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GooberEar

@ GooberEar @lemmy.wtf

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0
Comments
398
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • Hundreds of smartphone apps are monitoring users through their microphones

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  • So much of social media (and online in general) is just ads in disguise and people shilling products, intentionally or otherwise, and it ultimately spills over into real life conversations. So I agree with you completely.

    You might have given a thumbs up to your aunt Gina's photo of her and her friends at the office party celebrating her promotion. Ad networks see it as you interacting with a photo that contains a bottle of Schmudd soda, even if that's a detail you didn't even notice.

    You have dinner with your dad that night and the topic of Schmudd comes up due to the latest forced controversy (ermagerd the trans) so naturally when you start seeing Schmudd commercials the next day, you might assume your phone was listening to that conversation. But actually the reason you're seeing the ads is because of the thumbs up to aunt Gina's post.

    And yes, the tracking and analytics tools find those types of patterns and relationships, and so much more. And they've been able to do that for over a decade. No telling how good it's gotten since I was last working adjacent to that field.

  • I'm not sure that this is truly so unpopular.

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  • I'm currently unemployed, and I was not expecting to be so busy. I thought I would have a little more leisure time, might be able to catch up on a few things that I never seemed to have time for, like catching up with family, playing some video games in my back log, and doing a small bit of travel. That hasn't materialized. It's like as soon as I stopped "working", more things came up that needed my attention. I'm basically busy from the time I get up in the morning until I wrap up for the night and veg out in front of the TV for an hour before bed. I swear I had more me time when I was working. Not sure how this happened.

  • Hundreds of smartphone apps are monitoring users through their microphones

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  • On the other hand, it's amazingly easy for advertisers to figure out what topics / products you're talking about without the need for constantly recording via your microphone. In most instances, it doesn't even really make sense to constantly record audio via the mic to monitor folks, other means are much more cost efficient while being just as effective. That's not to say that some app isn't or hasn't done it, just that historically speaking, it hasn't been as ubiquitous as a lot of people seem to think or imply.

    Sometimes with these things, you have to apply Occam's Razor.

    I stayed with some family during the holidays a few years ago and they are conspiracy theory fanatics unfortunately. The type that swear their phones are listening to everything they say. They get ads for things they've only ever talked about in person. That sort of thing.

    As proof, they pointed out how the prior night the topic of old timey candy from our childhoods came up and all of a sudden they were getting news stories and facebook ads about those liquid filled wax bottle candies. To them, the only plausible explanation is that our phones were listening to us.

    Except, as I pointed out, I specifically looked those wax bottle candies up later that night because I was curious if they were still for sale. They live way out in the country and there's limited cellular data, so basically everybody there that night was using the same wifi connection. Which means, our internet activity is all linked because to the outside world, we're all on the same network/IP address. Even more curious, though, nobody got ads for any of the other candy that we talked about and which I didn't specifically look up. So, if our phones were actually recording us and serving up ads based on the things we talked about, then why didn't we get ads for Blackjack gum, wax lips, and Brach's? Only the very specific one I happened to search for.

  • Whats getting on your nerves at the moment?

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  • It just seems like nothing works the way I expect it should these days, and I'm happy to be wrong, but I don't think my expectations are that high.

    I make an appointment at the driver's license office for 10 a.m., I kind of expect to be seen around that time, especially since they tell you to show up at least 15 minutes before your scheduled appointment. Certainly, I don't expect to have to wait 2 hours to be seen.

    I go to the store to return an item that was missing parts, I don't expect to be turned away completely because the "printer is down". I have the receipt, can't you just make a copy and refund the very small amount of money or let me exchange it?

    I go to the bank to withdraw a few five and ten dollar bills, I don't expect to be told "I don't have enough". I especially don't appreciate being treated like I'm the first human in history to want specific denominations for a withdrawal.

    I get told to return my internet equipment to any of your locations, only to be told you can't accept that at your store. Why did the customer service person I talked to on the phone say any location, the company website have your location in the list of locations available when I filtered by "returns", and my final bill state "return equipment to any location" if your location doesn't accept returns?

    I go to the doctor for a specific health concern (that unbeknownst to me is a red flag for a major problem), they give me a medicine that actually exacerbates said major problem without ever mentioning it or testing for it first. You're the expert and professional, not me, and I guarantee if I'd asked about that major problem because I saw something about it online, you'd have made a snarky comment like "don't confuse your Google search with my medical degree" or similar.

    And all of this, plus much, much more, in just the past month or so.

  • Whats getting on your nerves at the moment?

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  • It seems like a lot of people are really quick to forget what the "rat race" is/was like AND many of them over estimate how well they handled it when they were in it. Unfortunately, my dad is one of the worst offenders so I have to deal with that kind of negativity more often than I'd like.

    For my personal situation, it often helps to push back on the most egregious manipulation. When I was younger and more naive, I would let things go with no push back, and all the happened is the guilt trips became more frequent and more hostile. Once I started calling it out and correcting the details, it happened considerably less and I'm pretty sure he's more apt to think twice before bringing those types of things up in front of me (though I know he still does it behind my back).

    For example, I will remind my dad about things like "it was easier for you to visit your parents every week because they lived in the same town and not 2 hours away like you and I currently do" or "you were in your 20s and early 30s when you did this and that, but when you were my current age, you definitely didn't have the time or energy for it". Usually he'll concede, at least for the moment.

  • ‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw

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  • I live in a part of the USA where, decades later, I still hear brand new and seemingly made-up idioms on a fairly regular basis. This skill set, making sense of otherwise fake sounding idioms based on limited context, is practically a necessity 'round these parts. After all, you can't feed a cow a carrot and expect it to shit you out a cake.

  • Mood

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  • I don't mean to speak ill of the dead but that looks like something my ex-bestfriend, Patty Henshaw, would have baked.

  • Locked

    Snakes

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  • I'm going to ignore the most heinous aspects of this and just say, I'd love to be introduced to a variety of venomous and non-venomous snakes and would likely find it to be a pretty cool experience. Snakes are neat and the venomous ones are often beautiful and fascinating.

  • Target foot traffic down for 11th straight week after caving on DEI

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  • Just an opinion, but I feel like trouble was on the horizon for Target regardless of this DEI fiasco.

    Of the major online general retailers, it seemed like Target held out the longest against 3rd party sellers. That was one of the biggest reasons I preferred to buy from Target. But they caved on that and somehow came out with one of the worst implementations. That decision really tarnished their brand for me.

    Another factor that made me favor Target over the years is that their clothing offerings were pretty decent quality in styles I liked and affordable prices. But the last few times I've purchased clothes from Target, it's been outright junk and Target should be ashamed. Either way, it turned me off from buying clothes there, and by extension, soured me to the brand almost entirely.

    By the end of 2024 I had basically given up on Target, and I can't help but think that all the issues I was having were systemic to the company. Feels like preemptively caving on diversity and equity policies was just another sign of the actual problem the company is facing (i.e. bad management and poor decision making).

  • Elon Musk: your new Tesla will drive from the factory floor, to your house 'this year'

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  • MY new Tesla? Doubt it. Considering I'm unemployed due to this clown administration and I don't tend to upgrade much of anything, let alone a vehicle, unless/until the old one no longer functions.

  • The Fun

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  • The jokes based on formal logic trend as of late go something like "The fact that there is a tuna fish implies the existence of a threena fish". And most of them are simply horribly tragic.

  • Credit to Poorly Drawn Lines

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  • I feel like the only person in the world older than 18 who has never used cocai-

  • Unpowered SSD endurance investigation finds severe data loss and performance issues

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  • The tape is a lie.

  • What else are they hiding from us?

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  • The easiest way I can explain it is like this: All the sci-fi geeks in the world are familiar with parallel timelines, right? The idea that there's another RymrgandsDaughter out there living in a world where apes with goatees are the "people" but otherwise pretty much everything else is very similar to how things are for us here and now. But like in perpendicular time, nearly everything is completely different than this current timeline, and yet somehow there's a point within where I, Gooberear, took the time out of my morning to completely make up this explanation from thin air and which has no basis in actual fact or reality. The end.

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    Permanently Deleted

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  • Mark my words, Big Minge will never let this technology see the light of day.

  • Judge Enters Contempt Order in Venezuelan Deportations Case

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  • You get a contempt. You get a contempt. And you get a contempt. Everybody gets a contempt.

  • What else do you need?

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  • Hello, nurse!

  • What else do you need?

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  • Slaughtered? In THIS economy? Best I can do is have a fairy steal all your teeth.

  • It's a fun new game

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  • According to ChatGPT, the result is 355.