During one of the mass exodus events from Reddit to Lemmy, a lot of people started using these tools they would install to automatically scrub and obfuscate their Reddit comments and posts history. Often these tools would replace posts with random letters and even nonsense links because there was suspicion that outright deleted posts could be detected and then programmatically restored if Reddit really wanted to get that user content back.

I suspect these tools probably exist for Lemmy as well and you are seeing users with long comment histories use them because those also happen to be the users who have a lot of previous content to cover up/obfuscate to maintain/ensure their own privacy.

Inject it with bleach! That’ll do the trick.

No, but you have access to the protocol so you write your own algorithm.

Then it is your algorithm, using the common protocol, that goes out and retrieves search results for your feed.

Likewise, 3rd party corporations can write their own algorithms on the protocol and everyone can choose which algorithms fill their personal feed with search results - turning them on or off on a whim, at a personalized level.

I recently listened to Paul Frazee talk about Bluesky on the Software Engineering Radio podcast and it struck me that one thing they got right was looking at social media like a search engine looks at the web, instead of like a centralized platform(Facebook) and instead of like a federated network of platforms(fediverse).

If your feed is understood to be just the search results you see, then users can understand that their algorithm is something they need to work on in the same vein that they change their search parameters on Google or Bing or other search engines.

This is a story that’s been rotating through the media since ChatGPT first released.

I have an unpopular opinion about this headline after seeing the media cycle repeatedly downplay/ignore what Alphabet has been doing in response to OpenAI: Google the search engine is not in direct competition with ChatGPT, but Gemini is, and Alphabet is smart to keep simpler/time-tested search functionality central to Google rather than react strongly and scrap the keyword-based search bar that users understand are comfortable using - especially older users, but I think most people are starting to discover they have a use for both search and LLM chats.

I think there are two product categories here, which first looked like they were going to converge in 2022-2024, but which are now slowly changing course as customers start to comprehend how both are necessary for different purposes.

When I make chats in ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude etc, I am starting to plan them longitudinally so that I can use them over and over for a specific project or query type.

When I turn to a search bar, it’s because I really want a proxy for a specific website or between me and whatever weird site has the answer to my specific question. It’s not that I want discussion and a chat about it, I just want Google’s card-like results with a website index I can read instead of that website’s stylized, animated web design on top or popups or malware.

Every time I get sucked into a chat with Bing CoPilot(ChatGPT) when I really only had a web search query, I regret wasting my time talking to the LLM. Almost as a reflex, I’ve started avoiding it for most things now.

Iran’s government sucks, but this story really shows how the Iranian people are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Regular Iranians have more in common with western social values than those of the Iranian government or Russia - it’s been that way before, during, and after the Iranian revolution.

Not sure what the answer is, but they keep trying to protest and resist their government every few years and they get violently forced back into submission.

Of all the countries with screwed up regimes, Iran is one where I think it’s more appropriate to encourage more fluid immigration into western countries - a lot of their working age population is relatively better educated than many other countries too.

Is this for real? Do these exist and are they any good?

A lot of the work they do is aimed at thwarting the business models of cyber criminals, scam sites, etc.

Their reviews are probably from the people who had a good thing going using bots to scrape PII or take advantage of free trials/free tier SaaS products but were suddenly put out of business by cloudflares captcha tools.

This seems shitty for consumers, but I think it’s not new shit - it’s just a window into the reality of exploitation we have all been living with our entire lives and it’s uncomfortable to confront that giant turd we don’t like to think about.

Retailers like maximum profit and they are going to point to supply/demand to justify it. With these digital price tags, they’re just equipped to do it more quickly and more often.

At first, I was thinking: What if I grab an item from the shelf and then it’s 20% more expensive by the time I get to checkout. Then, I realized they’re just going to claim I saw the final price on the checkout summary and should have denied the purchase at that time.

If we legislate anything, it should be the clarity around checkout/returns imo.

I do not pronounce that part of a URL. Who still does that? Why would you need to do that?

https://lemmy.ca/post/25179438

Yes, really! I thought you might find the post I’m linking above interesting. It was at the top of my feed this morning and may be relevant here.

I am curious if maybe you were witnessing people of the Boomer generation (or older GenX) discussing this because they are more likely to be consuming mainstream broadcast news?

lol

It feels like the novelty of an attempted XPOTUS assassination wore off in less than 48 hours. That’s crazy.

Nobody around me is even talking about this anymore - not at work, not on social, not at the grocery store, nowhere.

Idk if that’s due to everyone being super jaded or because it’s Trump. If it’s because it’s him, then I wonder if it’s because nobody gives a shit about him or if it’s just not surprising someone would take a shot at him or just because it’s irrelevant to his candidacy or what else.

FatTony Search engine is it down or just me

Do flip flops cause flat feet?

Walmart near me

Zuck beard real or fake

Mark Zuckerberg now a backstreet boy

1. It is OK not to be happy all the time.

2. It is also OK not to be the best, or even to be the worst!

3. It is OK to acknowledge your behavior or thoughts are bad and to really experience your negative behaviors and thoughts - you can regret or feel sadness about them without looking away to escapism.

Finally, even if you are the worst among your peers, at least you aren’t as bad or sad as characters of old fashioned tragedies and cautionary tales which are meant to give kids intuitive understanding of the three principles above.

Yes it does. I would venture there are alternative solutions but I can’t imagine what they are in any detail, just generally:

Maybe these trucks operate more like trains and have a designated lane where motorists do not have to encounter them?

I think it’s a great idea to require a human attendant for giant autonomous machinery.

If the company does not provide the attendant, then the public is just going to shoulder that burden.

I am NOT going to protect or respect unattended property like an autonomous truck if it runs off the road or rams my vehicle or is a risk to my own safety, for example.

I’m pretty sure I’d be offended just having to ride behind it on the freeway as it drives precisely the speed limit in all traffic conditions - can’t say for sure until I’ve experienced it though.