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deweydecibel

@deweydecibel@lemmy.world

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deweydecibel ,

All it really details are the things Google gathers from sites. Potential data to be used in the algorithm, but just because they are gathered does not mean they are all used. Having a wide range of potential data points is useful for development and refinement, even if they're not used in the live version.

deweydecibel ,

Pretty despicable if you ask me.

Despicable to lie to people whose entire jobs are to artificially raise the appearance of certain results, not based on what the user wants, but based on how much the site wants to be seen? People who primarily serve to turn search results into defacto ads by getting their clients to the top?
People whose entire jobs are effectively about the most effective way to mislead people onto garbage websites?

"Search engine optimization" is a bullshit name for an industry that fundamentally undermines search engines. Google is no saint but the whole SEO industry can take their indignation about this and blow it out their ass.

deweydecibel ,

Are Microsoft a big, evil company?

A. No, that’s insanely reductive. They’re super smart people, and sometimes super smart people make mistakes. What matters is what they do with knowledge of mistakes.

I have no doubt there are smart employees, but they don't call the shots. Case in point.

deweydecibel , (edited )

On the other end of the spectrum, the vast majority of home users have no idea how to disable this or that it's even activated. There will be folders of Recall shit filling up everywhere, waiting for someone who knows it's there to access it.

If any of them access their work data on the Microsoft 365 web apps, it's now sitting in that folder, and they will not know.

This is honestly the biggest evidence yet of a need for some sort of regulation that certain privacy related things should not be allowed to be activated by default. They should always be opt-in, period.

deweydecibel ,

Affinity Photo is on another planet compared to photoshop.

Other than 32 bit, what else have you got that actually sets it apart?

Because the single purchase license thing doesn't look like it's sticking around.

deweydecibel ,

Bad enough I have to let Microsoft constantly run on my phone, no way Adobe gets that privilege too.

deweydecibel ,

And your financial information need never leave the IRS and be put in the hands of a private company.

deweydecibel , (edited )

I remember people saying that Lemmy was going to be better than Reddit, yet here we are, with idiotic memes sharing blatant falsehoods that pander to people who can't be bothered to think critically or actually learn anything. Upvoted straight to the top, not least of which because it's an image.

I miss old Reddit when, if people were going to say stupid shit, they actually had to take the time to type it.

deweydecibel ,

It doesn't matter if 50% of people would be covered by the information that is submitted to the IRS, the point is the IRS does not know that. when you do your taxes, you are telling them that there's nothing else, but until you filed, they could not assume it.

And it isn't just about the lobbying, it's also just about conservatives in general. They do not want the government getting maximum tax income. They have crippled the IRS countless times over the last couple of decades, choking off their ability to ensure the government is getting the tax money it is owed. It doesn't matter what new methods could be employed to ensure that nobody ever had to file their own tax returns, the point is the IRS is not funded and staffed enough to manage that.

The IRS doesn't actually check most tax returns. They audit a certain number randomly every year, but they don't check them all. They can't with the resources they have available. They are taken on good faith for the majority of Americans every year because the IRS can't check the sheer scale of them in a timely manner. If something looks really off, so much so that it triggers something in the system, they'll take a look, but for the most part they're trusting the fear of an audit to keep people honest.

Keep in mind that the majority of the countries that you're referring to are dwarfed by the US. It is substantially more complicated and more expensive to manage federal income tax returns for all 50 states than it is for, say, Germany.

deweydecibel ,

Honestly, I don't care. At this point, looking at the smoking hellscape the internet has become, looking at what happened to wikia, I don't care if they're getting funded or not, I'm donating. Wikipedia and the Internet Archive are some of that last bastions of the internet the way it was meant to be. We simply can't lose them the way we've lost so many others.

It's really to curb my own anxiety more than anything else. It's the only thing I can do to reinforce the bulwark, and I'm gonna do it, because I can rest a little bit easier knowing that bulwark is a little bit stronger.

deweydecibel , (edited )

The only Democrat with the power to do anything at the moment is Biden, and his power is limited.

But he's been doing a lot within that limited power.

And I genuinely don't care whatever some asshole from hexbear with their Lemmy World alt is about to pop in here and reply with, because the fundamental issue is not Biden, it is Congress and the Supreme Court. Congress is absolutely fucked, and that is not Biden's fault, it's the Constitution's fault, and the fault of Red State conservatives that have completely gerrymandered their states to hell, and the Supreme Court that did not stop them. It is not biden's fault at the Supreme Court is now stacked with corrupt conservative justices that will strike down anything he does that they think they can make a case against.

It is very, very convenient to forget that the other two branches exist when you're intent is to make Biden look like he hasn't done anything or committed to his campaign promises.

deweydecibel ,

You do understand he can only do so much, right? You're calling it performative, but he can't do most of the major things without Congress.

If you're only complaint is "it's not enough he should do more" then how about you tell me what your definition of "more" is, and then we can take a look at the actual laws and see if it's something he can do without Congress.

deweydecibel ,

So he makes no concessions, nothing gets done, and then we'd be sitting here saying he's not doing enough.

deweydecibel ,

Care to offer an actual list?

They gave you a list. You go find the links if you're so hell bent on handwaving them away.

deweydecibel ,

Tell me what you think he could have done without Congress.

Let's hear it.

Give me the actual steps that you believe Biden could have done but did not do.

deweydecibel , (edited )

I get this is the go-to response now, for good reason, but there isn't really anything too shady going on with this particular case at least not from Google. This is more about them trying to keep SEOs from figuring out how they rank things so they can't pollute the search results even more.

Every comment is shitting on Google but here is the what the SEO expert said about the leak when it was presented to them:

This person’s sole aim appeared quite aligned with my own: to hold Google accountable for public statements that conflict with private conversations and leaked documentation, and to bring greater transparency to the field of search marketing. And they believed that, despite my years removed from SEO, I was the best person to share this publicly.

https://sparktoro.com/blog/an-anonymous-source-shared-thousands-of-leaked-google-search-api-documents-with-me-everyone-in-seo-should-see-them/

Just read through that blog. Look at the absolute indignity these SEO assholes have at the idea that the search engine wouldn't tell them exactly how to fuck it up with their garbage.

This is entirely about advertising. Hell, the leaker revealed their identity, and it's the guy that runs this company:

https://eaeagledigital.com/

Companies like this and the assholes behind them are a cancer on the internet and they have been for a very long time. You cannot point the finger at Google and not also point the finger at them, they are the other half of the shit equation.

deweydecibel ,

They were leaked specifically to "SEO experts" who shared portions of it. I don't know if it was leaked publicly.

I'm basically what happened is the leaker is an SEO guy, that runs an SEO company, and leaked the documents to another SEO guy.

deweydecibel ,

This doesn't have anything to with regulation. This is mainly a bunch of SEO and marketing people whining that Google hasn't been honest with them in telling them exactly how to game their search engine.

deweydecibel , (edited )

Rand Fishkin, who worked in SEO for more than a decade, says a source shared 2,500 pages of documents with him with the hopes that reporting on the leak would counter the “lies” that Google employees had shared about how the search algorithm works.

Am I supposed to care that the poor SEO assholes that need to get their ads more visibility weren't being given all the instructions on how to do that by the search engine?

Most of this article is SEO "experts" complaining that some of the guidelines they were given didn't match what's in the internal documents.

Google is shit, but SEO is a cancer too. I can't be too bothered by Google jacking them around a bit.

deweydecibel ,

I get it's a joke, but I hear it so much, it makes me question what some of y'all are doing to your cats that this is the go-to joke.

I've owned a lot of cats, as have my friends and family. They're all chill, and most open to affection. It's very rare to find one of these "Satan" cats. I legitimately can't keep my cats off me. I almost wish they hated me sometimes because their constant badgering for pets can get a little annoying.

CEO of Google Says It Has No Solution for Its AI Providing Wildly Incorrect Information (futurism.com)

You know how Google's new feature called AI Overviews is prone to spitting out wildly incorrect answers to search queries? In one instance, AI Overviews told a user to use glue on pizza to make sure the cheese won't slide off (pssst...please don't do this.)...

deweydecibel ,

It's also useful because it gives a corporate controlled filter for all information, that most people will never truly appreciate is being used as a mouthpiece.

The end goal of this is fairly obvious: imagine Google where instead of the sponsored result and all subsequent results, it's just the sponsored result.

deweydecibel ,

Are we ignoring the part where you can disable it the same way you always could?

They even when out of their way to assure you if you already had telemetry disabled, absolutely nothing is changing for you and no data is being collected now.

Google Search’s “udm=14” trick lets you kill AI search for good | Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)

Tack "&udm=14" on to the end of a normal search, and you'll be booted into the clean 10 blue links interface. While Google might not let you set this as a default, if you have a way to automatically edit the Google search URL, you can create your own defaults.

deweydecibel ,

Can also just add a custom search engine to Firefox with the search URL string:

https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s

No need to go through a completely separate site.

deweydecibel ,

It's not that it ignored it ten years ago and stopped, it's that much of it didn't exist to the degree it does now, and there was a lot more content being made of different websites, so there were actual results to show.

Google Search went to shit, it's true, but have you tried the other ones? They're not much better.

We have to acknowledge the internet itself went to shit. There's simply less to find out there than there used to be, because the majority of all web content and discussions moved away from individual websites and forums and centralized on a few platforms. They can filter out the SEO junk, but what would they replace it with?

deweydecibel ,

They're outright censored. Search for information on certain drugs (dosages, best practices, etc) and Google will not show you any information beyond studies about the drug and rehab sites.

Whereas DDG, Bing, etc will show all the sites dedicated to safe drug usage. At least they did a few years ago.

It's been documented by /r/drugs for a few years now.

That said, I don't particularly think this is a great example of Google fucking their own search up because there's reason to believe this may be due regulatory pressure.

deweydecibel ,

PS for those unaware:

If you use Firefox, you can add a custom Search engine with the Search URL string:

https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s

Then set that new custom Search engine as default.

deweydecibel ,

I expect you could simply have Firefox at least can simply set up a custom search using "!g" and using whatever search URL you want

Which, by the way, is:

https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s

deweydecibel ,

Bing guys don't seem to have a system status page (that I could find)

Microsoft's current MO is "very basic information is a privilege, not something you as the user should have access to easily".

It's why I have to use PowerShell and Graph to get half the relevant data I need, because they won't just put it in the god damn admin panels.

iPhones And Androids Can Now Warn You of 'Secret Trackers' (www.ibtimes.co.uk)

In a collaborative effort, Apple and Google have developed an industry-standard detection feature called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" (DULT) for Bluetooth trackers. This standard allows users on iOS and Android devices to be alerted if an unknown Bluetooth tracker is monitoring their location.

deweydecibel ,

No, both types are:

https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/lithium-batteries

Since most people have no idea how many grams of lithium are in their lithium batteries, airlines just ban them from checked luggage outright.

deweydecibel ,

Article feels heavily AI written or AI-extended.

deweydecibel , (edited )

It has to keep pinging so the iPhone knows it's still close. Other devices detect that ping; it can't choose who hears it when it calls out.

That's the whole thing: they are constantly calling out to any Apple device in the area so that device will report to Apple the tag's location through the Find My network. It has to call out, otherwise it can't function as a tracker.

Which is where this new standard comes in. Alerting you to an unrecognized device nearby that is pinging out while you're moving, because previously there was no shared standard that permitted this across all devices.

But there's really no good solution to this that isn't going to be messy and trigger a lot of false positives. It's a band-aid on a problematic technology that has been normalized, and now they're trying to back-port privacy into it to save face. All of this discussion should have happened before they started selling anything.

It's bad enough to sell cheap consumer tracking devices and provide access to a whole mesh network of other people's phones to use them on, without any consideration for what they would be used for. It's especially egregious that they made that technology proprietary so Android devices could not easily identify a tracker near them.

deweydecibel ,

The solution would probably just be to dismiss the alert with a response like "I am on a plane, bus boat, etc. I'm traveling with strangers and their stuff". Then it would temporarily remember all the local devices, and then dump that list after a set period of time.

deweydecibel , (edited )

You see this in action anytime people go "no no you just don't understand how this works" as a way of sidestepping the overall issue. They try to bury you in the minutiae of it, and what's "technically" possible without acknowledging that A) what's possible will increase over time and B) the issue is not technology, it's the intention of it and the motivations of the people behind it.

It's like trying to deconstruct the concept of a gun, talking about all its potential mechanical malfunctions, its capacity limits, the fact you have to aim it, and so on, all as a way of trying to downplay the danger of it being pointed directly at you.

deweydecibel , (edited )

Yes but imagine it all nicely arranged on a dashboard, with little made up metrics, and spreadsheets and bar graphs and other bullshit, all done automatically, from the 365 panel, and the CEO didn't have to set anything up.

The passivity and the integration of it is the biggest concern.

If there's one thing I have learned from seeing a bunch of different small companies, is it they don't bother to take the time to clean up all the bullshit and turn off all the garbage in 365/Intune. They manage the security and the needed software, all the other crap that Microsoft shoves in there and turns on for them, they don't pay attention. At some point Microsoft will just add this crap, employees won't be aware, or they will be aware, and it would require admin credentials to turn off.

deweydecibel ,

They're not talking about that, they're talking about this from last year:

https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-rules-that-employers-may-not-offer-severance-agreements-requiring

Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads (www.techradar.com)

Netflix has managed to annoy a good number of its users with an announcement about an upcoming update to its Windows 11 (and Windows 10) app: support for adverts and live events will be added, but the ability to download content is being taken away....

deweydecibel ,

People have been making this comment for so long, with every anti-consumer change, and it's never been true.

Killing VPN usages didn't do it, canceling shows didn't do it, the splintering of offerings across multiple platforms didn't do it, killing password sharing didn't do it, raising prices didn't do it, including an advertising tier didn't do.

And this will not do it.

Hell, this is barely going to tweak the dial. The overwhelming majority of people don't watch Netflix on the desktop app, why should they fear kick back from the few that do? All they'll say is the mobile versions will still let you download (because those file systems are sealed away from the user).

Consumers will accept anything if there's no where else to get what they want. It's why the "free market" has no power in the tech space: consumers are so addicted to their chosen platforms, apps, devices, and services that they will accept literally anything before they entertain the idea of using anything else.

That's partially why enshitification is getting so bad: there's no punishment for it. Users will not move.

deweydecibel , (edited )

"While downloads will no longer be supported, you can continue to watch TV shows and movies offline on a supported mobile device," the Netflix document says

So essentially Windows devices are no longer "supported" wrt this particular feature.

If I had to guess, it might be because the people that pirate Netflix shows may be doing it from the Windows app using the download feature. After all, you have full access to the file system on Windows.

Meanwhile, iPhones have always been locked down to prevent the user from accessing the file system, and Android in the last couple versions has locked its file system down too, while Google continues to become increasingly fierce in trying to detect and block anybody with a rooted device.

deweydecibel , (edited )

Only if the people that pirate the shows are able to obtain those higher quality downloads.

As these platforms become increasingly hostile to users, they're going to be well aware of the subsequent increase in piracy, and implement even more methods of preventing their content from being pirated.

It will always be impossible to stop piracy completely, but you can make it increasingly difficult to obtain best quality.

Keep in mind all of the various things that are starting to be implemented or suggested to ensure device/environment "integrity" in recent years. I promise a day is coming when Netflix and other streaming services will only allow streaming to "approved" browsers and devices, i.e. the ones that allow them to scrutinize every single bit of the stack down to the hardware.

deweydecibel ,

If we're talking about mobile, the Jellyfin app lets you download to the device already.

If we're talking about laptops, as far as I'm aware, the Jellyfin desktop app doesn't have a download feature.

deweydecibel ,

My partner works in historical archiving for science and medicine. Museum work, basically. He's told me so much of the archives are donated collections of notes, letters, journals, and so on from important doctors, researchers, scientists, etc. Donated by the subject themselves in their later years or by their families.

He's told me there is a growing issue with those people starting to donate entirely digital collections, but even worse than that, are all the documents that are not being stored on a physical hard drive, but on web services and clouds. By the time these people are willing to start donating their things, so much of it has just been deleted forever without them realizing it. Or worse, they die, and their families no longer have access.

Working in IT, I told him about Microsoft's growing push to eliminate Outlook and PST files, make it all web based email, and he wasn't surprised, but he was still bummed to hear it. Apparently a not insignificant amount of those donations are locally stored emails.

deweydecibel , (edited )

The fact both the alien's eyes are attached to its head is creepy and weird. I'd shove it back in, too.

Also this is more or less the plot to End of the World.

deweydecibel ,

but IMO they're pretty weak

Well, thankfully, it's not up to you.

deweydecibel ,

I believe they're suggesting just doing a full backup up of your system/Docker container. Which isn't ideal, but I think they're trusting people who can run a Jellyfin server to be able to use the scripts.

deweydecibel , (edited )

Based on some comments in recent PRs for requested features that seem to have gone nowhere, the devs are trying not to overly complicate the project at the moment with other people's code that they'd have to support, and instead leaving certain requests to be handled in some grand refactoring they're working on.

deweydecibel ,

That's an important point, and and it ties into the way ChatGPT and other LLMs take advantage of a flaw in the human brain:

Because it impersonates a human, people are more inherently willing to trust it. To think it's "smart". It's dangerous how people who don't know any better (and many people that do know better) will defer to it, consciously or unconsciously, as an authority and never second guess it.

And the fact it's a one on one conversation, no comment sections, no one else looking at the responses to call them out as bullshit, the user just won't second guess it.

deweydecibel ,

That's what happens when new posts aren't allowed to exist if it asks a similar question to an old one.

deweydecibel ,

IDK why you interpreted their comment as hating.

deweydecibel ,

Yes, actually. Look up Oldlander addon for Firefox.

It's new and kinda of rough but it definitely helps.

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