Well, yes, Google has been becoming shittier for years as they prioritize ads and fail to deal with SEO slop. You have to know what’s a good source, but that was true even when we were doing research in libraries.
The AI summary is making the problem worse. The information it provides is not trustworthy. It also deprives site owners from traffic. It’s really bad on like every metric.
Well, in this example, the information provided by the AI was simply wrong. If it had done the traditional search method of pointing to the organization’s website where they had the hours listed, it would have worked fine.
This idea that “we’re all entitled to our opinion” is nonsense. That’s for when you’re a child and the topic is what flavor Jelly Bean you like. It’s not for like policy or things that matter. You can’t just “it’s my opinion” your way through “this algorithm is O(n^2) but I like it better than O(n) so I’m going to use it for my big website”. Or more on topic, you can’t use it for “these results are wrong but I like them better”
A world there python ran in the browser instead of javacript would probably be a whole lot better.
I love this idea. Do you mind if I promote it with some queer folks I know?
Myself I’m pretty straight and don’t have a website, but maybe one day.
If a feature is useful people will use it, be it AI or not AI.
People will also use it if it’s not useful, if it’s the default.
A friend of mine did a search the other day to find the hour of something, and google’s AI lied to her. Top of the page, just completely wrong.
Luckily I said, “That doesn’t sound right” and checked the official site, where we found the truth.
Google is definitely forcing this out, even when it’s inferior to other products. Hell, it’s inferior to their own, existing product.
But people will keep using AI, because it’s there, and it’s right most of the time.
Google sucks. They should be broken up, and their leadership barred from working in tech. We could have had a better future. Instead we have this hallucinatory hellhole.
Possessive is normally done with an apostrophe. The dog’s toy. The apartment’s lobby.
But when possessive goes on the pronoun “it”? No apostrophe.
Look out for the monster. Its fangs are sharp.
If you put an apostrophe, that’s for “it is”.
This bothers me slightly. There’s history illinonating why it happened, but I don’t like it.
I’ve been saying for years that focusing on self driving cars is solving the wrong problem. The problem is so many people need their own personal car at all.
Larger orgs probably have their own website, and could put it there and/or make an RSS feed. That’s old tech, and probably not as popular because it can’t be monetized like twitter/facebook/etc.
There’s also email, which is typically free. It’s less fancy, but it’s also very open. You don’t get good discoverability, though. Some bands I like send out newsletters and that’s how I keep up with them.
Lastly, the fediverse exists. It has some of the problems of social media, but at least it’s not owned by a handful of rich assholes.
I don’t use reddit aside from reading search results. I never post and never explicitly seek it out.
I deleted Twitter years ago. I never used Facebook or Instagram or tiktok. That shit’s bad for you.
It’s annoying that some places will make announcements only on shitty platforms. None of my friends are this “hardcore” , so sometimes I find out about stuff like a concert or protest or whatever because one of them sees it on Instagram
CrossCode has such charm. The puzzles are good, but I find myself tired after playing it in a way other games don’t give me. I should finish it.
Shadowrun for Genesis was amazing! Ahead of its time. The way it semi randomly generated jobs for you to do was pretty unique. Like Bethesda radiant quests, but decades earlier and better. I really enjoyed rising up from the weakest street runner to someone with enough reputation to skip the line at the expensive club.
The leveling system was also pretty advanced for Genesis.
Also the cyberspace hacking was wacky and fun.
I haven’t thought through all the scenarios and edge cases, but generally spying on the public seems dicey and ripe for abuse. Especially if it’s just like “the public, all the time, whenever we feel like it,” instead of “ok we got a warrant signed by a judge to investigate Joe Bombguy”.
I don’t think the current government is capable or interested in making sound decisions. I don’t think the public is capable of electing a better government. For profit orgs don’t have the public’s best interest as a priority. So this is bad
will humanity ever learn to stop acting like dumb angry monkeys?
Seems unlikely.
As to your broader point about the tools themselves not being bad, the root problem remains capitalism, or “a few people have unaccountable power over many”
I feel like the current AI stuff has been net negative. It prompted layoffs and hiring freezes, but then didn’t produce quality results.
Ownership will abuse labor as much as it can. Sometimes to make more profit. Sometimes for murkier reasons. I think some management are just stupid and they’d hurt the company to follow their unfounded feelings.
Labor should organize.
Yeah it bothers me when the community for a game is like “{skill} is TRASH never use it” and when you do some digging you find it’s like 2% less damage per second. Or it doesn’t work well in NG+7. Some people are really obsessive about this stuff.
One of the reasons I prefer playing on PC over other platforms is there’s usually fan made mods / cheats. Like, yeah, I could do something really tedious for four hours, or I could get a mod to skip it. This is my leisure activity, not an exam.
I try to be mindful that too much cheating can water down the experience. Like, if I was playing BG3 and just set everyone to max level from the start, I would probably have less fun, personally. But if someone just wants to do the story and have fun with exploding barrels? Not for me to judge.
(I do draw the line at multiplayer. Cheating against other people is rude as heck. )
Yeah. Often when I talk to people who say they “don’t have time” I wonder where their time is going. Often to watching TV. Sometimes podcasts. Social media is a big time suck.
But like if you have time to watch all of the office again this year, you had time to play video games.
A friend of mine realized they were just losing hours a day to Instagram. Delete that, and you have time for better hobbies. Play a game. Read a book.
Having children seems like a bigger factor. The only couple I know that has kids still has time. One spends it on DND, and other on TV and simple phone games.
I don’t think it saves time on net if you have to read it and then go verify it anyway. Might as well go directly to the more trustworthy source in the first place! And if you don’t care if your answer is correct, why even search? Just make something up.