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Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

cnbc.com

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Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#471

Post by IshKebab »

rendaw wrote: post #380
IshKebab wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is a competitor. You know how StackOverflow is dead because AI provided an alternative? That's happening in search too. You might think "but ChatGPT isn't a search engine", and that's true. It can't handle all queries you might use a search engine for, e.g. if you want to find a particular website. But there are many many queries that it can handle. Here's just a few from my recent history: * How do I load a share…

Is StackOverflow dead now? And because of AI? It still usually has the standard quality of answers for most questions I google. I google fewer questions because modern languages have better documentation cultures.

Yes: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/stack-overflow-is-almost-...

Raw data here if you want an update: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1882532/q...

It hasn't got better - down from a peak of 300k/month to under 10k/month.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#472

Post by mike_hearn »

Hard_Space wrote: post #90
supernova87a wrote: post #56

By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. (and another user here kindly did that for us below: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... ) It seems such a simple step (they must have been using the rul…

> By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read right in the story. I presume that this falls under the same consideration as direct links to science papers in articles that are covering those releases. Far as I can tell, the central tactic for lowering bounce rate and increasing 'engagement' is…

They didn't cited papers directly even before the web. It's not a bounce or engagement issue.

Journalists don't make it easy for you to access primary sources because of a mentality and culture issue. They see themselves as gatekeepers of information and convince themselves that readers can't handle the raw material. From their perspective, making it easy to read primary sources is pure downside:

• Most readers don't care/have time.

• Of the tiny number who do, the chances of them finding a mistake in your reporting or in the primary source is high.

• It makes it easier to mis-represent the source to bolster the story.

Eliminating links to sources is pure win: people care a lot about mistakes but not about finding them, so raising the bar for the few who do is ideal.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#473

Post by nwienert »

ehsankia wrote: post #383
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today I don’t think this is as settled as you imply. I tend to like Google products, and do almost everything in the Google ecosystem. But my browser is normally brave or Firefox, because better Adblock is so so impactful. I feel that chrome is a valid alternative, but that no browser is really clearly “the best”. In your view, what is it t…

1. It might not be the best across all metrics today, but it definitely was a few years ago. 2. While it's true that other browsers like Firefox have been catching up to Chrome in speed, it's still true that Chrome help lead the way and if not for it, the web would've likely been far slower today. 3. There has been an explosion in other browsers in the past few years, but admittedly they're all chromium-based, so eve…

Safari has been better for going on 5 years now, funny thing is it was worse for long enough that it seems everyone, even to this day, refuses to believe it.

Faster in basically every dimension. Supporting way more than FF in terms of specs. Way more efficient on battery. Better feeling scroll, better UI.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#475

Post by mike_hearn »

nomoreofthat wrote: post #375
nerpderp82 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> significantly less confident that an LLM is going to be any good at putting a raw source like a court ruling PDF into context and adequately explain to readers why You should play with LLMs this week.

[flagged]

There's a simpler explanation: they are comparing LLM performance to that of regular humans, not perfection.

Where do you think LLMs learned this behavior from? Go spend time in the academic literature outside of computer science and you will find an endless sea of material with BS citations that don't substantiate the claim being made, entirely made up claims with no evidence, citations of retracted papers, nonsensical numbers etc. And that's when papers take months to write and have numerous coauthors, peer reviewers and editors involved (theoretically).

Now read some newspapers or magazines and it's the same except the citations are gone.

If an LLM can meet that same level of performance in a few seconds, it's objectively impressive unless you compare to a theoretical ideal.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#476

Post by AdamN »

supernova87a wrote: post #56

By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. (and another user here kindly did that for us below: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... ) It seems such a simple step (they must have been using the rul…

> they must have been using the ruling PDF to write the story

Oh you sweet Summer child :-)

The worst is with criminal cases where they can't even be burdened to write what the actual charges are. It's just some vague 'crime' and the charges aren't even summarized - they're just ignored.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#477

Post by mike_hearn »

skrtskrt wrote: post #214
rafram wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve noticed this in New York Times articles in the last couple years. Articles are heavily interlinked now - most “keyword” terms will link to a past article on the same topic - but the links rarely leave the Times’ site. The only exception is when they need to refer back to a prior story that they didn’t cover, but that another publication did. Sources are almost never linked; when they are, it’s to a PDF embed on…

It's also a political tool. About a year ago when the NYTimes wrote an article called liked "Who really gets to declare if there is famine in Gaza?", the conclusions of the article were that "well boy it sure is complicated but Gaza is not officially in famine". I found the conclusion and wording suspect. I went looking to see if they would like to the actual UN and World Food Program reports. The official conclusion…

It's true that they do this sort of thing for political reasons, but it sounds like the original NYT report wasn't meant to be merely a paraphrase of a specific UN report? In which case, it would be legitimate to cite other sources and report that they disagree?

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#478

Post by PartiallyTyped »

fidotron wrote: post #19

This is an astonishing victory for Google, they must be very happy about it. They get basically everything they want (keeping it all in the tent), plus a negotiating position on search deals where they can refuse something because they can't do it now. Quite why the judge is so concerned about the rise of AI factoring in here is beyond me. It's fundamentally an anticompetitive decision.

The stock rose over 5%. Anyone who bought when Apple claimed Google searches were down would be up over 30% to date.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#479

Post by kasabali »

tfsh wrote: post #354
chneu wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has systematically shittified the internet with Chrome by pushing bunk standards that other browsers are forced to adopt. Just recently they got fed up with ad-blockers so what do they do? Yeah. Then what just happened with android apps? yeah. Google is not good for the internet. Anyone saying this is just sucking google's dick and siding with a major corporation. Also fuck AMP.

> Google has systematically shittified the internet with Chrome by pushing bunk standards that other browsers are forced to adopt. Out of interest, what standards?

All of 'em.

Re: Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

#480

Post by dns_snek »

sfdlkj3jk342a wrote: post #466
dns_snek wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get an acceptable answer maybe about 60% of the time, assuming most of your questions are really simple. The other 40% of the time it's complete nonsense dressed up as a reasonable answer.

Have you used Grok or ChatGPT in the last year? I can't remember the last time I got a nonsense response. Do you have a recent example?

Yes I (try to) use them all the time. I regularly compare ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude side by side, especially when I sniff something that smells like bullshit. I probably have ~10 chats from the past week with each one. I ask genuine questions expecting a genuine answer, I don't go out of my way to try to "trick" them but often I'll get an answer that doesn't seem quite right and then I dig deeper.

I'm not interested in dissecting specific examples because never been productive, but I will say that most people's bullshit detectors are not nearly as sensitive as they think they are which leads them to accepting sloppy incorrect answers as high-quality factual answers.

Many of them fall into the category of "conventional wisdom that's absolutely wrong". Quick but sloppy answers are okay if you're okay with them, after all we didn't always have high-quality information at our fingertips.

The only thing that worries me is how really smart people can consume this slop and somehow believe it to be high-quality information, and present it as such to other impressionable people.

Your success will of course vary depending on the topic and difficulty of your questions, but if you "can't remember" the last time you had a BS answer then I feel extremely confident in saying that your BS detector isn't sensitive enough.

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