maegul

maegul, 21 hours ago

The moment word was that Reddit (and now Stackoverflow) were tightening APIs to then sell our conversations to AI was when the game was given away. And I’m sure there were moments or clues before that.

This was when the “you’re the product if its free” arrangement metastasised into “you’re a data farming serf for a feudal digital overlord whether you pay or not”.

Google search transitioning from Good search engine for the internet -> Bad search engine serving SEO crap and ads -> Just use our AI and forget about the internet is more of the same. That their search engine is dominated by SEO and Ads is part of it … the internet, IE other people’s content isn’t valuable any more, not with any sovereignty or dignity, least of all the kind envisioned in the ideals of the internet.

The goal now is to be the new internet, where you can bet your ass that there will not be any Tim Berners-Lee open sourcing this. Instead, the internet that we all made is now a feudal landscape on which we all technically “live” and in which we all technically produce content, but which is now all owned, governed and consumed by big tech for their own profits.

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I recall back around the start of YouTube, which IIRC was the first hype moment for the internet after the dotcom crash, there was talk about what structures would emerge on the internet … whether new structures would be created or whether older economic structures would impose themselves and colonise the space. I wasn’t thinking too hard at the time, but it seemed intuitive to that older structures would at least try very hard to impose themselves.

But I never thought anything like this would happen. That the cloud, search/google, mega platforms and AI would swallow the whole thing up.

maegul, 16 hours ago (edited 11 hours ago)

I dunno, my feeling is that even if the hype dies down we’re not going back. Like a real transition has happened just like when Facebook took off.

Humans will still be in the loop through their prompts and various other bits and pieces and platforms (Reddit is still huge) … while we may just adjust to the new standard in the same way that many reported an inability to do deep reading after becoming regular internet users.

maegul, 3 hours ago

Oh yea, it’s basically a vibe now for those who see it, which I was mostly channeling.

maegul, 3 hours ago

Yea but this feels quicker than anyone expected. It’s easy to forget, but alpha Go beating the best in the world was shocking at the time and no one saw it coming. We hadn’t sorted out what to do with big monopoly corps yet, we weren’t ready for a whole new technology.

maegul, 22 hours ago (edited 14 hours ago)

Yea, US, can you just fucking not be a petulant child.

Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar said the court’s allegations are “significant” and the US must support its work as it has done on past occasions, including in the case of Libya.

“The application for arrest warrants is merely the beginning of a judicial process,” she wrote in a statement on Monday.

“The ICC has been a functioning court – it has seen convictions, acquittals, and dismissals, as we would expect from an impartial and non-political judicial body.”

Only clear headed response in the article.

maegul, 2 days ago

Yea, car congestion isn’t about industrial transport, it’s about personal transport. All of the people commuting to/from work etc in single person occupied tanks.

maegul, 3 days ago

Cheers for the personal review! Awesome.

It’d be cool if there was more of this than just links to the rest of the internet (which is clearly turning to shit anyway).

maegul, 3 days ago

It really is a decent album once you get past the initial knee jerk reaction to it lol

Haha yea … a Kerry King solo album certainly would bring that out in people.

maegul, 3 days ago

Huh!

My impression of Godzilla x Kong, as someone who’s generally enjoyed that franchise, is that it’s basically reached a sort of “strangely calm and abstract animated cartoon vibe”. Which I’m probably down for, but which is also probably just not as entertaining as many would expect.

maegul, 4 days ago

Fantastic framing! Not just of the internet, but the whole economic sector including big tech, various publishers, of course the ads industry and now all of the push for winning the AI platform wars.

It’s a toilet economy! Fueled by the attention, tastes, inclinations and urges of people taking a shit! And now, as AI “learns” from the internet, also fed by and literally made of the writings and thoughts of people … taking a shit.

It’s also a nice litmus test for what kind of internet space somewhere online is based on where people are when they comment or post: “Is this a toilet or desk space”. Depending on what you’re after, you will probably want to know if you’re in the right kind of place.

maegul, 5 days ago

The prestige Coppola carries certainly makes reviews less reliable for this, I’d say. Industry can’t let a good marketing angle slip by.

maegul, 5 days ago

And are really eerie against the brown of the sky and water!

maegul, 5 days ago

I’ve found a fair amount of strong loyalty to the place from all sorts of people. I was never a twitter person, so I don’t understand it, but AFAICT, all sorts of people have a real emotional bond to the place, like for them it’s been their main internet experience in life or something.

maegul, 5 days ago

I hear you … most people are still there (I’ve claimed in the past that it will be the MS Windows of social media, that no one really openly talks about using but is actually everywhere).

But I feel it may be useful to distinguish FOMO and social media gossip from actual useful information. I’m not saying there’s nothing useful on Twitter (I don’t actually know). But we’re talking about microblogging and social media here.

maegul, 6 days ago

Bad CGI takes my immersion away from the actors and story and breaks my ability to enjoy the not-CGI shit, so that essay you wrote is wrong.

Well my point was that perhaps your “immersion” (and others’ or the current culture too) is excessively sensitive to the apparent “quality” of the CGI, not that your immersion was never affected. IMO, it’s a mentality and expectations thing, not a “right/wrong” “what is objectively good cinema” thing.

maegul, 6 days ago

truth is that everything is scattered. And different alternative social media platforms or ecosystems … fighting and competing looks a bit silly once you zoom out a little. Both fediverse and BlueSky are sitting around 1 million monthly active users … which is nothing compared to the likes of twitter and threads and IG etc.

It would be physically impossible to say that “all of the scientists are actually on BlueSky/Mastodon”. By any reasonable approximation, they’re all on Twitter/Threads, with some experimenting with alternative social media. And those few are likely on both because they’re still interested in getting their messages out there.

maegul, 6 days ago

Underutilisation seems to me to be a problem common to both DIS and SNW.