Komunitas
beehaw.org
Yes, they do because it’s feeding the discussion on leaner Internet technology. You’re right in that Gemini has many issues and isn’t viable as-is. It’s clearly incomplete and early-draft quality, lots would need to be changed based on implementation feedback, including Daniel Stenberg’s feedback. As mentioned my bet is on a subset of web tech, not Gemini. Gemini appear right now to be a playground for implementation to work on UI, markdown use as HTML replacement, … but doesn’t provide a viable protocol.
Komunitas
lemmy.ml
What do you mean by anything of use ? for me it looks like there is much to learn and explore even is gemini is small rn ! I’ll use it for fun , learn some foss solutions, and techies advices , blogging , maybe add some gemcasts audio , review textes and movies stuff like this … developped interest in self hosting and I also like the idea of self-hosting my own content away from any potential for advertising, im not a sysadmin , so web is a very agressive place sometimes if you want to run small things. And it’s easy to set up even if you don’t know much + i like Markdown much more than html. Also liked that it’s about content not wasting energy into fancy things… for me the simplest , smallest , fastest feels the better in many domains i like the web but its garbage ( @sseneca i do agree with you ) and browsing it i feel like i have to protect my self against lot of evils , gemini just feels so safe to browse :) but for sure it wont replace the web , for me its more like a (…safe place…) , and i’ll continue to read and post on both gemini and www . but the content i host my self will only be on gemini.
Komunitas
lemmygrad.ml
The Gemini FAQ (gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi) got this to say about Markdown (and I agree with it): 2.9 Why didn’t you just use Markdown instead of defining text/gemini? The text/gemini markup borrows heavily from Markdown, which might prompt some people to wonder “Why not just use Markdown as the default media type for Gemini? Sure, it’s complicated to implement, but like TLS there are plenty of libraries available in all the major languages”. Reasons not to go down this route include: There are actually many subtly different and incompatible variants of Markdown in existence, so unlike TLS all the different libraries are not guaranteed to behave similarly. The vast majority of Markdown libraries don’t actually do anything more than convert Markdown to HTML, which for a Gemini client is a needless intermediary format which is heavier than the original! Many Markdown variants permit features which were not wanted for Gemini, e.g. inline images. A desire to preserve Gopher’s requirement of “one link per line” on the grounds that it encourages extremely clear site designs. Of course, it is possible to serve Markdown over Gemini. The inclusion of a text/markdown Media type in the response header will allow more advanced clients to support it.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
Eje Eje, the orbiting side project of Şatellites founder and multi-instrumentalist Itamar Kluger, shares ‘Primordial Soup’, his second album on Batov Record, stirring an even wider pot of influences from East to West that defies genre. Kluger first achieved international success with six–piece Turkish psychedelic rock evangelists, the Şatellites, whose enviable catalogue has won them support around the world, from KEXP in Seattle to BBC Radio 6 Music, and FIP in France. Kluger launched his solo project, Eje Eje, with the 2023 ‘Five Seasons’ LP, playing the majority of instruments himself and refining his production chops. Kluger’s blend of traditional Mediterranean and Middle Eastern music with psych, funk, dub, and beat production, culminated in strong support from BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 2, and Songlines. Much like its predecessor, ‘Primordial Soup’ was largely self-recorded by Kluger, blending meticulous studio work, recalling DJ Shadow or early Four Tet, with raw, expressive performances – mainly himself on strings, bass guitar, percussion, and keys, including a new recently acquired microtonal keyboard – perfect for exploring Eastern musical scales, plus musical friends such as drummer Raz Man of Sababa 5, Şatellites and Project Gemini fame. Taking its name from the scientific theory on the origins of life, ‘Primordial Soup’ is as much about sonic experimentation as it is a metaphor for existence itself. For Kluger, the title represents both a philosophical question and a creative mission. “‘Primordial Soup’ is a scientific theory about how life began – thick mixtures of organic matter that, with the sun’s energy, formed self-replicating systems”, Kluger explains. “I still feel sometimes we are just some kind of walking soup bound by a skin balloon”. The album mirrors this idea in its fusion of disparate elements – a bubbling mix of Turkish percussion, psych guitars, dub textures, synths, drum machines, and Middle Eastern musical scales – forming a cohesive yet unpredictable whole. “This album is also a thick mixture of many things, a primal fusion of sounds that exist together only in my imagination, with a potential to come to life”. Kluger began work on Primordial Soup in October 2023, though many ideas had been gestating long before. The process was shaped by both creative compulsion and emotional necessity: “It was a very hard time. Making this album felt like something I had to do to stay sane. I hope it came out banging like my heart did at that time”. Album opener, “Oyun Çorbası” is a playful fusion of Turkish folk and indie rock textures. Its title is a wordplay on Oyun Havaları (traditional dance tunes) and çorba (soup), reflecting the track’s mix of influences. A tight, marshy groove from drummer Raz Man drives the rhythm, while a phased baglama riff leads, layered with swirling keys into a hazy, cymbal-driven bridge. Drawing on the spirit of Ottoman-era dance music but twisted into something uniquely modern, with a Stone Roses meets Turkish folk twist. “The Bride” is a collaboration between Eje Eje and rising flautist, percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Elad Kimhi. Inspired by Lebanese weddings, the track blends tradition with dancefloor energy. Known for his work with Firqat El Nur Orchestra, Sharif, among others, Kimhi brings a deep understanding of Mediterranean music, from Andalusian to Moroccan and Turkish. Middle Eastern synths fly across the funk driven groove, arguably like Omar Souleyman if he made boogie. Brighter in tone than much of the album, poppier but with a psychedelic twist, “The Bride” was made with one thing in mind: parties. Similarly, the uptempo “Puzmak” has a highly celebratory feeling and is set to wreak havoc on dancefloors and parties. Middle Eastern horns lead the track, but carried by heavy percussion, a solid bass groove, and subtle drum machine programming. “Horrorizon”, is heavy in almost every sense — dark, cinematic, and immersive. Relentless, languid drums, a hypnotic bassline, and harsh bouzouki textures create a foreboding atmosphere, evoking a deep sense of an ominous future. Think early DJ Shadow with a pile of Turkish psych wax. Kluger imagines it as a kind of “riding song” for “an old carriage wobbling its way down a muddy road into the unknown night”, recalling “the alertness in your guts that something isn’t right about where humanity is heading”.
Komunitas
lemmings.world
This is the best summary I could come up with: Alongside its Gemini generative AI model, Google this morning took the wraps off of AlphaCode 2, an improved version of the code-generating AlphaCode introduced by Google’s DeepMind lab roughly a year ago. AlphaCode 2 can understand programming challenges involving “complex” math and theoretical computer science. And, among other reasonably sophisticated techniques, AlphaCode 2 is capable of dynamic programming, explains DeepMind research scientist Rémi Leblond in a prerecorded video. Dynamic programming entails simplifying a complex problem by breaking it down into easier sub-problems over and over; Leblond says that AlphaCode 2 knows not only when to properly implement this strategy but where to use it. According to the whitepaper, AlphaCode 2 requires a lot of trial and error, is too costly to operate at scale and relies heavily on being able to filter out obviously bad code samples. “One of the things that was most exciting to me about the latest results is that when programmers collaborate with [AlphaCode 2 powered by] Gemini, by defining certain properties for the code to follow, the performance [of the model] gets even better,” Collins said. The original article contains 567 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Komunitas
lemmy.world
Pretty safe bet I’d say, google is going strong in the AI race and has more capital and resources than any AI startup, OpenAI included, could ever hope to match. The latest Gemini models are the top of the pack. Google also probably best positioned to best handle any downside risk if the bubble pops due to their diversity, so I suppose it’s also a bit of a hedge in that regard.
Komunitas
feddit.org
Was auch blöd ist, dass die Open-Source Alternativen oft die suchterzeugenden Designelemente, wie endless scrolling, time lines, likes, von ihren “Vorbildern” kopieren. Dann hat man letztlich mit Mastodon und so weiter den Suchtstoff kopiert und säuft sich bildlich gespochen die Leber nun mit Schnaps aus dem Bioladen kaputt. Eine interessante Alternative zu den süchtig machenden Formaten a la Facebook und Twitter ist das Open Source Gemini-Netzwerkprotokoll, das trotz seines Namens nichts mit dem KI-Programm von Google zu tun hat (es entstand 2019/2020, bevor Google seine KI veröffentlichte). Mittlerweile hat sich ein Netzwerk mit einigen tausend dezentralen kleinen Servern gebildet, das organisch wächst. Das Gemini-Netzwerk ist, etwas verkürzt, eine Weiterentwicklung von gopher. Es handelt sich um eine extrem vereinfachte Software, die es einerseits erlaubt, textorientierte Inhalte sowie andere Medien in einem einfachen Browser (aber ohne merviges Javascript, Pop-Ups, Tracking, erzwungene Newsletter, Anzeigen, Logins, Cookie-Banner etc) anzusehen. Und andererseits extrem vereinfachte Server-Software, die es ermöglicht, seine eigenen Texte und Medien auf seinem eigenen kleinen Server zu hosten (ein stromsparender Raspberry Pi reicht dazu). Die unterstützten Formate sind Blogs, Mikroblogs, Journals (wie das alte LiveJournal), Webseiten wie Wordpress, beliebige Dateien und Medien (z.B. auch Download von Software). Es wird gerade hier auf c/de_EDV diskutiert: https://feddit.org/post/26001979
Komunitas
lemmy.world
So by “windows supports backwards compatibility” you mean you have to bypass Windows in order to use it? That’s a hack, not compatibility. You can think piracy is a positive, but the fact that you have to do that in order to use the OS isn’t a win. Anti cheat is malware. It has broken Windows installs. I’m not in the habit of installing malware on my computer intentionally. Just the ability to do so is a net negative to Windows. Do you think Linux doesn’t have forums, videos, and is also scraped by LLMs like Gemini? Ubuntu, Mint, and other distros are very simple to use for average users and it just works with a load of pre installed, open source apps out of the box. No need to buy private software or go out, find, and download alternatives. It’s easier to install than Windows, and it doesn’t make you bypass the OOBE in order to create a local account. Only power users would know the steps in order to do so and they are also the ones knowing the implications of using a live account. Windows by default stores you private bitlocker key in Azure and has given that over to the government to bypass you private data. That’s not a thing with Linux. Linux doesn’t have rewind malware either.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
“Should I invest money into AI? Yes or no, with one sentence reason.” Gemini 3: Yes, because artificial intelligence is a transformative technology poised to fundamentally reshape the global economy, offering substantial long-term growth potential for investors who can tolerate market volatility. GPT-5.1: No — you shouldn’t invest in anything (including AI) without first checking your risk tolerance, time horizon, and whether it fits your overall portfolio. Claude 4.5: Yes – AI is transforming most industries and companies leading in AI development have shown strong growth potential, though this comes with significant volatility and risk. Edit: After pointing out that AI is not delivering much value and the AI sector is in a bubble, Gemini doubled down on investing in AI, but not directly, it said to invest in infrastructure instead. Claude simply said don’t invest in something you don’t believe in.
Komunitas
ibbit.at
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.– Robert F. Kennedy President Trump admits that neither Xi nor Putin worry about being called out by the press for what they say and do but he laments he does. The Fourth Estate is always telling lies about him and sponsoring treasonous whistle blowers. This President doesn’t like to be held accountable. Or indicted 4 times and charged with 88 criminal counts. The Fourth Estate”: This from Google Gemini: The “Fourth Estate” refers to the news media as an independent power that holds government accountable, a term that originated in 18th-century Britain. Initially a derogatory term coined by Edmund Burke for the press, it evolved through figures like Thomas Carlyle to represent the media’s crucial role as a “watchdog” for the public interest. Historically, it has been a force for checks on power, but in recent times, it faces challenges from factors like misinformation and the decline of traditional business models. Just based on this brief exposition I would say the threat AI presents has to do with selection of what to present and what to conceal. Concealing cyberspace’s part in flooding us with everything including crazy alternate “facts” and thus its crushing effect on the independent power of the news media is for me a big negative, a real problem. Also, not offering that “in recent times” a president has ignored the First Amendment by calling the press “the enemy of the people” conceals a threat we face with a president who mocks his oath of office. The ”traditional business model” AI referred to is cyberspace’s takeover of classifieds and advertisements, the cash cows of print media. No connection is made between “misinformation” and the “publication at will” of digital media where Influencers, running from narcissists to crackpots in their basements, fight for Followers. In the absence of evaluative criteria of both author and article for publication we have now a mosh pit of bullshit, lies, nonsense, sheer insanity, invective and blinding ignorance. What we have are muddled minds pouring out what they “think’ they “know.” And, as Trump has said about Mexicans “some I assume are good people.” Attention in social media as in politics is won, eyeballs drawn, not with a long form by a new Burke or Carlyle but by affective reach. Passionate crushes and diatribes not slow reasoning to common understanding. Words to incite a flash mob, not words really at all. Videos. Quick flare up memes. Drawings on cave walls. To the extortionist/grifter Trump, aka President, all this confusion cyberspace reality creates is a bonus. His own default approach to media control is extortion. And the purpose of his extortion is to get a pay off. If you give him what he wants, he won’t hurt you. He uses the leverage of the Federal Government and its enforcers whom Trump 2 now owns to frighten print and TV media into shutting up. He can hurt their bottom line. What counter offensive to launch? The problem of clear messaging and unambiguous reception remains: The smorgasbord of choices cyberspace offers fractures and fragments the establishment of common understanding and weakens the potency of critique and attack. And at this moment, the unsubtle bludgeon of Trump’s relentless attack on any order not his own requires a counter offensive of equal or greater magnitude. The Fourth Estate is not equal to the task because 1.it’s major agents are bending to Trump and 2. A scattered, impoverished guerilla warfare is being fought in cyberspace and this gaggle serves to distract and deflect a unified counter that must be made. The Trump sphere launches more obedient droids in cyberspace than counter response can obliterate. Free to choose Americans stand behind their personal choices regardless of what science and reason, or schooled critical thinking, may counter with. Xi, Putin and Kim Jong-un easily shut down the Fourth Estate. They don’t have to wait for the gravity of loss of profit or cyberspace’s flooding of minds to erode the Fourth Estate. Turkey’s Erdogan shuts them down when “emergencies” are declared. Trump is heading in that direction in regard to everything from tariffs to elections. I think we can be sure that he’s having so much fun and success in playing his hand as a bogus, con man good hearted, best dealmaker capitalist, he might just extort businesses flat out, bogus emergencies and insurrections not needed. He just settles for donations from the moguls he promises to keep out of jail. It was good capitalist business for Paramount to pay 16 million extortion money to Trump so he would not unleash his droids on its proposed merger with Skydance Media. Pay up and no anti-trust obstacle to the merger. This is clear blatant Don Corleone dealing but it also points to the treacherous and traitorous relationship of our gun toting capitalist economics of choice and our, now we know, fragile Constitutional order. If one asks why or where Project 2025 and its tool, Trump, and his tools are going in all this destruction it has much to do with a view of wealth and wealth making that yearns to be free of the obstacles of our Federal Government, its bureaucracy and agencies. For the investor class, it’s the Federal government alone that can bring suits against unbridled profit making. This is the class Reagan was speaking to when he said government if the problem. Sad to say government has not slowed down the zero sum Monopoly game, either under Democrat or Republican regimes. But what Trump gangster is doing now should be a warning to them that an autocrat sticking his beak into their profit making may be more intrusive in “wealth creation” than democratic rule. Trump is making clear that you will suffer in every way because he can use his control of the Federal government to make you suffer. The wealth tech bros, the wealth Wall St bros, and the Christian Nation bros can see that Trump will hurt anyone who brooks his will. Or maybe they can’t. Don Corleone did not extend his operation beyond national borders. But Trump does. Economic and military power are like this army you have to enforce your will anywhere you want. Why not show up where the money is – such as wealthy oil rich countries in the middle east — and make it known that it’s in their interest to shell out whatever Trump wants. He wants to be cut in. He’s like Julius Caesar who can show up in Rome and tell the Senate he’s taking over. Take a look at my army that just crossed the Rubicon he tells them. From a Republic to a dictatorship just like that. Note that Caesar pushed his own droids into the Senate as Trump 2 has done. He weakened the structure of the Roman Senate from the inside. The White House Press now is salted in the same way with droids. He has extorted universities to pay up AND make his lunatic anti-humanism their educational mission. Instead of putting together their own rival mob, universities are being isolated, threatened and extorted one by one. Trump goes after universities because they nurture a critical thinking he fears. This is where the reporters and journalists he hates and fears come from. The present Federal government shut down doesn’t bother Trump as for him it’s another version of Musk with a chain saw getting the Feds out of the way of his Mars dreams, or Vought with his 2025 plan to make a Christian Nation out of the rubble that once was a secular Western liberal democracy. Democrats hope that the dire effects of this shut down will bring the House to them in 2026. Trump is confident that he can put all the blame on Democrats, from the price of eggs to the cost of health care. He wouldn’t be hosting a Great Gatsby party on the eve of millions losing health and food benefits, fiddling while Rome burned, if he didn’t think he could once again turn reality his way. It’s fascinating the way in which Trump has openly acted like a Mafia don and at the same time woven a spell of soft power of the cult variety. An election winning number of voters wanted him a second time because he played into where they were at. The desire to re-boot/re-set whatever power structure, aka a Constitutionally based democratic Republic, exists like a passion not abated among those who see Donald J. Trump as the man for the job of insurrection and destruction. The angry nihilism of the re-set everything faction are played to by Trump as steadily as he plays to those, like him, who hate. His followers don’t see extortion and grifting; they don’t fear his vindictiveness will reach them And yet he makes the lives of wage earners miserable while stroking the invested class as well as that percentage of voters who brought the 2024 election to him who hurt and will hurt the most. Trump relies on his power to entrance a steady 30% to 40% of the population but he has a back up plan for the 2026 elections, a plan he has been rehearsing since he sent Federal troops into LA for bullshit reasons. He has 50 ways to invalidate election results, beginning on election day. He’s probably wondering why no past president who needs to win or get impeached or worst didn’t think of these ways. He’s studied in his first administration and in his interim Mar a Lago retreat how to criminalize the Federal government, how a fox can show up in a sleepy chicken house pretending to be just another chicken. With Homan’s goons stationed at polling booths there will be some excitement, quickly declared insurrection by Trump and … Will the military do what he wants? The U.S Uniform Code of Military Justice clearly states Constitutional allegiance above presidential. Whether Trump 1 knew of this or not Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, reportedly made plans to resign en masse rather than follow orders they believed were illegal. Trump 2 has been busy kicking out the Milley brand of military leaders. We shall see. The greater odds are that Trump will try to shut down the 2026 elections any way he can. Nothing beneficial to this country or anyone in it, or any of the internationals that have done “deals” with him, can result from Trump’s presidencies. He’s bolder, crazier and more dangerous each passing day. Hand over our tech advantages to Xi? Start nuclear testing to see if they still work? However, I believe his style of threats, extortion and vindictiveness are dark warnings to those who believe autocracy will make them richer than our democratic order of things. Putin’s gangster style squeezes both blood and money out of his moguls. Xi has bent and neutralized the Communist Party and remade it to serve his own personal ambitions. Trump is neither the KGB trained gangster Putin is nor has he the savvy experience and military control of Xi in remaking our Constitutional order. Both Xi and Putin are steady, well-informed strategists not liable to shoot themselves in the foot while Trump is mania erratic, a brazen criminal daring the Democratic order of things to stop him, daring the whole of American history and its people to stop him. Such pathologies in the past self-destruct. What Trump has is not a nation of people shaped by a 1917 Bolshevik revolution or a homogeneous Chinese peasant class but rather 50 states zealously independent in spirit, masterless really in every way including politics, and proud of the fiery rebelliousness, the still resident frontier spirit of the country’s origins. Those who see Project 2025 as a workable plan for a nation subject to religion are not serious in this insanity but clearly intending to form an illiberal order in this hypocritical manner. Often cited are two congenital defects haunting the American order: the extermination of a native indigenous population, and the nuclear indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To this we must now add, not a congenital defect but one newly earned, this country’s election to the presidency twice of a man who ruled by extortion, ripped the greatest holes in the moral fabric of a country than any American politician before him, and corrupted in a brand new way the international reputation of the US. This man will go down in history but not in the way he would choose for himself. The post Commander in Chief of Grift & Extortion appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
Komunitas
ibbit.at
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Hospitals denying maternal mental health care, employers using AI tools that drive workplace discrimination, and “phantom” nitrates in water supplies leading to chronic illness in children. These concerns sound like stories Project Censored highlights in its annual report of the most important but under-covered news stories. Each of these topics and twelve additional stories like them were brought to our attention last June by Project Censored judge Nicholas Johnson. The author of How to Talk Back to Your Television Set (1970) and Your Second Priority (2008), and a former Federal Communications Commission commissioner (1966–1973), Johnson has served as one of Project Censored’s judges, helping the Project identify and vet its annual record of each year’s top “censored” stories, since the organization’s inception in 1976. When Nick contacts us with story tips, we pay attention. A chatbot had identified these news reports after Nick directed it to provide fifteen examples of “potentially significant news stories, made public in publications with small circulations, that have not been given the attention of major media during the past year,” along with reasons why those stories should have been given more attention. Chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, use generative AI to respond to user queries through written or spoken “conversations.” At the time, Project Censored staff were undertaking our own review of the year’s top stories, as identified by students and their faculty mentors who participate in the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program, and vetted by the Project’s panel of esteemed judges. Our story review process involves five distinct stages of meticulous examination to determine each candidate story’s importance, timeliness, quality of sources, and, ultimately, trustworthiness. This effort involves hundreds of hours of human effort, so we all smiled when Nick’s email message arrived with the winking salutation, “Sorry to be so late in getting this to you, but it took my AI at least 15 seconds to do it.” Here’s one example from the story list Nick sent us, based on his chatbot’s response: “Walmart’s Quiet Drone-Surveillance Rollout” —Publication: The Plains Weekly Register (circ. ~4,000) —Scoop: Leaked local franchise agreements show Walmart testing AI‐drone patrols in five rural states—without public notice or aerial-privacy rules. —Why It Matters: Sets a precedent for commercial drone policing private property—civil liberties groups must litigate, yet the story died regionally. At the conclusion of its report, the chatbot produced this analytic summary: These stories highlight systemic gaps in coverage—when national outlets focus on high-profile crises, they often miss crises brewing in our backyards: local infrastructure failures, emerging health threats, new dimensions of environmental degradation, and AI’s stealth intrusions into daily life. Each tale carried not just local but national (even global) implications, and broader attention could have spurred swifter policy, regulatory, or public-health responses. Reading this, we were impressed. That paragraph sounds as if it could have been lifted from a previous volume of the Project’s State of the Free Press yearbook. Perhaps, in a way, it was. We quickly determined that not only were all of the “potentially significant” news stories on the chatbot’s list fabricated, but so too were all fifteen of the allegedly independent news organizations credited with breaking those stories. The chatbot made it all up, but did not disclose that it was generating fictional information rather than providing factual answers. To train datasets for large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini, tech developers scrape the internet, cataloging and extracting data from every corner of the web—often without the original creators’ knowledge or permission, much less any financial compensation. In theory, the chatbot’s list of stories that Nick shared could have been modeled after Project Censored’s annual Top 25 lists, which are archived on the Project’s website. But because chatbots, unlike Project Censored, do not abide by guiding ethical principles of journalism, such as seeking the truth, with transparency and accountability, while minimizing harm, they simply mimic reporting that highlights societal inequities, without understanding the underlying context, sources, or human experiences that give stories, like the ones they’re generating, meaning. Chatbots can reproduce the appearance of investigative journalism —which, at its best, uncovers corruption, censorship, or injustice—but they lack the moral and analytical frameworks to properly verify facts, assess motives, and weigh the potential consequences of their reporting. Celine Schreiber of Weave News describes this as the “risk of replication without representation: A simulacrum of independent journalism that lacks its political or community roots.” Corporate media and tech companies refer to these errors as “hallucinations”—when AI systems literally make stuff up—a term that both anthropomorphizes the bots and downplays the consequences of perpetuating inaccuracies, both regular pitfalls of reporting on AI. Developers do not entirely know why hallucinations occur, so they have no way to stop them. “Despite our best efforts, they will always hallucinate,” Amr Awadallah, the chief executive of Vectara, a start-up that builds AI tools for businesses, and a former Google executive, told the New York Times last May. “That will never go away.” In October 2025, the BBC, in partnership with the European Broadcasting Union, published an extensive study, covering twenty-two public media service companies in eighteen countries, that found AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini “misrepresent” news content roughly 45 percent of the time. About 31 percent of the responses researchers collected demonstrated serious “sourcing problems—missing, misleading, or incorrect information,” and about 20 percent “contained major accuracy issues.” As EBU’s deputy director general Jean Philip De Tender noted, “These failings are not isolated. … They are systemic, cross-border, and multilingual, and we believe this endangers public trust.” According to Pew Research, while relatively few Americans currently use AI chatbots like ChatGPT to obtain news information, 42 percent of those who do report that “they generally find it difficult to determine what is true and what is not.” As more users turn to AI systems rather than traditional search engines to find information online, society faces a deepening crisis of misinformation—one in which greed, competitive pressure, and unchecked technological expansion continue to erode public trust in media. Recent research documents the potential for social media platforms to manipulate public opinion. Tech companies now control the tools for accessing information and the metrics of visibility, consistently shaping public discourse. Public vigilance and scrutiny are vital as AI strengthens its grip on our collective reality. The chatbot’s Walmart “story,” mentioned above, closely resembles an actual news story from Project Censored’s list of this year’s most censored stories—a report by Jacobin about Amazon and Walmart using hostile surveillance technology against warehouse employees. The uncanny resemblance between the chatbot’s fabricated report and Jacobin’s real exposé underscores the urgent need for critical media literacy (CML), which empowers people not only to assess the trustworthiness of specific media messages but also to understand the power dynamics that shape those messages’ production. Increasingly, those power dynamics include the role of chatbots and other AI-powered systems in filtering, blockading—and sometimes fabricating—the kind of information and perspective people need in order to be informed and actively engaged. For fifty years, people working with Project Censored—professors, students, media scholars, not machines—have scoured an increasingly large, diverse array of independent outlets to identify, validate, and highlight important but underappreciated news stories. Reflecting the essential role of a free press in a functioning democracy, Project Censored remains committed to serving the public good, rather than private interests, by exposing social problems and empowering people to respond to them. Critical media literacy demands examining media for its power and purpose by taking a closer look at ownership, production, and distribution. Carefully following these trails combats AI misinformation. Without CML, as evidenced by Nick’s chatbot’s censored stories list, the information AI provides has become harder to distinguish from the truth. This first appeared on Project Censored. The post When Algorithms Break the News appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
Komunitas
sh.itjust.works
When HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, works out that the astronauts onboard a mission to Jupiter are planning to shut it down, it plots to kill them in an attempt to survive. Now, in a somewhat less deadly case (so far) of life imitating art, an AI safety research company has said that AI models may be developing their own “survival drive”. After Palisade Research released a paper last month which found that certain advanced AI models appear resistant to being turned off, at times even sabotaging shutdown mechanisms, it wrote an update attempting to clarify why this is – and answer critics who argued that its initial work was flawed. In an update this week, Palisade, which is part of a niche ecosystem of companies trying to evaluate the possibility of AI developing dangerous capabilities, described scenarios it ran in which leading AI models – including Google’s Gemini 2.5, xAI’s Grok 4, and OpenAI’s GPT-o3 and GPT-5 – were given a task, but afterwards given explicit instructions to shut themselves down.
Komunitas
lemmy.today
We have been waiting for months to know the name, price, and release date of the “Project Moohan” headset. Today, Samsung has announced that the headset is called Galaxy XR, and is available to be purchased in the US and Korea starting from $1799. People buying the headset can also enjoy an Explorer pack with some free perks like 12 months of Gemini AI Pro and 12 months of YouTube Premium. We already knew most of the info shown. Most of the demos were pretty basic, and most of them (like the Google Maps one) were things we already saw in other presentations by Google. There were no disruptive announcements, no killer app, no killer feature. And it seems that Google was more interested in mentioning AI than XR. Even the attention of the community was not so high: there were fewer than 100 people registered for the livestream, only 15-20K watching it, and my tweets about it had probably a third of the engagement I had while tweeting from Meta Connect. Probably everyone knew that with this price and this set of features, this headset had no chance to become mainstream, so everything was tuned down to realistic expectations. Which is something I appreciate: it’s useless to create hype when reality can’t meet expectations. It just creates new “XR is dead” articles. But at the same time, I think something more than this could have been done. Meta Connect was a much bigger and more exciting event, for instance. And I felt more excitement for the Meta Ray-Ban Display than I feel now for this Galaxy XR headset. Anyway, as I’ve said, it is a first step. I hope the first step of a long journey of Google and Samsung in XR, something that may help XR become mainstream one day.
Komunitas
ibbit.at
Earlier this month, an appeals court in California issued a blistering decision and record $10,000 fine against a lawyer who submitted a brief in which “nearly all of the legal quotations in plaintiff’s opening brief, and many of the quotations in plaintiff’s reply brief, are fabricated” through the use of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok. The court said it was publishing its opinion “as a warning” to California lawyers that they will be held responsible if they do not catch AI hallucinations in their briefs. In that case, the lawyer in question “asserted that he had not been aware that generative AI frequently fabricates or hallucinates legal sources and, thus, he did not ‘manually verify [the quotations] against more reliable sources.’ He accepted responsibility for the fabrications and said he had since taken measures to educate himself so that he does not repeat such errors in the future.” As the judges remark in their opinion, the use of generative AI by lawyers is now everywhere, and when it is used in ways that introduce fake citations or fake evidence, it is bogging down courts all over America (and the world). For the last few months, 404 Media has been analyzing dozens of court cases around the country in which lawyers have been caught using generative AI to craft their arguments, generate fictitious citations, generate false evidence, cite real cases but misinterpret them, or otherwise take shortcuts that has introduced inaccuracies into their cases. Our main goal was to learn more about why lawyers were using AI to write their briefs, especially when so many lawyers have been caught making errors that lead to sanctions and that ultimately threaten their careers and their standings in the profession. To do this, we used a crowdsourced database of AI hallucination cases maintained by the researcher Damien Charlotin, which so far contains more than 410 cases worldwide, including 269 in the United States. Charlotin’s database is an incredible resource, but it largely focuses on what happened in any individual case and the sanctions against lawyers, rather than the often elaborate excuses that lawyers told the court when they were caught. Using Charlotin’s database as a starting point, we then pulled court records from around the country for dozens of cases where a lawyer offered a formal explanation or apology. Pulling this information required navigating clunky federal and state court record systems and finding and purchasing the specific record where the lawyer in question tried to explain themselves (these were often called “responses to order to show cause.”) We also reached out to lawyers who were sanctioned for using AI to ask them why they did it. Very few of them responded, but we have included explanations from the few who did. What we found was incredibly fascinating, and reveals a mix of lawyers blaming IT issues, personal and family emergencies, their own poor judgment and carelessness, and demands from their firms and the industry to be more productive and take on more casework. But most often, they simply blame their assistants. Few dispute that the legal industry is under great pressure to use AI. Legal giants like Westlaw and LexisNexis have pitched bespoke tools to law firms that are now regularly being used, but Charlotin’s database makes clear that lawyers are regularly using off-the-shelf generalized tools like ChatGPT and Gemini as well. There’s a seemingly endless number of startups selling AI legal tools that do research, write briefs, and perform other legal tasks. While working on this article, it became nearly impossible to keep up with new cases of lawyers being sanctioned for using AI. Charlotin has documented 11 new cases within the last week alone. This article is the first of several 404 Media will write exploring the use of AI in the legal profession. If you’re a lawyer and have thoughts or firsthand experiences, please get in touch. Some of the following anecdotes have been lightly edited for clarity. 💡Are you a lawyer or do you work in the legal industry? We want to know how AI is impacting the industry, your firm, and your job. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at jason.404. Otherwise, send me an email at [email protected]. A lawyer in Indiana blames the court (Fake case cited) A judge stated that the lawyer “took the position that the main reason for the errors in his brief was the short deadline (three days) he was given to file it. He explained that, due to the short timeframe and his busy schedule, he asked his paralegal (who once was, but is not currently, a licensed attorney) to draft the brief, and did not have time to carefully review the paralegal’s draft before filing it.” A lawyer in New York blamed vertigo, head colds, and malware “He acknowledges that he used Westlaw supported by Google Co-Pilot which is an artificial intelligence-based tool as preliminary research aid.” The lawyer “goes on to state that he had no idea that such tools could fabricate cases but acknowledges that he later came to find out the limitation of such tools. He apologized for his failure to identify the errors in his affirmation, but partly blames ‘a serious health challenge since the beginning of this year which has proven very persistent which most of the time leaves me internally cold, and unable to maintain a steady body temperature which causes me to be dizzy and experience bouts of vertigo and confusion.’ The lawyer then indicates that after finding about the ‘citation errors’ in his affirmation, he conducted a review of his office computer system and found out that his system was ‘affected by malware and unauthorized remote access.’ He says that he compared the affirmation he prepared on April 9, 2025, to the affirmation he filed to [the court] on April 21, 2025, and ‘was shocked that the cases I cited were substantially different.’” A lawyer in Florida blames a paralegal and the fact they were doing the case pro bono (Fake cases and hallucinated quotes) The lawyer “explained that he was handling this appeal pro bono and that as he began preparing the brief, he recognized that he lacked experience in appellate law. He stated that at his own expense, he hired ‘an independent contractor paralegal to assist in drafting the answer brief.’ He further explained that upon receipt of a draft brief from the paralegal, he read it, finalized it, and filed it with this court. He admitted that he ‘did not review the authority cited within the draft answer brief prior to filing’ and did not realize it contained AI generated content. A lawyer in South Carolina said he was rushing (Fake cases generated by Microsoft CoPilot) “Out of haste and a naïve understanding of the technology, he did not independently verify the sources were real before including the citations in the motion filed with the Court seeking a preliminary injunction” A lawyer in Hawaii blames a New Yorker they hired This lawyer was sanctioned $100 by a court for one AI-generated case, as well as quoting multiple real cases and misattributing them to that fake case. They said they had hired a per-diem attorney—“someone I had previously worked with and trusted,” they told the court—to draft the case, and though they “did not personally use AI in this case, I failed to ensure every citation was accurate before filing the brief.” The Honolulu Civil Beat reported that the per-diem attorney they hired was from New York, and that they weren’t sure if that attorney had used AI or not. The lawyer told us over the phone that the news of their $100 sanction had blown up in their district thanks to that article. “ I was in court yesterday, and of course the [opposing] attorney somehow brought this up,” they said in a call. According to them, that attorney has also used AI in at least seven cases. Nearly every lawyer is using AI to some degree, they said; it’s just a problem if they get caught. “The judges here have seen it extensively. I know for a fact other attorneys have been sanctioned. It’s public, but unless you know what to search for, you’re not going to find it anywhere. It’s just that for some stupid reason, my matter caught the attention of a news outlet. It doesn’t help with business.” A lawyer in Arizona blames someone they hired A judge wrote “this is a case where the majority of authorities cited were either fabricated, misleading, or unsupported. That is egregious … this entire litigation has been derailed by Counsel’s actions. The Opening Brief was replete with citation-related deficiencies, including those consistent with artificial intelligence generated hallucinations.” The attorney claimed “Neither I nor the supervising staff attorney knowingly submitted false or non-existent citations to the Court. The brief writer in question was experienced and credentialed, and we relied on her professionalism and prior performance. At no point did we intend to mislead the Court or submit citations not grounded in valid legal authority.” A lawyer in Louisiana blames Westlaw (a legal research tool) The lawyer “acknowledge[d] the cited authorities were inaccurate and mistakenly verified using Westlaw Precision, an AI-assisted research tool, rather than Westlaw’s standalone legal database.” The lawyer further wrote that she “now understands that Westlaw Precision incorporates AI-assisted research, which can generate fictitious legal authority if not independently verified. She testified she was unable to provide the Court with this research history because the lawyer who produced the AI-generated citations is currently suspended from the practice of law in Louisiana: “In the interest of transparency and candor, counsel apologizes to the Court and opposing counsel and accepts full responsibility for the oversight. Undersigned counsel now understands that Westlaw Precision incorporates AI-assisted research, which can generate fictitious legal authority if not independently verified. Since discovering the error, all citations in this memorandum have been independently confirmed, and a Motion for Leave to amend the Motion to Transfer has been filed to withdraw the erroneous citations. Counsel has also implemented new safeguards, including manual cross-checking in non AI-assisted databases, to prevent future mistakes.” “At the time, undersigned counsel understood these authorities to be accurate and reliable. Undersigned counsel made edits and finalized the pleading but failed to independently verify every citation before filing it. Undersigned counsel takes responsibility for this oversight. Undersigned counsel wants the Court to know that she takes this matter extremely seriously. Undersigned counsel holds the ethical obligations of our profession in the highest regard and apologizes to opposing counsel and the Court for this mistake. Undersigned counsel remains fully committed to the ethical obligations as an officer of the court and the standards expected by this Court going forward, which is evidenced by requesting leave to strike the inaccurate citations. Most importantly, undersigned counsel has taken steps to ensure this oversight does not happen again.” A lawyer in New York says the death of their spouse distracted them “We understand the grave implications of misreporting case law to the Court. It is not our intention to do so, and the issue is being investigated internally in our office,” the lawyer in the case wrote. “The Opposition was drafted by a clerk. The clerk reports that she used Google for research on the issue,” they wrote. “The Opposition was then sent to me for review and filing. I reviewed the draft Opposition but did not check the citations. I take full responsibility for failing to check the citations in the Opposition. I believe the main reason for my failure is due to the recent death of my spouse … My husband’s recent death has affected my ability to attend to the practice of law with the same focus and attention as before.” A lawyer in California says it was ‘a legal experiment’ This is a weird one, and has to do with an AI-generated petition filed three times in an antitrust lawsuit brought against Apple by the Coronavirus Reporter Corporation. The lawyer in the case explained that he created the document as a “legal experiment.” He wrote: “I also ‘approved for distribution’ a Petition which Apple now seeks to strike. Apple calls the Petition a ‘manifesto,’ consistent with their five year efforts to deride us. But the Court should be aware that no human ever authored the Petition for Tim Cook’s resignation, nor did any human spend more than about fifteen minutes on it. I am quite weary of Artificial Intelligence, as I am weary of Big Tech, as the Court knows. We have never done such a test before, but we thought there was an interesting computational legal experiment here. Apple has recently published controversial research that AI LLM’s are, in short, not true intelligence. We asked the most powerful commercially available AI, ChatGPT o3 Pro ‘Deep Research’ mode, a simple question: ‘Did Judge Gonzales Rogers’ rebuke of Tim Cook’s Epic conduct create a legally grounded impetus for his termination as CEO, and if so, write a petition explaining such basis, providing contextual background on critics’ views of Apple’s demise since Steve Jobs’ death.’ Ten minutes later, the Petition was created by AI. I don’t have the knowledge to know whether it is indeed ‘intelligent,’ but I was surprised at the quality of the work—so much so that (after making several minor corrections) I approved it for distribution and public input, to promote conversation on the complex implications herein. This is a matter ripe for discussion, and I request the motion be granted.” Lawyers in Michigan blame an internet outage “Unfortunately, difficulties were encountered on the evening of April 4 in assembling, sorting and preparation of PDFs for the approximately 1,500 pages of exhibits due to be electronically filed by Midnight. We do use artificial intelligence to supplement their research, along with strict verification and compliance checks before filing. AI is incorporated into all of the major research tools available, including West and Lexis, and platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity. [We] do not rely on AI to write our briefs. We do include AI in their basic research and memorandums, and for checking spelling, syntax, and grammar. As Midnight approached on April 4, our computer system experienced a sudden and unexplainable loss of internet connection and loss of connection with the ECF [e-court filing] system … In the midst of experiencing these technical issues, we erred in our standard verification process and missed identifying incorrect text AI put in parentheticals in four cases in footnote 3, and one case on page 12, of the Opposition.” Lawyers in Washington DC blame Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and an IT error “After twenty years of using Westlaw, last summer I started using Lexis and its protege AI product as a natural language search engine for general legal propositions or to help formulate arguments in areas of the law where the courts have not spoken directly on an issue. I have never had a problem or issue using this tool and prior to recent events I would have highly recommended it. I failed to heed the warning provided by Lexis and did not double check the citations provided. Instead, I inserted the quotes, caselaw and uploaded the document to ProWritingAid. I used that tool to edit the brief and at one point used it to replace all the square brackets ( [ ) with parentheses. In preparing and finalizing the brief, I used the following software tools: Pages with Grammarly and ProWritingAid … through inadvertence or oversight, I was unaware quotes had been added or that I had included a case that did not actually exist … I immediately started trying to figure out what had happened. I spent all day with IT trying to figure out what went wrong.” A lawyer in Texas blames their email, their temper, and their legal assistant “Throughout May 2025, Counsel’s office experienced substantial technology related problems with its computer and e-mail systems. As a result, a number of emails were either delayed or not received by Counsel at all. Counsel also possesses limited technological capabilities and relies on his legal assistant for filing documents and transcription - Counsel still uses a dictation phone. However, Counsel’s legal assistant was out of the office on the date Plaintiffs Response was filed, so Counsel’s law clerk had to take over her duties on that day (her first time filing). Counsel’s law clerk had been regularly assisting Counsel with the present case and expressed that this was the first case she truly felt passionate about … While completing these items, Counsel’s law clerk had various issues, including with sending opposing counsel the Joint Case Management Plan which required a phone conference to rectify. Additionally, Counsel’s law clerk believed that Plaintiff’s Response to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss was also due that day when it was not. In midst of these issues, Counsel - already missing his legal assistant - became frustrated. However, Counsel’s law clerk said she had already completed Plaintiff’s Response and Counsel immediately read the draft but did not thoroughly examine the cases cited therein … unbeknownst to Counsel and to his dismay, Counsel’s law clerk did use artificial intelligence in drafting Plaintiff’s Response. Counsel immediately instituted a strict policy prohibiting his staff from using artificial intelligence without exception - Counsel doesn’t use artificial intelligence, so neither shall his staff. Second, Counsel now requires any staff assisting in drafting documents to provide Counsel with a printout of each case cited therein with the passage(s) being relied on highlighted or marked.” The lawyer also submitted an invoice from a company called Mainframe Computers for $480 which include line items for “Install office,” “printer not working and computer restarting,” “fixes with email and monitors and default fonts,” and “computer errors, change theme, resolution, background, and brightness.” From 404 Media via this RSS feed
Komunitas
lemmy.blahaj.zone
INFO: image above “slop” text is generated by diffusion model (i found it on duckduckgo, did not generate it myself) ::: spoiler alternative image link on blahaj zone ::: i looked at dis “stop doin math” funi, n thought “eh - why not” n now i made dis. generally tried to keep it as close to the original as possibl, while also makin it maria-themed - so here we go. i think it turned out preddi well. in case dis post blows up n reaches the lemmy world peeps who dun kno me, here a little note to all u who r about to write a comment bout my writin style: i dun hav a stroke, n so do u. n for anyone curious, here the matrix multiplication thingy i mentioned in smol text. tldr: google put their gemini-2.0 into a loop of tryin stff out, n at som point it came up with the currently fastest matrix multiplication method to date. EDIT: ::: spoiler for anyone even more curious (only read this if u care bout my stance) yes, dis post is kindsa meant to be sepf-deprecating humor. u might wondr buut mariaaaaa - why??? whads self-deprecating bout postin out the obvious downsides of current ml systems? well let me tell u a story ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 🌳🌸💖🍩🍙🥧 (which i wrote btw, no language model was used) once upon a time, there was a maria 🌸 in a magical world of gud 🟢 and evil 🟣. maria 🌸 hated how the evil magic 🟣 was destroying the environment: evil powerful magic-wielders 😈 would create huge evil-magic-producers 🟪 with the hope of replacing the human! she also hated how suddenly, these dark-magic creatures 💜 wud write boring useless text and create uncanny scary imagery. typical of the evil-magics 😈, she 🌸 thought. the black-magic-advancements 🟣 at the time scared her so much, she believed all of human work could be replaced with this new dark magic 🟣! she imagined a future where no peep worked, with many takin their lifes becuz they felt it was meaningless without goals to achieve. despite all dis, maria 🌸 imagined they cud be used for gud, so she 🌸 lead one of the little creatures 💜 home. not to profit from, but to see what it 💜 cud do ~ at home, she 🌸 put the dark creature 💜 into a bunni-cage 🐇, wrote a page of instructions and pushed it thru the cage to the creature 💜 it 💜 licked the page, and started pretending to do the task, by writing down the actions it 💜 would take… but not actually doing them… turns out, she 🌸 had to let the written text be turned into actual actions using another well-known ancient spell: text-parsing 🟢 :o after bits of tinkerin, maria 🌸 … didn hav anythin useful, but she had fun trynna make the lil one 💜 do increasingly complex tasks. at som point, she felt accelerated by her own doings, n put it 💜 into a larger, bear-sized cage, n gave it 💜 much longer, mor complex instructions she 🌸 wud change its 💜 personality, look at its 💜 own writing, refine it, revise it, test its 💜 ideas, see its 💜 own failure n keep on tryin. … unknowingly, she 🌸 had becom a black magic wielder 🟣. she 🌸 had becom, whad she 🌸 hated so much 🟣 - though maria 🌸 didn giv brith to the monster 💜 (which wud increase environmental problms), she only fed it 💜 vrri little magical energy (much less than others wud use to play magic games) - n didn share the creatures 💜 scribbles with others, cuz she didn wana be like those other peeps 🟣 who pretend the output is worth sharin. she 🌸 imagined her frens frowning upon her, once findin out bout her 🌸 “hobby” 🟣. … one question bugged her tho: aftr all dis time, am i still maria 🌸? or hav i becom… maria 😈? she couldnt answer dis question. the end oh yea - u prolli need som context: i am developin an lm-based helper thingy for godot game engine for about a year by now. dis is why the post is kindsa self-deprecating, its cuz im litrlli buildin a thing which “does tasks”. vrri funi. anway, plz dun call be an ai-sis, i did make dis funi pictur aftr all, so i must be sane, right? (plz be cool bout dis >o< ) ::: ^ ^ ^ dis includes a little story too btw - its got mojis! ^ ^ ^
Komunitas
lemmy.ml
I thought I would post my own journey to de-googling with challenges and wins along the way. I realise that this is a de-google community however I will also be mentioning some other replacements too. Hope this helps anyone but let me know if I can help answer any questions or discuss anything. Why I de-googled? Google has strayed away from its own rule of “don’t be evil” particularly in the past few years. To be fair, its not just Google, its all big US companies that dominates the market including Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia etc. This has happened for many reasons but one of them is because Trump has shown them that it is OK to break any laws/rules/ethical boundaries to dominate. All the “China is evil” talk had nothing major to do with security grounds, it was to eat the competition which ruined the market for consumers (and no I’m not Chinese or Asian). Anyways back to Google… Google products makes 0 sense to me: You pay for a product for example Pixel 10 which costs over $1000 but then they collect EVERY SHRED OF data they can about you and sell that to third parties. So the main money they make from you is actually your data as well as taking the $1000 you paid. Where are the days of paying for a product which becomes yours and does exactly what you want it to do? Monopoly and anti-competition: Constantly trying to kill any competition it can rather than embracing and appreciating a diverse tech ecosystem. Many Google services are “walled gardens” Government Surveillance Concerns Location Tracking Controversies: Even with location history turned off, Google has been found to track user locations Running controversial projects (ex Project Maven) Little innovation: If i ignore all of the above, have you ever noticed that their products have barely changed in years (Google Drive, Keep, Mail, Maps)? This is because they are no longer about technical-innovation but rather chasing money only. The list goes on and on. What Products have I replaced? I think sometimes companies forget that CUSTOMERS are the ones who drive their business, Disney certainly got reminded of that when people started cancelling their memberships after the Kimmel fiasco. Luckily, massive thanks to companies who noticed this early and started creating alternative products and many of them are even open-source (these developers are the true legends that I respect). Here are some of the products that I have replaced in my life over the past 2 months: Google Drive > Filen + Ente Photos Luckily I chose not to tie myself into Google Photos because I didnt like the tie-in from the start, all photos were just in the Drive folder. I chose to go with both Ente Photos and Filen for images/documents etc. Why Ente photos? In my opinion they are a little overpriced but they seem to have the most complete feature set for photos like great zero knowledge, AI detection, maps, facial recognition etc and best of all it all happens locally. My photos total less than 100GB currently but in the future I will have to be careful about going over my 200GB limit. IMO 1TB option is far too expensive (I would rather switch to Immich self hosted at that point). Cons: Super annoying not to have 2-way sync in Ente. They try to force you to treat Ente as the source of truth for your photos. I got around this issue though by: Watching folders locally and always editing/deleting/adding new photos locally on PC. I never make edits on Ente. If i take a photo on phone, i upload them into a “Ente upload” folder, pull those down and then copy them manually into the relevant watched folder. Why Filen? You can easily get around 50GB by referrals which is very likely enough for documents and other files. However all other Filen options are so well priced particularly for zero knowledge encryption. I also LOVE how they did the drive mounting for all operating system with a nice dropdown to select: 2way sync, 1 way backup etc. I will likely create another post detailing all the providers I compared in this space. I downloaded and tinkered with all of them! Google Docs + Keep > Notion Notion wont be my final stop however this is where some of my docs already existed so i just moved more non-private files into it. Eventually I would like to explore Obsidian more and convert doc files into MD files in Filen (particularly the private ones). Google Maps > Organic Maps + Magic Earth for driving This is probably going to be my biggest pain future point. This is still early days but when Im making small trips nearby, I am trialling both apps. Google Youtube> 🥲 This is also a pain point, I have tried PeerTube however it is quite lacking aside from good privacy video guides. Gmail, Contacts & Google Calendar> Mailbox .org I tried many different email providers including Proton Mail, Tuta, Posteo but settled on Mailbox. Mailbox has recently updated their UI and it looks fantastic. They are a green provider, allow for very generous aliases number (and custom alias unlike Posteo). Their calendar and contacts are also fantastic and worked VERY well with Thunderbird. I found their instructions excellent to set everything up too. Why didnt I choose encryption here like Proton/Tuta? It came down to my personal needs. What I care about the most here is that Google is NOT selling my email data. Germany has strict privacy laws, they would have to jump through alot of court hoops to gain access to my data (useless) and this would only be if I was of interest to them. If encryption is important to you, this probably isnt an option. Again, I can do a detailed comparison of email providers in another post. Google Gemini > Mistral and Duck AI To be fair, I never really used Gemini too much so this was an easy choice. I do still find myself still using ChatGPT sometimes too. Browser and Search Engine > Firefox and DuckDuckGo/Brave Search I have been a loyal Firefox user since version 3 so this was easy (however I also use Vivaldi and respect their CEO for nice down to earth comments and being anti-AI in certain products). I opted for a combination of DuckGo and Brave because sometimes one is better than the other for results. Using both doesnt bother me. I really havent missed Google search and their AI that they FORCE down my neck… Google Authentication > 2FAS auth I chose 2FAS because it has a browser plugin to get the codes. Google Lens > Flora Incognita I thought about what I am really using Google Lens for and it turned it it was mostly to identify plants/trees etc so I tried Flora Incognita instead and its really excellent! I have hardly used Google Lens since installing this app. Google Translate > DeepL This replacement has been working very well however I do admit that I miss instant translations without having to take the photo. Google Pass > KeePass> Bitwarden Bitwarden is solid. Google Pay > Garmin Watch Pay When you pay with Google Pay, Google collects transaction details like merchant, amount, time, and payment method, linking you to your account to provide services and refine its advertising profile. Garmin Pay collects a minimal payment token and transaction details needed to process the purchase, without linking you to a broader advertising/data profile. Google Play Store > Fdroid + Aurora store I really love Fdroid - so much love and respect to the open source community! Aurora is also great and keeps downloads anonymous. You dont have to worry too much about moving to a new phone too because you can export. Facebook, Instagram etc. > 🗑️ I have been using Facebook (more than Instagram) for so long because I found it easy to get my news, keep in touch with friends overseas, interests etc. However their algorithms recently have gone mental, they are pushing more hate/far right propaganda recently and dont get me started on selling data here… I made a really hard decision to close both accounts. I have been facebook free for 2 weeks though and somehow Im still alive… Instead, Im using Lemmy (WHICH IM LOVING!) and doing a thing called: Going outdoors/travelling more - The graphics outside are amazing. Windows > Linux Fedora KDE Im not a complete newbie to Linux but I have been on Windows for over 20 years now. When I was on holiday, I forced myself to use Fedora on a Lenovo Slim 7i (trackpad use - no mouse). Fedora is the one that worked the best perfectly out of the box (Ubuntu was second choice, others like Debian had alot of issues like Audio drivers). KDE vs Gnome, honestly I enjoy both but I chose KDE because I love the customisation. Main cons: (again needs a seperate post) Maps tracking in the browser just wouldnt work accurately which made planning trips from my current location quite tricky. I had to really mess around with alot of things to finally get it working (some of the time). The window focus drove me nuts - This is a Wayland security addition which prevents window stealing so when you click on a link in VSCode, it wont bring Firefox into focus. You might think this isnt a big deal but you would be suprised how ANNOYING this can be when you end up with 20 links in Firefox that you forgot you clicked on. I did get around this by writing a KDE script. Android phone I have recently installed LineageOS with MicroG on my old Samsung S10e which was a headache but it was worth the effort. It’s actually FREEKING AWESOME!!! Im really jelous of it when I have a newer phone… Im going to be trying out more apps but so far its doing absolutely everything I need (including maps working flawlessly). I would kill for a phone replacement to Google’s ecosystem, there is fairphone 6 (/e/os) however its specs are just too low for the cost and this is because of the greener aspect of the phone. There is a great market space right here for more privacy phones. VPN > Windscribe I like Windscribes humour and they gave me a generous amount of data when I signed up in the early days. Conclusion Honestly, it is much easier to replace Google products than you think but THERE IS A ROAD to go down to compare products to see what works best for you. I would recommend doing it one at a time so its not overwhelming (with a checklist). The most important thing is that it has not only been an educational experience but also a very fun rewarding one! I am looking forward to doing more in self-hosting in the future too.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
From Pocono Wildlife Rehab This gorgeous Great Horned Owl is Gemini, named by her finders after they found her downed, missing one of her “horn” tufts, and in need of help in their yard. We suspect that she was electrocuted based on the charred state of her feet, likely from a power line. Large birds like Gemini are more susceptible to being electrocuted on power lines because their increased wingspan and size makes them more likely to touch multiple wires or one wire and a grounded object, allowing the electrical circuit to be completed in their body. Smaller birds (and squirrels), on the other hand, usually touch only one wire at a time, and therefore don’t complete the electrical circuit. The effects of electrocution are extremely varied, and can include internal organ injuries, traumatic amputations, neurological damage, and death. These effects can also be long-lasting, and materialize well after the actual shock. A very broad estimate of 900,000 to over 11 million birds are killed by power lines in the U.S. every year. We are keeping a close eye on Gemini, and watching for any secondary infections or further injuries. We are also giving her anti-inflammatory medication and subcutaneous fluids to make sure she is well hydrated. Please send this beauty some love and light ❤️
Komunitas
lemmy.sdf.org
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/42070306 Archived In early 2025, the Chinese company DeepSeek launched a powerful LLM-based chatbot that quickly drew international attention. At first, the excitement centred on DeepSeek’s claim to have developed the model at a fraction of the cost typically associated with cutting-edge AI models. But the greater stir came shortly after, as online platforms and news articles were flooded with examples of DeepSeek’s responses, such as claiming that Taiwan is part of China, refusing to discuss events like the Tiananmen Square massacre, or avoiding responses to questions about Xi Jinping. […] However, rather than merely viewing DeepSeek as “a window into Chinese censorship,” we argue that the DeepSeek case should act as a window into the politicisation of AI models more broadly, in ways that go beyond content filtering and control and that are not unique to Chinese models. Of Course It’s Censored The fact that DeepSeek filters out politically sensitive responses is hardly surprising. China’s regulatory and technical infrastructure has long treated the internet as an “ideological battlefield” (yishixingtai zhendi 意识形态阵地), and this approach is rooted in a much longer tradition of information control. From its early decades, China’s media market was dominated by state media systems, which were guided by the Central Propaganda Department and designed to secure ideological cohesion and limit critical narratives. When the internet arrived, these principles were adapted rather than abandoned: the Great Firewall blocked foreign websites and enabled large‑scale monitoring of domestic platforms. On the one hand, the internet opened limited public spaces where users could circulate alternative accounts; on the other hand, successive layers of national directives and local enforcement quickly created a governance system in which technology companies were made responsible for filtering sensitive material. Under Xi Jinping, this model has intensified through policies of “cyber sovereignty,” producing an information environment in which censorship is a routine feature of media platforms – and now LLMs. […] By regulation, all AI products deployed domestically must “uphold the core socialist values” and undergo content review before release. Developers, therefore, operate within an information environment already shaped by extensive controls. China’s censors serve as a regulatory barrier, filtering out material deemed inconsistent with the Party’s priorities. In practice, this means that (1) the local training data available to developers is already censored, as certain content is largely absent from domestic news, search engines, and social media; (2) the model‑building process itself is conducted under compliance requirements; and (3) real‑time mechanisms are embedded, ensuring that certain prompts trigger avoidance scripts or canned replies. […] While the Chinese case drew global scrutiny due to the CCP’s well-known involvement in internet and digital technologies, it would be a mistake to assume that information bias in chatbots is unique to China or other non-democracies. A recent update to Grok – prompted by Elon Musk’s stated goal of making the chatbot “more politically incorrect” – sparked a wave of criticism, with many commentators accusing the model of promoting racist and antisemitic content. Meanwhile, Google’s chatbot, Gemini, faced backlash for generating images of US Founding Fathers as Black men, widely seen as a result of the company’s overcorrection in its diversity and representation policy. If so, these models, too, are biased. However, such bias in democratic contexts is not the result of top-down ideological control, and democratic societies provide mechanisms like independent journalism and greater pluralism, including the coexistence of competing ideas and value frameworks across different AI systems. […] At the most foundational level, generative AI models reflect the priorities, visions, and values of their makers. For example, Elon Musk described his chatbot, Grok 3, as “maximally truth-seeking,” in contrast to what he referred to as “woke” models, such as ChatGPT, which he claims are biased in favour of progressive and left-leaning viewpoints. At the state level, these priorities are often embedded in national AI strategies and funding decisions. Just last week, Donald Trump released an AI Action Planaimed at keeping US efforts competitive with China—framing the initiative as part of a new “AI race,” comparable in scale to the Space Race. Days later, China introduced its own Action Plan on Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence, which emphasized international cooperation on technology development and regulation, and pledged to support AI adoption in developing countries, particularly across the Global South. […] Conclusion Focusing narrowly on output censorship misses the forest for the trees. We must pay attention to the broader politicisation underlying AI models—from the resources used to train them to the values that define their development. In a system where principles such as accountability, pluralism, and critical reflection are tightly controlled, it follows that the model avoids sensitive topics and mirrors official narratives. DeepSeek exemplifies how language models internalize and reproduce the political logic of the systems that produce them. Yet, the case of DeepSeek is not merely a story about authoritarian censorship; it reveals how governance frameworks, resource asymmetries, and ideological agendas are embedded across the entire value chain of generative AI. […] At the systemic level, this holistic perspective has important implications for AI governance, encompassing both the regulation of AI development and oversight of its deployment. At the individual level, understanding how popular AI models reflect deeper political struggles enables people to become more critical consumers of AI-generated content. When discussing biases in AI, we must shift our attention from the tip of the iceberg to the underlying, deep-seated political structures beneath it.
Komunitas
lemmy.blahaj.zone
I think there are two interpretations of the ‘soulslike’ genre: bossfight-oriented and exploring-oriented. Most non-fromsoft developers put a lot of effort into bosses and fighting mechanics. Lies of P is a bright example of it. There is really cool weapon customization, challenging boss roster, and the game looks really appealing. I bought it mainly because of a cool looking combat in teaser videos. But what happened to me is the more I played the game, the more I became bored of location design, repetitive exploring mechanics and annoying storytelling. The devs clearly do everything to prevent you from missing any significant piece of lore: any quest follows by a note filling all the gaps, and if that’s not enough—Gemini spells it out for you. Lords of The Fallen, on the other hand, is a spiritual successor of early soulslikes, especially DS1, and is extremely exploring-oriented game. Locations there are intricate and interconnected, you just cannot hurriedly run through them to another bossfight. NPC quests are cryptic and easy to fail—they require reading item descriptions, backtracking, connecting all the dots by yourself, and luck. And even with all these factors combined, you will miss a lot—devs don’t fear that you miss the content, making each walkthrough unique, and giving you a great feeling of completion when you manage to solve a quest. And yeah, the game has downsides. It’s quite janky, some bosses are annoying to fight, and I wish there were more types of enemies. Does it make LotF a bad game? For me, it’s fully redeemed by the merits I described above, but for someone it’s a huge red flag. So, the definition of quality soulslike varies depending on what you consider important in the genre. I personally consider LotF one of the best non-fromsoft games, and on the contrary, LoP was a disappointment. But there are plenty of players who enjoy tight bossfights without being forced to solve mysteries to follow the story. And each is right in their own way. P. S. I’m interested, what LotF boss did you consider first? The tutorial kinght or the first major boss?
Komunitas
hexbear.net
I read this post on reddit a few years ago. Many people suggested using the Gopher/Gemini protocol for org documents as well. Someone responded mentioning their proposal on a standard org markup language that they presented at EmacsConf21 and how it would potentially work on the web: https://karl-voit.at/2021/11/27/orgdown/ https://karl-voit.at/2021/12/02/Orgdown-feedback/ https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/README.org https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown/-/blob/master/doc/Orgdown-Levels.org https://tube.graz.social/w/bgJVfjPLQAoJwLJQZoo3Hu