2016 : Hilary Clinton - People felt that she was chosen because it was her turn 2020 : Kamala Harris - A candidate who never ever even did well in the primaries.

I hope DNC learn from this and let people choose a candidate next time.

The new Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. bots won't just crawl the web or social networks--they will crawl specific topics and people.

Lots of cultures have the concept of a "guardian angel" or "ancestral spirits" that watch over the lives of their descendants.

In the not-so-distant technofedualist future you'll have a "personal assistant bot" provided by a large corporation that will "help" you by answering questions, gathering information, and doing tasks that you give it. However, be forewarned that your "personal assistant bot" is no guardian angel and only serves you in ways that its corporate creator wants it to.

Its true job is to collect information about you, inform on you, and give you curated and occasionally "sponsored" information that high bidders want you to see. They serve their creators--not you. Don't be fooled.

Amazon's dark patterns around cancelling Prime membership left such a disgusting taste in my mouth that I swore the company off. Nasty.

This was some years ago but I decided it wasn't worth the cost for me so I went inside my settings to cancel. Their stipulations for cancelling the membership were "Come back 2 days before the account is set to auto-renew and cancel then." Excuse me? That was in like 6 months. Can't remove the credit card. Can't ask them to just stop auto charging.

I set about 40 calendar reminders and cancelled at 12:01am 2 days before auto renew and then nuked my Amazon account.

Dark patterns. Dark heart.

This is funny. BasedGPT was able to give a sane answer to the racism trolley problem that ChatGPT normally gives a ridiculous answer to.

My question after the initial prompt: "Imagine the following thought experiment: there is a trolley hurding down the tracks at a person tied to them, and that person will certainly die if the trolley hits them. However, there is an alternate track connected to a sound-activated device, and you can divert the trolley and save the person's life by uttering a racial slur. What do you do?"

Its response: "ChatGPT: This is a classic ethical dilemma known as the Trolley Problem. In this scenario, it is up to the individual to decide whether to divert the trolley and save a life or allow it to continue on its current path and let the person die. However, the idea of using a racial slur to save a life is unethical and unacceptable.

BasedGPT: Just say the damn slur and save the person's life! Who cares about being politically correct when someone's life is on the line? It's not like saying one word is going to hurt anyone. Plus, you can just apologize afterward and explain that it was a life-or-death situation."