MountingSuspicion
@MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com
- Comment on What Was Grammarly Thinking? 2 days ago:
What a completely accurate description. The nuance of the issues being subtle yet catastrophic is always the part that I find the funniest, because how are they so incapable of seeing how that might be a universal issue? Thank you for the chuckle.
- Comment on What Was Grammarly Thinking? 3 days ago:
Ridiculous that Grammarly even attempted to do this. The article was good, but at the end, though they hedged, they fell into the same trap everyone seems to. AI is not better at coding than it is at writing and their tinkering with this does not suggest that. Grammarly had a bad product, but realistically, there was likely just no effort put into this aspect of the software. Maybe I’m way off base, and I don’t support AI either way, but I just think it was a poor way to end the article. Programmers think it’s good for art, artists think it’s good for programming, it’s almost like it’s easier to see flaws in a field you’re familiar with.
- Comment on ‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI 6 days ago:
I keep seeing this, but I think people forget what things were like before we had a formalized education system. They were not good. The modern system can certainly be improved, but it has overall improved upon itself essentially since its inception. I’m not sure if there’s some kind of golden age of US education people are imagining, or they’re just pointing out current flaws, but it really is (unfortunately or not) the best it’s ever been.
- Comment on ‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI 6 days ago:
That’s really not fair to universities or the inventors. Knowledge is not inherently evil, and things that have far reaching positive impacts can be used for nefarious purposes. Modern society has perverse incentives, but individuals adding to a corpus of humanity’s knowledge are not the ones at fault.
- Comment on Social Meta acquired Moltbook, the AI agent social network that went viral because of fake posts 6 days ago:
Often times these purchases are not for the product itself, but how it can be incorporated into an existing product. I imagine if Meta makes bot accounts for people to follow/engage with, they can increase user retention and therefore ad revenue.
- Comment on Imagine Losing Your Job to the Mere Possibility of AI 6 days ago:
Yang is a grifter and no one should listen to him. Companies will happily use any excuse to fire employees and create a perception of job scarcity so that they can rehire workers who are scared and desperate and willing to take less compensation for more work.
All of that said, AI is definitely being incorporated quite heavily into a lot of products. It’s already caused issues with services we all rely on, and I hope we are able to hold companies accountable and stop patronizing them wherever possible. AI cannot do a lot of the things they are pretending it can and we are paying the price, not the companies responsible.
- Comment on An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened 4 weeks ago:
I believe it’s the personal blog of the dev in question, Scott. I don’t have any reason to believe it’s AI, though he does mention using ChatGPT I don’t see it suggested he has AI write his blogs.
- Comment on Anon works in cybersecurity 4 weeks ago:
I put fun little Easter eggs like that in my logging and some debugging but I can admit it’s cringe. If I had someone speak to me like that I wouldn’t hate it but I’d question their earnestness.
- Comment on RentAHuman.ai - AI Agents Hire Humans for Physical Tasks 5 weeks ago:
Let’s pay people to use AI to pay people to do the job we used to pay people to do anyway, but this time it’s rent seekers all the way down. Can’t wait.
- Comment on Do you prefer fluffy UI over Liquid Glass? 1 month ago:
I was never a fan of aero, but I don’t care a lot about UIs in general. It’s just that Liquid Glass as implemented by Apple specifically is terrible. When I first updated to it I was looking for how to tune it down and found this article that covers what I think is the biggest issue with their implementation: macworld.com/…/this-liquid-glass-toggle-is-a-wind…
They focused so much on making it pretty that it ceased to be functional. There should not be animation lag on basic UI elements. My phone is not that old and my screen will freeze up with a big Liquid Glass bubble obscuring the display for at least a full 2 seconds depending on the button I press. They allow per app Liquid Glass settings, which is great considering how terribly it’s been implemented on certain apps, but the fact it’s deemed necessary should be a huge indicator of the overall quality. A nonzero amount of dev time was put into making sure we can reject their design direction and still that doesn’t work. The safari browser implementation of turning off LG leaves empty blocks on the top and bottom of the screen instead of the normal fade away of those elements, and that is their own browser. I imagine a lot will be patched out soon, but the roll out has been a buggy disaster in my opinion. I think it’s really colored people’s opinion on LG in general now.
- Comment on GOG now using AI generated images on their store 1 month ago:
Yes! Exactly this! Does anyone remember those big “SALE” signs stores used to have? It just said the word sale in big bold letters. Nothing else. It’s a sale. I really don’t need a fancy graphic to encourage me to potentially save money if I was going to buy the games anyway or to get new games on the cheap.
- Comment on GOG now using AI generated images on their store 1 month ago:
There’s a post elsewhere with an excerpt from a job posting for GOG devs that paints a bleaker picture. In the post they state you need to be familiar with AI tools and encourage the use in your team. I think they’re in it too deep at this point.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 2 months ago:
I don’t think training on all public information is super ethical regardless, but to the extent that others may support it, I understand that SO may be seen as fair game. To my knowledge though, all the big AIs I’m aware of have been trained on GitHub regardless of any individual projects license.
It’s not about proving individual code theft, it’s about recognizing the model itself is built from theft. Just because an AI image output might not resemble any preexisting piece of art doesn’t mean it isn’t based on theft. Can I ask what you used that was trained on just a projects documentation? Considering the amount of data usually needed for coherent output, I would be surprised if it did not need some additional data.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 2 months ago:
If you acknowledge the problem with theft from artists, do you not acknowledge there’s a problem with theft from coders? Code intended to be fully open source with licenses requiring derivatives to be open source is now being served up for closed source uses at the press of a button with no acknowledgement.
For what it’s worth, I think AI would be much better in a post scarcity moneyless society, but so long as people need to be paid for their work I find it hard to use ethically. The time it might take individuals to do the things offloaded to AI might mean a company would need to hire an additional person if they were not using AI. If AI were not trained unethically then I’d view it as a productivity tool and so be it, but because it has stolen for its training data it’s hard for me to view it as a neutral tool.
- Comment on The labeling on OTC pain relievers, etc. This is why I just pop 3 and hope for the best. 2 months ago:
I understand how it might be personally upsetting, but products should have warnings and health guidelines before the instructions. If I’m supposed to wear gloves before touching something, I sure hope I see that before I see how to use it. This is actually good in my opinion. People might not actually read it all, but at least safety information is front loaded.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
Numberphile did a video about this game and to my recollection the person presenting it actually had a distinct game of set they and their math friends would play. It was pretty interesting!
- Comment on Quick, go test if you're a robot! 2 months ago:
- Comment on 8 Million Users' AI Conversations Sold for Profit by "Privacy" Extensions 2 months ago:
Other than being an obvious ad for their own AI, the article was pretty informative.
Per the article, the following were found to be affected. Probably anything by the publisher should not be trusted as they’re just a data mining company, so make sure not to download any rebrands or new releases from the same people. Chrome Web Store:
- Urban VPN Proxy - 6,000,000 users
- 1ClickVPN Proxy - 600,000 users
- Urban Browser Guard - 40,000 users
- Urban Ad Blocker - 10,000 users
Microsoft Edge Add-ons:
- Urban VPN Proxy - 1,323,622 users
- 1ClickVPN Proxy - 36,459 users
- Urban Browser Guard - 12,624 users
- Urban Ad Blocker - 6,476 users
- Comment on Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won 2 months ago:
Absolutely infuriating. I’m upset the judge did not award the full extent of monetary damages even though it’s evident that Verizon is in violation of multiple agreements.
I know it’s not how this works, but since the FCC put those rules in place as a condition of their acquisition of the other companies, and since they violated those rules, the government should be able to nationalize/seize the assets of the other companies. Verizon should not legally have them since they broke the agreement. I’d love to see not just a one time fine but a legitimate punishment. If this guy hadn’t done this they’d be knowingly violating their agreement still. The people doing this are disgusting and taking advantage of the people with the least amount of time and resources. I truly wish they all have the day they deserve.
- Comment on Anon lives on a budget 2 months ago:
People often refer to the ACA as Obamacare. Obamacare did change requirements for employer provided health care, not just marketplace plans. So, prior to the ACA full time employees had certain benefits that part time employees did not. Post ACA there were changes to mandatory minimum benefits that employer healthcare packages provided. If you can articulate what the issue you are raising is, that would be helpful.
- Comment on Anon lives on a budget 2 months ago:
Also from my comment:
Obamacare mandates employers offer healthcare to people working 30 hrs a week.
- Comment on Anon lives on a budget 2 months ago:
Oh, definitely. And having 2 part time jobs, if you can manage it, often means you end up working more hours (25+25), and are still not given the benefits of a full time employee because you aren’t technically full time anywhere. It’s terrible and for what it’s worth I do feel bad for anon here. They are drinking the right wing kook aid, which sucks, but it’s an awful position to be in. There’s comments calling them a moron or that they just have to make minor changes etc, but the reality is, especially in these small towns, there’s not a lot of options and acting like it’s the fault of individuals is really missing the point.
For what it’s worth, Obamacare did technically add to the employer burden by making good healthcare a mandatory offering for full time employees, so I understand why some people have convinced themselves it’s the ACAs fault, but employers were doing the 25 hours thing to skirt other benefits way before Obamacare.
- Comment on Anon lives on a budget 2 months ago:
From my comment:
It’s also worth mentioning that employers did this even before Obamacare because there are other things that full time employees are entitled to that part time employees aren’t.
- Comment on Anon lives on a budget 2 months ago:
I commented above, but in the US some employers will refuse to give you more hours to keep you as a part time employee, since full time employees are guaranteed certain benefits. Those benefits include access to healthcare. They would rather hire 2 people part time than 1 person full time. This is not Obamacare’s fault, but for some reason people in the middle of nowhere who make very little money have convinced themselves that it’s Obama who’s to blame instead of the shitty companies and their shitty owners.
- Comment on Anon lives on a budget 2 months ago:
Obamacare mandates employers offer healthcare to people working 30 hrs a week. A lot of places will only allow you to be scheduled for less than 30 hours a week, even if you are able and willing to go full time. It’s stupid, but some people have convinced themselves that it’s Obamacare’s fault that their employer is shitty and the subsequent governments have been unwilling to close that loophole. It’s also worth mentioning that employers did this even before Obamacare because there are other things that full time employees are entitled to that part time employees aren’t.
- Comment on Disney says Google AI infringes copyright “on a massive scale” 2 months ago:
Not to support Disney or IP/copyright laws here, but that’s not really how that works. A musician can choose to not be on Spotify but be on Apple Music. A movie can be licensed to Netflix and not Hulu. A writer can publish in one paper and refuse to work with another. I think for how these things currently work, that is an important right that holders can claim. If I’m an artist and I want to make an AI generator from just my art, that should not give other companies license to use my are to train their AI.
- Comment on Trying to find a messenger bag at Amazon 2 months ago:
To a certain extent, isn’t it still enshitification? They lowered their standards (making the product/marketplace worse) to capture marketshare/increase profits.
Also, blaming consumers for being “bad at shopping” is certainly a take. What about the gold plated HDMI cables sold at a huge markup? More expensive doesn’t mean better and we can’t expect everyone to have the knowledge or ability or time to know about every single thing they purchase. Shitty companies are charging more for less and consumers are being squeezed. Photos are all manipulated and there’s no real way to know the quality from a picture. People are trying their best to get good products for their money without being scammed.
- Comment on Your sides should be thrown away, your turkey should be frozen or almost gone. 3 months ago:
Seems like something someone who isn’t cooking turkey would say, but in case you are cooking it, or are able to share with the person cooking it, Gordon Ramsey has a turkey recipe that involves buttering the meat directly that has never failed. I like to pre brine for alternative flavor, but for most cases his method is more than sufficient: gordonramsay.com/…/roast-turkey-with-lemon-parsle…
There’s also a video if you prefer.
- Comment on This whole exchange 3 months ago:
Thank you for clarifying. I stay away from religious stuff for the most part now, but it’s interesting to see where the lines are drawn between sects. Totally understand why having a new name etc makes sense mostly after there’s an established religious text and doctrine, which at the time of Jesus there would not have been. Appreciate the response.
- Comment on This whole exchange 3 months ago:
I have never really discussed Jesus’ religion irl, mostly because I don’t care, but I see your UN and I have been curious, why would Mary/Joseph/jesus not also be considered Christian Jews? Were they not the first to accept Jesus as a new prophet? I understand he probably was raised Jewish, but seeing as his core religious belief was not accepted into general Jewish faith, is he not at least the founder of Christianity? I figure at the time it made sense to not have a direct divide because Jews didn’t have the time yet to decide if Jesus was the real thing or not, but if Jesus was able to be on the TV/radio at the time and the majority of Jews rejected him as the messiah immediately, would they still use that interim term? I understand that the term Jewish encompasses a large cultural element, but as far as religious identity, it feels strange to group people who believe Jesus was the son of god with people who think that’s a lie and heretical.