After two decades of sharing more online, it looks like we've decided to share less. New polling shows that nearly a third of all social media users post less than they did a year ago. That trend is especially true for adults in Gen Z.
BBC Special Correspondent Katty Kay and writer Kyle Chayka discuss the ways that social media is changing – and what that means for how we live our lives online.
It's been worse and worse over time for whatever reasons, but the AI summary at the top now can be way off. I had a result the other day where a quick glance (all that I give it as I scroll down to any results) I laughed because I could tell it was totally wrong, and couldn't even figure out where it got that result from. It wasn't in the results I found.
My favourite (inconsequential, but incredibly stupid) automatic AI question/answer from Google :
I was looking for German playwright Brecht's first name. The answer was Bertolt. It's a pretty simple question, so that at least was correct.
However, among the initial "frequently asked questions", one was "What is the name of the Armored Titan?"
Somehow Google decided it would randomly answer a question about manga/anime Attack on Titan in there. The only link between that question and my query is the answer, Bertolt (so of course, it wasn't in my query). Because there's a guy called Bertolt too in that story.
By the way, Attack on Titan's Bertolt is not the armoured titan.
Until recently, one man, who ran from the sinking ship of Yahoo search into Google's marketing/ads group. He bullied the former head of search out when they refused to make search worse in order to boost the ad click through rates. He then became head of search himself until fairly recently.
In depth writeup here, and there's a link to the same story as a podcast at the top.
Wanna listen to this story instead? Check out this week's Better Offline podcast, "The Man That Destroyed Google Search," available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Didn't take as long as I expected, but I expected it (which is why I didn't bother to read, even if it's not all the way there, it's coming).
Seriously, advertising (or propaganda to use the older name favoured by Goebbels) really needs to be seen as a much more serious enemy than most do. Propaganda for capitalists is super effective at sucking up peoples mental bandwidth, they've been selecting for it going on a century now and they're depressingly good at it, if you don't actively counter it, straight to the subconscious, along with all the background crap in it. /rant, but seriously...
I am seeing more and more people trusting that "zero-click search" result without looking for any kind of source or discussion around their information. Honestly, it's scary.
Or if you are set on using AI Overviews to research products, then be intentional about asking for negatives and always fact-check the output as it is likely to include hallucinations.
If it is necessary to fact check something every single time you use it, what benefit does it give?
None. It's made with the clear intention of substituting itself to actual search results.
If you don't fact-check it, it's dangerous and/or a thinly disguised ad. If you do fact-check it, it brings absolutely nothing that you couldn't find on your own.
It might be able to give you tables or otherwise collated sets of information about multiple products etc.
I don't know if Google does, but LLMs can. Also do unit conversions. You probably still want to check the critical ones. It's a bit like using an encyclopedia or a catalog except more convenient and even less reliable.
Google had a feature for converting units way before the AI boom and there are multiple websites that do conversions and calculations with real logic instead of LLM approximation.
It is more like asking a random person who will answer whether they know the right answer or not. An encyclopedia or catalog at least have some time of a time frame context of when they were published.
Putting the data into tables and other formats isn't helpful if the data is wrong!
It hasn't stopped anyone from using ChatGPT, which has become their biggest competitor since the inception of web search.
So yes, it's dumb, but they kind of have to do it at this point. And they need everyone to know it's available from the site they're already using, so they push it on everyone.
The part about Reddit communities being built now that contain only Ai questions, Ai answers, and links to products is what I figured Spez wanted when he ipo’d. And with Ai writing convincing text, it’s so easy!
Was trying to find info about a certain domain the other day - damn near impossible just cause all the results I could find was the same type of AI slop.
Don’t bother asking Google if a product is worth it; it will likely recommend buying whatever you show interest in—even if the product doesn’t exist.
This seems like a general problem with these LLMs. Sometimes when I'm programming I ask the AI what it thinks about how I propose to approach some design issue or problem. It pretty much always encourages me to do what I proposed to do, and tells me it's a good approach. So I'm using it less and less because it seems the LLMs are encouraged to agree with the user and sound positive all the time. I'm fairly sure my ideas aren't always good. In the end I'll be discovering the pitfalls for myself with or without time wasted asking the LLM.
The same thing seems to happen when people try to use an LLM as a therapist. The LLM is overly encouraging and agreeable, and it sends people down deep rabbit holes of delusion.
I have only tried a few of these. ChatGPT, Le Chat and then maybe a couple of days with Copilot and hours with Gemini.
Unfortunately, Le Chat is a bit on the weaker side though I would prefer its success to others.
Copilot sucked at everything including microsoft specific stuff like excel formulas and actually editing a sheet when it asked I upload it and then made insane changes that made no sense and presented it as accurate.
Gemini, I dont like google and just avoided it straight away.
ChatGPT is my go to, free only as I generally only use it as a sounding board or for broad simple research such as listing family events in my area, you know put together lists.
What you say is my gripe with it too, I have told gpt to be concise, direct and critical and it improved but it needs reminding every few days not to run off into "great idea, heres why would you like more of ehy its great ad how to do it?"
This isn't much of a change. Before AI it was SEO slop. Search for product reviews and you get a bunch of pages "reviewing" products by copying the amazon description and images.
This ia crazy. It means Google and Reddit are shifting content from other web sites to Reddit, under corporate control. It seems like Google has firmly entered the unsustainable profit maximization step where they're now increasing the share of profit they take from their content sources by redirecting less and less traffic to them, while showing that content to Google users.
La guerra infuria sotto i flutti, lontano dagli occhi umani che potrebbero tentare di giudicarla. Quietamente operosa, la colonia tende all’espansione in base a linee guida chiaramente definite dall’esperienza.
Dal 2 al 9 agosto torna a Vauda di Rocca Canavese la Sagra della Pesca Ripiena, evento molto atteso organizzato dall’associazione La Baraca, con il patrocinio della Città metropolitana di Torino. Immersa tra boschi e vigneti, Vauda è al centro dell’altipiano delle Vaude, tra le Valli di Lanzo e il Canavese, e richiama ogni anno migliaia di visitatori per la festa patronale.
Al centro della sagra c’è la pesca ripiena, cucinata secondo l’antica ricetta della nonna e cotta nel forno a legna. Lo stand gastronomico propone esclusivamente piatti tipici piemontesi: acciughe al verde, tomini, peperoni di Carmagnola, salame di turgia, agnolotti, fagioli con le cotiche nelle tofeje di Castellamonte, carni alla brace, salsiccia artigianale e Toma di Lanzo, accompagnati da vini locali come Barbera, Bonarda e Arneis. Un’occasione per riscoprire i sapori autentici della tradizione contadina.
Domenica 3 agosto, alle 16, si terrà la 10ª edizione del raduno di auto storiche, con esposizione, giro turistico e cena alla sagra.
Ma Vauda è anche sinonimo di musica e ballo. Ogni sera è prevista animazione con artisti di punta del liscio e non solo:
Sabato 2: Musicanti di Ceres + Federica Cocco
Domenica 3: orchestra Matteo Bensi
Lunedì 4: cabaret “Non si vede un Kansas” con Marco & Mauro
Martedì 5: orchestra I Rodigini
Mercoledì 6: Omar Codazzi
Giovedì 7: Francesca Mazzuccato
Venerdì 8: live show “Voglio tornare negli anni ’90”
Sabato 9: Cristina D’Avena chiude la festa
Aggiornamenti sul programma: facebook.com/sagradellapescaripiena.it Info e prenotazioni: info@sagradellapescaripiena.it | Tel. 335-1984892 – 345-2951674
Da sabato 2 a sabato 9 agosto 2025 a Vauda di Rocca Canavese torna la Sagra della Pesca Ripiena, organizzata dall’associazione La Baraca e patrocinata dalla Città metropolitana di Torino. Vauda di Rocca è al centro dell’altipiano delle Vaude, al...
Torna per la sua terza edizione Camosci Sound, il festival musicale ospitato nel contesto naturalistico del Lago dei Camosci, nel grande prato che affaccia sul lago, ai piedi della parete rocciosa del Monte Pirchiriano e della Sacra di San Michele. Due giornate, sabato 2 e domenica 3 agosto, dedicate alla canzone d’autore e alle sue evoluzioni più libere, sperimentali e contemporanee.
In programma due superband dell’alternative italiano e una selezione di autrici e autori delle nuove generazioni, dalla scrittura profonda e laterale. Protagonisti della serata di sabato 2 agosto saranno Quintorigo & John De Leo. La band si riunisce, a venticinque anni dall’uscita di Rospo, con la formazione originaria per riproporre la sua inimitabile formula alchemica, incentrata su arrangiamenti spigolosi guidati dalla voce-strumento di John De Leo. In apertura, dalle 18, il live set di Sasso, progetto solista del torinese Anthony Sasso, tra psichedelia, suoni analogici e un’attitudine punk. Alle 20, Carlotta Sillano, pianista e cantautrice, autrice di un folk da camera elettronico, poetico e oscuro, presenterà con una formazione in quartetto l’album Nella natura vuota dei simboli appassiti.
Domenica 3 agosto il pomeriggio si apre con le suggestioni del folk spirituale di Adele H, cantante e pianista bergamasca. A seguire, il live di Gaia Banfi, classe 1998, musicista e produttrice, autrice di un cantautorato elettronico e contemporaneo, che presenterà dal vivo il suo ultimo album La Maccaia. A chiudere la due giorni sarà infine il live di Mariposa, collettivo cult bolognese che da oltre vent’anni fonde avanguardia, sperimentazione, non-sense e psichedelia in una forma musicale libera e teatrale, laboratorio e fucina di talenti della scena musicale italiana.
I concerti di Quintorigo & John De Leo e di Mariposa saranno preceduti da due interviste dal vivo a cura di Enrico Deregibus, giornalista musicale e operatore culturale.
Camosci Sound è un progetto dell’Associazione Culturale S.T.A.R., con il patrocinio del Consiglio Regionale Piemonte, della Città metropolitana di Torino e del Comune di Sant’Ambrogio di Torino. Direzione artistica di Carlotta Sillano, con la consulenza di Enrico Deregibus. Il festival si svolge nel contesto naturalistico del Lago dei Camosci, a Sant’Ambrogio di Torino, spazio culturale in bassa valle raggiungibile in treno, auto o bicicletta, e attrezzato con area ristoro e possibilità di pernottamento in tenda. I biglietti in abbonamento e per le singole giornate, sono disponibili sul sito www.camoscisound.it
Torna per la sua terza edizione Camosci Sound, il festival musicale ospitato nel contesto naturalistico del Lago dei Camosci, nel grande prato che affaccia sul lago, ai piedi della parete rocciosa del Monte Pirchiriano e della Sacra di San Michele...
Vi sono significative implicazioni nell’appartenere a un popolo che ha sempre tradizionalmente venerato un simbolo, piuttosto che il concetto astratto di divinità o entità superiori.
Ieri mattina tardi (e ovviamente ne scrivo solo il giorno dopo, ops) mi sono fatta coraggio e, nonostante il forno acceso fuori in tutta la città, sono andata al casalinghi cinese a comprare questo affare plasticoso che ogni volta che mi metto a tagliare la carta mi ricordo sempre sarebbe il caso di utilizzare, ma […]
qui comprai la stellanica base per fare il gransupertagliamento…
Ieri mattina tardi (e ovviamente ne scrivo solo il giorno dopo, ops) mi sono fatta coraggio e, nonostante il forno acceso fuori in tutta la città, sono andata al casalinghi cinese a comprare questo affare plasticoso che ogni volta che mi metto a tagliare la carta mi ricordo sempre sarebbe il caso di utilizzare, ma che appunto prima non avevo… la “base di taglio”, o in spagnolo “base de corte”, che penso stia più per “base di curtiell“, ma al diavolo le inprecisazioni ora. (Stranamente, anche questo coso è della marca #Stelan, che senza volerlo mi sta capitando sempre tra le mani quando compro tutta questa roba da cancelleria/ufficio, vai a capire com’è possibile…) 👽 Boh, è crazy, incredibile, con questo suo materiale particolare, ottimo per evitare di distruggere tappetino e scrivania quando mi metto all’opera. Si, c’è scritto PVC, ma la texture (semiruvida) e soprattutto le vibe che trasmette sono molto diverse da, che cavolo ne so, un tubo in PVC. Però attenzione, perché a primo impatto sembra che in qualche modo strano riesca a non graffiarsi mai in maniera sensibile al tatto, ma se ci si va troppo forte (ovviamente, direi ora, non so cosa mi aspettavo) lo fa… per esempio, più o meno al centro della foto, subito sopra l’area coperta dalla bustina di plastica, quel graffio che si vede al tatto sembra molto peggio di com’è alla vista (invece altri più a destra si sentono meno o niente). 😳
Sicuramente comunque, funziona meglio dell’usare il cartone di Amazon come base di taglio, perché ok, un po’ il suo pure quello lo fa, ma ovviamente si taglia molto velocemente a sua volta, lasciando in giro le briciole e le strisce marroni e diventando pieno di fessure che rendono via via più impreciso il lavoro… e, se non si fa attenzione a sostituirlo in tempo, magari una volta la lama ci passa pure attraverso e va a tagliare quello che c’è sotto… ops. Non è magico ma, per 1 euro e 50 (anche se bisognerebbe vedere quanto dura a lungo andare…), ci sta, è bono… quindi ecco, ora posso distruggere la carta con meno ansia. 🙏
(Che poi, in negozio, per qualche motivo, una versione circa 2.5 volte più grande del prodotto costava 5 euro e 30, che è più di 3 volte tanto questo qui… ma forse è stata una cosa buona, perché così, puramente per tirchiaggine, ho preso questo grande circa quanto un foglio A4, che a suo modo è più comodo, perché ci entra sulla mia scrivania senza che io debba spostare completamente la tastiera.)
Using widely available technology, well-known ethical hackers Chris Kubecka and Paula Popovici quickly accessed numerous pornography sites without ever verifying their ages.
Conservatives and that Australian feminazi group are basically terrorists, their actions do nothing but harm the lifestyle of absolutely everyone, achieve nothing if not toxic control over vulnerable people, and divert valuable and finite resources from real issues.
All conservatives are not just basically terrorists, they are terrorists. conservatism is a plague that must go away or else we will always be held back.
I'm gonna start by saying that I absolutely hate the people responsible for systems like this.
With that said, can we please not bring back Gamergate terminology? Call the Australian lady a TERF or an asshole or whatever, but seeing the word "feminazi" makes me feel like I'm on reddit back in 2016.
Today I read a thread of people using the photo mode of death stranding to prove they are Norman Reedus. While this certainly won't be the end to the story, it's kind of funny this iteration of a clearly unfinished age verification system got out there. Makes me wonder how good they are going to protect their "customers" data.
Britain's government spends an insane amount of money to combat what they claim is benefit fraud, taking actions that hurt real claimants far more than fraudulent ones, in the form of reducing or removing the payments. We're very used to this kind of waste.
By 10am on Friday, data suggested an extra 66,000 internet users in the UK had begun using the dark web.
"People should be aware that children and adults who use [certain software] to bypass age checks will not benefit from the wider protections offered by our online safety rules."
Adult film producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media have filed a significant copyright infringement lawsuit against tech giant Meta. A complaint filed at a California federal court alleges that their films were downloaded via BitTorrent for AI training purposes. With at least 2,396 movies at stake, potential damages could exceed 350 million dollars.
In a July 18, 2025 decision, Uganda’s Personal Data Protection Office (PDPO) found Google LLC in breach of the country’s data protection law and ordered the global tech giant to register with the local data protection office within 30 days.
The decision would place the popular search engine under the ambit of Uganda’s Data Protection and Privacy Act, whose provisions it would have to comply with. In particular, the PDPO has ordered Google to provide – within 30 days – documentary evidence of how it is complying with requirements for transferring the personal data of Ugandan citizens outside of the country’s borders. Google also has to explain the legal basis for making those cross-border data transfers and the accountability measures in place to ensure that such transfers respect Uganda’s laws.
The orders followed a November 2024 complaint by four Ugandans, who argued that as a data collector, controller, and processor, Google had failed to register with the PDPO as required by local laws. They also contended that Google unlawfully transferred their personal data outside Uganda without meeting the legal conditions enshrined in the law, and claimed these actions infringed their data protection and privacy rights and caused them distress.
The PDPO ruled that Google was indeed collecting and processing personal data of the complainants without being registered with the local data regulator, which contravened section 29 of the Data Protection and Privacy Act. Google was also found liable for transferring the complainants’ data across Uganda’s borders without taking the necessary safeguards, in breach of section 19 of the Act.
This section provides that, where a data processor or data controller based in Uganda processes or stores personal data outside Uganda, they must ensure that the country in which the data is processed or stored has adequate measures for protecting the data. Those measures should at least be equivalent to the protection provided for under the Ugandan law. The consent of the data subject should also be obtained for their data to be stored outside Uganda.
In its defence, Google argued that since it was not based in Uganda and had no physical presence in the country, it was not obliged to register with the PDPO, and the rules on cross-border transfers of personal data did not apply to it. However, the regulator rejected this argument, determining that Google is a local data controller since it collects data from users in Uganda and decides how that data is processed.
The regulator further determined that the local data protection law has extra-territorial application, as it states in section 1 that it applies to a person, institution or public body outside Uganda who collects, processes, holds or uses personal data relating to Ugandan citizens. Accordingly, the regulator stated, the law places obligations “not only to entities physically present in Uganda but to any entity handling personal data of Ugandan citizens, including those established abroad, provided they collect or process such data.”
The implication of this decision is that all entities that collect Ugandans’ data, including tech giants such as Meta, TikTok, and X, must register with the Ugandan data regulator. This decision echoes global calls to hold Big Tech more accountable, and for African countries to have strong laws as per African Union (AU) Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (Malabo Convention), and the AU Data Policy Framework.
However, enforcement of these orders remains a challenge. For instance, Uganda’s PDPO does not make binding decisions and only makes declaratory orders. Additionally, the regulator does not have powers to make orders of compensation to aggrieved parties, and indeed did not do so under the current decision. It can only recommend that the complainants engage a court of competent jurisdiction, in accordance with section 33(1) of the Act.
Conversely, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner of Kenya established by section 5 of Data Protection Act, 2019 and the Personal Data Protection Commission of Tanzania established by section 6 of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2022 are bestowed with powers to issue administrative fines under sections 9(1)(f) and section 47 respectively.
The dilemma surrounding the Uganda PDPO presents major concerns about its capacity to remedy wrongs of global data collectors, controllers and processors. Among its declarations in the July 2025 decision was that it would not issue an order for data localisation “at this stage” but “Google LLC is reminded that all cross-border transfers of personal data must comply fully with Ugandan law”. This leaves unanswered questions over data sovereignty and respect for individuals’ data rights given the handicaps faced by data regulators in countries such as Uganda and the practicalities presented by the global digital economy.
In these circumstances, Uganda’s Data Protection and Privacy Act should be amended to expand the powers of PDPO to impose administrative fines so as to add weight and enforceability to its decisions.
By Edrine Wanyama | In a July 18, 2025 decision, Uganda’s Personal Data Protection Office (PDPO) found Google LLC in breach of the country’s data protection law and ordered the … Continue reading Ugandan Regulator Finds Google in Breach of Country’s …
Good, this bullshit has never made a compelling argument
In its defence, Google argued that since it was not based in Uganda and had no physical presence in the country, it was not obliged to register with the PDPO, and the rules on cross-border transfers of personal data did not apply to it. However, the regulator rejected this argument, determining that Google is a local data controller since it collects data from users in Uganda and decides how that data is processed.
There was a site I found in highschool around 1998 - the paradigm of pessimism.
Full of dark humor and anti-jokes, in glorious web 1.0 - that site had a huge impact on my humor. I've never been able to find it again. Just a random site someone hosted somewhere on the Internet - no scams, no paywalls, just a bunch of weird humor.
Nowadays, if there's something you like online, remember to plug it into archive.org so it gets added to the wayback machine. You'll still need to remember the URL to access it, but at least it will be archived somewhere
I tried gemini protocol for a bit to see if it did a decent job addressing this, but it doesn't. We do legit need a 'smallweb' non-commercial sort of thing, but I suspect retreating to a BBS model is probably what is required.
A big reason why I've come to like Lemmy communities so much is really because they give me some old internet feeling. It's not super crowded, it's an app that isn't design for brain rot, it allows interesting online discussion etc.
I think projects like this can continue to exist, even in a bleak corporate owned internet.
Fuck off with your device based verification system. That's just the same service, but as a more invasive app installed on your phone.
Instead of scanning a face or ID and uploading it to a service, we're expected to run unverified closed source code on the device we carry everywhere in our pockets?!
Experience, most proposal for "age and identity verification" being badly implemented mostly closed-source solutions that only works on devices they deem trusty, meaning (seemingly) non-rooted phones with specific OSes.
Fuck off with your device based verification system. That's just the same service, but as a more invasive app installed on your phone.
not necessarily. you give a phone to your children. you partly lock it down by setting it up as a child account, with its age. you make sure to install a web browser that supports limiting access to age appropriate content according to the age set in the system, maybe taking a parent allowed whitelist. the website is legally obliged to set an appropriate age limit value in a standard HTTP header.
that way, the website does not know your age. the decision is on the web browser. the web browser checks the configuration in the system, that only the parent can change. it does not send it anywhere, only does a yes/no decision. if the site is not ok, it'll show a thing like when the connection is not secure or it was put on the safebrowsing list, except that you can't skip it, only option is to request parent permission. and finally the age is set in the operating system, without verifying its truthiness, but once again requesting lock screen authentication. oh and app installs need parent approval for kid accounts, like it should almost always be.
this way it's as private as it can get. the only way a website can find out information about you from this, is to log if your browser loaded the html but not any other resources, because that means you were caught in the age filter. but that's it.
there's multiple pieces in this that is not yet implemented, but they should be possible with not too much work. this is all possible with open source code, if you make sure the kid can't install anything without parent approval. stores like fdroid could have some badge or something if a browser supports this kind of limitation.
All's well until other countries try to implement this and you will very quickly see how nearly none of them agree with each other on which age limit goes where. In my opinion, the best way to ensure that children don't go to certain places on the internet is to either not give them access to the internet at all or to only let them use whitelisted websites that you review yourself before adding.
how nearly none of them agree with each other on which age limit goes where.
that's the task of the website to figure out, the device does not have to be aware of the laws. but I think is still much easier to manage than id verification.
I habe an other idea. don't make the websites send agelimit http headers, because as you said that can easily vary by country. instead send http headers that tell what kind of content is available there. only the categories that could be questionable. that way the device (actually the browser) would decide if with the kid account's age that kind of content is accessible. that way the browsers need to know the age limits, and maybe it's easier to handle it this way.
In my opinion, the best way to ensure that children don't go to certain places on the internet is to either not give them access to the internet at all or to only let them use whitelisted websites that you review yourself before adding.
ok, and I agree, but only very few parents will do that unfortunately. especially considering that their kids could be discriminated against by their ~~limited~~ clasates who don't have their access so broadly limited.
and then, you still need such a whitelisting capability, which I think does not really exist today in firefox and such browsers. addons cant solve this because they can be removed.
That still could vary greatly by country and culture, as one man's pornography could very well be another man's art. You would either need a great deal of near-duplicate categories or just label something as explicit the moment a single country pipes up about a woman not concealing her hair or something else that doesn't bother you one bit.
ok, and I agree, but only very few parents will do that unfortunately. especially considering that their kids could be discriminated against by their limited clasates who don’t have their access so broadly limited.
I suppose that we could at least be able to convince the parents that letting their children go unsupervised on the internet is like letting them go unsupervised in the big city. Totally fine if they're old enough to know what they're doing and don't stray too far from where they're meant to be going, but unacceptable if they're not so wise yet and aren't at least somewhat regularly checked up on. Children will always want the forbidden fruit, but their parents should restrain them until they understand why it was forbidden to them in the first place, and how to safely interact with it.
and then, you still need such a whitelisting capability, which I think does not really exist today in firefox and such browsers. addons cant solve this because they can be removed.
I'm not too well versed in this kind of software either, but I just looked up some parental controls services and they seem to offer device-level blocking of unwanted websites/apps/downloads/etc. Web browsers don't need to do the blocking, as the parental controls probably refuse the connections to the web domains.
I didn't even mention all of this being completely bypassed if you used another website as a kind of proxy: go to proxywebsite.com -> it has a search bar -> use it to go to explicitwebsite.com -> proxywebsite.com returns the html, css, js etc of explicitwebsite.com without you ever visiting it -> profit.
Doesn't need to be by age tbh- you could have content tags and filter by content instead of age (I.e. No graphic violence). That would ignore country discrepancies and then give more flexibility
But why does the distinction between "real-world adult material" and "creative, non-realistic", "artistic, animated works" that "do no harm" matter? Last time I checked, realistic adult material can be just as artistic, and the harm done by negligently letting children watch it seems comparable.
Are they in favour of age verification for "uncreative, realistic" pornography, or is the real distinction just between real-life and online?
I interpreted it as "can't possibly be doing harm to the people in the video" - eg as much of mainstream porn can do - since there are none if everything is animated fiction
Admittedly, I'm pretty sure UK did this with the underage consumers in mind, not the industry actors, for whom both sorts of porn would have a similiar impact. (I'd assume)
Personally though, the constant repeating to me sounded comedic and they were making fun of how seriously we're taking nude drawings with this, which sounds silly even if it's justified.
It's the same schtick you hear from pedophiles in defense of their child sex dolls and it's unsurprising to see it coming from rule34 in particular considering they serve up a lot of that content in cartoon form.
Yeah, the “it’s just cartoons so it’s not harmful” argument falls flat pretty quickly. There are much better arguments to be made for why the law is dumb.
I think it's more about the legal distinction between drawn and 'real' porn.
TBH "negligently letting children watch it" seems like a sensless statement to me. The onus should be on parents to filter their kids' internet environments, not literally every accessible site on the open internet (which are never going to comply with a patchwork of age verification regs).
My networking knowledge may be out of date, but can't you get around region locked sites with VPNs or Tor?
I was in Turkey in July 2019. Wikipedia was blocked. I had to use Tor to access it. On installation I think I had to tick a special box that said something like "use flux capacitor bridge for blablabla countries like China and Turkey"
Though In that case, Wikipedia didn't give a fuck if you were accessing it from Tor. The government did.
I know some sites block tor/VPN access for various reasons
Depends on what you mean by "kids". Elementary schoolers, no, but some teens are willing to do a surprising amount of work to accomplish something if it's important enough to them. And then they pass their method along to their friends, or offer to set up anyone in the school for the price of a couple of bags of snack food.
I'm not sure whether the readership for this article is primarily British ("crisps") because it's about the UK, or primarily North American ("chips") because of what I perceive as the general population demographics of Lemmy, so I compromised. 🤷
lol I’m just joking that teens in high school would probably trade weed for things rather than snacks. I’m not proud of it, but I got paid in weed junior year of high school for customizing MySpace accounts, which is why I laughed at “snacks” because if they are later age high school students they probably aren’t trading in sour cream and onion.
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You vastly underestimate the interest young people can have into things, especially into forbidden things, especially when the workaround is trivial and works with a few clics, no tech skills required.
Will this become a new venue for scam? Most likely. But kids motivation vs. a very easy "fix" is not what's gonna stop them. Adult surveillance would be way better.
This is the second time in my life that Labour have gained power after a long Conservative tenure, only to dive straight into enacting policies that were more right-wing than their predecessors.
It's less of a left - right thing (that's mainly economics). It paternalism Vs liberty thing. Labour have always had a very strong "we must protect the populace" theme to their policies. Conservatives have it too, but they want to do it in a different way.
Sadly it's a really difficult thing to stand against. Who wants to be labelled the person enabling paedophiles, when all you want is the right to private communication.
The full spectrum is really more like “authoritarian vs libertarian”. Political policy should really be split into two different spectrums. On one spectrum, you have financial policy. On the other, you have social policy. The two normally get lumped together because politicians campaign on both simultaneously. But in reality, they’re two separate policies. So the political spectrum should look less like a single left/right line, and more like an X/Y graph with individual points for each person’s ideology. Something more like this:
On this graph, as you go farther left, the government has more ownership and provides more, (and individuals own less because the government provides more for their needs). As you go farther up the chart, social policy gets more authoritarian. So for example, something on the far right bottom corner would be the Cyberpunk 2077/The Outer Worlds end-stage capitalist where megacorps inevitably own everything and have their own private laws.
Once you separate the two policies into a graph (instead of just a left/right line) it becomes clear why “small government” doesn’t necessarily correspond to “fewer laws” when dealing with politicians.
Around our local voting season there's actually a online test to check which parties are more aligned with the person values and it puts things into a graph like this. It's very useful
I assume "Republican" on this diagram is not used in the contemporary American sense. Otherwise it would be somewhere up in that little grey cloud.
In any case, official US politics takes place entirely within the top right quadrant, and UK politics seems to have retreated there too. Canada is in danger of getting up there as well. And we don't have any mechanism to vote our way out of that box, so change will have to come from action outside of electoral politics.
Part of that is allowing labels to be so powerful. Someone doesn’t have to watch kiddie porn or molest children to be branded a pedophile, but when you have that label for someone, it’s implied that’s what they did. We saw this same shit during the Bush years with the “terrorism” label. We’re actually seeing it again with Luigi Mangione and people protesting at Tesla dealerships. People don’t care about reality if there’s simple branding that wipes critical thinking away.
To correct one thing, the left-right political spectrum is based on authority. It goes back to the French Revolution, in which the nobility - favoring top-down power hierarchies - literally occupied the right side of the assembly hall while the revolutionaries - favoring true equality and egality - sat on the left.
This cannot be separated into distinct domains since power is wealth and wealth is power. The political compass fallacy is, and always was, nothing more than rightist propaganda to muddy language and ideology in an effort to hold on to their wealth and power.
Don't get me wrong, but why are matters of governmental surveillance and control inherently "right-wing" rather than a totalitarian policy not otherwise directly connected to wing politics? Extremists on both sides have a history of creating totalitarian, Big Brother states (which the UK is certainly headed towards).
Big Brother states (which the UK is certainly headed towards)
When the Snowden Revelations came out, the UK had even more civil society surveillance than the US.
As a consequence of those revelations, in the US some of the surveillance was walked back, whilst in the UK the Government just passed a law that retroactively made the whole thing legal, issued a bunch of D-Notices (the UK system of Press Censorship) to shut up the Press, got the Editor of the newspaper that brought it out in the UK (The Guardian) kicked out, and the Press there never talked about it again.
Also, let's not forget the UK has the biggest number of surveillance cameras per-capita in the World.
Oh, and they have a special and separate Surveillance Tribunal (the Investigatory Powers Tribunal) were the lawyers for the side other than the State are not allowed to be present in certain sessions, see certain evidence or even get informed of the final judgement unless their side wins.
They easily have the most extreme regime of Civil Society Surveillance in Europe, and in the World are probably second only to the likes of North Korea and China.
Britain is well beyond merely "headed towards" Big Brother and has been for at least a decade.
In the case of Labour, the party's politics these days are over to the right on any measure. Under Starmer they seem to have abandoned their left-wing roots.
if i had a nickel for everytime a labour government came into power after a prolonged tory government and immediately started governing further right id have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice in a row
There's a UK Parliament petition to repeal the Online Safety act. There's no guarantee it'll do anything but might be worth a try for anyone in the UK.
Don't forget to write to your MP - being polite but angry helps. Explain the issues, shortcomings and why you feel this should be repealed and a better user-friendly and privacy respecting alternative needs to be found BEFORE implementing stupid asinine knee-jerk legislation like this.
My poor MP is getting it in the jugular because they boasted about working in data security and I'm exploiting the hell out of that statement so they can't easily weasel their way out of it.
I'm just waiting for the response to be something along the lines of... "According to existing law (see Online Safety Act), websites are required to do age verification... blah blah blah, no changes will be made, thank you for your inquiry"
That moment when you decide to use i2p because its more sustainable for every user to be a node just for your server's location to get leaked in a vulnerability. This is why most deep web migration to i2p ended
I don't really have a link, but you might be able to find something talking about game server protocols. Outside of LAN, usually you're either connecting to a central server, or a peer relay. With a relay server it's just a proxy between you and the other players to hide your IP from others. There's plenty of cases in games that didn't do this where malicious actors could find the IPs of the people they're playing with and DDoS them to give themselves an advantage. Knowing someone's IP will also probably tell you extra info about them like what city they're in, and open them up for further hacking.
Gemini is a group of technologies similar to the ones that lie behind your familiar web browser. Using Gemini, you can explore an online collection of written documents which can link to other written documents. The main difference is that Gemini approaches this task with a strong philosophy of "keep it simple" and "less is enough". This allows Gemini to simply sidestep, rather than try and probably fail to solve, many of the problems plaguing the modern web, which just seem to get worse and worse no matter how many browser add-ons or well meaning regulations get thrown at them.
How it applies to geolocation and server hosting in light of the OSA I really have no clue. But it's an interesting underground hacker/tinker type alternative.
This says it started in 2019, Google Gemini was 2023. It seems like these big companies pick a name first and then figure out who they'll have to sue after.
This is sadly the way to handle it, users of these places need to learn how to vpn instead of giving their private information for age verification online.
VPNs aren’t going to be a practical solution going forward. You are creating dependancies that governments can target, spying on traffic and enforcing censorship for these relays is something any country can and likely will implement at some point. The clearnet is dying because the evangelicals are killing it.
Ah Lemmy, downvoting an honest question. Never change.
rule34.xxx is a website where users can post naughty drawings, renders, etc. of mostly anime or computer game characters. Think of your favourite character of your favourite anime, game, comic, etc. Chances are there’ll be images of them on there.
I agree with the message but making the argument that it's safe for kids to watch because it's cartoons is wrong. Kids can be fucked up by 2D furry porn, I've seen it happen. Still agree that age verification is a security nightmare, just think it's a weird argument.
Thhink they are referring to it saying "requiring age verification for fictional cartoon content is an overreach that fails to recognize the distinction between real world and adult material"
Paragraph 3 "Requiring age verification for fictional cartoon content is an overreach thay fails to recognize the distinction between real-world adult material and artistic, animated works." etc
I'm on the fence, because do kids need to be seeing glimmer choke down on a futa She-Ra? No. But does the UK Guv need to de-anonymize the internet to stop it? Fuck. No.
Or have your site taken down by your own country because of its international obligations. You still have to abide by your own country's interpretation (and political alignment to) of foreign laws.
I doubt that the USA would recognise and take down websites for not following Ofcoms requirements. And Ofcom would 100% be too cowardly to even threaten that. They'd just geoblock.
Perhaps? But you can get extradited from the US to the UK, and there's all sorts of dumb agreements for international evidence and standing precedent. I don't expect the current administration to forge new ground here, but navigating the waters of international law is byzantine at the best of times.
I really, really doubt that a website owner based in USA would be extradited to the UK for not complying with UK local law with how they run their website. That's absurd.
I feel like if most websites chose not to comply, there's fuck all the government could do tbh. What are they gonna do? Fine big tech with a slap on the wrist again? Try to shut down every indie hentai site hosted in the Congo or something? Please... it's all absurd.
If I had the money for lawyers, I would definitely add an "I confirm I am not in UK" button to access to sites to "help people mistakenly identified as being in the UK due to e.g. a VPN or a proxy".
hand wringing over objectionable video games is why queer artists are now having their platforms removed. if you dont want to see certain kinds of fictional porn, then either avoid the website it is hosted on, or make an account and edit your blacklist. also, if youre worried about your children having access to gay yiff, then restrict their access
Have to agree with you. If every site just blocked the country with a stupid law like this, then the regular (regarded) folk that are gonna send over their ID the first chance they get will maybe log off their wank station and idk join the cause.
Saying that, at least ppl will be forced to use a vpn instead of sending their id through the internet if they dont comply and just block.
I don't understand how this is a controversial opinion, but maybe parents should actually parent their children instead of expecting the Internet or the government to decide what their kids should see for them? Maybe talk to your kid about safe and ethical sex, the dangers of porn addiction, and not to take anything away from pornographic content instead? Maybe we shouldn't be giving children smartphones and tablets with unfettered internet access in the first place instead of spending time with them? Wild concepts I know.
I've been saying this a couple places recently, but why not pass legislation requiring every site to provide a content rating. Then parents can choose if they want to restrict content by ratings or not. Yeah, you could have malicious actors, but it makes it easier and simpler for everyone to work than having ID laws.
This, right here. It's like Nixon's "war on drugs" that went on, and on, and on... The goal was not drugs, per-se, but to use drugs as a pretense to police people of color.
That requires effort, which most parents are unwilling to do, and newspapers will still want it banned and governments would still want to ban it so they can ban other things too.
An copyright law is pretty similar in every country, or at least has a version of it. Japan's copyright law is so strict you can't even mention brands in media and has no version of fair use. It's why in Anime, when illuding to trademarks, it'll be something like "Sany" or "Destiny". This however, does not mean that I, in Scotland, am forbidden from making a video where I mention the words "Sony", "Disney", "Greggs", and "Tesco". Every country has different copyright laws and on the internet they seem to take a middle ground.
Porn on the other hand is very different with very different laws and very different ideas. For example, Porn is illegal in South Korea. No "JAV" where genitals are blocked out, porn is straight up a crime. Where I live however, it is legal, albeit on the internet you have to go through an adult verification thing, which is easily bypassed. Each country does not have a universal standard law on pornography or what counts as such. There's proposed laws in the US for example which could see the mention of queer people as counting as "pornography". Not the depiction, just something like "Leonardo Da Vinci was gay". That's why people in the UK are worried because the law doesn't just cover pornography and covers "sensitive content", which, you know, could be defined at some point to include anything.
idk why you responded to my comment with all that. Your first paragraph is, "yes, I agree, and here's another law that's also very similar in many countries"; which, ok, sure. But your second paragraph is completely unrelated to what I said.
Damn, U.K. is really getting destabilized fast. Law changes, immigration, censoring and now monitoring? Is this what happens when you leave EU and "lose" in the modern war?
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L’Unione della Romagna Faentina, nell’ambito del progetto europeo EMPOWER WOMEN, invita all’inaugurazione della mostra fotografica SHAPED – Women’s Voices in Ceramics, mercoledì 31 luglio alle 18:30 nel Salone delle Bandiere, Piazza del Popolo 31, Faenza.
Curata dal Gruppo Fotografia Aula 21, in collaborazione con la Strada Europea della Ceramica, Itinerario Culturale del Consiglio d’Europa, l’esposizione propone un racconto per immagini che attraversa le storie di undici ceramiste, esplorando il loro legame con argilla, arte e lavoro da una prospettiva femminile.
La mostra nasce all’interno di EMPOWER WOMEN, progetto cofinanziato dall’UE tramite il programma CERV – Networks of Towns, di cui l’Unione della Romagna Faentina è partner. Obiettivo: favorire partecipazione civica e uguaglianza di genere, pilastri di una società europea più inclusiva.
La mostra resterà visitabile fino al 7 settembre 2025.
Orari di apertura:
Agosto Lunedì, mercoledì, venerdì: 7:30–15:00 Martedì, giovedì: 7:30–17:30
Settembre Dal lunedì al venerdì: 7:30–19:30
Aperture straordinarie durante la mostra mercato della ceramica Made in Italy: Sabato 6 settembre: 10:00–22:00 Domenica 7 settembre: 10:00–20:00
Per l’occasione ogni ceramista presenterà un’opera inedita ispirata al tema del progetto.
Per informazioni: progettieuropei@romagnafaentina.it
L’Unione della Romagna Faentina, nell’ambito del progetto europeo EMPOWER WOMEN, è lieta di invitarvi all’inaugurazione della mostra fotografica SHAPED – Women’s Voices in Ceramics, in programma mercoledì 31 luglio alle ore 18:30 presso il Salone del…
Se nel classico garage di turno di New York City, una qualsiasi band talentuosa si mettesse a suonare con l’intenzione di fare un disco alla National, con buona probabilità quel disco sarebbe “Trouble Will Find Me”... Leggi e ascolta...
Se nel classico garage di turno di New York City, una qualsiasi band talentuosa si mettesse a suonare con l’intenzione di fare un disco alla National, con buona probabilità quel disco sarebbe “Trouble Will Find Me”. Sono duri gli inizi per un gruppo: il parto di un’idea originale, la continua ricerca di una personalità, la voglia di non sentirsi mai scontati. I National negli ultimi anni hanno attraversato tutti questi stati, trasformandosi in una band dal successo globale, senza intaccare la loro più grossa e indiscutibile qualità: la personalità. Se la sono giocata, in tutti i modi possibili, abbinando il gusto per la raffinatezza melodica con la voce cavernosa del leader Matt Berninger... lindiependente.it/the-national…
Se nel classico garage di turno di New York City, una qualsiasi band talentuosa si mettesse a suonare con l'intenzione di fare un disco alla National, con
TEJO elektis novan prezidanton kaj estraron, dum la eksigita prezidanto denove kaj ripete postulis demision de ĉiuj estraranoj. Tiuj laŭ li malhelpas al la komitato fari sian laboron.
The United States should be ashamed of its repeated groundless accusations against China at the UN Security Council this week, said a Chinese envoy on Friday.
The United States should be ashamed of its repeated groundless accusations against China at the UN Security Council this week, said a Chinese envoy on Friday.
The UK's new act blocks access to adult content without identification. Turns out, you only need a copy of Death Stranding and a phone to get around it.
It's fun that one can use games for it, but it shouldn't be difficult to do the same through AI-generated imagery either, which isn't much more difficult.
Even though this method is flawed, one shouldn't really use ID-only verification either imho, as it's a security risk to upload any official document like that (ref. Tea app leaks).
The whole age verification that the UK wants to impose has been quite the impossible task from the beginning. Creating government-backed education for (future) parents about how to raise a kid and protect them in today's digital society would be more efficient than this, if we really are thinking of what is best for the kids. But alas, there are zero requirements to become a parent...
I think the issue there is the k-ID software asks you to do things like open your mouth, then close your mouth - so you'd need to find stock photos of the same person doing stuff like that. Which, now that I think about it, I imagine there will be an influx of selfies of people with closed and open mouths available on google images very soon.
The problem, as always, is that parents don't want to put the work into educating their children, they want the government to wave a magic wand and make the problem go away. And that's what gets you half assed solutions like this.
The OSA is nothing to do with kids or parenting and everything to do with further developing surveillance of the UK and controlling what we can access.
I guarantee you, at some point after this will come prohibiting content deemed terrorism such as mentions of the word 'palestine' and 'action' in the same paragraph for example.
Sooner or later we'll have our own pseudo or real great firewall. I expect them to come after VPN use at some point too.
Neither is taking a picture of nearly any stranger about to take a bite of food at a fast food place and then walking over and snapping another picture of them. What they gonna do about it?
Then come the hacks and abuses (executives and politicians not excluded) and we are back to square one, except that everybody and the innocents lost something while the cybercrime syndicates had a field day.
I think that credit cards are unambiguously tied to you, whereas a photo could be a bunch of people. I appreciate that having someone take a photo of you before you go to a porn site isn't exactly anyone's idea of a utopia.
I've seen this suggested elsewhere and it seems like the least intrusive suggestion to me - why not simply use the device as the age verification. Almost every phone/tablet/computer already knows your age through it's own sign-up/activation method, so why not allow the device to offer an API that provides age verification to sites that require it.
It could simply be a permissions-based answer where an adult site requests a yes/no answer to the question "is this user an adult" from the device and the user is prompted to provide the permissions for the site to have that data.
This would solve the problem for the vast majority of iphone/android/windows/macos consumers.
Whether or not that's the case, I think the proposed technical implementation above is a better way of enforcing the actual law than what's been applied so far.
Yeah I do too, but so would anyone who was seriously thinking about this in terms of keeping kids from looking at porn rather than restricting access to "adult content" (whatever that means) more broadly. Any programmer worth their salt would have immediately suggested "hey this is a bad idea we should do it this other way" when asked about the viability of the current solution and yet this was ignored.
The goal is to introduce general surveillance and censorship mechanisms. Whether they be technical, legal precedence, tested boundaries, or changes in laws and government positions.
Porn age stuff is just a convenient entry point. Solving just that without the survellance mechamisms is pointless to these people.
There absolutely is a minimum age requirement to set up a Google account, which you can see from their Ts & Cs. Whether that is enforced is an entirely different question.
Except there is no ID/age verification when you create a Google or Microsoft account (no idea about Apple, don't use that crap), so you're suggesting that the "birthday" field where I can set whatever date I want should be a standard age verification method?
Jesus Christ, no, I'm not suggesting that nothing changes from exactly what we do now. I'm suggesting a new, more secure, less intrusive method, and it's not even an original suggestion. Just try a little bit of thought.
If it's going to be implemented by law anyway, the age verification should be at the device level. The device accounts already do ask your age - directly or indirectly - although it's not stringently enforced, however each of the big 3 already have a minimum age requirement to set up an account as per their terms and conditions.
It's not a big leap to suggest that true age verification is done at that point seeing as you already often have to provide an age or payment information to set up on-device payment details, meaning there's no need to involve a third party at any other subsequent point.
Honestly, I'd rather see official governmental third parties that handle ID verification and guarantee to discord and any service needing age verification that the user is over the required age. Not comfortable with sharing any sort of verifying data with private companies, even less american companies. I have to for some stuff, but... Not liking it one bit.
There is already a few countries here in Europe with an official governmental identity verification system, and I'm pretty sure age verification can be done through them. I think the EU is also working on a system covering the entirety of Europe, but not certain.
The difficulty you might end up with there is governments not permitting their age verification system for certain sites if they desired. Meaning even greater governmental control of what sites you can access.
Well then the site uses a different system that complies with regulations. I don't see this as a problem, it doesn't have to be the only service that can verify your age.
This is a clever way to bypass. If they get wise and somehow filter out Sam Porter Bridges' face, you could always fire up any of the games of comparable visual realism which let you design your own character's appearance.
As we've seen, the current system is incredibly easy to bypass. There are plenty of ways to game or avoid the age checks.
The current implementation also uses multiple different age verification services, on a per-site basis. This proposed one reduces data exposure vulnerabilities to a fraction.
This is more politics than technology, but it's good info for people living outside the US. You can't trust your data to American companies no matter where they store the data.
~~As someone in the US who has been in audits where we had to attest to where our data was stored, also wtf.~~
Oh reading the article it means non-US sovereignty. Pretty sure anybody in IT at this point should know the US privacy laws are non-existent and US companies are in this position and have been for decades.
The article makes it pretty clear that this is due to a 2018 law called The Cloud Act. I'm sure the US could have tightened the thumbscrews and gotten the information illegally before then, but that's going to be true of every country. No reason to think you can trust any government.
I can not understand why there is not an enormous backlash from companies about this. All their employees have all the sensitive information on Microsoft servers. But watch out if you bring a USB stick to work...
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Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
I think it’s likely that Microsoft will start turning it on by default, and resetting it with updates for people who have opted out. Much like they did with edge and Cortana, intentionally making it harder to choose not to use it.
More programs actively blocking it will make that harder, but I wonder how many will stick to their guns when pressured by Microsoft.
I suspect that Microsoft will ratchet up the pressure to force it on people as the gen AI bubble pops, an attempt to keep the narrative alive to keep up demand for their overbuilt GPU data centers.
This is the way of the world, but only because people are allowing it. I will never understand "I'm too lazy to care about my privacy", which undermines our security way more than we even know.
The worst part is that, no matter how some of us care and do something about our privacy, the ones that we interact with that don't care still expose us to all this BS. Until the world changes it's mindset, this will not change, and only get worse (I'm not holding my breath for people to care though).
Ok, seriously, just use Linux. I know how it sounds, but I'd say a majority of people use a computer to use a web browser. Guess what? We browsers have always worked and been native with Linux.
Problem is, it's not a passion for most people and they just want to buy something and get on the internet. While they exist, you can't exactly go to Best buy and buy a new computer running Linux.
But really, if you have hardware that works well with it, it's a dream.
No, I don't want Linux or any other OS. I perfectly know my way around with Windows and so many of my regular tasks depend on tools made for Windows. I have used Linux desktop in the past and have many friends and co-workers who use it as their main OS, but it's just not for me.
Besides of course this recall stuff gets blown way out of proportion like every time Microsoft makes a bad move. All of my computers don't even support recall and when they eventually do, I'll just disable it in one of like four possible different ways.
I'm currently sticking to Windows 10 on my private machines but already on 11 on my work computer and it's fine with an alternative start menu. I'm also looking forward to the better HDR features on 11.
Fair enough, I use 10 and 11 at work and hate it ... I used to like 7, using the control panel, search, default paths and stuff seemed a lot more intuitive.
That's why I stick with Linux at home, it feels a lot more like Windows used to, lol
Yeah the control panel revisions took some getting used to, but now I think it's not so bad. I know where to find everything but I can see how it's frustrating for others. What's most important to me is that I have local admin rights on my work PC and can customize it to my liking. Many companies lock their devices down heavily, and I don't want to deal with that.
Indeed, I don't have admin rights for anything outside of IP address changes at work.
I just thought of another bug bear, start menu lag on mouse clicks is a very odd problem, I don't remember anything like that, even on the first release of Windows 95 which I ran on a laptop with 25MHz and 8 Mb of ram.
I don't think so. I don't think it is blown out of proportion, I actually think it is that bad, and I also think that if you think you can just disable it and be done with it, you don't have any experience with microsoft products and services. they regularly reset privacy settings, both on windows, and yesterday I found that even in their android apps like the swiftkey keyboard.
another example of this tendency, is that a few days ago I was helping a friend with computer problems who stuck on windows 7, and I have seen that microsoft yas gone out of its way to push an update or something that installed their edge browser, pinned it to the taskbar and automatically opened it on boot.
I've never had that issue on Professional editions of Windows 10 or 11. Home edition? Maybe. But Pro lets you override almost anything you want with group policies.
I also rely on group policies. they do get reverted. o&o shutup10 has a feature to detect it and point that out, and I see it almost every time I open it. I use it rarely per machine, but I use it on multiple machines and each does this.
then sometimes the setting is just ignored. I was baffled when the policy to disable the start menu automatic bing search -which basically uploads all your local searches to microsoft bing - did not work, even after 2 reboots. I think it was this year, perhaps the last one
Damn, that sucks. It's been forever since I set that one so I checked and it looks like I'm using the registry edit method for that particular one. My start menu has looked like this for as long as I can remember so I'm not sure what's keeping it from changing with updates. searching for anything not on my local system results in 'no results found'
edit I am using OOSU10 but unless it has some auto-reset feature then it isn't what's keeping my changes in place through upgrades. I'm even on the beta channel for windows.
I will say that I would absolutely be championing linux if not for relying way too much on RTX features For example, their inverse tone mapping (SDR-to-HDR) is far far superior to the Windows AutoHDR solution as long as you're willing to spend a bit of time tuning it for your display. That said, if anyone wants to do an equivalent trade for a freshly re-pasted 3080 10GB I might consider going AMD lol.
A friend of mine just installed CachyOS Desktop Edition (plasma) and I brought up the HDR calibration in windows, thinking that was something linux still didn't have. Turns out at least some DEs (i think thats a DE thing?) do have decent HDR support now. I still want RTX features tho.
I've already tried Linux with an Nvidia GPU. The driver is bare bones. You don't get the Nvidia App or even the Nvidia Control Panel. That means no 3D Settings page, no RTX HDR, no Shadowplay, no game filters, no video upscaling in Firefox... All features that I paid money to have and use daily.
Point I'm making is that I didn't spend a bunch of money on a 4090, onlyto not be able to fully utilize every feature it has to offer.
Linux has HDR support now, and there are slightly more configuration options for it than in Windows under KDE Plasma. These are very recent developments.
Those seem like niche things to hold on to. A 5090 should work just fine under Linux, what feature do you use that isn't supported? Also a 9070 XT is capable of doing ray tracing. You don't always have to have the absolute most powerful card.
I don't have an HDR monitor so can't say how well it works in Linux, but you can survive without HDR. Is a better lighting contrast that big of a deal?
With an Nvidia GPU on Linux, you don't get the Nvidia App or even the Nvidia Control Panel. That means no 3D Settings page, no RTX HDR, no Shadowplay, no game filters, no video upscaling in Firefox... All features that I paid money to have and use daily. None of it exists in Linux beyond wonky half-solutions.
It doesn't mean you don't get those things, it just means that you don't use them via a control panel.
There are a few solutions for shadowplay that are all decent to excellent, rtx HDR I think is automatic in Proton? Not sure what you mean by game filters unless you're talking about reshade, and I wasn't aware there was a video upscaler in Firefox.
To me, "block" or "disable" seems like it blocks/disables the feature machine-wide, when it just says "pretty please, make me black after you take that screenshot".
Newsmax host Greg Kelly said on his show Thursday that convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell "just might be a victim" -- a comment that drew loud and swift backlash.
they don't just whimsically decide on a daily basis whether or not to comply with court orders. something changed legally that caused them to take action.
VPNs will help. The article is only talking about VPN servers based in a location with a geo ban, which, duh. But if you actually use your VPN to be in a different country and not just a different city it'll work fine.
Yeah, I'd say that the title here is clickbait. The author is working awfully hard to try to frame the issue in the article in such a way that they can write that title.
For the first time, this also means that using a virtual private network (VPN) won't bypass these restrictions, as long as the server is based in the UK.
Hope they learn the hard way to stay away from overly powerful centralised systems, I can see that, probably, when they made their choice, the stance of the service seemed good enough to bite the bullet and have a convenient setup, but we've seen time and time again how corporate will comply with governments as they rightly have to do, only privately can you really not care, though you also take the responsibility for that. What we can hope is that decentralisation makes the crackdown harder to put into effect
It's not just convenience - depending on how you use it, Cloudflare is also pretty good at giving an additional layer of anonymity. They assign any user of your site to the closest CDN Server geographically, so it's is pretty hard to determine how and where your site is actually hosted. They also used to be pretty good about resisting takedown requests.
Oh well. I'd say time for a federated CDN, but the legal costs would probably be rather annoying for most volunteers.
India has ordered the blocking of 25 streaming services — many with millions of viewers and even paying subscribers — for allegedly promoting "obscene" content.
India has ordered the blocking of 25 streaming services — many with millions of viewers and even paying subscribers — for allegedly promoting "obscene" content.
The Internet Archive, thanks to its designation by California Sen. Alex Padilla, joins a network of over 1,100 libraries that make government documents accessible to the public.
The UK's new act blocks access to adult content without identification. Turns out, you only need a copy of Death Stranding and a phone to get around it.
Now this is the kind of AI application that's actually productive, would improve the lives of many if widely adopted and help with coping with demographic crises around the world.
We've seen this coming ever since machine leaning has been on the public's radar. The current davinci robot are always wired directly to Intuitive, ostensibly so that their support team can help resolve faults mid-surgery asap.
Every input the surgeon makes is recorded. Intuitive has millions of surgeries of training data.
I'd absolutely hate to put the decision making of my own surgery in the hands of the bullshit generators we call 'AI', but I could say the same about some of the surgeons I've worked with too... If I really had to choose which one I distrust the least, I'd probably just ask my anesthesiologist to load me up with 'i don't give a fuck' drugs and choose whichever option is cheaper.
The article is very unclear on the kind of model they used. Several mentions of ChatGPT, but it doesn't really sound like they used an LLM.
I really hope it's not an LLM, this is a perfect case for specialized models trained just for surgery. I really wouldn't want my surgeon to invent stuff when it doesn't know what to do.
See this is a use case for AI that actually makes sense. LLMs are just trash. Like the ones that Wendy's drive throughs have now. The manager did confirm that you can ask for a human though. I didn't blame her or tell or anything, I know it's a stupid corporate decision that probably got some useless executive a bonus they didn't fucking deserve.
Se vi piace il genere fantasy... con bei paesaggi incontaminati piene di gente normale, anormale e di strane creature, un mondo fiabesco di storie attorno ad un fuoco, e l'immancabile manipolo di eroi ognuno con la sua storia, la sua personalità e le prop
Se vi piace il genere fantasy... con bei paesaggi incontaminati piene di gente normale, anormale e di strane creature, un mondo fiabesco di storie attorno ad un fuoco, e l'immancabile manipolo di eroi ognuno con la sua storia, la sua personalità e le proprie speranze... Dragonero della italiana 'Sergio Bonelli' fa per voi. La stessa casa editrice di Tex e Dylan Dog, per intenderci, qualora foste curiosi (e curiose) ma poco frequentanti questo mondo..
Martedì 22 luglio, alle ore 18:00, il Bonelli Store di Milano ospita Stefano Vietti e Ivan Calcaterra in occasione dell'approdo in libreria del nuovo volume di Senzanima: Maleficio!
The Canadian government is preparing to give away Canadians’ digital lives—to U.S. police, to the Donald Trump administration, and possibly to foreign spy agencies.
Deestan
in reply to Pro • • •StinkyFingerItchyBum
in reply to Pro • • •Rhaedas
in reply to StinkyFingerItchyBum • • •brsrklf
in reply to Rhaedas • • •My favourite (inconsequential, but incredibly stupid) automatic AI question/answer from Google :
I was looking for German playwright Brecht's first name. The answer was Bertolt. It's a pretty simple question, so that at least was correct.
However, among the initial "frequently asked questions", one was "What is the name of the Armored Titan?"
Somehow Google decided it would randomly answer a question about manga/anime Attack on Titan in there. The only link between that question and my query is the answer, Bertolt (so of course, it wasn't in my query). Because there's a guy called Bertolt too in that story.
By the way, Attack on Titan's Bertolt is not the armoured titan.
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wizardbeard
in reply to Rhaedas • • •Until recently, one man, who ran from the sinking ship of Yahoo search into Google's marketing/ads group. He bullied the former head of search out when they refused to make search worse in order to boost the ad click through rates. He then became head of search himself until fairly recently.
In depth writeup here, and there's a link to the same story as a podcast at the top.
The Man Who Killed Google Search
Edward Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)MalReynolds
in reply to Pro • • •Didn't take as long as I expected, but I expected it (which is why I didn't bother to read, even if it's not all the way there, it's coming).
Seriously, advertising (or propaganda to use the older name favoured by Goebbels) really needs to be seen as a much more serious enemy than most do. Propaganda for capitalists is super effective at sucking up peoples mental bandwidth, they've been selecting for it going on a century now and they're depressingly good at it, if you don't actively counter it, straight to the subconscious, along with all the background crap in it. /rant, but seriously...
brsrklf
in reply to Pro • • •like this
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A_norny_mousse
in reply to brsrklf • • •TomMasz
in reply to Pro • • •A_norny_mousse
in reply to Pro • • •Combine the 2:
snooggums
in reply to Pro • • •If it is necessary to fact check something every single time you use it, what benefit does it give?
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brsrklf
in reply to snooggums • • •None. It's made with the clear intention of substituting itself to actual search results.
If you don't fact-check it, it's dangerous and/or a thinly disguised ad. If you do fact-check it, it brings absolutely nothing that you couldn't find on your own.
Well, except hallucinations, of course.
A_norny_mousse
in reply to snooggums • • •like this
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TXL
in reply to snooggums • • •It might be able to give you tables or otherwise collated sets of information about multiple products etc.
I don't know if Google does, but LLMs can. Also do unit conversions. You probably still want to check the critical ones. It's a bit like using an encyclopedia or a catalog except more convenient and even less reliable.
snooggums
in reply to TXL • • •Google had a feature for converting units way before the AI boom and there are multiple websites that do conversions and calculations with real logic instead of LLM approximation.
It is more like asking a random person who will answer whether they know the right answer or not. An encyclopedia or catalog at least have some time of a time frame context of when they were published.
Putting the data into tables and other formats isn't helpful if the data is wrong!
A_norny_mousse
in reply to snooggums • • •So does DDG
artyom
in reply to snooggums • • •It hasn't stopped anyone from using ChatGPT, which has become their biggest competitor since the inception of web search.
So yes, it's dumb, but they kind of have to do it at this point. And they need everyone to know it's available from the site they're already using, so they push it on everyone.
snooggums
in reply to artyom • • •artyom
in reply to snooggums • • •rizzothesmall
in reply to Pro • • •LainTrain
in reply to Pro • • •relativestranger
in reply to Pro • • •like this
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TXL
in reply to relativestranger • • •yessikg likes this.
Pandantic [they/them]
in reply to Pro • • •jaybone
in reply to Pandantic [they/them] • • •The Reddit team is developing a bot that can post “this”.
They’re building a datacenter full of nvidia hardware for it.
forrgott
in reply to Pro • • •floofloof
in reply to Pro • • •This seems like a general problem with these LLMs. Sometimes when I'm programming I ask the AI what it thinks about how I propose to approach some design issue or problem. It pretty much always encourages me to do what I proposed to do, and tells me it's a good approach. So I'm using it less and less because it seems the LLMs are encouraged to agree with the user and sound positive all the time. I'm fairly sure my ideas aren't always good. In the end I'll be discovering the pitfalls for myself with or without time wasted asking the LLM.
The same thing seems to happen when people try to use an LLM as a therapist. The LLM is overly encouraging and agreeable, and it sends people down deep rabbit holes of delusion.
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Squizzy
in reply to floofloof • • •I have only tried a few of these. ChatGPT, Le Chat and then maybe a couple of days with Copilot and hours with Gemini.
Unfortunately, Le Chat is a bit on the weaker side though I would prefer its success to others.
Copilot sucked at everything including microsoft specific stuff like excel formulas and actually editing a sheet when it asked I upload it and then made insane changes that made no sense and presented it as accurate.
Gemini, I dont like google and just avoided it straight away.
ChatGPT is my go to, free only as I generally only use it as a sounding board or for broad simple research such as listing family events in my area, you know put together lists.
What you say is my gripe with it too, I have told gpt to be concise, direct and critical and it improved but it needs reminding every few days not to run off into "great idea, heres why would you like more of ehy its great ad how to do it?"
Hildegarde
in reply to Pro • • •Avid Amoeba
in reply to Hildegarde • • •sandwich.make(bathing_in_bismuth)
in reply to Pro • • •m3t00
in reply to Pro • • •Avid Amoeba
in reply to Pro • • •gravitas_deficiency
in reply to Pro • • •WhyJiffie
in reply to Pro • • •How Google is killing independent sites like ours - HouseFresh
Gisele Navarro (HouseFresh)