I do not understand why Google has become so ossified. They must know they're strangling their own business, surely? Do they somehow think they're irreplaceable? That no one will ever build a better search engine? And the best they can come up with is AI-generated search nonsense? As if that's going to help.

Stop trying to make maximum profits for minimum effort, fire whatever useless exec is in charge over there, and get someone who actually wants to fix things before someone eats your lunch, Google!

He may very well sincerely believe everything he's saying, but that doesn't mean it's true. Perhaps he's been lied to, or perhaps he's just crazy. Who knows?

Yeah, I got that, but this was the particular part I was reacting to:

"He continued, “And applied to AI? That’s a terrifying possibility. Terrifying. Not least because as AI systems go into the defense infrastructure, ultimately they’ll be charged with nuclear weapons and if we allow people to say that that’s a separate entity from the person’s whose wielding, programming, putting AI into use, then we’re doomed."

Possibly I misread it.

Excuse me, what? I fervently hope nobody is considering letting an "AI" get anywhere near anything nuclear! Despite whoever happens to be in the White House at any particular time, the upper echelons of the US military seem to be generally sane and smart enough to know that allowing glorified predictive text to control city-destroying superweapons is a bad idea.

AIs aren't anything of the sort. They're not intelligent at all, and we should stop calling them that. It just gives people weird, unrealistic ideas about their capabilities.

I'm still using Reddit for some stuff, but much less than I was. I have no doubt this will fully replace it at some point just as Mastodon has completely replaced Twitter for me.

There's more than that too. Like Pixelfed for images and Funkwhale for music streaming.

Check out this Feditips thread for a bunch of stuff.

That's true, but they'll never be satisfied with just making some profit. There will always be a rapacious desire for infinite profits. If they could find a way to make you watch nothing but ads on there and charge you for it, they would do it. It's only going to get worse.

The navy uses wired controllers to operate periscopes, not wireless ones, and not for anything mission critical. Although I think I remember reading some military drones are or were at one point using controllers because they're easy to train people on, but those are unmanned.

Rogue One has been mentioned. Also Prey. Easily the best Predator movie since the first one.

Over on Mastodon, there are relays you can sub to to help populate things. I don't think there's any such functionality in this corner of the fediverse yet, but it's surely only a matter of time.

Currently binging Justified in preparation for the new one. I haven't fully rewatched it since it first aired, and I'd forgotten just how awesome it is. I feel like it's a show that got lots of critical praise but never really the viewership it deserved and has been somewhat forgotten, which is sad because it's fantastic. So many awesome characters and so much wonderful writing.

Yeah, there was definitely a lot of, "If you don't like it, go back to the bird site" around the time I first signed up to Mastodon. It seems to have fallen off a lot now. It presumably will here too. Even if something has only been around a short while, a culture gets established. There's bound to be some friction when a bunch of new people show up, and some of it will be unpleasant on both sides. Hopefully, things will reach a new equilibrium soon and it's one we can all live with.