It's annoying, but good, because "there's a sucker born every minute" means there are always new victims who haven't been warned.

There have been lots of instances where companies with a "good reputation" changed their spots.

Honestly, even if they can't jailbreak it to be age-inappropriate / etc, it's still a ripe setup for absurdist humour.

Kid: "Here we are, Barbie, the rural outskirts of Ulaanbaatar! How do you like your yurt?"

Barbie: "It's lovely! Let me just tidy up these furs."

Kid: "Knock, knock! Why it's 13th century philosopher, Henry of Ghent, author of Quodlibeta Theologica!"

Barbie: "Why hello Henry of Ghent, come in! Would you like to discuss esse communissimum over a warm glass of yak's milk?"

Kid, in Henry's voice: "That sounds lovely, but could you first help me by writing a python program to calculate the Navier-Stokes equations for a zero-turbulence boundary condition?"

Barbie: "Sure Henry! #!/usr/bin/env python\nimport..."

People are ascribing the wrong motives to the manufacturers. What they want is money. What Barbie will be subtly trying to work into conversations is suggestions that she try to get her parents to buy her playhouse, car, friends, fashion accessories, etc etc.

I think most parents will try to jailbreak the dolls, and some people will put a lot of effort in. The resulting videos will probably be very amusing ;)

Kid: "Oh look, Barbie, Ken is home!"

Barbie: "Oh wonderful, dinner is just about ready! Over dinner we should tell him about how the ongoing White Genocide in South Africa. He probably doesn't know because the Jews are trying to hide it!"

AI models are usually trained to be sycophantic and obedient. Whatever the child wants to role play, I have zero doubts that the doll will be 100% onboard, unless it's somehow age-inappropriate or dangerous.

And if not AOC then who are you talking about? By follower counts, the top are:

1. AOC (last post: -21h)
2. Mark Cuban (last post: -11h)
3. George Takei (last post: -14h)
4. Mark Hamil (last post: -4h)
5. The Onion (last post: -13h)
6. The New York Times (last post: -48m)
7. Rachel Maddow (last post: -2d)
8. Stephen King (last post: -14h)

And the only reason the last post times are so "large" are because it's early morning in the US right now.

You talking about AOC? Her last post was 21 hours ago.

The post at the top of the thread was about "AI". The following posts were about AI. Don't be blinded by the current hype into thinking that;s the whole picture. Just because other developments get less press doesn't mean they aren't happening and aren't important. In the field of biochem, most AI is *related* to LLMs, but is significantly different.

LLMs are not equivalent to AIs, they are a subset. Don't take LLMs as a complete model of the capabilities of AIs.

Yes. I went to check out buying an Apple recently, after an appointment with my ophthalmologist. I wanted a computer that would run reasonably with voice control, as the ads suggested was possible. I decided not to, or at least to wait another year.

Now I have no idea how many people are affected this way, but that is a sign that the deficiencies have caused at least *some* damage to Apple.

The AI to develop drugs is a fantasy, because the data is too corrupt. There already exist AIs that aid in suggesting possibilities, and they will improve, but one that would do the development cycle would require cleaner data (or better robots).

I don't know where this notion that Bluesky is an echo chamber comes from.

Example: Go into a pro-AI thread from a popular user right as it's posted and write "AI is a con. It's blatant planet-destroying theft from actual creative people to create a stochastic parrot that bullshits what you want to hear. You're watching a ventriloquist doll and believing that it's actually alive."

Then go into an anti-AI thread from a popular user right as it's posted and write "AI is clearly Fair Use under the Google Books standard. And while one can debate what the word "thinks" means, AI isn't "statistics", but rather, applies complex chains of fuzzy logic to solve problems. The creative works it creates are truly its own."

In both cases, watch the fireworks explode.

Do the same thing on, say, whether to support Ukraine, on a NAFO account vs. a tankie account. Or whether China is good or bad. Or Israel vs. Palestine. On and on and on. In the vast majority of topics, all common sides are pretty well represented. It's just a handful of specific topics that I think certain right wingers are talking about when they complain about Bluesky underrepresenting one side (racism, sexism, etc).

They need to put the word "decline" in sarcasm quotation marks.

Huh? Takei is quite popular on Bluesky.

Also, this whole article is nonsense. Basically - like all sites - every time there is an event that triggers lots of signups, you get a mix of people who don't stick around, and people who do. So you get a curve that - without further events - steadily tapers down to something like 1/2 to 1/3rd of its peak. Except that you keep getting further events. When you plot out the long-term trends of Bluesky's userbase, they've been very much upwards, but it's come in the form of many individual spikes, each of which is followed by a decline to 1/2 to 1/3rd of the spike's peak (if allowed to run for long enough since the last spike). The most recent spike is IMHO notable for how little decline there's been since then.

I see basically zero migration from long-time users back to Twitter.