Beefalo

I got to thinking about IRC some time ago, and how much creative time we spent solving the fundamental problem of how, exactly, to use the internet without needing some sort of middleman, like a crazy person hosting a server for no clear reason, so that we could all communicate together.

That and designing the thing so that even if the hardware in your closet got hammered with a bajillion visits it wouldn’t stutter because it was all too light weight for that. But also, fuck no I would rather throw myself down the stairs than arrange it so that I have to maintain it a lot. That type of thinking defined an era, and that’s why zombo.com still works.

I have to put more maintenance into my Gmail account than the zombo guy does into the entire website, is what I’m saying. Return to monke, is what I’m saying.

God I love shitty cosplay that still works.

Somebody shakes their head and says something about milk and pizza

He’s a survivor. He had a hunch and started walking casually toward the mountains, never to be seen again.

Please note that the prompt says “queens of England” very clearly, which turns it into a glorified Google image search, so the results are unacceptable trash, and vaguely leftist language about people being angry for the lack of racism are your problem, only. Fuck off, troll.

The real issue is that even with a handholding, direct and easy prompt, the tech cannot simply hand over pictures, even generated ones to avoid copyright issues, that come from easily discovered answers on Wikipedia and who knows how many other credible sources. The lineage of the British Royal Family is all but open-source data - probably is, literally - and your mom can probably name three Queens offhand though she’s Canadian. This thing completely ate shit on an easy, easy prompt.

I don’t know how many times now I’ve seen some YouTuber use “evil Jerome Powell” as a prompt for a thumbnail, and get a clear picture of him complete with devil horns, copyright be damned, so what the f? The AI isn’t this stupid, that means they’re nerfing it and screwing it up. You best believe they’re still selling it, though.

What other results will it comically fuck up, but you don’t have the knowledge to critique? You won’t see the results, either, somebody else will use them to judge your resume; IS using them, now. Fucking lazy hiring managers are going to just plug your name into this thing and ask for a synopsis of your life so they don’t have to work. It will just fill in missing information with lies, and they’ll eat it up. I guess you shot two people a couple of years ago and didn’t know about it. I wonder why you didn’t get the job?

People have been crazy dumb with this AI, meaning young, smart, tech-savvy people with heavy internet backgrounds who should know better than to trust keep treating it like an oracle, because they have some weird blind spot about this technology. Ignorant executives who think math is for slurs are going to make it do everything.

They’re going to use this technology to decide who gets an apartment, who gets arrested, and a bunch of other shit, save your leftism for that.

The stinky back of that poor tiger

The only time I get 10 hours and wake up tired is after a lot of drinking, so maybe you have other issues.

Try out Shreddit, it’s a web app for exactly this. It even lets you filter by post karma so you can keep your hits. I’ve never used it but that’s the name that came up over on Reddit from everyone talking about the announcement.

This announcement is just “oh by the way, the horse is now out of the barn. He left like 10 years ago but this is the announcement.”

Shout out to whoever dismissed the first AI writings with “It’s like a perfect Redditor. Totally confident and completely full of shit, doesn’t even know that it’s lying.”

That doesn’t happen by accident. That happens when everyone was already scraping the shit out of the site, at the very least.

Gonna smoke fat doinks and make a scene at some expensive restaurants

Reddit tended to be best where it had stolen better communities from the old web.

For example, r/Excel was always a stunningly chill place to get help with MS Excel. But notice that the community was/is tightly focused on a subject, that subject would have objectively correct answers to any questions about it, and the mods could politely but firmly discourage any spicier conversations as off-topic. You can keep that sort of place decent almost indefinitely.

Such communities would have been their own little message board before Reddit came along and hoovered them all up.

Likewise with all the other subreddits that were famously full of answers, ones you never had heard of. Just the other day I googled a question about some random piece of cable I had in my hand and guess who had answered it 4 years ago? Yeah. Those little communities tend to be really solid. They never get that big, either. You can’t just fuck around in them, you have to stay on topic and the average user hates that.

But Reddit turns into a wretched, life-draining parasitic monster in any form where the public feels like they have the right to run their mouths and chatter. So, most of Reddit, really. Anywhere that gives the average schmuck a place to vent will degenerate, rapidly, usually toward an abusive groupthink. It’s just populism, then, and a textbook answer to why that’s bad.

It’s the bane of all social media. I don’t think people are generally that shitty. I’ve decided that social media, including Reddit, just empowers small, loud minorities of miserable, exhausting people who have nigh-fascist opinions on every single thing, and as soon as the normal-ass people see that they’ve joined the chat, the normal-ass people all vanish, overnight, leaving behind only shitbags who love attention, or believe they have a right to it, at everyone else’s expense. There’s no getting rid of them when they show up, you can only get rid of you. I hope you weren’t having a nice time, because it’s over now, time to move on.

Reddit always had its great little subreddits full of truly precious answers as a counterweight to all that. It would appear that they were the only thing of value that Reddit ever had, too.

Lemmy doesn’t really have that. It looks like the most obnoxious parts of Reddit came here, so, you know, every computer problem is solved by installing Linux, and other mouthfuls of that flavor. Then somebody opened the floodgates and now you’re arguing with Commies about every political thing. Meanwhile, no great little subLemmies full of answers for your obscure questions exist to make up for it.

Like you said, it was super chill for a month, but then, yeah. It’s kinda same shit different day. It’s reminding me that I’ve decided to view social media as a vice, almost exactly like smoking, and changing cigarette brands does not solve the problem.

In the spirit of Tupac I call for unity in the hood on this one.

GuNindos it is

I will never forget when my tourist ass was bumbling through O’Hare on my way to my gate and this dark haired woman who I have dubbed the Executive Raven went blasting past me in a pencil skirt and 3-inch heels with her little rolly suitcase clacking behind her and I thought, “damn.”

Then I got to my gate and she was already there waiting for her own flight, she’d whipped out a laptop and an earpiece and appeared to be running the entire world so that it wouldn’t collapse in the three hours that she would be on the plane.

You meet a lot of these people in airports. I think me and the OOP don’t meet a lot of them, otherwise.

I’ve been calling it Xitter, sounds like zitter. Gotta call it something, not the dumb thing he made up.

Idunno, I feel like they certainly fathom it to some degree. They have an awful lot of funky little predator evasion techniques for an animal with no fathom.

That whole schooling thing is a bunch of fish going, I know they like eating us, but I’d rather they eat YOU.

I do agree that they have no conception of humanity, just that sometimes their friends get raptured away by something that makes a boat noise.

That’s beyond “wow he’s tall” and well into “somebody fucked with this in Photoshop” tall.

If they didn’t then he’s well into uh oh, something is wrong with this kid and his life expectancy might not be the greatest, tall.

I managed to be on TikTok for one (1) calendar year and then bailed. For now, I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, but soon, something like this is just going to be a weird picture that means nothing. That’s a strange thing.

This guy looks like he got in a terrible fistfight where he completely lost and ended up in the hospital with a face like a lumpy purple balloon, but that was a year ago, and he’s mostly healed, now. Mostly.

I got that Dramm Heavy-Duty Brass Adjustable Nozzle, so I get that full-analog control and I feel like a fireman.

Also, this thing survives the winter, and the next five of them. That’s why I bought it. Everything else would be cool until the next spring when it was a leaky failure. I had to replace llke 4 of the ones in the OP, fricken Walmart specials, shitty plastic, garbage seals. Not the Dramm. This thing’s fit for Canada. It doesn’t care if it froze all winter, it’s ready for spring, leak free.

I get all these settings, and every gradient in-between, unlike the peasantry. Can you imagine? How droll. Merely 7 choices. Genteel shudder

Only $17 on Amazon, so load that one up for a Father’s Day gift. Mother’s Day gift, too, you know she loves that garden. Did your friend just transition? Dramm garden hose nozzle, welcome to the elite, I put a little bow on it. Hell, I think I’d give it for Christmas to the right person. Dramm 12380, investment grade equipment, real Buy It For Life shit.