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Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet

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Re: Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet

#51

Post by appplication »

silverquiet wrote: post #48
reducesuffering wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm perplexed that there are a significant amount of people on a tech forum that can't do a simple linear extrapolation from last year to one year into the future. That would get you in the right direction, except that we're on an exponential curve.

Not all problems are linear - people have been saying for over a decade now that self driving cars are imminent, but at this point it seems like most have actually given up on them.

Well… it’s possible we’re on an exponential curve there too. The early part of exponential can be pretty slow. And it depends on how you measure progress. We are seeing exponentially more training data collected in terms of miles driven every year. And likely exponentially more processing power applied to the problem space.

Re: Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet

#52

Post by thiht »

For me Google Search is the big one. It has sucked for a few years, but in the last few months it’s been increasingly worse, to the point where I can’t Google anything anymore and get meaningful results. The top results (2 first pages) are systematically SEO/AI junk, and Google goes out of its way to ignore the keywords I add, even when I use natural language as we’re supposed to now.

I’ve completely moved my searches to ChatGPT (general questions), Reddit (consumer opinion, pros/cons), Kagi (when I need sourced stuff) and… TikTok, which is amazing for recipes and creative stuff.

Re: Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet

#53

Post by namaria »

sneed_chucker wrote: post #22
MichaelRo wrote: post #6

>> In the last few months, the constant flood of algorithmically generated junk content has kicked into an AI-powered overdrive, and it is cutting a swath of destruction as it overwhelms search engines, filters, and moderation systems Nothing that wasn't happening already since some 15 years or so.

"nothing ever happens" Believe it or not, sometimes things happen.

Everything that happens is cancelled out by the entropy increase generated for it to happen. And it will also degrade over time due to entropy seeping into the enclosure where it happened.

Nothing ever happens[0] indeed.

[0] Without costing something else coming undone. We can only pump low entropy around, we cannot generate it.

Re: Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet

#54

Post by finnomenon »

zachmu wrote: post #20

What's interesting to me is how quickly AI generated art came to be expected, unexceptional. Every random blog post has a couple AI generated images now, they are completely unremarkable and uninteresting. The novelty wore off basically instantaneously. They're just the new corporate art style.

The stock photos accompanying every random blog post we had up until now were also completely unremarkable and uninteresting.

Re: Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet

#56

Post by xethos »

shiroiushi wrote: post #49
xethos wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a family dinner last week, in the Pacific North West. One topic that came up was evil government regulations that required heat pumps, with the follow-up claim being that they do not work below -5C. I cannot express the amount of shit I took for stating, un-movingly, that heat pumps work below -5C. I was shown Google search results, webpages, and was hit with professional experience from my brother, the red sea…

I wonder how much of this heat pump argument was miscommunication. My personal experience is that heat pumps don't work worth a damn in below-freezing weather, and always need to resort to resistance ("emergency") heating, which is extremely inefficient and expensive. Of course, my experience is with frequently decades-old units, or at best whatever cheap-o unit the landlord bought, not the very latest state-of-the-a…

Sounds like you might be after a cold-climate [0] heat pump. They'll use advances in things like variable speed compressors and flash / vapor injection to draw useful heat from the air at well below -5C, without the need for auxillary heat sources like resistance heat.

I'm doubtful it was simply mis-communication. Another point of contention was that heat pumps can be over 100% efficient - to the point that asking "Will they be more than 100% efficient with outside temps at 15C or 25C, and in indoor target of 20C?" got an emphatic no. That's less a miscommunication than a poor education, IMO.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_source_heat_pump#In_cold_c...

Re: Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet

#57

Post by BizarroLand »

ornornor wrote: post #50
ilamont wrote: post #8

"Google is taking action against algorithmically generated spam. The search engine giant just announced upcoming changes, including a revamped spam policy, designed in part to keep AI clickbait out of its search results." Even before the AI floodgates were opened, there was a huge problem with ads and SEO-optimized junk written by humans clogging up Google, and pushing the good stuff into the SERP netherworld. People…

I can’t understand why they don’t apply the same mechanism as how they filter spam out of gmail and friends: why can’t I the user block/derank/prioritize domains in a custom search results ordering? Aggregating this data at google etc scale would give a pretty good idea as to which domains are junk and eventually automatically tweak results rank this way. Isn’t it how gmail spam « detection » works (or worked?) for t…

1: Use Firefox. 2: Don't use Google anything. 3: If you can't do 2, at least do 1 and add a search blacklist extension like ublacklist. 4: Actually, use uBlacklist (or whatever) anyway, it will let you add other search engines, and block the annoying sites that clog the search results.

Here is my current search result blocklist, these sites earned a position on the list by either being intrinsically unwanted, (i.e. news sites, social media), completely useless (learn.microsoft.com, a site specifically written so that you can't learn anything from it (Oh, I define a few of the function for a specific thing but can't be searched and only rarely show any examples, hope you have a dev DC to practice your poorly written powershell scripts on! of course, we never tell you that there is a book series that actually teaches you microsoft stuff because otherwise more people would understand how easy it is to operate windows), or SEO spam optimized BS that prevents me from finding what I am actually searching for.

://.yelp.com/* ://.cambridge.org/* ://.linkedin.com/* ://.williampitt.com/* ://.sothebysrealty.com/* ://.whitepages.com/* ://learn.microsoft.com/ ://.microsoft.com/* ://.reddit.com/* ://.glassdoor.com/* ://.facebook.com/* ://.pcmacstore.com/* ://.yellowpages.com/* ://.superpages.com/* ://.mowerrepairshops.com/* ://.angi.com/* ://.bbb.org/* ://.freeconvert.com/* ://.pdfcandy.com/* ://.cleverpdf.com/* ://.convertio.co/* ://.png2pdf.com/* ://.pngpdf.com/* ://.xodo.com/* ://.cloudconvert.com/* ://.usinsuranceonline.com/* ://.elsevier.com/* ://.clarivate.com/* ://.google.com/* ://.usask.ca/* ://.jpg2pdf.com/* ://.smallpdf.com/* ://.pdf24.org/* ://.ilovepdf.com/* ://.11zon.com/* ://.pdfresizer.com/* ://.freepdfconvert.com/* ://.sodapdf.com/* ://.pdfcrowd.com/* ://.pdfsimpli.com/* ://.axios.com/* ://.insider.com/* ://.bhg.com/* ://.windows101tricks.com/* ://.stellarinfo.com/* ://.nucleustechnologies.com/* ://.wondershare.com/* ://.getmailbird.com/* ://.clean.email/* ://.minitool.com/* ://.cch.com/* ://.product-reviews.net/* ://.gbatemp.net/* ://.macbookproslow.com/* ://.iu.edu/* ://.hubspot.com/* ://.getdroidtips.com/* ://.shotkit.com/* ://.citrix.com/* ://.gosunoob.com/* ://.belenjesuit.org/* ://.computerinfobits.com/* ://.appuals.com/* ://.drivereasy.com/* ://.techradar.com/* ://.betebt.com/* ://.webstick.blog/* ://.anysoftwaretools.com/* ://.contactmonkey.com/* ://.regainsoftware.com/* ://.gottabemobile.com/* ://.easeus.com/* ://.computerhope.com/* ://.splashtop.com/* ://.multcloud.com/* ://.ubackup.com/* ://.wintechlab.com/* ://.safetydetectives.com/* ://.guidingtech.com/* ://.bigxperts.com/* ://.techmaina.com/* ://.itechhacks.com/* ://.airtv.shop/* ://.spreadsheetpoint.com/* ://.bt.com/* ://.fasthosts.co.uk/* ://.technewstoday.com/* ://.windowsreport.com/* ://.msn.com/* ://.thewindowsclub.com/* ://.geekchamp.com/* ://.slipstick.com/* ://.aol.com/* ://.abc13.com/* ://.go.com/* ://.nypost.com/* ://.nbcnews.com/* ://.cnn.com/* ://.cbsnews.com/* ://.usatoday.com/* ://.g2.com/*

Re: Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet

#58

Post by AwaAwa »

a_vanderbilt wrote: post #13
squidsoup wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are massively underestimating how quickly AI generated content is going to dominate the web. This is something new.

This was a plot point in the Cyberpunk lore. The Internet got overrun with AI to the point that they had to build a new Internet in parallel for humans, with mega-companies being the stewards of course. In a way, Pondsmith called this decades ago.

Sounds like the AOL walled garden was way ahead of it's time. I can't wait for iInternet from the fruit company.

Re: Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet

#59

Post by shiroiushi »

xethos wrote: post #56
shiroiushi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of this heat pump argument was miscommunication. My personal experience is that heat pumps don't work worth a damn in below-freezing weather, and always need to resort to resistance ("emergency") heating, which is extremely inefficient and expensive. Of course, my experience is with frequently decades-old units, or at best whatever cheap-o unit the landlord bought, not the very latest state-of-the-a…

Sounds like you might be after a cold-climate [0] heat pump. They'll use advances in things like variable speed compressors and flash / vapor injection to draw useful heat from the air at well below -5C, without the need for auxillary heat sources like resistance heat. I'm doubtful it was simply mis-communication. Another point of contention was that heat pumps can be over 100% efficient - to the point that asking "W…

"Miscommunication" was probably poor wording on my part. What I meant was that their experiences, like mine, probably involved years or even decades of poor experiences with heat pumps in cold weather, so they were assuming that heat pumps haven't significantly improved in that regard.
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