Heresy_generator

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If anyone isn’t familiar with this here’s the Wired article

Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.

Why would Google want to do this? First, the generated results to the latter query are more likely to be shopping-oriented, triggering your subsequent behavior much like the candy display at a grocery store’s checkout. Second, that latter query will automatically generate the keyword ads placed on the search engine results page by stores like TJ Maxx, which pay Google every time you click on them. In short, it’s a guaranteed way to line Google’s pockets.

It’s also a guaranteed way to harm everyone except Google. This system reduces search engine quality for users and drives up advertiser expenses. Google can get away with it because these manipulations are imperceptible to the user and advertiser, and the company has effectively captured more than 90 percent market share.

It’s unclear how often, or for how long, Google has been doing this, but the machination is clever and ambitious. I have spent decades looking for examples of Google putting its enormous thumb on the scale to censor or amplify certain results, and it hadn’t even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better.

It’s neat from a research and proof-of-concept perspective but practically speaking I’d like to see the CPU cycles required for the LLM compression compared to PNG or FLAC compression. We’ve always known we can increase compression by throwing more computing power at the problem but we settle on a happy medium at the intersection of “good enough” for compression and performance.

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When you’re such a Karen that you take your NIMBY complaints all the way to the UN.

LMAO; this pro-Assad/pro-Russia propaganda outlet doesn’t even try to pretend to present reality:

Russia & NATO

As the Draconian Western-led sanctions on Russia exacerbate the economic crisis worldwide, and as Russian troops gain more ground despite the influx of military aid into Ukraine, exposing US direct involvement in bio-labs spread across Eastern Europe and the insurgence of neo-Nazi groups… How will things unfold?

If I didn’t know better I would think that sentence was a parody of Kremlin propaganda.

On July 25, 2022 the lawsuit alleges, Lee asked her supervisor for three days off using her floating holidays to attend to her health. Her supervisor allegedly rejected the request saying it “would be a burden to the rest of the team” and that “there is a lot of work to be done.”

What the fuck? It’s 3 days; fix your staffing!

It’s actually only a few things. The vast majority of the goods we purchase are clearly priced. Most states (and some local jurisdictions like big cities) do have sales tax applied to purchases of non-essential goods, but those rates are generally much lower than the national sales taxes in most European countries.

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20-mile-per-hour speed limit permitted for riders under 16

So, unmodified, slower than a bicycle where your average cyclist can sprint to over 30 mph without much trouble.

This is just media fear mongering about [new thing]. When I was a kid there were plenty of bicycle wrecks where kids got hurt, sometimes severely, and the media wasn’t pearl-clutching about the “danger” of pedal bikes.

The first sentence of the article:

With so many new, or newly sad, social media apps, how do you know if Threads, Bluesky or Mastodon are for you?

This is literally the last time Masodon is mentioned so I hope you found it enlightening.

It’s a stretch to blame NVIDIA for someone buying their hardware off of a shelf and using it for something shitty. It’d be like blaming Sony if it was found that child abuse rings prefer to use their cameras.

It’s not a game, it’s a child exploitation engine.

[I was privileged enough to have easy access to any book I wanted without needing to rely on the school library so it won’t be a problem for people like me. It only prevents poor students and students with controlling parents from obtaining the books excluded from the school library so I don’t care.]

[Also, the literal laws making it a crime for people to use the bathroom they are comfortable with have never impacted me so I don’t care about that either.]

[Why are we wasting time and energy on issues that don’t impact me personally?]

An impressive level of narcissism.

Selling it for clout rather than money doesn’t make it better in any way.