AmbitiousProcess (they/them)

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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2025

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  • *specifically boomers between years 1946 and 1964, which have actually paid more than they’ll get in benefits.

    The others are still taking more than they contributed. It’s fair to say that some current boomers have paid for their Social Security, but many others have not, and the situation isn’t getting any better.

    To put it simply, there are just fewer workers paying in to the system than there are people taking money out, and that number only grows as people get older. image

    This means only about 80% of existing benefit rates are expected to be paid to people when they retire later, and many of those benefiting from existing rates are already taking more from current generations than they paid in.

    I don’t think we should universally hate boomers just because the economic situation they were in happened to favor them in some ways, after all, I want my grandma to keep being able to afford her retirement care right now before she dies, but it’s also just not true to say that all current boomers have paid for their social security in its entirety.

    Only some of them have, and with the way things are going, it’s not looking like we’ll be any better as we grow older, as rates will have to decline just to prevent draining the entire fund, while people continue to pay the same % of their income into the system.


  • Videos, images, and text can absolutely compel action or credible harm.

    For example, Facebook was aware that Instagram was giving teen girls depression and body image issues, and subsequently made sure their algorithm would continue to show teen girls content of other girls/women who were more fit/attractive than them.

    the teens who reported the most negative feelings about themselves saw more provocative content more broadly, content Meta classifies as “mature themes,” “Risky behavior,” “Harm & Cruelty” and “Suffering.” Cumulatively, such content accounted for 27% of what those teens saw on the platform, compared with 13.6% among their peers who hadn’t reported negative feelings.

    https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114054/documents/HHRG-117-IF02-20210922-SD003.pdf

    https://www.reuters.com/business/instagram-shows-more-eating-disorder-adjacent-content-vulnerable-teens-internal-2025-10-20/

    Many girls have committed suicide or engaged in self harm, at least partly inspired by body image issues stemming from Instagram’s algorithmic choices, even if that content is “just videos, and images.”

    They also continued to recommend dangerous content that they claimed was blocked by their filters, including sexual and violent content to children under 13. This type of content is known to have a lasting effect on kids’ wellbeing.

    The researchers found that Instagram was still recommending sexual content, violent content, and self-harm and body-image content to teens, even though those types of posts were supposed to be blocked by Meta’s sensitive-content filters.

    https://time.com/7324544/instagram-teen-accounts-flawed/

    In the instance you specifically highlighting, that was when Meta would recommend teen girls to men exhibiting behaviors that could very easily lead to predation. For example, if a man specifically liked sexual content, and content of teen girls, it would recommend that man content of underage girls attempting to make up for their newly-created body image issues by posting sexualized photos.

    They then waited 2 years before implementing a private-by-default policy, which wouldn’t recommend these teen girls’ accounts to strangers unless they explicitly turned on the feature. Most didn’t. Meta waited that long because internal research showed it would decrease engagement.

    By 2020, the growth team had determined that a private-by-default setting would result in a loss of 1.5 million monthly active teens a year on Instagram, which became the underlying reason for not protecting minors.

    https://techoversight.org/2025/11/22/meta-unsealed-docs/

    If I filled your social media feed with endless posts specifically algorithmically chosen to make you spend more time on the app while simultaneously feeling worse about yourself, then exploited every weakness the algorithm could identify about you, I don’t think you’d look at that and say it’s “catastrophizing over videos, images, text on a screen that can’t compel action or credible harm” when you develop depression, or worse.


  • This whole article is just a condescending mess.

    “Why does everyone who has been repeatedly burned by AI, time and time again, whether that be through usable software becoming crammed full of useless AI features, AI making all the information they get less reliable, or just having to hear people evangelize about AI all day, not want to use my AI-based app that takes all the fun out of deciding where you go on your vacation???”

    (yes, that is actually the entire proposed app. A thing where you say where you’re going, and it generates an itinerary. Its only selling point over just using ChatGPT directly is that it makes sure the coordinates of each thing are within realistic travel restrictions. That’s it.)


  • I cannot possibly overstate how amazing this is, given everything else valve is doing to make compatibility layers for practically anything.

    This can attack Meta’s near-monopoly on VR incredibly effectively. All those games made for the Quest? Pop 'em on either your higher-power PC, or directly on the Steam Frame, and it just works, very low effort to port, and you can squeeze more performance out of them if you’re playing tethered.

    Want to use an Android app on your PC rather than your phone? Done. Linux suddenly becomes much more useful to you on its own.

    Being able to run Windows applications on Linux was just the start of making Linux more usable, and giving people more choice as to what software to use, but this expands it to an even larger scale. Simultaneously, this could mean some developers make things for Android that they otherwise would have only made to run on Linux, meaning Android users get more (likely open-source) choices too.

    There’s a metric fuck ton of apps that I wish I could use on Linux, but are only easily run on Android directly. (Yes, I know Waydroid is a thing, but it’s been a pain to set up and use for me and many others. Valve has been pretty good so far at making sure things “just work” as best they can.)


  • There’s a reason so many people who suffer from chronic loneliness are told to first join some kind of socially-integrated hobby, activity, or group: Doing something you already enjoy, in the company of other people who enjoy the same thing, is likely to bring you people you are more likely to vibe with.

    One of the best possible ways to start actually finding people you enjoy being around is to go to activities that involve people with a similar set of interests to you. For example, if I go to my local hackerspaces/makerspaces, I’m going to find a fuck ton of people who are interested in the same technology as me, and that means I’m probably gonna find people that have similar interests overall.

    The main problem is that with the major reduction in third places, and with things becoming more and more costly to do, (e.g. my nearest makerspace costs over $100/mo to be a part of) it’s hard to actually get into those social circles where you can meet people that you’ll actually like being around.


  • And it’s more expensive than the most expensive US mobile plan, which would have faster speeds, whereas Trump Mobile’s drops off after a certain (lower than T-Mobile’s own plans) amount of GB data usage since they’re solely using T-Mobile as an MVNO, and also has deprioritized data speeds during periods of network congestion.

    It would also get you the ability to switch underlying network providers if you’re in a dead zone, international calling and data in more locations, better customer support given all the experiences we’ve seen from reviewers, and unlimited hotspot data, plus better bundle deals for families or people with smart watches that need separate data.

    Hell, even T-Mobile’s own own plans, which are usually substantially more expensive than other companies they solely act as an MVNO for, like Mint Mobile, (which is actually owned by T-Mobile now) which will get you the same value as T-Mobile’s $50/mo plan in a $30/mo plan that is just $15/mo for new users for up to a 12 month period.

    Trump Mobile is just $2.55 cheaper than T-Mobile’s $50 plan.


  • The CDC’s “vaccine safety” page now claims that the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is not based on evidence because it doesn’t rule out the possibility that infant vaccines are linked to the disorder.

    This dumbfuck doesn’t understand that science can’t fully rule anything out. That’s why science continues to evolve, and things we once thought were true change over time as we get more evidence.

    Science explains what we see in the world, it doesn’t magically explain every possible outcome of every possible thing we look at.

    No shit you can’t “rule out the possibility”, because you can’t have an omnipotent view of every possible way every chemical reaction occurs ever between any infant and any vaccine.

    What we can do, is look at how vaccines and autism rates are correlated, engage in numerous studies, and find out that there is no observable causal link between the two, or even a statistically significant correlation. That is the closest we can possibly get to “ruling it out.”

    You wanna know what there is an observable causal link for? Viruses killing people that would otherwise not have gotten sick from the virus had they gotten the vaccine.

    Jfc we are so cooked as a nation.







  • Not all of those videos are fully AI-generated, at least not entirely. (voices and video itself are real, script is AI-generated) They are still slop content, though.

    From what I can tell, most of the voices are real (you can hear changes in microphone types & background noises, reverb, natural stuttering, accent changes, proper tone, etc on many of them) but a lot of the scripts seem AI-generated, along with the actual face in the thumbnail, even when the voice is real.

    Most of the videos are being generated by a semi-large media generating organization who just pumps out algorithmically optimized videos. I did see a few, mostly from smaller creators, that were entirely AI-voiced as well, though.

    I think most of them were just copying the thumbnail design because it got clicks. Not uncommon on YouTube unfortunately.

    For anyone curious, the videos are basically just them scrolling through the websites of each, while reading off a paragraph or two of general information about what each is that has that sort of AI-generated tone and order to it.

    The video creation process is literally as simple as:

    1. Ask ChatGPT “write me a script for a short video talking about what Actual Budget is vs. Firefly III”
    2. Record yourself auto-scrolling slowly through the Actual Budget website, then the same for the Firefly III website
    3. Record a voiceover of you just reading word-for-word the script from ChatGPT
    4. Slap them on top of each other
    5. Clone the thumbnail from the other channels that got the most clicks, just like everyone else is doing, so now all of your videos look the same.

  • Schools do indeed sometimes teach some conformist lessons, primarily regarding how you should operate as an individual to work within the Capitalist machine.

    That does not mean we should abolish all schools. It means we should ensure schools that do sometimes push conformist messages stop doing that, while still remaining the educational institutions that they are.

    Schools taught me the math I use every day both at work and at home, the history I derive various meanings and life lessons from, the art lessons I use to relax in my free time, exercise and nutrition advice that keeps me healthy, writing that I’ve used to publish articles read by thousands, better budgeting, leadership and coordination skills, and even some philosophy that I’ve used to better understand my place in the world.

    Not to mention how schools are the primary way many kids create friendships, as it essentially forces you and many other people to all exist in the same, dense space, nearly every day, for extended periods of time, which is crucial for social development.

    Without all of that education, I and many others would be in a much worse spot. I find it absurd you’d argue against a concept so deeply human that so many cultures across landmasses and time periods had some form of education through systems very similar to what we’d call “school” now, because it benefited not just society, but any individual that participated in it.

    What do you propose as an alternative to school? No education at all, where we simply hope that people’s personal experiences will lead them to the right answers and knowledge they could need for their future?





  • It runs autonomously to a degree, but a lot of these sites operate via posting a wide variety of content on the same domains, after those domains have previously gained status in search engines.

    So for example, you’ll have a site like epiccoolcarnews[.]info hosting stuff like “How to get FREE GEMS in Clash of Clans” just because previously they posted an article about cars that Google thought was good so they ranked up the domain in their ranking algorithm.

    Permanently downrank the domain, and eventually they have to start with a new domain that, as is the key part here, has no prior reputation, and thus has to work to actually get ranked up in search again.

    They’re also going to be making this a public database, and have said they’ll use it to train AI-generated content detection tools that will probably be better at detecting “AI generated articles meant to appear legitimate by using common keywords and phrases”, rather than just “any text of any form that has been generated by AI” like other AI detection tools do, which would make them capable of automating the process a bit with regard to specifically search engines.