I don't know about hardware, but they marketed that you'd be able to interact with an AI that would use your apps for you, via what they called a Large Action Model. None of those apps currently work, because they all are likely getting defeated up front by Captchas and other roadblocks companies put up to stop automated usage of their services.
This isn't just personal sites. Large blogs (Gawker), whole news sites (Vice), and other content no longer exist, because cynical corporate parasites bought them out. Newspapers that exist from before the internet era are arguably better archived on microfilm, Google Books etc, than today's news. The Internet Archive and other sites exist, but they are nonprofit and can't keep up with the sheer scale of content being pulled down.
Also strongly disagree with your assertion that some sites don't need to be saved. The whole point of archiving is that we often can't judge what is important to future generations
yes, I find Gemini actually not bad when it comes to my specific use case of showing generic examples for R programming, so I can figure out the syntax for my actual code. I don't try to have it generate actual code for me because my topic of marine biogeochemistry is far too specific for it to have any idea how to work with it. Unlike ChatGPT, which often makes up nonsense functions or hallucinates whole packages, Gemini seems to do ok. I also found it pretty good for generating images of natural subjects. It did the best job of generating a pic of a giant clam of any image generator I've tried. I would never trust factual information from Gemini. So like Google+, it's a pretty good product that in no way should be shunted into search results, Google Docs and other places where its output is not relevant, yet that is exactly the trap Google is falling into again.
That's the rationale Google uses. "We're the best, that's why users pick us." They built a moat of investment in search and the browser that other companies can't compete with. But as a consumer, I am not willing to accept that argument. Ma Bell claimed the same thing. We're a lot better off economically in a world where Ma Bell was broken up, and Microsoft was forced to stop their anticompetitive activities. Google will be better off as separate companies, worth more than the sum of its parts
I recently read The Parable of the Sower and it really affected me, both because I felt empathy for the characters and because I saw some uncomfortable parallels in the recent history of our world.
I also was disturbed by The Sparrow. Though frankly I wouldn't recommend it for a lot of reasons.
Battle Royale is intensely violent, in a really personal way.
For graphic novels, From Hell is a really rough read honestly, but also really interesting
If there were multiple sources of traffic, the pressure to optimize to one source would be lower, and the disruption caused by algorithm changes would be muted. Which would mean more interesting content less driven by a narrow set of metrics
It's an example of why monopolies are harmful. They create distorted economies that don't serve consumers. Like ecosystems overcome by a monoculture, monopolies are inherently less resilient, less functional and prone to sudden disruption.
The predictable backstop of subscription plus the nearly limitless potential upside of ad sales is just too tempting in the long run for media companies. They get to have their cake and eat it too. Spotify, Amazon, Netflix and have all eventually given in, despite insisting they never would. Shareholder owned media companies will always gravitate to this model. It's the only way to maximize quarterly revenue growth.
dantheclamman @ dantheclamman @lemmy.world Posts 154Comments 586Joined 2 yr. ago
I don't know about hardware, but they marketed that you'd be able to interact with an AI that would use your apps for you, via what they called a Large Action Model. None of those apps currently work, because they all are likely getting defeated up front by Captchas and other roadblocks companies put up to stop automated usage of their services.