10 years using Duolingo, 4 years in Diamond League, and earlier this month I just had enough of the low-quality AI bullshit.

Out. Done. Gone. Waste of my time, every damn day.

The decline in quality and accuracy was just too much. As an English speaker learning a handful of other languages and concentrating on two, it was interesting to me that the first real noticeable patterns of errors and general slop were actually on the English side. Increasingly obtuse questions or statements, ok fine, I will spit those back in French or Spanish with good accuracy. I don't have any issue whatever with the occasionally-dark humor or the gender related topics that might push others' hot buttons, and I appreciate the occasional foray into curious stories and situations. But... over the past year there has been an increasing level of nonsensical AI-generated questions, erroneous answers accepted, multiple correct answers, etc etc... and it's obvious that no actual native speaker looked at a lot of the new content -- either from the native or foreign perspective. A couple years ago there was an increasing level of having to hit the button for "You should have accepted my answer." But for the past year, it's become a daily occurrence to have to hit the button for "You shouldn't have accepted my answer." The latter is a clear indication of AI slop and drift in the language models, and lack of QA. Real human QA is not optional, and Duo has apparently dispensed with it entirely. The result is gameified garbled nonsense. Playing the game was fun for a while (seriously, still in Diamond league for more than four years straight), but the goal is language learning not to compete with other stupid little games on my device. Feh. Done. Cancelled my subscription, et je vais dépenser cet hundred bucks de mon argent pour un spritz et une charcuterie chaque après-midi pour le reste de l'été.

This is the exact same method by which Grubhub/Doordash/Postmates/etc get a large portion of their business: by getting their phone number and/or spoofed site listed as a search result or even in the google maps listing for a site nearest the searcher's location.
Of course Google won't "fix" the problem; it's a source of advertising revenue, and general boost to user engagement.

This program has the stink of regulatory capture.

I pay $25/month for 50 Mbits Internet without any discount. That's $5 less than the "discount" the ISPs are milking out of the FCC. I live in a small town suburb so it's not like I have a lot of ISPs competing for my money.

Barbra Streisand
Woo-ooh, ooh-hoo, ooh-hoo, ooh-hoo

https://soundcloud.com/thathyp...

As good ole' Bill Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliette: "A plague a' both your houses!" -Mercutio

Is there anything either of these pox peddlers can provide that is necessary for living my life? The steady drumbeat of serotonin hits from exaggerated clickbait "news" and AI-written headlines designed to make my blood pressure spike? Frothy propaganda pieces posted by sock puppets and nation-states intent on sowing discord? Intrusive messages from people I tried to leave behind in high school and college? Advertisements for crap on Amazon that I paused the mouse over just long enough for the telemetry bots to smell $0.001 of revenue?

No.

Work doesn't use Facebook or TikTok or even Twitter anymore. My family doesn't use it, friends only occasionally, and the rest is just a steady fire hose of crap that makes my life worse when I look at it. Really there's no reason at all to participate in either of these. "Look away" seems like the best option.

That's my point, it's already legally/contractually banned on most devices in the country, so diddling around with discussion of a 100% ban is a diversion from the real issue. The crux is that a lot (majority? plurality?) of people use their work laptops for personal purposes, and their personal mobile devices for work, in contravention of numerous contracts and regulatory requirements -- and this is where the actual risk to data lies. Anyone who checks work email/messages/workflow/chat on the same device they install TicTok/Facebook/Insta/etc is already breaking policies, contractual rules, and/or civil and criminal laws. What we need is better enforcement, and the will to actually prosecute people for illicit behaviors they've grown so accustomed to getting away with that they no longer recognize them as a crime. A new law that mostly restates the old one doesn't solve the lack of will to enforce.

Two things: First, westerners don't generally understand that China is not a country in the western sense of the word; it is a corporation. The whole thing. Ever since the party leaders got right with that whole money thing, it's been this way. Now since the party controls the currency and operates the entire governing framework without exception, and every business operating within China has to comply with the legal framework, that effectively makes all such businesses a subsidiary of the party...corporation. The idea that a subsidiary corporation could have a policy or procedural framework to keep data private from the executive whims of its parent corporation only makes sense in a western context; but when the parent corporation is a totalitarian regime which makes the laws, runs the judiciary, and controls the currency, the idea of such a separation of control or information is laughable. It does not happen. Pure window dressing. Anyone who takes such proposals seriously is a fool.

Second... why? Is there any legitimate use case for non-work video sharing or other social media on a work device, especially one used for sensitive data or national security? No. Absolutely not. Even in a private-sector work context. If I install TicTok on a laptop used for my client's work, I should be fired. If I install it on a personal mobile phone also used for handling sensitive emails or regulated data, I should be fired and then sued or prosecuted. It's disappointing to see so many people fretting over how to accommodate other people's improper or illegal handling of data just so they can get their serotonin hit.

I am an old guy who is supposed to be watching his blood pressure, and people constantly suggest these manufactured products as a substitute for meat. The impossible burger has 370mg of sodium per 4oz portion, while an equal portion of ground beef has about 70mg. The Impossible people like to compare their 370mg patty with the typical ~370mg of a commercial burger but that ignores the 300mg coming from the cheese, bun, and condiments. So a BASIC single impossible burger prepared the same way is going to be almost 700mg of sodium, more than 1/3 of all the salt a typical adult is supposed to have in a day. The impossible patty alone is about the same salt as two pieces of fried chicken. I'm supposed to be on a low-salt diet, and this impossible stuff would give me a damn coronary. My doc (yes, a real GP with certifications in nutrition) specifically warned me away from novelty foods such as manufactured meat because of the sodium content required to make them palatable. If you want to cut back on the meat, then eat a vegetable. But once you've reduced the volume, honestly, the real thing is much healthier at least for old folks.

Don't forget your power supply. The video shows 300W at 6 ghz.

Great for heating your room in the winter.

In a dictatorship you would be right.

But in a capitalist society, some of the technically literate will realize there's an opportunity by selling specialized firewalls for TVs. The choices will proliferate for awhile until a few clear winner emerge and their inventors will make a nice sum of money selling to the technically illiterate.

One of the virtues of capitalism is it decentralizes power - an effect dictatorships abhor.

Yeah, no. I might not be in the exact center of the target demographic, but I'm definitely in the group. This whole notion of avoiding interaction with other humans even for basic tasks like getting food... why? I mostly work from home, and I can avoid people by staying home, and ordering shit from Amazon. If I leave my house, part of the reason I walk out the front door is to get a break from the silence and to interact with other people. Then I find they've been removed from places where they're expected... without lowering of prices or actual improvements in service. On top of that, why should I participate in the demise of the lower half of our economy? When you shove people out of low-level jobs like this it's not like they magically get some other better paying job, or simply die off and disappear -- no, they become poorer and more dependent on aid, which in turn jacks taxes and costs for everyone. So the smooth brains at McD's and YumCorp decide they need to cut corners even more, and it gets worse. Race to the bottom.

I'll pay more for my damn cheeseburger. I'm ok with that. But I'm not shopping at any brick-and-mortar that is eliminating entry level jobs, still delivering crap service, and charging me the same. I've walked out or ditched my cart when I've been refused service by a human, and that's ok. (Kroeger and Lowe's, I'm looking at you 15-watt geniuses.) My shopping and cooking at home probably won't really slow this damage to society, but at least it won't be on my dime.

Former member of InfraGard here. I went through a long and silly hazing/vetting process to join, and then came to the realization that it's organizations like this that are part of the problem. You know that weird sensation of being an actual old person in a crowd then listening to what they're saying and thinking "oh my god these people are old" even if they're younger than you? Yeah, that. That was almost every InfraGard session and meeting, with olde dudes in DC and Redmond giving powerpoint presentations about vulns known 18mo prior, grossly mis-attributed threat actors ("the APTs are comin for yew!! Fancy Bear!!1!1!!!"), 101-level errors in data gathering and basic analysis, hopelessly outdated kill-diamond malware circle-jerks, results from clustering algorithms they'd picked but couldn't explain, and other wheezing exhortations to vague action made by people who smell like mothballs and coffee with too much cream.

Seriously, we need an organization LIKE IngraGard to share information as a coordinated community. But running it with the organization of a stereotypical frat combined with the speed of the feds ... there's no there there, and even if there was or will be, that org moves too slowly to be useful, by at least an order of magnitude. But hey, if you like a dependable flow of disappointment with absolute consistency, there they are.

Just try to say no. Adobe screws you anyway.

I used to use an Adobe Acrobat utility, Distiller, to produce pdfs for my class. It was part of a series of tools that I had cobbled together over the years to generate individualized documents for each student.

Every few months or so, my workflow would go sideways. 99 out of 100 times, it was Adobe's fault. They'd update distiller, without my permission, and screw up the settings.

They pulled that stunt once too often last Spring. Exasperated, I finally sat down and learned how to get the same result using Python. I was so happy to purge Adobe Acrobat from my computer.

Hello, my name is jmichael and I've been clean for 185 days.

From ethics.org.au: "The Panopticon is a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells. From the tower, a guard can see every cell and inmate but the inmates can't see into the tower. Prisoners will never know whether or not they are being watched." https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Now imagine that instead of just building a watchtower in the center of the circular prison to see your movements, it can see your eyes. And everywhere you look. And it can see those things too. And it fits on your head. And you *paid* for it.

This is the beginning of some true horror. "Orwellian" doesn't even begin to do this justice.

I think TSMC may have averted an invasion by warning China that mere possession of their physical plant wouldn't be sufficient to continue operations. TSMC tweeted that they rely on a global supply chain to make chips. Invade Taiwan and away goes that supply chain. Moreover, if TSMC's equipment is damaged beyond repair during an invasion, it would be years before the equipment was replaced, if at all.

The U.S. has repeatedly said it would support reunification with the caveat it was a peaceful process that Taiwan agreed to. China screwed up when they didn't honor their commitment to allow Hong Kong to self rule after Britain left. They promised a One Country - Two Systems approach which they reneged on when Britain left. Reneging on Hong Kong warned the Taiwanese they wouldn't fare any better after reunification.

A path forward would entail restoring self rule to Hong Kong. Leave Hong Kong alone and Taiwan wouldn't be as reluctant to join the mainland. If China was smart, China could end up becoming the United States of Asia by letting other countries maintain their democratically elected governments and joining China like the Territories joined the United States. The word "States" in "United States" means self rule for each region subject to the powers reserved to the Federal government.

    For that to happen, China would need a new Deng Xiaopeng to replace Xi Jinping. China's huge strides forward were due to Deng allowing private ownership, a huge break from Mao's legacy. Hopefully the Chinese recognize that before WWIII breaks out.