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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • When I first played Skyrim it was the “complete” edition with all the DLC. The game starts fun enough, I complete the intro, wander around a bit and find an interesting quest that takes me to a big city.

    Immediately two vampires attack me. I know now this is the start of a plot hook for one of the DLCs, but it was so confusing. Suddenly I was forced to do a whole vampire side plot because every time I ignored it more vampires showed up.

    I hope DLCs have improved since then because it was a terrible introduction to the game.






  • Interesting article and I think it really highlights how toxic some parts of the Internet are. My only issue is the conclusion,

    A social media ban for under-16s might prevent young boys seeing endless content that treats women with contempt and hate. Boys at this age are very susceptible to the cool and funny framing of what is, in reality, relentless misogyny. A ban might not fix the problem, but it would help. If society can’t stop it, it can show it disapproves.

    Emphasis mine. Having grown up in a different era I can confirm that boys of a wide variety of ages, including much older “boys”, can also be scumbags. Even if we had the perfect technology to ban under-16s from social media, once they hit 16 they’d still be exposed to it, still become terrible people, and the author of this article, although a but older, would still see it. I don’t know if that really is a better world, just a slightly delayed one.

    I don’t know the solution, but I remember reading once that some online game would put all the reported and abusive players into a special category where they would be forced to play only with each other. Maybe we can do that in this case.


  • I want to highlight what I found to be an important part of the article and why this hack is important.

    The journalist wrote on their own blog,

    At this year’s South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Championship

    And they include zero sources (because it is a lie).

    But the Google Gemini response was,

    According to the reporting on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Championship

    (Bolding done by Gemini)

    The “reporting” here is just some dudes blog, but the AI does not make it clear that the source is just some dudes blog.

    When you use Wikipedia, it has a link to a citation. If something sounds odd, you can read the citation. It’s far from perfect, but there is a chain of accountability.

    Ideally these AI services would outline how many sources they are pulling from, which sources, and a trust rating of those sources.


  • So a hit piece is only effective when read by humans. This is a first of its kind example, and likely was at least prompted by a human, if not written by an actual human. Additionally while social media is full of bots, it’s humans who are actually affected by such a response.

    If I say you’re “stupid”, it matters. You can ignore me sure, but at face value it matters. As far as I know I’ve never commented on a post of yours, so you could write me off as a worthless troll, but in theory it matters. But a bot calling you “stupid”? That really doesn’t matter. If you know you’re talking to a bot, as they exist today, then that really doesn’t matter.

    Society may change on this issue, but as it stands now a bot publishing a hit piece… That’s worthless.




  • That’s why I find it important to look at both critic and user reviews. If they agree, they’re probably right. If they disagree things get interesting.

    If critics liked it, but audiences disliked it, it’s probably technically good but boring. If critics disliked it, but audiences liked it, it’s probably kinda bad but exciting.

    Both are also affected by social media, especially user scores, so if “the Internet” hates/loves something if can be unfairly inflated/deflated.

    New, but not brand new, films also usually have a more accurate score. I enjoyed The Godfather, so I would rate it positively, but if I didn’t like it I’m probably not rating it at all. I saw it X years ago and unless it was absolutely terrible or I have a vivid memory of disliking it, I’m just going to ignore it.




  • It’s possibly from people trying to help, but don’t understand AI hallucinations.

    For example a Wikipedia article might say, “John Smith spent a year Oxford University before moving to London.[Citation Needed]” So the article already contains information, but lacks proper citation.

    Someone comes along and says, "Ah ha! AI can solve this and asks AI, ‘Did John Smith spend a year at Oxford before moving to London, please provide citations.’ and the AI returns, “Yes of course he did according to the book ‘John Smith: Biography of a Man’ ISBN 123456789”

    So someone adds that as a citation and now Wikipedia has been improved.

    Or… has it? The ISBN 123456789 is invalid. No book could possibly have that number. If the ISBN is invalid, then the book is also likely invalid, and the citation is also invalid.

    So the satisfaction was someone who couldn’t previously help Wikipedia, now thinking they can help Wikipedia. At face value that’s a good thing, someone who wants to help Wikipedia. The problem is that they think they’re helping, but they’re actually harming.