Comment Re:This is kinda funny though. (Score 1) 61
The only thing the internet is is an ad platform.
Comment Re:Crap (Score 1) 249
Comment Re:Yet another... (Score 1) 192
What I have a problem with is not with the information itself, it's with the increasing trend towards abuse. With traditional marketing, it's more obvious that it's sponsored, and there are more obvious standards as far as how far you can go with stretching the truth for your marketing. With "influencer" culture, we blur all the regular communication lines, and end up with far more advertisements dressed up as if they're documentary news.
My problem isn't with "Product X is healthier than Product Y", it's with "Did you know that people who buy Product Y are putting literal poisons in their bodies!!?!". I'm in favor of the advertising from The Invention of Lying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stbwqSOJwL4).
There were a number of things I could say on the topic, but they all unfortunately end up reinforcing the unstated premise - I'm older and I think new things are stupid.
Comment Time to use some mesh networks (Score 1) 172
Comment Re:Imagine the bug bounties (Score 1) 75
Comment Re:We need Google (Score 1) 27
Comment Re:First Post! (Score 1) 79
Comment Unreliable Sources (Score 4, Interesting) 44
I got involved in a contentious topic on Reddit recently (amazing, right?) and I went to AI... can't remember if I used Gemini or ChatGPT that day, but I asked it to provide evidence supporting or refuting the redditor's claim.
It cited as evidence in support of the claim the very post I was disputing.
Full disclosure, I use AI daily (almost always for work, because our corporate overlords require it, but also for one-off jokes when accuracy doesn't matter.) But I loathe ubiquitous, unsolicted use of AI in my daily activities and I never trust what AI tells me; at best I use it as a suggestion list of topics I can research in depth on my own.
Comment Re:Can it please be called... (Score 1) 38
Comment I Miss Altavista (Score 1) 79
I had a brief (6-8 years) as the guy who could find anything online because I was able to leverage my dBase and R:Base query skills into complex searches with Altavista - (this OR that) AND (x OR y OR z) AND (not foo). Then Google came along, and eventually Altavista died.
What's really frustrating is, Google theoretically has operators for complex searches but whenever I try them, their anti-bot gatekeeper tells me I'm obviously not a human because I'm using sophisticated queries.
Comment Re:Is Bill Winters' ... (Score 1) 57
Comment Re:I'm always amazed (Score 2) 131
It seems not, because IIRC my Pixel 10 says that even if for instance a thief steal my phone and shutdown it, it will still be traceable for a few hours.
Comment Re:You can't make a sequel to nothing (Score 2) 152
Oh man, that's a name I haven't heard in many decades!
I built my career around dBase, starting in 1986; evolved to Clipper around 1992. My Clipper work kept me busy until nearly 2000, and I was still patching my old Clipper apps well into the first decade of the new millennium as I made the transition from developer to DevOps working primarily in SQL and Powershell.
Comment Re:Wrong Problem (Score 1) 54
I think my argument there is that we shouldn't be saying that what they did wrong was to "use infinite scrolling maliciously" as much as the broader concept of "creating addictive content".
Please forgive the poor comparison, but it's against the law for me to cause bodily harm to you. There might be additional laws that indicate that my reasons modify the nature of the crime, or the implements I use change sentencing, but the underlying law is about my actions and how they cause harm.
Similarly, I don't believe the issue should be about what UI elements the companies choose to use, but about the underlying actions / harm.