Yet, in a redacted copy of an internal email chain released on Friday, Jim Kolotouros, the vice president of Android Platform Partnerships, wrote: “Chrome exists to serve Google search, and if it cannot do that because it is regulated to be set by the user, the value of users using Chrome goes to almost zero (for me).”
So Chrome’s whole point is bringing users to Google Search… and Google Search’s whole point is Google Ads. I’m Glad I use Firefox.
Dunno about “the last update” or the current state in each region but as far as I know the default search engine in FireFox has varied over the years and has always depended what country you’re in.
Baidu, Yandex and Yahoo are / have been the default in some countries. They made Bing the default for “1%” of users in a bunch of major countries recently to test the waters (and didn’t take it further than that).
Google blocks traffic from Chinese IP addresses as a protest against censorship there, so nobody has Google as the default in that country.
Sadly, not really. Most Democrats and all Republicans would have pushed back on his progressive policies. I don’t know which policies may have squeaked through, but it wouldn’t be enough.
This is the reality I came to. The establishment would have pulled out all the stops, guaranteed. If Bernie couldn’t take North Carolina, he certainly could not take Congress. Facts.
Honestly I don’t think it’s just Google, DDG has been getting worse as well, not quite as bad as Google but still similar issues where the thing I’m looking for is buried under spam sites built to a generic standard with shitty content but spectacular search engine optimization.
And pumping out sites and pages like that is optimal in the current market as it is the best way to get clicks, as supposed to investing in skilled writing, investigation and research.
The problem is that the major search engines have all kind of sat on their behinds about this and actively sold these bad websites assistance in gaming their search engine. The search engines would have to rebuild their search functions to find signs of bad sites and deprioritize them in the list, not just show things that seem relevant. They’ll probably never do this because then they’d hurt the part of their business that is helping shitty sites game the engine.
I say supposed here in place of opposed as “ supposed” implies “a correct course of action”, rather than “an alternative but opposite course of action.”
As an FYI, opposed does not necessarily mean opposite, it can and often means in contrast to or in conflict with. Shades of gray, but either word works fine here.
“as opposed to” is an idiom that just means “in contrast”. You’re creating a contrast between what they’re actually doing as opposed to what they’re supposed to be doing. “As supposed to” doesn’t work as a preposition and doesn’t actually create a contrast on its own.
It’s AI-generated content. Someone is just telling the AI to generate content that will capture X search term. Like free google ads, except instead of configuring target keywords in a system designed to do that, they’re bridging the gap with content designed to capture search traffic.
Because of AI, this is flattened again to a simple config. You could have an adwords-like interface where you’re configuring target keywords and phrases, and then you just click “run” and you have a pile of content designed to connect the dots you configured. Here’s a keyword, here’s a URl. When people search this keyword I want them to end up at this URL. Write me an article that will meet both those criteria.
Maybe this AI shit is like the warp drive in the three-body problem: it feeds off a space filled with well-organized information, but when it’s used, it pollutes that environment with bullshit, rendering future use of that information ecosystem less valuable.
That’s horrifying. Why would a potential life-threatening device be controlled by a smartphone app? What functions could possibly not be handled on the pump itself and need to be offloaded? What FDA crook was paid off to allow such a stupid thing to hit the market?
The problem with this logic is the manufactures have no control over the iPhone update. The article didn’t go into exactly what happened, but it could have been that the device worked fine at launch, but then Apple released an update which caused an issue in the app. Even if it didn’t happen this way I could definitely see it happening. Using an app for critical life sustaining medical devices is like playing Russian Roulette, an update from Google or Apple can put you in the hospital, or worse.
You need an incredibly robust quality management system to even achieve certification (allowing you to place on the market) when creating systems which include life support function, or functions which potentially could kill a user. All potential changes both within and outside of the manufacturers’ control MUST be assessed and constantly monitored so such issues CANNOT arise.
No one should be able to legally place an unsafe app on the market, or legally perform changes to the app without the necessary checks and balances.
Medical device approvals in most countries are definitely not the wild west. Although they are not perfect.
Why does it need a connection to another device in the first place though? Silicon is tiny and cheap; all the logic, sensing, and scheduling could be done inside the pump.
I can see the utility, but there should be at least some critical operability in case the phone or app doesn’t work for whatever reason, to help avoid injuries like these
The same reason you don’t carry a camera, a music player, a phone, etc as separate devices in your pocket. Because it’s wildly inconvenient and super frustrating to swap between them. For diabetics in this case, you generally have two separate companies making the pump and the glucose monitor. So at that point you are carrying a phone around, a monitor for your glucose levels, and a controller for your pump. That’s three devices that you need to keep charged and on your person at all times. Not to mention they are generally not slim and sleek and easy to pocket.
The ability to swap between these from a single device and the mental offload that brings can’t be overstated.
That being said, people that use medical services on their phones should not do OS upgrades until they are notified by their makers to be verified and working and should be heavily tested before any updates go out.
Since it first arose, H5N1 has been identified in a range of species including mink, dolphins, grizzly bears, foxes, and a polar bear.
It’s been especially devastating for marine mammals; in Argentina, bird flu killed 17,400 southern elephant seal pups, roughly 96 percent of all young born in 2023, researchers estimated.
Maybe I am missing something but assertion that the current public health risk is low seems to be based on more or less nothing. Why is the risk low? People are still working among animals some of whom are definitely infected, every day, in messy conditions. The consequences once it figures out how to spread person-to-person will be somewhere from moderate to apocalyptic, and what we're doing right now is clearly just half-measures to delay that happening by a little bit. Why is that low risk?
What matters more for public health risk is virility, and mortality tends to have a negative correlation with virility. In simpler terms, the more deadly it is the worse it is at spreading. It’s not a hard rule but is true more often than not, though I don’t know any details about avian flu. I assume if the CDC has determined the public health risk is low that it’s probably because it’s not particularly virile.
Do you mean transmissibility? I get what you mean, but I've never heard this word used this way. (Virulence is, more or less, the non-fatal version of mortality -- how much damage the disease does -- so not that.)
Be that as it may, once the disease is established in a new species it tends to get less harmful because of exactly what you're talking about -- but plenty of diseases through history have been in the short run both fast-spreading and deadly, especially right after they jump into a new population. Which is exactly what H5N1 is doing right now (on all three counts).
I am going to assume you don’t really understand what it would mean if there was a pandemic with a 10-50% case fatality rate in the modern global economy where it would be on every single continent on earth in a matter of days. I can assure you that housing prices would be the last fucking thing on your mind.
The risk is low because we have not yet detected a variant with the mutations needed to facilitate human to human spread. If we do it will jump from low to extreme very quickly.
"It is okay! The fire is only in the building next door along with the 10-15 others it spread to. Once we've detected it in our building, the risk won't be low anymore, of course."
(Edit: Actually, once it's spreading inside our building the risk won't be low -- we've already detected it in our building a couple of times, but it didn't spread so it's fine.)
It’s kind of terrible now. Since late 2023, when I go to search technical specs of hardware, I am presented with a view that looks like browsing an online shopping catalog. It’s weird and unwanted. For personal use, I went back to DDG.
Things like this are why I think the whole Facebook “encrypted messaging” thing is just a scam to try and look like they respect your privacy. It doesn’t matter if you have the best encryption out there if the doors are wide open for them on either end and they’re keylogging everything you do.
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