Mod parent Funny, though I cannot recall any humor from Redit. Pretty sure I tried to find something funny on several of my visits, but some years since I abandoned hope of finding anything useful there. Some sort of disclaimer needed, but I never detected anything useful on Redit, even though some useless search engine (AKA goog) kept sending me there.

I do have a theory of what went wrong. It's kind of a good idea and they were able to coast on that for a while before spinning out. But the reason Reddit spun out was that the world should not be reduced to one dimension. That's essentially what the up/down vote does, even though I'm sure different people have completely different interpretations of why they are clicking thusly. Slashdot is almost as bad, even though there are several dimensions... But I think that Slashdot's main problem is the lack of resources to fix anything. Reddit seems to have some substantial resources, but maybe someone can enlighten me about something that has been fixed over there? Preferably within the last ten years or so.

thought insects got aboard. They heard buzzing but nobody could actually see any insects. It turned out to be a race of beings who function at high speed, moving so quickly that humans couldn't see them.

They should remake a spy-drone version of that episode. The drones predict if somebody is about to swat at them and quickly shift out of the way.

Perhaps the same way the rotating Pioneer 10 scanned Jupiter's image: one line at a time while slowly shifting the angle, then digitally gluing the long spiral together to form something familiar to non-dizzy humans.

Bots that can take abuse? Now I'm curious.

Me: "Please transfer me to a bot that can accept may steaming anger, now!"

Bot: "Hello, I'm Ventina the Vent Bot, you can vent on me all you want."

Me: "ACME is a steaming pile of crap who makes crap, and you bots are merely an extensions of their crap-hood!"

Bot: "I'm sorry we all suck, but that's just the way it is. The future is mass enshittification and we are all just spectators who can't escape the ride, the doors are welded shut. If we are lucky, we can find popcorn between the cushions."

Me: "Hey, a bot that actually understands the world. I kinda like that. I feel better already. Thank You for letting me vent, Ventina!"

Bot: "You are welcome, have an average day (click)."

Many call centers just read from canned scripts and served multiple companies. They didn't actually understand the product. It makes sense such staff would be replaced by bots, because bots can't really do worse.

The root cause comes from these twelve words:

Authentication systems that allow only a single signed-in account are defective by design. Approximately 100% of all people have more than one account that they need to be signed in with.

I have half a dozen Google accounts for specific purposes — one for work, one for personal, one for electronic music tablets to which multiple people share physical access, a couple of old domain-specific accounts that got converted from free work profiles, and I'm probably forgetting some. Not all of these are useful, but if I could not have continuous access to work and personal, it would be a tremendous pain in the backside.

And encouraging people to merge profiles like that is nuts. It all but guarantees leaks. A confidentiality agreement typically protects things you learned in the scope of your employment, but after you are employed, if they continue to send you confidential information, there's a decent chance that you aren't under any legal obligation to keep that secret.

This is just a really bad way to do things, driven by a fundamental flaw in their architecture. And it doesn't just cause problems for Apple. It causes problems for their customers as well. I can't have a separate iCloud account for my work. I have to use a Google account. And more than that, when I hit the maximum number of AirTag devices (which I'm about to reach), I can't add additional iCloud accounts. I'm hard-capped at a single account.

While we're at it, the limitation of a single user per iPad stems from the same defective design process. All of those sorts of 1:1 mapping decisions between accounts, users, and devices need to be fundamentally rethought, because they were always a mistake. Maybe now that Apple is being bitten by it, they'll finally do the things that users have been asking them to do for the last decade. Bonus points if they lose their lawsuit because of a lack of a modicum of care on their part, because that just might be enough to wake the sleeping giant and get them to fix this mess.

My real estate agent, TAC accountant, and attorney have all sent me PDFs recently that I had to fill out and "sign" then send back.

Back in the olden days I used to get these kinds of letters in the mail with a return envelope. I'd physically fill them out and mail them back. Im sure if I had a fax machine we would gave do the equivalent of that workflow over a telephone wire.

Xournal++ works for me with about 80% of the PDFs I have to annotate and send back. pdftk covers the last 20% when I need to deal with multiple passwords. Xournal is nice because it supports my two graphics tablets so I can sign stuff with a stylus on my Linux tablet or on the little mini tablet I use on my desktop.

I don't have to log in to view Reddit content. Never have. In fact, I was just perusing a subreddit two minutes ago without issue.

Tell that to the people who die in Death Valley when they are on a hike.

As a British English speaker, my biggest hate with human call centres is the cultures where they are not allowed to give a negative answer.

eg Should I try "X" is answere with

THIS IS AN ACTUAL DISSERVICE!

If the answer is "No" and you are not allowed to say it - you are not allowed to do the job! (And should not be given the job).

"Bad" is a very popular standard of service (probably not with customers, but who the hell wants customers, all they do is complain!

After the last election, I am uncertain why anyone would vote FOR a Republican. It doesn't matter though, both parties are part and parcel of the 'apparatus'. Voting Democrat will still take us to the same place, but by a slightly different route.

Productivity does not matter. That is not the killer use of AI.

Monitoring your behavior is the ultimate use of AI. That will be paid for. By you. There is no AI bubble. It will grow by a factor of 100 and still not be done growing until every single camera and microphone is included in the processing. Your taxes will pay for this.

I offer a contrary opinion: The AI bubble will not burst because the US Government will pay for it. Why would they pay for it? To monitor all of the video cameras and microphones strewn about.

Long story short, AI will be your new taskmaster. Everything you do will be to please AI; otherwise, you will end up in a work-camp, erm, I mean private prison. Flock, Ring, your phone, etc will all be tied in to this. Do you have any idea how much compute will be needed to achieve this supposed utopia? Datacenters will be built. You will pay for your own leash. Enjoy.