I’ll check out Brave, it’s been mentioned a few times.

I don’t mind companies making a dime, but now it’s really devolved in bad results that are profit-driven.

What’s the best alternative, in your opinion? I’ve tried Bing and DuckDuckGo, but both showed me worse results for my particular searches.

I just want classic Google Search back, before everything got turned to shit. But I fear that doesn’t really exist since there’s such an economic incentive behind how search engines rank and show results.

That fucking AI thing absolutely sucks for anything factual. I’m a journalist and noticed that it gleefully listed all sorts of factual errors in that AI summary. Stuff that you can see correctly on the original pages, but it somehow manages to misinterpret everything and shows incorrect information.

And knowing how lazy people are these days, most will happily accept Google’s incorrect information as fact. It’s making me very, very nervous for the future.

And one funny addendum to that story is that someone COULD reasonably think that Pepsi had an actual Harrier to give away. After all, Pepsi once owned an actual navy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PepsiCo

In 1989, amidst declining vodka sales, PepsiCo bartered for 2 new Soviet oil tankers, 17 decommissioned submarines (for $150,000 each), a frigate, a cruiser and a destroyer, which they could in turn sell for non-Soviet currency. The oil tankers were leased out through a Norwegian company, while the other ships were immediately sold for scrap.

The Harrier commercial aired in 1996. The Harrier jet was introduced in 1978. It wasn’t too unreasonable to think that an 18 year old jet aircraft would be decommissioned and sold, especially after Soviet tensions eased. And if ‘they’ let Pepsi own actual submarines and a destroyer, doesn’t that seem more far fetched than owning a single old jet aircraft?

Guy should’ve gotten his Harrier.

If you don’t hate AI, you’re not informed enough.

It has the potential to disrupt pretty much everything in a negative way. Especially when regulations always lag behind. AI will be abused by corporations in the worst way possible, while also being bad for the planet.

And the people who are most excited about it, tend to be the biggest shitheads. Basically, no informed person should want AI anywhere near them unless they directly control it.

God I miss the pre-9/11 US, when the worst thing happening was bad jokes on SNL about Bill Clinton and cigars.

Uh, do the kids these days really not know about the post-9/11 Patriot Act?

I’m designing the 3D-printable fleshlight mount right now. Hold your horses and give me ten minutes…

Yeah, their search is basically the main thing keeping me away from their store.

If I type in EXACTLY what I want, down to the exact type number, it’ll first show me things that vaguely have the same text, followed by things in the same category, followed by something totally random like a waffle iron, and MAYBE on page 2, there’s the thing I need. Show me that FIRST, not the slew of crappy clone/fake/off-brand shit or things not even in the same category.

I usually have better luck just going to Google and searching it that way. Usually that gets me to the item straight away. Like it should be.

Correct, as the article points out. Sites aren’t made with smaller screens in mind, and 62-68 percent of web traffic is made with phones.

Phones are not JUST a status thing, but having a better one is certainly more appealing to consumers, rather than a device that they and others know is purposefully gimped.

Consumers just aren’t that interested in a product that’s visibly cheaper and worse than what everyone else is carrying. And that is what a smaller phone signals.

Phones are a status purchase; they all do basically the same things, but most people gravitate towards higher end phones because they offer all the fancy features. Flagship phones are all large, so that’s what you see in the marketing. Just like you’ll never see a car company put its cheapest base model on a car catalog cover.

A smaller phone tends to cut corners; it’s not just smaller, but also functionally worse. While the price might be appealing, the potential customer also knows that using said phone will mean a worse experience, and might even get them ridiculed because they got ‘the cheap one’.

So we can absolutely go back to small phones - we just don’t want to. Smaller, cheaper, worse products just don’t appeal to a status-conscious buyer. If phone manufacturers offered the same specs at different sizes, that might change. But any savvy tech buyer knows a smaller phone is worse than the bigger one.

Back in the pre-smartphone days, size was a thing companies could compete on since customers wanted small, light, distinctive designs in premium materials. Like the Motorola Razr V3. These days, that just doesn’t work.

Welcome! We can definitely still use a few more people, especially if they’re willing to contribute to content.

Well, if by ‘similar priced’ you mean: a very cheap player, it might make sense.

But in 2004, I carried an iPod 4G which had either 20 or 40 gigabytes of storage. You’d need a backpack full of MD’s to match that, even if you put lower quality songs on there. I had my iPod filled with everything from podcasts, audiobooks, complete albums and enough random music to never hear the same song in a month. Absolutely loved that iPod!

Sony made some really sexy devices, but the format itself just came out too late for it to have widespread consumer appeal. MP3 was just way more convenient, and a lot of folks still rocked discmans like myself.

That said: it was actually a very popular format for the media. I was a journalism student 2001-2005 and it was the format we recorded all interviews on. The radio station where I worked at had MD gear, but also used Marantz compactflash recorders, which I personally preferred.

Yeah, I’m pretty much done with Lemmy right now. It’s just getting way too much. The sky is falling every five minutes.

That tracks for sure. The most enthusiastic guys at work also happen to be the ones who put in the least actual work. Sure, it has some uses… but the things it gets wrong are significant enough that no sane individual should rely on anything that AI is involved with making/running. The intelligence part just isn’t there yet. People are effectively getting wowed by a glorified ELIZA chat bot.

Ha, the slang and colloquialisms are actually the easy part, really!

We are subjected to an awful lot of US culture in general. We watch Hollywood movies and we get most US shows, which are shown with subtitles here. We also follow US news and events, we enjoy US music, we use a lot of the same services, etc. Basically, if I moved to the US, I’d fit right in.

We tend to enjoy US culture quite a bit. We might disagree on topics like politics, healthcare, gun issues or the metric system, but by and large we’re like… Canadians.

Thank you, we take pride in our language education.

We learn English, French and German in school, which really helps when dealing with the rest of Europe. Whenever you meet someone from another European country, chances are you can find at least one language you both speak. Makes trade and travel a lot easier.

I do occasionally slip up when talking to Americans. We’re generally taught UK and US English here simultaneously. Which means I sometimes have the UK spelling in my head, which can differ slightly. For example, flavour vs flavor. Online, I usually try to keep it ‘US English’.

Yeah, I can absolutely see that ‘District of Columbia’ argument in my head :D You’d assume people at least know that one considering how much important stuff happens there. I’d understand if someone not from the US didn’t know. But Americans really should.

Well I’d certainly hope the people in the military get properly trained. You’d hate to confuse Austria and Australia or Georgia (state) and Georgia (country) if you ever needed to bomb or invade either one of them :D

I always knew Americans in general were bad with global geography… but to not even know their own states? That sounds insane.

Heck, in our Dutch schools, we actually learn all the states in the United States. I definitely know New Mexico is a state. Same as Alaska and Hawaii (but not Puerto Rico, which is a territory but not a state)

How am I better at this than actual Americans? That should not be a thing.