Huh. I didn't know they only take 18%. Though, admittedly, I also didn't know they had no way for users to review the games. I just assumed they would, as it seems like a key element to such a store. I guess Steam spoiled me.

Oh well, you have given me yet another reason to continue not using the Epic Game Store.

I think it's a good move and long overdue. Steam needs real competition in the market. Though I don't see much reason why I would choose the Epic games store over steam, especially given that my steam library is already overflowing with games I bought on sale and have barely found time to play.

I guess some more Epic store exclusives would help. And if Epic bucked the cartel and undercut that whopping 30% that Steam charges to sell through their store, they could attract some real talent.

A lot of responses to my post have said something similar to yours: "Google can track you anyway."

Well that's fine, because I wasn't trying to "be anonymous" so much as "get clean search results." And this method is working. I have seen what search results look like when I am signed in to a Google account and my current search is "tainted" by past searches. And after de-googling my life (and using this clear-cookies technique while not being signed in) I am seeing much cleaner search results that are focused only on my present search term.

So it seems to be working, even if Google has a full search history on me.

But as always, your mileage may vary.

I have one of my installed browsers set to clear cookies and stuff every time I close it. This way, whenever I go to YouTube, it has no idea who I am or what other videos I have watched in the past. The results I get are purely a function of the search terms, with no interference from a recommendation algorithm.

That's how I protect myself from this effect. I highly recommend it to anyone who is concerned.

Of course, Facebook does the same thing, putting all of its users in little echo-chambers that only show it news articles that reinforce what they already believe, creating an illusion of worldwide agreement with them, and giving their opinions a feel of objective truth. My solution to that is: don't use Facebook.

Anyway, if these recommendation algorithms became outright illegal in these contexts, I wouldn't shed a tear. I don't mind them for something like Amazon that wants to know how old your kid is so it can recommend gifts that are age-appropriate or whatever. It's a bit creepy but actually useful and doesn't seem to have this side effect. Not so in the case of information feeds.

...happen again.

Voters get really mad at a party and hand control to the opposite party. And there is much rejoicing. Then the new party turns out to be just as bad but in different ways, gets voters really mad, and the vote swings to the other party. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Of course, Republicans and Democrats alike hate to hear this, because each thinks their own party is right about everything and the other party is wrong about everything, and insists that the voters handed the vote to the other party not because they had legitimate reason to be angry, but because they are all moral reprobates and complete morons.

So, yeah, both sides.

Your statement is false. Gemini will still contradict itself even today. I have asked it questions and gotten contradictory answers as recently as this week.

Usually the contradictory answers won't show up until you start a new chat asking the same questions in a different way. Though it has happened a few times that it contradicts itself in follow-up questions in the same chat.

It has also very confidently given me answers that are patently false. Sometimes when I ask for citations, it cites reddit, of all places, as an authority of truth.

Gemini as a generic chatbot is still this bad, even today.

One thing everybody wants: quick and accurate answers to their questions.

Of course, no publisher wants to provide this. They want to make you pay for a subscription and/or buy books or articles and also assault you with ads as your route around through their site trying to find the answer you care about.

I can't blame the publishers....their business is selling information. If they can't profit on that, then there will be no publishing, and that would clearly be worse.

I can't blame Google for trying to circumvent this; their business is giving you quick access to information (in return for behavior tracking and their own ad viewing, of course).

Personally, I think the world would be a better place if we could get quick and easy answers to all of our (legal) questions. A better profit model for this is clearly what is needed. I am just hoping they can invent one as a result of this clash.

Aside: Gemini's answers are often harmfully inaccurate, and it will directly contradict itself depending on how you phrase the question. In theory this means the publishers shouldn't have to worry, because everybody will realize this and just stop using Gemini. In practice, the promise of a quick answer often overrides people's skepticism and prevents them from demanding references and proof, thus sending them astray. That problem needs a solution too.

The world is a complicated place. Broad categories like the ones I gave will cover a lot of common things, but can't cover everything. Nothing is black-and-white, there are always shades of gray.

Futures and Options qualify as "derivatives" from real assets. They DO sit in a middle ground so they get classified as "speculation" which isn't quite investing and isn't quite gambling. Most of the time for most people, it doesn't matter. Investing is how people come to own the means of production, which is a foundation of wealth-building in a capitalist society. Someone who never invests (in good old-fashioned stocks) because they think it is "gambling" is seriously mismanaging their money and may remain trapped in poverty their entire lives because of it. Someone who spends a lot of money on lottery tickets regularly and considers that "investing" is going to wind up in a similar position.

The world of Futures and Options and other fanciness is for people who want to take their financial knowledge and engagement to the next level. It's a whole step beyond the distinction and advice that I was originally talking about. A veritable subject change.

Incidentally, CFDs and hedge betting have little-to-no institutional hedging, so they function a lot more like gambling (even more so than derivatives). These are generally private contracts with a broker, making them structurally more similar to the operation of a casino. I read that in UK and Ireland, they ARE legally classified as gambling, and generally not legal in the USA. So, despite their unique structure, they fall pretty firmly into the "gambling" category. And, as I said before, they are simply not relevant to ordinary people who just want to be financially healthy, put their kids through school and save up for retirement, so they don't need to complicate the conversation.

No its not. AI is a significant element of achieving technological singularity. Its a huge part of how we get there. It couldn't possibly be MORE relevant.

Clearly we haven't achieved AGI or "other big promises" yet. But the LLMs we now have are totally new and way better than the sorts of AI techniques we have had before. It's a step forward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity.

Ironically, you could have just asked Gemini what I was talking about.

No it's not. The semantic distinction is subtle, but significant:

1. Gambling is when you purchase a "chance to play".
2. Investing is when you purchase a legal ownership stake of a legal business.

That is THE difference. It is true that both actions involve risk-taking, and making guesses about the future. But "risk taking and making guesses about the future" is not the key element to the definition of "gambling" in this context. The act of purchasing a chance to play and nothing else is what makes it "gambling." The act of purchasing an ownership stake in a real business is what makes it investing.

A failure to understand this distinction is one thing that can and does keep people trapped in poverty.

On the one hand, its not "uninformed or coping" since it is objectively true right now. Maybe that will change in the future, but until it changes, we still need humans reviewing the code, right now, and that's a fact.

On the other hand, Singularity here we come! Woooooooo!

People who don't like the toxicity of social media can stop using it. Problem solved, next!

People who don't like AI slop filling up news articles can switch to a different news source (or, heaven forbid, create one of their own!). Problem solved, next!

If you agree that kids shouldn't have cell phones during school due to the distractions, and that social media is harmful to kids, then what's the problem here? Looks like "the world" is taking appropriate action on that front already. Problem being solved, next!

I think there *is* a greater problem in that huge numbers of people aren't recognizing this and remain caught-up in the toxicity and misinformation and radicalization and etc. that is going on online, and their poor judgment is motivating them to take actions that are harmful, to themselves and others, politically and economically. That problem has me concerned, but we aren't going to fix it by killing the Internet.

I have worked with junior level devs who just take a dev task's requirements, hand it straight to AI, put that through basic testing (only the main intended cases) and then offer that up as a finished solution. The solution was, of course, full of holes, some of them quite serious, just not obvious. The holes were in the edge cases and how it handles and recovers from errors. These were exactly the kinds of mistakes I would expect a junior level developer to make (in at least one case I am thinking of, the task shouldn't have even been handed to someone so inexperienced, but the people making that decision didn't really know how advanced the task was and anyway the dev wanted to get real experience).

So, our process worked because we had senior level human code review, which caught these. But the real risk here is that without such experienced senior level people to do that review this would have seemed like a "slam dunk" where AI saved a whole lot of time and eliminated the need for expensive veterans on the team (only to fail catastrophically in production as soon as something hiccupped). This is what I am most concerned about. Companies will fall for this. Especially new companies where leadership is just as inexperienced at running a tech business as the cheap vibe coders they hire.

So if we are hiring people who will be using AI to do most of the coding work, I think we need to test the thoroughness of their thinking, their ability to detect unspoken problematic edge cases and know to focus on them when reviewing the AIs output, and the ability to recognize dangerous vagueness in requirements and ask for clarity. Also, the ability to mentally translate between "business speak" and "tech speak" is extremely valuable.

Though I still don't feel right about skipping a proof of coding skills. I just don't think we are yet at the point where it is safe for someone who can't code to be relying on AI to get it right. The aforementioned senior developers doing the code review are all people who have been coding by hand for years, and in order for such people to continue being available to do code reviews in the future, we need to make sure we hire people who can do this.

Going against a trend is never easy. Ya gotta want it.

All of the listed problems are surmountable. This little test had insufficient will, determination, and resources behind it.

With little more than a token gesture like this, failure was inevitable.