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What popular product do you think is modern day snakeoil?
  • ML/LLMs applied sensibly is definitely not snake oil.

    Peddling ML/LLMs as AI and saying it will be the biggest paradigm shift ever seen is definitely snake oil and a lot of people just looking to capitalise on the latest fad, just like blockchain, "Big Data" or the metaverse.

    Tech companies were struggling to raise funds in the bearish market that followed the pandemic tech boom. They were desperately looking for something big and shiny to use to persuade investors into loosening their wallets, and they've struck gold with "AI" because it sounds so cool and it can "basically do anything", including replacing loads of staff with bots. Investors are being very easily bamboozled by this. Of course FOMO plays a big role here too.

    I think "AI" is close to its peak of inflated expectations on the Gartner hype cycle curve below and it will take a while for people to wake up to the realisation that the "Bright AI-fuelled Future" they had been sold is nothing more than a thin wrapper around a ChatGPT API with a pretty bow on top.

  • What popular product do you think is modern day snakeoil?
  • I'm not disputing that certain super foods are just marketing but I would also say that almost no food is healthy when consumed in excess.

    "Regular consumption of coconut oil may raise cholesterol levels and is high in saturated fats". How regular are we talking about? Every day? Every week? What amount of oil? A few ml or 3L? And what kind of cholesterol are we talking about here? The good one or the bad one?

    Coconut oil may well be a nutritious, healthy oil when eaten sensibly, just like eating nuts is very good for you but you don't want to eat too much at once because they are very high in calories.

  • Which file system do you recommend for Linux?
  • Btrfs. It was the default filesystem already when I used Fedora on both my personal and work laptops. Not a single problem. It is true I don't really make much use of most of its advanced features like snapshotting, CoW, etc., but I also didn't notice any difference whatsoever in stability compared to ext4 so I'm pretty happy with it as my new default.

  • Atheists of lemmy what is a stereotype about us that is just not true?
  • Not sure about that. It takes a pretty big leap to go from believing in 0 gods to 1. I think the line dividing atheists from theists is a pretty huge rift because they hold opposing views on very fundamental matters like the concept of God itself, how the world came to be, our purpose in life, what happens after we die... I don't think it's something you can quite reduce down to a matter of numbers.

  • Tucker Carlson: Putin takes charge as TV host gives free rein to Kremlin
  • If the nuke comes out, it won't make an ounce of a difference who has more of them: if only each side can manage to land a small handful, everyone is equally and utterly fucked.

    This principle alone is why NATO has not engaged Russia more directly.

  • CIA director: Not passing Ukraine aid would be a mistake 'of historic proportions'
  • I genuinely can't fathom how anyone other than Russia and their buddies can look at this situation and think they're better off not helping Ukraine right now. What do they expect? That Russia will say "Ah, gobbling up Ukraine hit the spot, I'm good now. Thanks guys!" and stop their aggression forever?

    Ukraine is just the first step. Eventually, Russia will gain more power and influence and encroach into more European territories. You have to be either deluded or directly stand to benefit from Russia's invasion to think just because Russia cannot physically invade the US as easily, that the US won't hurt badly because of it. I really don't get it.

  • AI spam is already starting to ruin the internet
  • I rely on Google Search far less now than I used to for this reason. People had already gotten Google SEO down to a science and were poisoning search results very effectively. This AI-generated bullshit is taking it to a whole new level.

    I've decided to use alternative search engines like DDG, SearXNG, etc. hoping their indexing criteria will be different enough current SEO techniques won't affect them as much... For now.

  • Where do you realistically expect the world to be in terms of meeting the 2050 climate goals?

    With evidence mounting on the failure to limit global warming to 1.5C, do you think global carbon emissions will be low enough by 2050 to at least avoid the most catastrophic climate change doomsday scenarios forecast by the turn of the century?

    I am somewhat hopeful most developed countries will get there but I wonder if developing countries will have the ability and inclination to buy into it as well.

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    Liam Mayfair @lemmy.sdf.org
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    Comments 54