🛁🧇🦶

I agree with you that online conversations are rare these days. Just my personal opinion but social media isn’t usually great for conversations. It’s better for shallow comments, drive-by’s, and echo chambers. Social media also tends to steer toward blind comments, so there is a lot of repetition. Forums seem to be better for conversations because there’s often a emphasis on reading the entire thread before commenting, there is more moderation, and also because they tend to accrue replies more slowly. However if a thread becomes too long then forums break down too, so nothing is perfect.

Thanks! I think I prefer startpage.com (which I only just learned about due to this thread) because it doesn’t redirect to google.com. But this is also good to know about just in case.

I’m trying to get real, specific examples.

Asking for unnecessary specifics and details is usually a sign not that the person wants to be helpful but that they disagree and are looking for ammunition to argue and feel superior. Ultimately the exchange becomes a waste of everyone’s time, as the person inevitably becomes rude, condescending and argumentative. Basically, some people online think they’re smarter than everyone else, or at least want to project that. They believe they have the only valid argument and they’re going to prove it to the world and probably think that they’ve won because they had the last word when in reality everyone left because they realized the person was not arguing in good faith. I’m not claiming you’re that type of person, but I suspect that’s why nobody is giving you specifics.

Wouldn’t have mentioned anything but you did ask.

I’ll have to try out !g, thanks a lot!

EDIT: Tried it and it just redirected to google.com. I was hoping it would have kept me on DDG for privacy and just presented a first page of results or something like that.

EDIT 2: Startpage is great! This will be my go-to when DDG doesn’t work out.

I had no idea what it was. When I saw the mention of US bans I decided it was safer not to search the term.

Gemini is already creeping me out with all the personal information Google is injecting into the AI context. So far I’ve seen my name, location and if I remember right, which vehicle I drive. Who knows what else is in there. I use DDG whenever I can, but sometimes a Google search is the only way to actually find something, so I see the Gemini junk as I’m scrolling down.

Is there any way to have that info deleted and no longer collected or used by Google? Or is that kind of thing only for the lucky people in Europe?

EDIT: Found it here: https://myactivity.google.com/product/gemini?hl=en-US

Thank you!

p-ing

What did it originally say?

What’s ccp hacking? Afraid to search it.

Skydio, Skynet. Dammit Cameron, not again.

🖖

AI (specifically chatbots) is crap, has stolen and monetized work people shared for free, violates copyrights (including the GPL), has already caused job loss, is biased and bigoted, I’d even say somewhat unethical to use due to the aforementioned things. People are better off not using it (although it’s basically forced on you now when you go to certain websites). But I’ll just mention a couple things:

• It takes around 200 ChatGPT queries to use 2 gallons of water for cooling (EDIT: seeing a lot of different answers on this, some as high as 2 gallons for only 15 queries. Lets go with that instead. It still means that taking a shower for only 4 seconds uses more water than a single ChatGPT query.)
• A standard shower head uses 2½ gallons of water per minute

So to save water, taking a shorter shower, not having a swimming pool, not watering a lawn, not washing your car, not spraying driveways, flushing the toilet less often, washing a full load of laundry and running a full dishwasher instead of hand washing are all much more impactful than cutting out the occasional AI query.

I do hope that awareness of AI water waste will also motivate people to cut water use in other ways too, so it’s good that the issue keeps coming up.

The vaccine did not work well for me: I got COVID at least 3 times. Was wearing N95 masks from the start (happened to have some). Stayed at home except for vital shopping. Grew my hair out. Social distanced the best I could. Played a lot of Animal Crossing. But interacting with work and family is unavoidable, and that’s who I believe I got it from every time, as they were generally not taking it seriously.

From what I read, when I got the shot and boosters I should have had some kind of mild reaction. Felt bad for a day or at least a few hours, something like that. But that never happened to me. However, others I talked to did have a reaction, and they also didn’t seem to get COVID. So I’m inclined to believe that the vaccine probably did work, for at least some segment of the population, just not for me for some reason. It was a rush job, so it not working for everyone isn’t a conspiracy, to me it’s somewhat expected. And maybe one of the other brands would have worked, but I don’t think you were allowed to mix them.

Can’t think of anything!

Slightly higher resolution: https://i0.wp.com/ivo-hennemann-grundschule.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Frauendorf_0012_komp.jpg

You’re the only person that said that. Quit gatekeeping.

Right, I was disagreeing with them on those points.

Intentionally misgendering is offensive, but that’s not what happened here, in my opinion. There’s nothing in their profile so sure going neutral with they/them is probably a safer option, but defaulting to male pronouns (which traditionally are all encompassing) is also fine, IMO. If they had a preference that they cared about then they would specify it.