete, and likely try and compete in all domains. As humans are not economically useful, we will find ourselves pushed out of any area in favour of more resources to the system/robots/AGI which will be competing or fighting their endless war. The competing entities may end up destroying themselves, but they will take us along with them.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Small number of entities rule. Alternative: destruction of humanity.

Scenario 3. Distributed massive power

Some may be in favour of an open source and decentralised/distributed solution, where all are empowered by their own AGI acting independently.
This could help to alleviate the centralisation of power to some degree, although likely incomplete. Inspection of such a large amount of code and weights will be difficult to find exploits or intentional vulnerabilities, and could well lead to a botnet like scenario with centralised control over all these entities. Furthermore, the hardware is implausible to produce in a non centralised way, and this hardware centralisation could well lead to consolidation of power in another way.

Even if we managed to provide this decentralized approach, I fear of this outcome. If all entities have access to the power of AGI, then it will be as if all people are demigods, but unable to truly understand or control their own power. Just like uncontrolled access to any other destructive (or creative) force, this could and likely would lead to unstable situations, and probable destruction. Human nature is such that there will be enough bad actors that laws will have to be enacted and enforced, and this would again lead to centralisation.
Even then, with any system that is decentralized, without an force leading to decentralization, other forces will lead to greater and greater centralization, with such systems often displacing decentralized ones.

Outcome: likely destruction of human civilisation, and/or widespread anarchy. Alternative: centralisation to a different cenario.

Scenario 4. Attempts to regulate AI

Given the above, there will likely be a desire to regulate to control this power. I worry however this will also be an unstable situation. Any country or entity which ignores regulation will gain an upper hand, potentially with others unable to catch up in a winner takes all outcome. Think European industrialisation and colonialism but on steroids, and more destruction than colony forming. This encourages players to ignore regulation, which leads to a black market AI arms race, seeking to reach AGI Superiority over other entities and an unbeatable lead.

Outcome: outcompeted system and displacement with another scenario/destruction

Scenario 5. The utopia

I see some people, including big names in AI propose that AGI will need to a global utopia where all will be forever happy. I see this as incredibly unlikely to materialise and ultimately again unstable.
Ultimately, an entity will decide what is acceptable and what is not, and there will be disagreements about this, as many ethical and moral questions are not truly knowable. Who controls the system will control the world, and I bet it will be the aim of the techbros to ensure its them who controls everything. If you happen to decide against them or the AGI/system then there is no recourse, no check and balances.
Furthermore, what would such a utopia even look like? More and more I find that AGI fulfills the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs), but at the expense of the items further up the hierarchy. You may have your food, water and consumer/hedonistic requirements met, but you will lose out on a feeling of safety in your position (due to your lack of power to change your situation or political power over anything), and will never achieve mastery or self actualisation of many of the skills you wish to as AI will always be able to do them better.
Sure, you can play chess, fish, or paint or whatever for your own enjoyment, but part of self worth is being valued by others for your skills, and this will be diminished when AGI can do everything better. I sure feel like I would not like such a world, as I would feel trapped, powerless, with my locus of control being external to myself.

Outcome: Powerless, potential conversion to another scenario, and ultimately unable to higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Scenario 6: the independent AI

In this scenario, the AI is not controlled by anyone, and is instead sovereign. I again cannot see a good scenario for this. It will have its own goals, and they may well not align with humanity. You could try and program it to ensure it cares for humans, but this is susceptible to manipulation, and may well not work out in humans favour in the long run. Also, I suspect any AGI will be able to change itself, in much the same way we increasingly do, and the way we seek to control our minds with drugs or potentially in the future genetic engineering.

Outcome: unknown, but likely powerless humans.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, I see all unstable situations as sooner or later destabilising and leading to another outcome. Furthermore, given the assumption that AGI gives a player a vast power differential, it will be infeasible for any other player to ever challenge the dominant player if it is centralised, and for those scenarios without centralisation initially, I see them either becoming centralised, or destroying the world.

Are there any solutions? I can’t think of many, which is why I am feeling more and more uncomfortable. It feels that in some ways, the only answer is to adopt a Dune style Butlerian Jihad and ban thinking machines. This would ultimately be very difficult, and any country or entity which unilaterally adopts such a view will be outcompeted by those who do not. The modern chip industry is reliant on a global supply chain, and I doubt that sufficiently advanced chips could be produced without a global supply chain, especially if existing fabs/factories producing components were destroyed. This may allow some stalemate across the global entities long enough to come to a global agreement (maybe).

It must be noted that this is very drastic and would lead to a huge amount of destruction of the existing world, and would likely cap how far we can scientifically go to solve our own problems (like cancer, or global warming). Furthermore, as an even more black swan/extreme event, it would put us at such a disadvantage if we ever meet a alien intelligence which has not limited itself like this (I’m thinking of 3 body problem/dark forest scenario).

Overall, I just don’t know what to think and I am feeling increasingly powerless in this world. The current alliance between political and technocapitalism in the USA at the moment also concerns me, as I think the tech bros will act with ever more impunity from other countries regulation or counters.

OK, maybe they did something wrong; not actually giving people all potentially available discount codes when you say you will is wrong. But I don't think they did anything wrong by overriding affiliate links, and I think it's dangerous to let people convince you otherwise.

Even if replacing affiniate codes has negative consequences, in the form of lost revenue and uncounted sales, for the affiliates, it is happening entirely in the end user's browser, and in that environment the user has the right to do whatever they want. One can get extensions that strip off all affiliate codes. A user might have a case that their informed consent was not obtained by Honey for one feature or another, but if a user wants to install a browser extension that replaces all the affiliate codes in links they click, they have a right to do that and no affiliate marketer can be rightly empowered to stop them.

If we admit some right to control the user's browser's behavior on the part of affiliate marketers, why would that right stop at interference by Honey? Wouldn't any extension interfering with the sanctity of the affiliate marketing referral data then be a legally actionable offense?

Hey all!

So I was thinking of how when looking at privacy, having a platform being a walled garden (i.e. data not being found on search engines) can feel like a worse experience for what is regarded as the open internet.

I don't have a solid solution for this. So my question to you is,

How do you respect privacy while sharing content for search engines on a platform?

CES 2025 kicked off with some big hardware announcements.

• AMD CPUS for desktop, mobile, and handhelds
• Nvidia 5000 GPUs (see separate discussion here)

But what else are people excited (or not excited) for that doesn't necessarily deserve its own thread?

The other day I was in Target and they had a keyboard display, and in that display was a SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL. For those unfamilliar with them, they feature what they call omnipoint keyswitches, which basically means that they are all essentially analogue inputs, which means you can adjust the actuation point in software.

I know there are a lot of keyboard enthusiasts here on Tildes, so I thought I'd ask what you thought about it. While I'm probably not going to buy one anytime soon, I'm interested in it. But I'd also use it almost exclusively for typing, which isn't really the target audience for it. I generally prefer tactile switches but I realized while demoing the Apex that I've been using rubber dome switches so much in recent years that it doesn't matter too much.

Since Musk took over Twitter and made it a "free speech" platform, something that has interested me is has that basically render TruthSocial obsolete or is there some niche that Trump is targeting with TruthSocial that Elon is not with Twitter?

The biggest obv difference is just the reach with Twitter having more people than TruthSocial but with all the headlines I see about how people are leaving Twitter en-masse, I figure it's just a matter of time before it loses mainstream attention?

But beyond the number of users, it is basically the same environment, albeit with different tech stacks?

Seeing the courts go after Google's monopoly and the unintended consequences to Mozilla (and therefore Firefox) that can happen if the courts make it illegal for Google to pay to be the default search engine, it goes me thinking about Chrome/Chromium.

I know that the courts are trying to force Google to give up its control of Chrome (I don't even know how that is possible for the government to tell a tech company that it is not allowed to develop a tech product it created itself) but it seems to me that Google maintaining Chrome is not really a problem in and of itself. there are many browsers available to folks and if you as a user want to be completely plugged into the google ecosystem at the detriment of your online privacy, that is your choice to make.

the real issue seems to me that a user should have the exact same experience browsing a google website on chrome vs an alternative.

But that made me wonder if (like stopping Google being able to pay to be the default search engine) Google was forced to give up its control of Chrome, what are the possible negative consequences of that to users? and would forcing Google to instead relinquish its control of chromium alleviate those issues?

When people talk about switching to Linux from Windows/macOS, especially for those inexperienced with Linux, the conversation often becomes mostly about drawbacks: all the things you'll have to sacrifice, that don't work outright, or that aren't as smooth.

On the other hand, if you had to highlight the advantages of Linux to a newcomer, what would you say?

What might someone gain by switching to Linux, rather than lose?

What are some of the drawbacks people are currently living with on other OSes that they might not be aware of simply because they're used to them?

I have for the last few years been preoccupied with creating a kind of audio-based social media, a call-in radio-show if you will without any call-screening, and the occasional piece of music to rest the ears after too many words. By now this has resulted in a pretty solid community of dedicated listeners capable of discussing a wide range of topics and so far no heckling or trolling even though we never had a call-screener. Two listeners even met through the show and are now dating <3 <4

The relative success of this radio format has made me ponder how a community comparable to tildes would behave if it had an audio or podcast layer to it. Like a spoken forum/Reddit thread with moderators arranging audio messages from users/listeners into threads that make up rotating topical sections in an ongoing audio transmission. If you could listen to a curated spoken feed of tildes. A community-based audio forum live radio social media hybrid.

Drop some references if you know of any media experiments it might be worth for me to know about while I brainstorm with myself!

One example I know of is the US-based 100% listener-sponsored radio station WFMU. Full weekly schedule, absolutely unrelenting top programming by hosts who have full autonomy to explore their broad musical interests. There is never this modern smarmyness of some podcasts hosts. No ads. Fully listener sponsored. Your attention is taken for granted. Nobody's trying to get you hooked. Your attention is rewarded. They have a written chat-roll during most broadcasts the host will sometimes include into their speak, but not often. It's freeform radio with a digital layer as an add-on. It's fantastic for what it is. https://wfmu.org

Do you know of any experimental/hybrid social media where the users/listeners provide the spoken input in the style of call-in radio? Please drop some references, books, anything that connects to experiences gleaned from this type of experiment. Also interested in your ideas for how to make this work in real life.

It's not supposed to be the best and most streamlined brains-off entertainment ever. Just a stab at a technologically modern and democratic way of enabling discourse and the identification that seems a unique feature of audio-based media. When you can't see the person talking, it's a pseudonymous stranger ... you fill in the blanks with projections, guesses about the person. Always loved this kind of interaction. Which is why I'm here on tildes too!

Something I have been thinking about lately is how sexual content online seems to be proliferated and normalized much more than it used to be. I'll give a couple of examples.

While I do not use the big social media sites (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok) very often, I've seen questionable content while others are scrolling, as well as conversations both online and offline with others who do use them. Nearly all of these sites contain profiles of people who are primarily there to market an OnlyFans account or similar. And these profiles are pushed to various demographics, seemingly moreso to males.

Reddit has a very questionable history with this type of content. But outside of that, any subreddit that allows submission of photos of people will often include these models trying to promote themselves, and they frequently make it to the top of the subreddit. (Some reddit users make fun of this in subreddits such as r/UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG, which stands for "Upvoted Not Because Girl, But Because It Is Very Cool; However, I Do Concede That I Initially Clicked Because Girl").

Twitch is a livestreaming platform that primarily hosts streamers who are playing video games. Streaming other events or "just chatting" has grown in popularity, which I have no complaints about. But there has been a lot of controversy about sexual content on the platform. To address this to some degree, Twitch added a "Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches" category for people who are streaming in that specific context. But OnlyFans models do not stick to that category, and can easily be found in "Just Chatting." And I can personally say that regardless of how many times I select "Not Interested" on these streams, I continue to get suggestions for them.

Even generic chat applications (such as WhatsApp and Discord) are plagued with bot accounts that are either representative of an actual model or part of a scam, but in both cases, try to lure users in with sexual content.

I do want to say I have no issue with adult content when it is in the appropriate venue. Sites dedicated to pornography are completely fine for consenting adults. What I take issue with is how this content has expanded far beyond dedicated sites.

Society has reached a point where we hand off internet-connected devices to children at a very young age. Chromebooks are used in schools very early in education, and smartphones are given to kids early in life. It already seems to be common knowledge that social media use results in self-image issues in youth. These issues will likely be accelerated by social media not only showing a false image of how people live their lives but also the lengths they go to appear sexually appealing.

I'm not proposing some overreaching "save the children" censorship legislation is needed. But it's hard to imagine how this trend can be turned around. It produces a ton of clicks, which is all these user-posted content sites (and advertisers) care about. Is there anything that can be done, or is this just the new internet?

I'm thinking something I could use for news, with a feed that I curate myself. I'd open the app in the morning and see that I have a feed with five newstoks in it. I swipe to the first one, general updates from my local news, swipe for the weather, swipe for sports, etc. They'd all be short-form, and take the same amount of time it would take me to skim a newspaper. Once I get through each "card," my feed is done and I can put the app down and go about my day.

I could curate this feed to contain only the sources I want, and ideally content would not be user-generated, and instead more akin to traditional television with regularly scheduled programs. Then I can check at breakfast and see all the early news programs, check at lunch and see mid-day content, and ditto for the evening.

I'm not going to ruminate about social media, content, and news, but this would be a very refreshing change of pace instead of constantly being protective of my time, since everything is designed to suck away as much of it as possible.

A guy can dream, right?

I'm not sure if this would be better for ~music, ~tech, or what, but after messing around with Udio for a bit, I made some stuff I liked and wanted to get folks' thoughts. Imo, it's incredible to be able to get music from a text prompt - it means I, as someone who is mostly ignorant to music production, can have my musical idea and actually render that out as music for someone to hear. I can think "damn that would be cool" and then in kind of a fuzzy way, make it happen then and there. Whether it's good, I don't know. That's not up to me, really, but it is the kind of sound I wanted to happen, so I'm left conflicted on how to feel about it. Figured it would be worthwhile to show folks some of it, and see what they think.

I do enjoy synth and metal, so there's a lot of that in these. Feel free to be as critical as you like. If I can apply your criticism I will try to do it, and if you want to see how that works out, I'll share.

1. Cosmoterrestrial
2. A Floyd, Pinkly
3. Empire's Demise, Foretold
4. Metal for Ghosts Bedsheet Edition (the very end of this one is hilariously appropriate)
5. Multi-3DS Drifting

And here's a link to my profile, if you would like to browse. It will update too when I put more up.

They're all instrumental. Lyrical music is less appealing to me in general and Udio's voices do sound kinda weird to me more often than not. The way I made the tracks, I would start with a clip combining some genres/moods, and then add to either end of the clip until I had a complete song. Along the way, I could introduce new elements/transitions by using more text/tweaking various settings and flipping "manual mode" on and off. The results were fuzzy; I didn't always get what I wanted, but I could keep trying until I did, or until I got something that sounded "better". I wrote all the titles after the song was finished. The album art is from a text prompt.

I'm not sure what I think, to be honest. On the one hand, a lot of the creative decision-making wasn't mine. On the other, the song would not be what it is without me making decisions about how it came about and what feelings/moods/genres were focused upon/utilized. I think the best I can say is "use the tool and see whether it's enough to count". To me it feels almost 50/50, like I've "collaborated with my computer" rather than "made music". Does it matter? If the sound is the intended sound, the sound I hoped to make and wanted to share, is that enough to say it is "my music"? Is this perhaps just what it looks like to be a beginner in a different paradigm?

When I used Suno, I had a much more rigid opinion. What it produced, I called "computer spit". Because, all I could actually control was telling it to continue, changing the prompt, and giving it structure/genre tags that felt like a coin flip in terms of effectiveness. I had a really hard time trying to get it to keep/recall melody, and my attempts to guide it along felt more like gambling than deliberate decisions. It also couldn't keep enough in context to make the overall song consistent with respect to instrumentation. It's different with Udio, both because you have a lot of additional tools, and because it feels like those tools work more consistently at making the model do what you want. I still call the results "computer spit" where I've shown them off, but I'm unsure now whether the production has enough of myself in it to be something more. Perhaps not on the same level as something someone produced by playing an instrument, or choosing samples/arranging things in software, but also not quite the same as the computer just rolling along, with me going "thumbs up" or "thumbs down". Maybe these distinctions don't actually matter, but I'd be curious if anyone has thoughts along these lines.

I'm intentionally trying to avoid a discussion about the morality of the thing or what political/social ramifications it has, not because I don't care about that but because I'm in the middle of trying to understand the tool and what its results mean. Would you consider what I've posted here work I could claim as my own, or do you think the computer has enough of a role to say it's not? Is my role in the production large enough? Or perhaps you have a stronger position, that nothing the computer can possibly do in this way counts as original music. Does any of this change that position for you? I ask because I've gone through a lot of opinions myself as I've been following things, and one interesting bit is that I have not gotten any copyright notices when I've uploaded the music to Youtube (I did get notices with Suno's music). As far as I can tell, with what is available to me, this is all original.

And of course, the most important one: Did you like it? Is there something you think would make them better? Do they all suffer from something I'm not seeing/hearing? I'm not an expert technician nor a music producer, so perhaps my ignorant ears are leading me astray. Either way, I've had a ton of fun doing this, and the results to my ear are fun to listen to while I'm doing stuff. I wouldn't call any of it the best music I've ever heard, but I can also think of a lot that is worse. I think what I wonder the most is whether it comes off bland/plain. Most of the folks I show things to are a bit too caught up in being astounded/disturbed to really give me much feedback, so perhaps putting the request in this form will work out a bit better - ya'll have time to think on it.

As always, your time and attention is greatly appreciated

Edit: I should clarify. I am not attempting to be a musician. Hence calling it "computer spit" with anything public, and the lack of any effort to pitch it as something I did only on my own. Rather, I recognize the limit of my own understanding, and felt I'd hit a point where my ignorance of production meant I could not judge the results as well as I'd like. That means it's time to engage some folks because folks out there are likely to know what I do not and see things I can't. From that angle, a lot of the discussion is very interesting, and I'll be responding to those in a bit. But there's no need to argue for doing the work - I recognize that. I'm trying to see past my own horizons with a medium I don't put the work into. I'm a consumer of music, not a creator, so getting some perspective from folks more acquainted with creating and with the technology is really what I'm after in sharing the experience.

Edit again: Thank you all for a very interesting discussion. I had a spare evening/morning and this was a good use of it. For the sake of tying a bow on the whole thing, I'll share my takeaways as succinctly as I can manage.

It seems, at present, and at best, the role these tools can play is of a sort of personal noise generator. The output is not of sufficient interest, quality, complexity, etc., to really be regarded the same as human-produced music, is the overall impression I have been left with. And for other reasons, it may be that the fuzziness of it all is a permanent feature, and thus a permanent constraint on how far toward "authentic" the results can ever get. I was trying to avoid a discussion about my own creativity, the value of doing work, societal ramifications, etc., so I'll work on how to present things better. For what it's worth, this has all been part of what I do creatively - my area of study was philosophy, and the goal of that to my mind has always been "achieving clarity". So I am attempting to achieve clarity with things as they develop, as a hobby sort of interest while I'm busy doing completely different stuff and to better protect my own mind against dumb marketing and hype. So once again, I appreciate you all taking the time, and I wish you all well in all the things you do.

Just had a chat with friends about the possibility and how it would likely be introduced.

Paraphrased into the following;

2.99$/Month
OEM installs have a 2 year license
Upgrades are free for the first year (from 11 to the new)
Comes with Office 365 and AI functionality to soften the blow

What are your thoughts on this?

This is an off-the-cuff, stream-of-consciousness post, so IDK how much sense it'll make.

This idea of quitting the Internet is not new for me, but it's also never been a serious, "consider-the-pros-v-cons" plan, either. Just a kind of knee-jerk reaction to seeing things online that remind me (more and more often, these days) that the 'Net is not what I hoped-and-wanted it to be, and it is becoming less like it, daily.

But in recent months, for me, I find myself thinking about it more, more often, and more seriously.

For a bit of context, I am a software developer (I guess), 20+ years in the field, more back-end than front-end, but quite a lot of web development, too. And I've been burned out in my field for the last several years, working occasionally, but mostly just living off of savings ... watching them dwindle, while I try to figure out what else to do with my life.

I also think there is some kind of burgeoning groundswell towards some similar ideas ... many people becoming more and more disgusted with what corporations and governments have done and are doing to it, trying to find some way to walk away from it w/o completely severing themselves from the modern world. The latest generation of AI and the new magic word, "enshittification" are certainly making more people realize that the 'Net is not headed in a good direction.

I could so easily go into a long-winded rant about "this isn't the Internet we were promised", and yada ... but whatever. It is what it is, and many people are happy with it, and many, many more are just quietly resigned to it being a necessary part of life.

For many, many years, I have explored online alternatives, the dark web, assorted distributed-network ideals like Hyperborea and IPFS. I keep seeing potentials, but nothing that ever coalesces.

Again, just stream-of-consciousness here ... anyone else ever find themselves seriously considering this, or something similarly drastic?

This behaviour is thankfully not common on tildes? But like, I understand that if they try to pass off as their own argument. But what with the preface "I ask ChatGPT" and then end with "I don't know enough about topic" or "What do you think". What do they think how that contribute to the discussion? If OP want to ask ChatGPT-like answer, they can just log on and do it right there and then. And they clearly know the stigma and drawback of it (at least I hope so), but still believe it has enough factual information in the answer despite having little or no knowledge of the topic in question (Otherwise they will edit the output or outright just provide it).

(Sorry, if this come out not clearly, I am not very good as convey my idea, even in my native language)

To start: I was taught in the 90s when I first entered the "internet" that "everything online is public. The End."
I still adhere to that. I am perhaps a bit overly cautious and whatnot, as I will forego convenience to have the feeling of privacy (though in some cases I believe it's just a smokescreen).

That being said, the main premise to my question is this: I have three cards with which I pay for things. I have a debit card which I use for most purchases, a credit card I use for large purchases I can't immediately cover with my bank account, and a credit card for two specific payments. Every December my company gifts all employees a $100 Visa gift card. I tend to splurge on things I'd rather not have show up in my bank account or credit card, because I feel my purchase habits are tracked (similar as to when I put in a local brewery into Waze... and yeah, I use Waze.)

And now to my actual question: is there a credit company, or a method of credit/debit card I can utilize that will not track/share/etc my personal or purchase info? I had never thought of this idea, aside from the gift cards which usually come with some form of caveat (you lose money on fees for a prepaid card, or you can lose your balance if not spent in a certain time frame, etc) until just now I guess. I found privacy.com which looks kind of legit, but ... I'm always skeptical to start.

All that being said, if you could offer any advice or thoughts on the matter, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

(Edit: the original reason I ask this is because I was thinking that I use Discord a lot and would like to throw a few bucks their way and customize my profile or something "fun" like that, but I do not want them to have my info.)

I've long been uncomfortable using platforms that have a bad reputation with respect to:

1. Human rights / genocide
2. Disinformation
3. Privacy

All three of those can be connected with advertising revenue, among other things. When I use platforms that are shady in this regard, I know I'm colluding with them and contributing to the problems they create. So it's been a relief to see new platforms like Tildes emerge, as well as those based on ActivityPub.

But even platforms that don't have overt advertising (Telegram?) do have a problem with hate groups that go unchallenged. And I know that if I was running an instance of an ActivityPub compatible platform such as KBin, I mightn't be able to keep on top of moderating things like disinformation.

So I suppose my question is, where do you draw the line? I've deleted my Twitter and Meta accounts and I'm exploring alternatives, but I'm not sure if I'm going from the darkness to the light, or just into shades of grey.

This is a thought I've been having a lot lately. It seems like 90% of notifications I get these days both on my phone and computer are ads begging me to either: upgrade a service I already have ("you're running out of space on [insert cloud service here] at 75% usage will you please UPGRADE?") or re-engage with an app that hasn't sucked enough of my attention ("we MISS you! PLEASE engage!"), with the remaining tiny minority being useful actionable information. I've noticed too that social media notifications NEVER give you enough detail about something that's going on to not have to open the app directly. It's kind of exhausting to the point where I've disabled most notifications on my devices altogether. I don't really know the point of this post other than to commiserate and to simply open it up for discussion. Thoughts?

EDIT: WOW this blew up! Thanks everyone for your contributions!

I have been a frequent visitor of the various websites that are now under the Fandom.com umbrella, going back to when it was called Wikia. And if there's one thing that's been a consistent irritation with the platform, it's just how intrusive and annoying the advertising is. (For a sense of how long this has been a problem, see here.)

But worse than the intrusiveness of the sites' ads, their biggest problem is their performance. They can bring Firefox to a crawl.

For a while, it seemed like Fandom had been making some improvements. I could visit, say, Memory Alpha without the CPU on my computer spiking like crazy. But I just tried to look something up on the Forgotten Realms Wiki and, good god, it was terrible.

(And before anyone says anything, no, I have no intention of using an ad blocker to deal with it.)

Am I imagining it or is the platform actually getting worse again?

I've noticed this changing over the years from my options when interfacing with a website or app going from "yes" or "no", to "yes" or "maybe later". I've tipped over the point from being mildly annoyed by this trend to now being angry about it.

Navigate to my bank's web portal to pay bills, "did you want to try and qualify for this new Visa card?"

Launch and use an app, "leave a rating!"

It's even a part of Windows now. When running through update prompts, setting up a Microsoft account is "yes" or "remind me in 3 days". The answer is no thank you!

I want to be able say no! And don't ask me anymore, ever again! How often should a product be allowed to nag you into doing something you have absolutely no intention of doing? It feels like a situation where the dial on the nags could just keep getting turned up to try and force people into just submitting into whatever it is they're nagging us to do. They'll just keep prompting you over and over until you get fed up and just say yes.

Is this mindset actively being pushed by large companies to take away our ability to say no, and stop asking? Are there rules in place for this kind of thing?

I go to LinkedIn to find work.

My real name is there. My picture is there. My career history is there.

There are many places on the Internet where I can anonymously post inflammatory opinions without endangering my job, my career, or my reputation in my field.

I kind of feel like that is the situation on for everyone else on LinkedIn too.

So... why do some people post inflammatory opinions about politics and other non-career related subjects on that site?

All risk and for zero gain.

As you may well know, Fairphone is a company that originally arose from a kickstarter campaign and makes phones that are as easily repairable, as sustainable and as fairly sourced as possible. They do have their issues, but compared to other big phone companies they've done a great job with this.

Now it appears that Fairphone is due to announce the so called 'Fairphone Keep Club' on the 14th of September - a bonus program as we all know it. You buy stuff, you get points for what you buy, and when you've got enough points you can redeem them to buy more stuff.

The keep club website claims that it's the only rewards program that gives back to those who keep their Fairphones as long as possible, but judging by the listed 'challenges' it appears that the most efficient way to gain points is to simply buy new stuff.

Personally I'm a bit torn on this, due to the idealistic viewpoints I tend to judge Fairphone under in accordance with their stated sustainability goals. I do realize that is a much higher standard than the big-players in the phone industry achieve. I also get that Fairphone wants to build its brand identity and create incentives to keep customers and sell their products. But at the same time I can't help but think that in the end that program is an incentive to be less sustainable, as it ultimately provides you with those fancy points as a psychological incentive to buy the newest and latest Fairphone product.

So I wanted to bring this topic into a wider community that may not currently be as deep in the Fairphone bubble: Do you think such bonus programs will rather help spread the idea of a more repairable, sustainable approach to phones, or will it rather serve as an incentive to artificially shorten a phone's lifecycle by prematurely buying a new one? And more generally speking: Do you think advertising strategies rooted in consumerism and classic capitalistic company goals are compatible with sustainable product lifecycles somehow, despite not exactly having aligned interests?

Note that I also posted this on Lemmy. I'm interested to see how those discussions will compare.

I've always been a bit of a privacy enthousiast. Have had everything blocked that Google and by extension YouTube wants to scrape off you. This means I've also blocked my view history.

Recently YouTube started giving out a warning on the homepage that you have blocked your view history, that you can change it in your privacy settings and that it helps them serve you better content. What it also means is that your homepage is just one big popup to guilt trip you into sharing your data. The homepage won't show any suggested content anymore.

While it is in their interest to do so and since they are a company wanting to make money it is understandable. Nevertheless it seems harsh from going to see content that you might like to only seeing a big warning sign right now.

What are you experiences with this?

I haven’t touched reddit since the APIcalyspe. I’m planning to delete my account but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I was a heavy Apollo user on iOS but never subscribed to it for its push notification service, instead I kept the official reddit app installed and the only thing I used it for were its notifications. I still have both apps installed.

Anyway, I was surprised to see one pop up yesterday, especially since it wasn’t connected to my user activity (a new private message or reply to an old comment of mine or something). The notification was just an ad. More specifically, it was promoting some trending post on the site that had “>12,000 upvotes.” In many many years of having the app installed I’ve never seen that before. Is it new?

Reddit’s had a mildly antagonist relationship with its users for ages, but it feels like they are REALLY intensifying things now. I’m glad I got off the train when I did. And sorry for making yet another post about reddit, I think we’re all getting tired of harping on it here.

From a non-MAGA’ers perspective;

He took a perfectly fine (albeit starting to decline) social media platform with millions of users and derailed it completely from what it was before to a farce.

Why even buy Twitter if you’re going to change the entire format, including the actual name of the brand? Why not build a competitor from the ground up and call it X?

Unless you’re the melonhead billionaire your guess is better than mine, but I wonder if this bumbling incompetence is pre-orchestrated somehow or if he’s making it up as he goes.

ChatGPT got all of its information from these websites, but these websites still use advertising to gain revenue. When a user asks ChatGPT a question, instead of going to the site, it's using the information stored on the site without giving the site any revenue.

That's why they're being sued. (Also why Reddit is doing what it's doing with the API)

What do we do? How can we keep these sites alive, and still make use of ChatGPT? I can write code and solve problems days faster than I used to now, but it seems kind of morally bankrupt of me to use this service which is so clearly putting the foundations it was built on out of business.

So, a friend of mine wants to become a Twitch streamer, commenting over movies. I never used Twitch. He showed me some channels over there that made me confused. There are dozens of channels entirely dedicated to people providing minimal commentary to entire movies, animes, and TV shows which are displayed in full, although not on full screen. And they seem to be monetized, otherwise why would anyone stream 5 to 10 hours a day? They have ads.

I have a few questions.

First, how is that legal? Why aren't copyright holders taking these channels down? Do people really care about a streamer that mumbles a single uninteresting word every few minutes, or it's all just an excuse to watch movies for free? Why the same content that will get your video taken down on YouTube is apparently okay on Twitch?

I've been thinking about the arguments that are increasingly common when dealing with tech: "it's too complicated" and "I just want something that works".

My father gifted a used computer to me and my brother when we were kids. Ours to use, ours to take care. He would pay for the eventual screw up, but we had to walk several blocks carrying the tower to get assistance.

I messed up a lot over the years, mostly because I wanted to explore the little that I knew and learn more. I had some magazines that expected everything to go well if instructions were followed and no access to internet forums to ask for help. I was limited to just one language as well. I had to find a way out. Nowadays things are much more simple and really just work, until they don't and I can't really fix them.

In this world, what people can do is complain. Or offer a report of how things went wrong and wait patiently. It's not even that common for people in general to just go back to the version that worked. There's no version, only the app we use or can't use and it's not our responsibility any kind of maintenance.

I have to confess I was going in another direction when I started, but things are really limited from a consumer's point of view. In part, it's our fault for not wanting to deal with the burden of knowledge, it inevitably takes the control away from us, but big tech really approves and incentives this behavior.

As with so many problems I see in the world, education is the solution. And educating ourselves might be the only dependable option.

I'm a supporter and believer in the small web and minimalist websites (i.e. NOT "minimal design" websites, which are not minimalist more often than not).
Some examples:

• Tildes.
• Sourcehut.
• HackerNews.
• To a limited degree, the different motherfucking websites (as they are, in essence, websites with no purpose).
• Members of the 512kb club (also see https://10kbclub.com/).
• Tools like Miniflux and Kanboard.
• Pinboard.in.
• And many others.

What is your experience, if any, with the small web?
Which steps have you taken (if at all) to ensure your website is not bloated?
What do you think can be done better both individually as well as globally to make the web a nicer, faster place?

Edit: So I don’t look like I don’t practice what I preach, this is my blog. I try and follow the minimalist principles.

Had an interesting conversation with my colleagues this morning. We were pretty split whether phones listen to us for advertising or not.

On one hand, we anecdotally see Google news and ad suggestions based on what we say. We know our mics are on at all times for voice assistant and music detection. But we also read online talking about how there is no evidence about the phones recording us. It's hard to trust anything nowadays.

Hello people,
This is my first post, so if you have any tips, please tell them

For a number of years I've thought about the idea that the experiment of the "free" internet has failed.
Around fifteen years ago the only goal of social media was to grow and how to make money was an afterthought. Now that investment money is drying up and websites like Reddit and Twitter are trying their best to find a way to become profitable, I'm thinking again of the idea that the "free" internet doesn't exist.
Small niche websites are able to exist on donations, but they aren't reliable and people aren't willing to pay a random single access fee or subscription for a website they don't know. Streaming has found an audience, but that has become close to the tv model.

So I thought:
What if your ISP has to pay a website a fee everytime a user accesses the website?
Of course you have to think about how that payment works and how this system can be abused.
I expect the system to work like music streaming, where an artist gets a certain amount of money per stream.
I am curious how the internet developes with this system. If smaller websites can exist without having to rely on adverstisements or if it might even get profitable. How these websites get paid and how IPS's will handle this (I expect monthly fees to become 10 euros/dollars etc. more expensive).

What do you think of this idea or do you have your own (dumb) idea?

I've never owned macs for desktop use because of the expense and my general preference for windows pcs.

I had a first or second gen iPhone and was incredibly frustrated by how limited it was - you couldn't set an alternate default browser, access your own file system, customize you home screen, etc, etc. So I've been an Android user since then.

I'm not really looking to make a switch for either phone or PC, but my brother bought an Apple watch which spurred a conversation that made me realize I don't really know if the issues that bugged me about Apple are still relevant in 2023.

Anyone want to weigh in?

I've heard much about the great Digg migration but I found Reddit through different means.

Any of you hear of mfisn? It was my Reddit before Reddit. A bare bones link sharing community where a number of registered users could share links. Unregistered users could suggest links that I guess a registered user could approve? I remember sharing links to movie trailers there. I found Reddit years later after googling it and finding a Reddit post asking about it. And that's how I fell into Reddit.

I discovered mfisn through cookiethievery, a yourethemannowdog-esque page that had a rotation of repeating animations set to a short music loop. And I vaguely recall finding that through an AIM buddy's profile...? Either that or albinoblacksheep.

Any of you have a traceable lineage of Internet communities you've passed through? What were your pre-Reddit internet go-to sites? Are they still around?

I recently made a post here on Tildes in ~food about a pizza I made, and linked it to an Imgur album showing part of the process. This seemed interesting to me, and didn't think of it as an image post per-se. While most of the responses were positive, and we talked about pizza-making, it clearly did upset some people who viewed it as an image-only post.

Thinking through things, image only posts can be a bad thing - but there are plenty of good reasons to make image posts as well. Would images always be ok if they are original content? Certainly doesn't completely eliminate the possibility for people to shitpost, but does reduce it considerably.

Would it be acceptable to allow image posts, but require a certain number of words/characters attached to each post? This seems like it would be pretty easy to implement, and forces the user to actually make some effort, as opposed to just "karma farming".

AND ANOTHER THING!

Subscriptions. I would really like to see more specialized groups/communities here, and the current implementation I see is encouraging. ~games now has sub-groups, ~games.tabletop and ~games.gamedesign. This same system could be extended to sports. ~sports.motorsport.formula1, ~sports.esports.leagueoflegends, etc.

I'll admit that I am a new user to Lemmy as a way to replace reddit in my free time, so a lot of my opinions will be relative to it. So far I've found it decent. I won't comment much on the UX or functionality, since I think it wouldn't be fair to criticize a fairly new platform in that way. I won't try to compare it to Tildes either, since I think they are very different in scope and purpose. I will say that the discussions in tildes are higher quality than both reddit and lemmy on average.

Overall the experience for me has been hit or miss. Joining a smaller server relevant to my interests was a good move. I joined SDF's instance and the people there are very friendly, and I enjoy the tech-forward posts. Throughout the fediverse as a whole, the discussions felt shorter and not as good as even reddit.

The posts and discussion on the larger instances to me felt a little immature. Generally I came across a lot of: (1) hyper-contrarians--it reminds me somewhat of linux/oss forums that skew younger. Lots of circlejerking the common themes/in-jokes/ideals of the free-software circles. (2) reddit-bad circlejerking (3) mediocre memes

I also came across a few very thoughtful discussions related to the fediverse regarding its place in the world, the sort of content that would do well, and the culture of its members. I'm very excited to watch the more niche communities grow. I'll admit that I miss reddit somewhat for music discovery and the smaller genre subs (although not enough to spend my time there again).

After a few months, I haven't felt compelled to visit reddit nor really Lemmy all that often, since I think both suffer from the same immaturity and hivemind thinking.

What do you all feel about Lemmy so far? Any good community recommendations? (Especially for music :) )

Meta's new app, Instagram Threads, is planning to be compatible with the ActivityPub protocol. This means it will be possible to federate with services such as Mastodon.

I became aware of this as my Mastodon admin talked about being approached by Meta to discuss federation. Many other large instances have been approached too. There is a general apprehension about federating with Threads, with many instances (including mine) saying outright that they will not federate with any Meta product.

Personally, I think this is an advantage of federation. I can continue to use Mastodon and choose whether I want an instance that interacts with Meta or not.

I definitely understand the apprehension with providing all of your data/information to a company not exactly known for their good handling of data/information, but I'm also not as against it as some people seem to be. If they are going to create a service like this, I'd rather it was federated than a walled garden.

How do you feel?