OpenStars

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Answer: not yet.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

It took me far too long to get this one - like why would an all-powerful genie be vulnerable to such a simple science trick? But probably what made the genie be that powerful was the voice of Robin Williams or Will Smith, and all other genies are inferior:-P.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

There are so many ways this could go:-).

OpenStars , 5 months ago

It's a voice acting job - he's in another, separate room, so we should be safe. Yeah he had a great career, then that, and that'll be all that we remember for a long time if not forever.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Life is pain, sometimes. Maybe he remembers what happened on Reddit too vividly but would rather forget.:-)

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Maybe they should try making products that work instead of trying to shove ads down our throats? How's that for a business model: give the customer what they want?

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Fair - but I would hope for a functional product supported by delivery of ads, rather than ads that exist for the purpose of ads so that there can be more ads delivered along with the ads (oh yeah, and somewhere in there, a product... which itself is little more than merely another thinly-disguised advertisement).

Google is the perfect example: it made its name bc it WORKED, then it started to be supported by ads - okay fine so far - then the ads took over and now very often, it merely passes on SEO "ads" (except crucially: remember that was supposed to be the product) rather than show actual results. Plus on top of that, it also shows the ads. The latter are fine but the former are most definitely not, especially when it pushes out real results so that like even on page 5 you can't find what you were looking for, which might still be the very top result of DuckDuckGo hence cannot be that hard to produce. It exemplifies the process of enshittification for us all.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Believe it or not, but at one point Google (and similarly many of the products that it owns now, like YouTube) did not have ads in them either...

I am okay with adding ads to them though, to help support future product development. And likewise contributing packages delivered as open source, ofc I am happy with that.

I just do not like watching products, like Google search, lose out on services, not b/c of traditional ads but rather the newer style of ads in the form of SEO, i.e. not "ads" so much as "misinformation", which Google made far too easy to game the system with as compared to the previous incarnation, where it was based more on "reputation" e.g. linking to & from other sites. Though similar to ads in that it is a way for companies to promote themselves, jumping straight to the front of the line rather than play "fair".

Nowadays you can zoom in on Google maps and not see the store you are looking for until you are practically on top of it or manage to click it directly - instead Google prioritizes what it wants to show you, based on who ponies up what amount of dough to Google, rather than what you as the customer want to see.

And as for AI, it simply was not ready. It was itself an advertisement to executives from people trying to sell it before having made a viable product yet. Thus I am not surprised that they lost billions due to mismanagement of this highly interesting and promising field, that will eventually offer everyone a great deal, one day.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

And are those fees more than $2450? Asking for a uh... friend.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Aha, I see that you've uncovered our their dasterdly plan!? The only hope you we have left: work harder!

OpenStars , 5 months ago

I dunno... only 6 seems like it would be replaced in a month if not a day. It might be even more difficult than that, very sadly:-(.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Actually... that was the thinking behind the OG MAGA movement. Ngl, but aside from the stupidity of thinking that Trump of all people would do anything even remotely like what they hoped, he was an attempt borne out of sheer desperation to have ANYONE other than "Mrs. The Establishment", "keep the status quo" Clinton. It was pretty much her campaign slogan - "things right now aren't all that bad", remember?

He even shook things up in a BIG(-LY) way! Unfortunately, it was all in the opposite direction but... still, he did move the needle, that much he did!

It reinforces in my own mind: the journey of 1000 miles does not begin with a single step, but rather with figuring out where the fuck we are now and which direction we should be heading in. Like if you are heading west 1000 miles, then instead of just start walking west, maybe go south 100 miles first, then drive east 1000 miles to get a plane so that you can handle going over the ocean that you would have encountered soon enough by simply stupidly walking or even driving. Anyway, Truth is far often more complex than Fiction, and I'm saying that we should figure out the right way to go first. Or, you know, we could ignore all of that and head down to the Texas/Mexico border with our guns, bc somehow that has become top priority too (/s, bc it's not, unless quite possibly it somehow is, like if the USA goes to civil war over that, and that is the flash point event?).

Yeah I have no clue what to do.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Thank you for attempting to bring facts to what looks to be a feelings party - people could literally end up homeless by following this pattern, e.g. if the new job fell through and the one after that checks both previous references, then all the old manager has to do is send that screenshot.

Karma exists, and yes corporations are evil SOBs but that's no reason for us to be so likewise.

And ofc it's a joke meme, but... is it tho? And anyway why downvote you even so? Now I too will accept those alongside you, and I suggest we treat it as a badge of honor at this point, I will hold fast to what is true regardless.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Bold of you to presume that cats need to use a board for that, rather than possessing that ability innately.:-)

OpenStars , 5 months ago

It's light traveling from your phone to your eyeballs.

Then it's neuronal signals to your brain.

OMG it's abstraction all the way down, isn't it!? :-P

OpenStars , 5 months ago

And energy in turn derives from the sub-atomic level, which itself sits on top of the quantum, although some people say that it is all oscillations of n-branes... therefore do any words ever have any meaning, really, ever?:-P

OpenStars , 5 months ago

They are not birbs so... yes? They "are real" (wink):-).

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Rich people learn how to game the system? I'm shocked!

OpenStars , 5 months ago

That may be as well. I was just recalling those PP loans during COVID, which later inspection of who got them was often nefarious.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

The article ends with:

it is only going to get shittier

(in reference to a comment that Musk had said to advertisers to go ‘fuck themselves’, so meaning i.e. X, not necessarily overall, i.e. Fediverse)

OpenStars , 5 months ago

While 99% of the news media at this point is clickbait, this one at least adds new information: "Enshittification... has been named 2023's Digital Word of the Year." The original article did not say that:-).

Also, yes there are ads, but also it's not blocked by a paywall so... checks and balances. Whereas X is basically just fully trash at this point, now that Musk has cancelled Twitter:-P.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

I usually say Twitter/X, but Musk began the process of cancelling the Twitter part, and the part that will continue to get shittier is X :-P.

Like Disney did to Star Wars, he took people's community engagement and feelings of ownership, and... well he just took them. Things don't truly belong to us unless we keep them out of the hands of billionaires - like "our" media, now "their" media. It's a life lesson I suppose.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Flint, MI would like to have a word with you...

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Shiny toy distracc

OpenStars , 5 months ago

It's a rite of passage! I had to learn it so now you do too! Why, when I was young I used to have to walk to school, uphill both ways, in the snow... :-P

OpenStars , 5 months ago

He wants to be appreciated!?

OpenStars , 5 months ago

The system works as intended then.

It makes a twisted kind of sense: if you believe that "free speech" = you should be allowed to vote with your dollars, as in you having more dollars than most others (those who you choose to surround yourself with anyway, bc despite the facts of how millionaires are absolutely dwarfed by billionaires, somehow they don't seem to see that) should mean then your votes count more. And thus an enterprising little turd could sit there at the center of it all collecting the toll for all that "free speech". Within that worldview, it's entirely consistent.

It is only when that interfaces with the real world that it breaks down: bc no matter how much Nazis pay Musk to advertise their propaganda, we still don't have to choose to listen.

It's all advertising, all the way down.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Once bitten twice shy. Except some people refuse to learn entirely so be glad that your attitude allows you to not fall into that camp.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

It is speaking to you in an Eldritch language that none of our puny minds can comprehend. When the dreams begin though, then you will know, THEN you will begin to understand...

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Bold of you to presume that Musk wanted less celebrity pornography on Twitt X.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Not directly, but it's balanced by the traffic that talking about it generates?

Musk has been known to say... controversial statements from time to time for this reason.

Making sure that X remains relevant, living rent-free in all of our heads, is a huge benefit, compared to moving on and never looking back.

Edit: though to be clear, I didn't say it was a good plan - most of his plans do not qualify for that word imho:-P.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

If you are a healthy well-adjusted person, possibly never:-). After all, X is a letter not a name, and just about the least-used one at that (except Q, which is also co-opted now by the similar group).

If I were to suddenly declare that my name was now the letter "A", how much arrogance would be required for that, to straight-up steal an entire letter of the alphabet for my own personal use? But then for it to be "X" instead... he knows he doesn't deserve his own letter, he seems just hoping for someone to push back against him, though nobody will.

So it is not just you - his chaotic evil actions affect everyone who uses anything that he touches.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

If you lie quietly, some say that you can still hear him to this day, driving around. In the city, in the country, he is everywhere...

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Managers do all the real work, thus deserve all the compensation

- managers everywhere, every day

I may not know how to write programs, but I could still do a better job than people with decades of experience in doing exactly that

- these particular managers

OpenStars , 5 months ago

The workers in question are employed by RaterLabs, an Appen subsidiary specializing in search engine evaluation. They are responsible for training Google’s search algorithm by testing search queries and rating the accuracy and relevance of the results.

Oh, yeah probably you're right.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

^This, but the best I'll do is upvote and comment, I'm not reblogging shit for nobody!:-P

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Firefox has so many issues. I do hear people say that if you use the nightly build it gets better, but e.g. the app store version on a mobile has a lot of stuff turned off.

I still use it, both on mobile and desktop, but its main appeal for me right now is that it is "not Chrome". The 5% breakage of Firefox is nowhere close to the 50% enshittification of Chrome:-(.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

It does keep getting better and better (while Chrome gets shittier and shittier).

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Thank you for the comment in spite of the downvoters:-)

OpenStars , 5 months ago

It is like "even a stopped watch is correct twice a day - but that does not mean that you should trust the time that you see". It is possible, in more ways than one, to be both right yet also very wrong at the same time. :-P

OpenStars , 5 months ago

I don't pay anything to side load apps on my phone.

Probably bc I switched to Android.:-)

And I am never ever going back!

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Lolz!:-)

There are several women who would be alive today if they had done so...

Stubbornness can be a positively adaptive trait, but obstinacy in the face of facts not so much, and the same with squeezing your eyes shut REALLY tight to avoid knowing what is going on right in front of you.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

GET OUT OF MY HEAD! :-P

j/k, you can stay, here's a couch if you want a nap: 🛋️

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Oh yeah, they think we're absolutely delicious:-).

OpenStars , 5 months ago

It's nice to have a purpose:-).

OpenStars , 5 months ago

And that the reason they do not contact us is that we are simply not worth it:-). (so this being a hint to get our act together first if we want to open up additional communications in the future, I suppose)

Or it could just be a prank, from a billionaire with their own private space force :-P. Nowadays the likelihood of the latter has risen to become higher than the former.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

I remember that was an episode of Babylon 5 - if you answered the test correctly, the probe would blow you up. I suppose it's also a test of wisdom, not just intelligence:-).

But I also remember a short story in a book about humanity having uploaded itself into our sun, and thereby spread out into the stars, using those as supercomputer mainframes. i.e. what will come from us may look very unlike us now - similar to how a seed looks nothing like the plant that it becomes, or a child acts very differently than the adult that it grows up into.

Then again, if aliens now were to encounter the likes of Musk and Bezos as their points of first contact... I shudder to think what they would want to do to us:-( - after all, what would we do to us, if the roles were reversed? The very measure that we ourselves use is precisely the very thing that we fail at, i.e. we don't look at them and call them "good", do we? No, we are rather ashamed, but then again neither do we stop purchasing goods from Amazon or using Twitter/X (I mean... I do, but most of us do not).

OpenStars , 5 months ago

I like how you pointed out: backwards compatibility is a choice.