"From the bosses’ perspective, nothing has changed about their behavior. Ten years ago, they twiddled the knob as far as it would go, every chance they got. Today, they do the same – the difference is that today, the knobs turn much more freely." - @pluralistic
As of yesterday, my daily driver is Debian Linux. But I still use Windows for work.
This morning I was prompted to update. So I did. And of course Microsoft does what they so frequently seem to do: they re-enable features I have explicitly turned off.
MS is a pushy used car salesman in a cheap suit. Always trying to force me to buy pinstripes, rust proofing, or Scotch guard.
Yesterday, I replied to a question in the Godot forum with a wrong answer (since I misunderstood the question at first). Today, if you google "godot delete pattern", that answer will be displayed as a "featured snippet" right on top. 🙄 (The correct answer is in the same thread, but so far Google hasn't picked up on it)
The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to "AI search" - instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you'll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, it doesn't fear rival technology and it doesn't fear its workers. Google's workforce once enjoyed enormous sway over the company's direction, thanks to their scarcity and market power. But Google has outgrown its dependence on its workers, and lays them off in vast numbers, even as it increases its profits and pisses away tens of billions on stock buybacks:
In this week’s Disconnect Roundup, Apple delivered an insult to life itself by crushing all human creativity into an iPad Pro in its recent ad. Plus, recommended reads, labor updates, and other news you might have missed.
As we all know by now, Stack Overflow has alienated their primary contributors by letting OpenAI train on SO's (CC-protected) content, and forcefully preventing countermeasures. Therefore, SO content will likely become worse and even more outdated as time goes on.
So, time to migrate. What's the preferred open source, community-run alternative to SO for everyone to migrate to? Here's one list of alternative software to run such sites:
Liebe Medien, könnt ihr seit über 100 Jahren etablierte Fakten bitte einfach als Fakten berichten?
Nicht: „Als ein wesentliches Treibhausgas gilt CO2,“ wie ich gerade im RBB höre.
Sondern: „Ein wesentliches Treibhausgas ist CO2.“
Sonst klingt es als wisst ihr das nicht.
@rahmstorf #Treibhausgas#CO2
Gerade im Zeitalter der #Enshittification ist es wichtig, unumstössliche Fakten von Fiktion und #FakeNews zu unterscheiden.
Nicht nur in d.Juristerei, sondern auch in der (Natur)Wissenschaft ist eine präzise Ausdrucksweise unabdingbar.
Insbesondere von professionellen Journalisten kann man dies verlangen.
Zudem sollten in der breiten Öffentlichkeit noch unbekannte Leistungen wie die von #EuniceFoote zum Treibhauseffekt viel bekannter werden https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/112076615648963689
Really pissed at #Youtube today because it gives me a new layout for the main page with smaller thumbnails and more ads. The videos now show 5 columns instead of three. This is a big Fuck You to content creators (including myself). On my large monitor, I see 6 columns and some rows with two goddamn ads in them. #enshittification
@pluralistic Cory, this might be of interest, taking up your ‘Too big to care’ post. GMX licenses Google results. GMX results are superior to Google’s (without paying for Kagi’s metasearch).
This is catastrophic. Touring and table sales were bread & butter. These are signed bands with radio play who can't make ends meet & lose money touring. It's unhinged. Art has been devalued beyond belief.
If corporations are a form of slow AI, then what @pluralistic calls #enshittification is indicative of an "alignment problem", when the objective function (paperclip maximization) is persued by destructive means. And like all alignment problems, it has to do with a lack of, or the wrong, constraints.
... #Google is saying that they don't need to spend money on quality, because we're all locked into using Google #Search. It's cheaper to buy the default search box everywhere in the world than it is to make a product that is so good that even if we tried another search engine, we'd still prefer Google.
Mercantilism. It's just mercantilism without the goldbuggery. We've got the monopolies, protectionism, crown charters [limited liability], intentional underclass of mass labor, military complex, speculative landlords, and so on that Adam Smith, et al criticized.