Not everyone wants ai for their search tools
TechTakes
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
the wife sent this one to me
buddy slept through ww1+2 (it fits because brits called germans huns in their propaganda), also, roughly 5% of world population
I'll allow it
Not a sneer, but still a damn good piece on AI from Brian Merchant:
The great and justified rage over using AI to automate the arts
(Personal sidenote: Tech's public image is almost certainly gonna take a nosedive as a result of this AI bubble. "We made a machine with the express purpose of putting artists out of business" isn't a business case, its the setup for a shitty teen dystopian novel.)
(Fuck, now I wanna try and predict how the AI bubble bursting will play out...)
AP takes down CF Vance apologia, not asserting things that they cannot evidence (that Vance did not have sexual relations with that couch)
before: https://archive.is/fXiMc after: https://archive.is/j3aot
This is the journalistic integrity we expect of AP News
Crowdstrike offers 10 USD gift cards as apology.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/crowdstrike-offers-a-10-apology-gift-card-to-say-sorry-for-outage/
Those that try to use them find out that Crowdstrike can't even buy gift cards at scale.
Real “Scott’s Tots” energy
Japan supermarket chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in quality service push (South China Morning Post).
Called “Mr Smile”, it was developed by the Japanese technology company InstaVR and is said to be able to accurately rate a shop assistant’s service attitude.
It has also been designed with “game” elements that invite staff to improve their attitude by challenging their scores.
The company said its goal was to “standardise staff members’ smiles and satisfy customers to the maximum”.
Thanks I hate it
Press release here: https://www.aeonretail.jp/pdf/240701R_1.pdf or here: https://www.instavr.co.jp/news/aeon-retail-smile-2024-07-01/ (Lots of big words so I didn't try to read it)
InstaVR's English website here: https://www.instavr.co/
Previous workplace merged with a US company that among other things offered "sentiment analysis" for call centers - the software was supposed to detect if someone was upset or irate. Could be used to help employees deal with irate customers, but could also detect if an employee was rude or stressed. Same software could be used to ensure employees used certain stock phrases like "welcome to InitTech, how may I help you?"
Point is, tech has been used to enforce conformity since well forever.
standardise staff members’ smiles
Completely normal and chill thing to want
What if instead of making robots better we just made interacting with a real person indistinguishable by demanding they conform to arbitrary metrics that the brain-slugs that control our minds think look like genuine human warmth and kindness?
Ayo is this real? It'd be fucking wild if it was real
Like the couch story, this is real.
(No but for real, how would we know? Doubt any of us work at twitter and if we did we prob would be in no position to talk, would not be surprised if it was, and considering they are going after the information with a weird agressiveness (I saw the 'stay informed' thing myself). I think this has a high likelihood of not being false.
E: More things I cannot confirm But very much lol if okta accidentally exposed this information (which makes me more doubtful it is true), first crowdstrike now okta jesus.
so what rhymes with Proton getting into AI grifting? you fucking guessed it
Can't blame this shit on the survey!
I checked, crypto shit was not in any of the top 8 results (top 5 broken out, and they mentioned 3 more, which are surely #6 through #8).
The fuck is happening over there?
I could have “excused” the AI bullshit as “we did it to appease the corporate customers who make us money” but there’s no way you can spin this.
I’m canceling my account. At this point I might just say fuck it and use my Yahoo mail for everything again.
(And this time the Reddit thread is the dumpster fire I’ve been expecting the last one to be lol)
I'm sorry, what's a 1-2-punch, idgi 🤔🤔🤔
(big fat fucking /s ofc)
we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.
further down the page
Proton is not a crypto company. We do not speculate in crypto
so I’ve accidentally been paying shitheads who speculate on crypto to speculate on crypto. I’m kinda angry at myself for not catching this.
more on the nsfw side but this is a kinda interesting finding/use of existing tech
niche because only some types of slop, but still!