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#google

47 posts39 participants1 post today

On my usual Monday national network radio tech segment, I'll be briefly discussing the concept of "AI Agents" being pushed by #Google and other Big Tech firms, that represent an enormous escalation in the potential damage these systems can do to users by taking actual actions in browsers on the behalf of users themselves. And of course, the firms are not taking responsibility for potential resulting horrific errors and losses.

It will be interesting to see what Sundar does. No doubt he's sorely tempted to give a million or two to Trump's fascist inauguration. On the other hand, he is sure to know how unpopular this move would be with the vast majority of rank and file Googlers. The bottom line of course is: Does he care about that at all these days, while merrily firing employees and replacing crucial aspects of #Google with mediocre Artificial Stupidity substitutes. The answer to that question seems self-evident, but we can't be 100% certain of his calculus ... yet.

#Google has either dementia or has given up.
Yesterday, when I Googled the Marx Bros, it threw up a photo of actors playing the Marx Bros, and some unrecognisable AI images of Groucho. Today, I asked for a list of famous British actors of the 1970s and this is all it could come up with.

And one other note (for now) about #Google. I still consider Googlers to be both world class technologists and experts in other fields, and I've only very rarely met or dealt with a Googler whom I didn't like. In my own experience, most Google PMs and TPMs are also excellent. It's at the very highest corporate levels -- pretty much the C-suite -- where I personally feel Google has been led more and more deeply astray. Of course, my opinions on this matter to the execs up there about as much as an ant crawling on Godzilla's big toe.

I continue to wish I could turn off the AI Overview bullshit from Google search results. Sometimes I look at it by accident, and there's a risk I'll believe it.

Apparently: A) South Korea is the same length as the entire Korean Peninsula. And also, B) South Korea starts in the middle of the Korean Peninsula. And according to Gemini, both of those things are true at the same time.

#AI#Google#Gemini
Continued thread

This might grind my gears more than it should, but I really don't like the days where I feel like I'm living in a @pluralistic story and the service providers slowly tug on the rug underneath me.

If this is intentional by The #Google, I -really- hope they roll it back.

The margins in the GMeet compositor takes up 800 (~66%) extra horizontal pixels, which might not seem like much on a vertical 4k monitor, but is -really- annoying.

I use #Google meet for meetings in #Firefox, which works well most of the time.

Some meetings, I just watch a presentation, which I tend to attend from my desk. I like to pop the video feed out from the browser and put it as a separate window tile on my screen, removing the margins from the GMeet composer.

Today I found out that this doesn't work anymore. media.ccc.de works, but if I pop the GMeet feed, it just re-attaches to the GMeet composer within seconds.

Anyone else experienced this?