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brandon

@ brandon @lemmy.ml

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38
Joined
5 yr. ago

  • Pro-AI Subreddit Bans 'Uptick' of Users Who Suffer from AI Delusions

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  • Considering that parrots can have actual thoughts, I'd say LLMs are even less smart than that.

  • Would you consider this an expensive bike share?

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  • I do think the Pacers bike share is pretty expensive. As I resident I do use the free rides occasionally.

    I don't know how the fees for these things tend to be determined, but I'd be remiss to not point out that basically all the nice things Carmel is able to afford is subsidized by suburban wealth extraction from Indianapolis.

  • Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

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  • please please please make a program to lure mediocre and burnt-out software developers away from the US

  • Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads

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  • Look, maybe it's true that parents should be doing a better job here. The thing is, that's an individual solution. This is a systemic problem. How kids (and adults) interact socially and consume media is fundamentally changed over the last thirty years and we're going to have to find ways to adapt to that as a society.

    Yeah, in any particular individual case you can probably come up with a list of things the parent could have done differently. The reality is that this is a problem for tens (hundreds?) of millions of parents.

    You can hand wave away any problem that affects children with "parents should do a better job". It didn't work for obesity, it didn't work for child traffic deaths, it didn't work for fentanyl overdoses, it didn't work for school shootings, it didn't work for measles, and it's not going to work for this either.

    I'm just going to copy/paste what I wrote in a previous comment in a similar thread:

    Everybody is so quick to blame the parents in these situations. Maybe there is some truth to that, but people also need to reckon with the fact that kids (and adults) are being constantly inundated by Skinner box apps, and “platforms” full of engagement bait designed to be as addictive and attractive as possible. All run by corporations with functionally no regard for the safety of their users.

    Yeah, sure, if you’re giving advice to an individual parent, they should probably be keeping a closer eye on what their kids are doing.

    But there are systemic problems here that can’t be fixed with individual action. By laying the blame solely at the feet of the parents here, you are in effect putting individual parents up against dozens of huge corporations, each with armies of expert advertisers, designers, and psychologists working to build these products. It’s hardly a fair fight.

  • Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads

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  • You can walk into any Walmart in America and buy a cheap smartphone for $30.

    This approach is even less effective than "just don't give them drugs".

  • What food item are people sleeping on?

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  • Why this annoying trend of having face on videos ?

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  • ah yes, Karl Popper's paradox of yumyucking.

  • Need advice on a one pc home

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  • Your gaming PC is going to be terribly inefficient and draw 10x as much power at idle as a workstation PC.

    Is this really true? Modern components have fairly robust power saving capabilities. Just because it's got a 750W power supply doesn't mean it's drawing 750W all the time.

  • Firefox, VLC, Gimp, KeePass, LibreOffice among open source software endorsed by French Government

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  • Not judging the software at all, but the fact that OnlyOffice is owned/developed by a semi-sketchy Russian corporation would probably preclude it from getting any endorsement from a Western government.

  • China stops buying liquefied gas from US

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  • Everybody is so quick to blame the parents in these situations. Maybe there is some truth to that, but people also need to reckon with the fact that kids (and adults) are being constantly inundated by Skinner box apps, and "platforms" full of engagement bait designed to be addictive and attractive as possible. All run by corporations with functionally no regard for the safety of their users.

    Yeah, sure, if you're giving advice to an individual parent, they should probably be keeping a closer eye on what their kids are doing.

    But there are systemic problems here that can't be fixed with individual action. By laying the blame solely at the feet of the parents here, you are in effect putting parents up against dozens of huge corporations, each with armies of expert advertisers, designers, and psychologists working to build these products. It's hardly a fair fight.

  • Judge finds cause to hold Trump administration in criminal contempt for violating deportation order

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  • SCOTUS' decision re: presidential immunity does not (so far) apply to people other than the president himself. It's also not clear that the president can pardon criminal contempt charges brought by a judge. I expect that we'll be hearing more from SCOTUS about this in the near future...

  • Boasberg Issues Criminal Contempt Finding In Alien Enemies Act Case

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  • FWIW, the judge did say that if the DoJ declines to prosecute, he will appoint an outside attorney to prosecute instead.

  • Judge Enters Contempt Order in Venezuelan Deportations Case

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  • For what it's worth, the judge also said that if the DoJ declines to prosecute, he will appoint another attorney to do so.

  • Trump's tariffs force laptop makers like Dell and Lenovo to halt US shipments

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  • I know most of these companies have large logistics operations in other countries, for example Mexico.

    Can/will they attempt to dodge the tariffs on China by redirecting shipments through some other country with lower tariffs on the product's way into the United States? Would it be legal for them to do so? (It seems to me that a tariff happy country might prefer to view that as undesirable behavior--would the Trump administration have any recourse against that sort of thing?)

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  • The enshittification of the English language.

  • Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams says company targeted teens with advertisements based on their ‘emotional state’

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  • I got it from the library, so I won't comment how much money it's worth.

    Hard to say I enjoyed it, since the conduct described within is nearly without expection horrifying. I expect that most people on Lemmy would probably be unsurprised by it.

    I found it to be a pretty quick read, and I'm glad it's out there. If you're interested in the topic I'd say to give it a shot.

  • Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams says company targeted teens with advertisements based on their ‘emotional state’

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  • I didn't see the testimony, but I did read her book.

    When most people think "targeted advertising", I think they are thinking about something like: this user is a middle-class woman between 18 and 25 who enjoys bicycles, so we'll show her ad X.

    According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook/Meta is doing things like detecting when a user uploads, then immediately removes a photo--detecting that as a moment of emotional vulnerability (that is, the user was feeling self-conscious about their appearance), then bombarding them with ads in that moment for beauty products.

    I think the former is 'obvious' to most people, but the latter probably isn't--probably because Meta and other advertising companies have put a lot of effort in to keep this on the down low--which is why Wynn-Williams is speaking about it publically.

    (not accusing you of defending them BTW, just my 2¢ that this goes beyond what most people would consider obvious, imo)

  • What's with the move to MIT over AGPL for utilities?

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  • Yeah, but you and I aren't really representative of all software people. Most of them just want to grill.