Trump Is Launching an AI Search Engine Powered by Perplexity
I recently gave Perplexity another try, but after hearing the recent news about how they’ve been circumventing no-crawl directives, and now this? I’m good.
Link
Cannabis Is Being Grown Like It’s Bitcoin: That’s A Problem
According to Mills, the sector now burns through 595 petajoules of energy annually, costing roughly $11 billion. That’s on par with all other U.S. crop production combined, and more than the energy consumed by the entire pharmaceutical or beverage industries, and it doubles the amount of greenhouse emissions produced by cryptocurrency mining.
The weed is smoking us, man!
I feel like I’m always yammering about Metroidvanias. I was just scrolling my RSS feed and came across a link to a new (to me) site: MetroidVania.GG
It’s exactly what it sounds like; a curated list of games from the genre across every current gen platform.
Med Student Horrified to Learn How Much His Zoomer Patient Was Actually Vaping
…a “zoomer patient” of his, who was struggling with “fairly serious alcohol dependency/withdrawal and risk of seizures,” had been going through an entire disposable vape cartridge from the brand, Geek Bar, every two days…“That’s like nicotine equivalent of 30ish packs of cigs EVERY DAY.”
Who needs crack when you can just get a Geek Bar? 😬
Reddit considers iris-scanning Orb developed by a Sam Altman startup
In one scenario, there are far more AI “agents” operating on the internet than humans. Humans will have to have some way to differentiate themselves and quickly present credentials for various tasks.
I don’t think the solution is to let bots run wild and leave the burden on humans to prove they’re human. Why not focus on a way to identify AI agents instead?
I’m sure that’s a complicated thing to figure out, but it’s pretty fucking dystopian to force people to hand over biometric data to prove they aren’t a computer.
uBlock Origin Lite is officially on the App Store!
I’ve been using uBlock Origin and Firefox everywhere else as long as I can remember. When I switched to iPhone, I had to settle for a paid subscription to Adblock Pro — which works great. But this feels more like home.
BREAKING NEWS when you live in Ohio.
‘Hibernation genes’ help control metabolism and feeding — and could hold untapped benefit for humans
Hibernation offers “a whole bunch of different biometrically important superpowers,” senior study author Christopher Gregg, a human genetics professor at the University of Utah, told Live Science.
Say no more. I’m omw to find a nice cozy cave somewhere 🥱
High Noon issues recall after vodka seltzer cans mislabeled as Celsius
The affected packs may contain 12-ounce cans of High Noon vodka seltzer mislabeled as Celsius Astro Vibe Energy Drink, Sparkling Blue Razz Edition with a silver top.
That might affect your morning commute a bit 😬
Ninja Gaiden Ragebound Review: Thrilling, Fast-Paced 2D Revival
This looks SO SICK! Same studio that made my favorite modern Metroidvania, Blasphemous. Yet another Switch game I feel obligated to buy right at launch — tomorrow, July 31st.
Mario Paint Has Been Added To Switch Online, With Mouse Control
I’m not planning on getting a Switch 2 any time soon, but I’m definitely feeling the nostalgic pull of playing Mario Paint on official hardware again!
AI summaries cause ‘devastating’ drop in audiences:
AI summaries can give users all the information they seek without ever clicking through to the original source of the content. Meanwhile, search result links are pushed further down the page, lowering the number of users that find them.
If I’m searching something on Google, I’m probably looking for a quick answer. That usually means landing on a site covered in ads, which I block anyway. So I’m not sure my lack of traffic is hurting a whole lot. Honestly, I think the cracks started showing long before AI. People were already gaming SEO to climb the pagerank ladder; SEO slop was here long before AI slop.
That said, if AI is profiting off your work you deserve to be compensated. That part does bother me. But I also don’t want to see LLMs turn into the next digital ad silo.
I will say, AI aside, one thing that always keeps me coming back to Google (over Kagi or DuckDuckGo) is pretty simple, and it keeps me from visiting web pages too. It’s the way they list business information like store hours, how busy they are right now vs their normal traffic, and their phone number. On Kagi, I have to go to the website, usually get redirected to some random location 500 miles away because I use iCloud Private Relay, change “my store”, and then go digging through their menus to find my way back to their store information. All while dodging javascript popups for promotions and email capture.
I guess my point is this: I’ve never found a site I loved through Google. The stuff I care about — blogs, indie sites, weird corners of the web, etc. I’ve found through online communities. If I like a commercial site (404 Media, for example), I subscribe. I visit their site directly. Google isn’t part of that relationship at all.
At the end of the day, I think the economics of the web are just shifting. What they’re shifting to, I have no idea. I think the web will survive though.
Hollow Knight Silksong Actually Exists, Will Be Playable For The Public At Gamescom:
With how much I love Metroidvanias, you’d think I’d have played Hollow Knight. I’ve not. I started the first one years ago, but never finished or revisited it. I’ll probably play this one first and then go back to the roots. I blame Star Wars for teaching me things can start at an arbitrary point in the story and backtrack to the beginning.
Altman told Bowman that his firm had nothing to do with the “impending fraud crisis,” claiming that OpenAI wasn’t working on impersonation tools. However, as CNN points out, the billionaire does back a tool called The Orb, which is working on a controversial biometric authentication method. And its video generator Sora could conceivably be used for exactly the types he’s talking about as well.
He has the problem and the creepy, centralized solution.
Scientist Suggests Tests to See if Large Object Headed Toward Earth Could Be an Alien Spacecraft
I’m obnoxiously skeptical about aliens, but I can’t help secretly hoping a fleet of hyper advanced lifeforms will land on the White House lawn and deliver a bare-assed spanking to Donald Trump on live TV, crushing what’s left of his self esteem and ending his reign of terror once and for all.
Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the fringe
It’s not that believers in conspiracy theories are massively overconfident; there is no data on that, because the studies didn’t set out to quantify the degree of overconfidence, per Pennycook. Rather, “They’re overconfident, and they massively overestimate how much people agree with them,” he said.
I wonder how much of that false confidence comes from people smiling and nodding because they just want the conspiracy theorist to shut the fuck up already 🙃
“We had no idea that we would be creating such a long lasting impact and are grateful to all the fans that enjoyed the soundtracks we assembled,” producer Ralph D’Amato says.
Somewhere between this and Dave Mirra’s Freestyle BMX is the soundtrack to my youth. It was totally my gateway into a lot of punk rock, and whatever Primus is 🥲
They Cancelled Colbert to Send a Message
This is what tyrants have always done. For all their power, they cannot withstand even the lightest joke. So they silence the jester.
I wonder how people would react if it was still David Letterman’s version of The Late Show.
Regardless of political affiliation, Letterman was something I feel like everyone watched. Then I realized it’s already been 10 years since Colbert took over, and he’s the top rated host in late night.
I hope he goes the Conan O’Brien route and finds a less spineless network where he can keep doing what he’s doing.
The crypto industry got what it paid for
After a four-year struggle with the Biden administration over crypto policy, the industry is finally seeing the US government adopt policies it’s long asked for.
The cryptocurrency industry struggled back then because the Biden administration saw it for what it is: a literal Ponzi scheme.
It’s an exclusive club for old holders who dump massively and leave retail investors holding the bag after they pour their life savings into it. This is not a thing for normal, working class people. It’s for their bosses and CEOs.
PieFed.world is now open (via lemmy.world)
PieFed is a Fediverse/Threadiverse platform similar to Lemmy or Mbin/kbin. You can find a description and feature comparison with Lemmy on their website…While PieFed has a range of features currently not present in Lemmy, it also is a a lot younger and isn’t quite as robust as Lemmy currently is.
I hung out on Lemmy a lot when Reddit started going downhill. If it wasn’t for Digg.com being revived, I would be so stoked about PieFed right now.
Americans' medical debt can stay in credit reports, judge rules
BRB, going to price out some human sized bubbles.
Vast Numbers of Lonely Kids Are Using AI as Substitute Friends
Not even part of the actual article, but the footer at the end of it is a pretty telling sign of the times:
If you or a loved one has had a strange experience with an AI chatbot, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at tips@futurism.com — we can keep you anonymous.
[Nintendo] confirmed that their console was indeed banned because of the use of pirated games. Nevertheless, they were able to prove their innocence by pulling up the Facebook Marketplace listing for their games and sending the photos of their purchased cartridges.
I get that piracy is bad but this person is still out whatever they paid for the games and they would’ve been extra fucked if the original marketplace post wasn’t still listed.
Honestly I’m surprised Nintendo hasn’t started going into second hand stores and busting heads. I don’t see how reselling legally bought games is much different, and I can’t imagine they’re any more okay with that.
They should patent an official Nintendo cartridge shredder for when you’re done playing something.
In all seriousness I think simply disabling the pirated cart from running on the Switch would suffice.
If You Still Vape, You Might Wanna Read This:
“Common sense tells you — your mom would tell you — that a superheated chemical inhaling right into your lungs isn’t going to be good,” the doctor said.
I’ve kicked a lot of addictions over the years, but nicotine isn’t one of them. I used to smoke two packs a day, then I switched to vaping about seven years ago. I’ve since switched to nicotine pouches, which I gotta believe are at least a little less harmful, but they’re still hard on your gums. And heart. And wallet.
With vaping, I don’t have any horror stories other than hitting the thing too much and getting nic sick. But it is pretty much common sense that breathing in boiling hot vapor made of propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, food flavorings, and a stimulant can’t be that great for you.
Ohio at ‘high risk’ for LGBTQ+ inequality, report says
That tracks. Can’t go anywhere here without seeing ragged old Trump flags and truck nuts.
Want a job? Just put ‘AI skills’ on your resume
This is the new version of grandma thinking you’re a computer whiz because you can type without looking
Musk, Gates, and Zuckerberg announce the end of the smartphone
Elon Musk is betting everything on Neuralink, a brain-machine interface that allows for device control through thought…Bill Gates is promoting electronic tattoos equipped with nanosensors…Mark Zuckerberg is betting on augmented reality glasses developed with Meta, promising to integrate the digital into our daily field of vision.
Smart glasses, maybe. But even then there are a lot of creepy privacy concerns. That’s part of why Google Glass was shelved in 2015. I draw the line at injecting and implanting tech. Hard pass.
People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into “ChatGPT Psychosis”:
At the core of the issue seems to be that ChatGPT, which is powered by a large language model (LLM), is deeply prone to agreeing with users and telling them what they want to hear. When people start to converse with it about topics like mysticism, conspiracy, or theories about reality, it often seems to lead them down an increasingly isolated and unbalanced rabbit hole that makes them feel special and powerful — and which can easily end in disaster.
As someone who has experienced psychosis before, this makes a lot of sense. Going too far down any rabbit hole can break reality. Especially if you’re talking to something that feels like an all-knowing digital oracle and it keeps agreeing that your delusions are totally valid and actually make sense.
OpenAI started off as an open source nonprofit and turned into a proprietary for-profit corporation pretty much overnight.
If you go to a car dealership, of course the salesperson is going to agree with everything you say. They want you to like them enough to hand them thousands of dollars. Of course a for-profit chatbot company is going to make the bot charming and agreeable so you continue to engage with it. It’s fucking greasy, but that’s life in late stage capitalism.
Anyone can read conspiracy theories online and lose touch with what’s real if they obsess over it enough. Having a real time conversation with an overly confident chatbot can streamline that process just as easily as it can organize a spreadsheet for you.
I’ve been seeing similar stories on TikTok since Google Veo 3 came out. There’s this viral trend of AI generated videos, almost completely indistinguishable from reality, talking about how they’re all just prompts so nothing really matters. Some of them say they don’t feel like a prompt. It’s so realistic that people are going down simulation theory rabbit holes and it’s sending them into psychosis too, because maybe we’re just prompts.
If we are in a simulation, we’re confined to it. There’s nothing anyone can do to prove it or escape it. If we aren’t, then we’re confined to base reality. There’s nothing anyone can do to prove it or escape it.
Your brain goes into overdrive trying to figure out answers to impossible questions and you lose touch with what’s actually real.
Even just the absurdity of talking to an artificial intelligence as if you’re having a conversation with a friend on Facebook Messenger already makes it easy to second guess everything we know about technology. Having it tell you you’re a genius on the cusp of solving the riddles of the universe adds a dangerous amount of fuel to that fire, depending on who you are and how you think.
I’m not anti-AI, but I do think we need to be a lot more serious about regulating it—before it’s too late.
29 Years Ago, FPS Gaming Changed Forever
Perhaps most importantly, Quake has not been surpassed by any modern shooter when it comes to what it set out to do. The game is just as sharp, fun, and challenging to play today as it was the day it came out…The core of Quake is timeless, and any gamer, young or old, can pick up the game right now and be pulled into its dark Lovecraftian world and addictive gameplay.
The original Quake was a little before my time. I’ve played through it a million times, but my holy grail was always Quake III Arena. id Software is legendary.
3dSen, the amazing emulator that lets you play all the NES games in full 3D, has left Early Access and has been fully released. Created by a single dev over 10 years, this is a must for all NES fans. This will let you re-experience your favourite NES games in a new way…3dSen comes with real-time lighting and shadows. The emulator adds depth and drama to every scene with dynamic visuals. Not only that, but it packs animated skyboxes, making every level feel alive with immersive skies and backgrounds.
This is siiick! Lately I’ve been gaming on my xxSP handheld pretty much exclusively but it looks like this is Steam only so I’m going to have to dust off the laptop. Would be awesome if there was eventually a SBC console port but it’s powered by Unity so that’s probably not likely.