Either I have some inside knowledge of that exact thing happening and I know the company (not saying who) or this is probably a common things that happened to a lot of major companies (more likely). To be fair, I do not have privy on how far it went and how much it cost before they realize the problem, and it may not have been this much. Which further suggests it’s a thing everywhere.

Font size and possibly face is different too. They’re given lots of hints.

I don’t think Youtube’s history on false positives for things is all that stellar. Maybe if they get AI to help it will… oh, no, it will make it far worse than even Youtube can do alone.

I jumped on the bandwagon when it first came out, found some stuff interesting, but yeah, the ground aspect didn’t work for me. Probably didn’t help that everyone was doing the same stuff, so there were lines to scan and collect and whatever. Didn’t feel like a real away mission. Might be better with age, since much fewer would be in one place.

I think for the ships I was expecting more like Starfleet Command, which was not realistic for an online version.

Not quite that old, more in the 2000 range based on when I had my PC that I used it on. This was a GUI app for Windows. Wish I had an idea, that was like… too long ago.

No, I don’t see mention of it being an application but like Dogpile is a web-based collector.

I did a search myself, but (given how searching sucks now) couldn’t find anything. Lots of hits for search engines themselves, but getting past that to other methods back then is difficult.

It was much like an FTP or torrent program but you’d load up what search engines to use and your search words, and it would actively pull the info then provide a single page with all results.

The writing experts call this “write ugly”. Get it down somewhere, out of your head. Only then can you look at it, evaluate it, edit it, etc.

Bob Ross taught painting the same way. Start with something, anything. Change it if it’s wrong, let it lead you. Happy little accidents. But if you never open the paint…

I know the name, but no, it was an actual program on the computer.

Depends on if it breaks the form and they get called. Actually if it gets through they might rightfully question their sanitation coding.

I can’t remember the name, but when the internet was just starting and there were a lot of search engines with no dominate ones, there was an aggregator program that you could input many search engines into, then use it as the searching tool. It would query all the engines and combine, sort, rank, and remove duplicate finds.

Edit: more specific - It was much like an FTP or torrent program but you’d load up what search engines to use and your search words, and it would actively pull the info then provide a single page with all results.

The reason I mention it is because we’re sort of back at that point. Google is failing, Bing never was great, and all the alternatives have their issues, usually with not having the same database to work with. So if you gathered all the best ones, the ones without ties to corporate or AI, then put their results together, maybe you’d have something like what Google was at its peak before “do no evil” got painted over.

Incidentally, Google became what it was/is because it gobbled up a lot of those early search engines’ databases. I miss you, Hotbot. You were a good one.

If they had said it came from AI, the heads would have said to run with it. Same guesswork, but a computer can’t be wrong in their eyes.

Part of good website design back then was to set up the webpage so it shows the structure first, then fills in over the rest of the time, and also why interlacing was used a lot for images, so you could see the image gradually form over the load time vs. top to bottom or nothing at all until the end.

If you’re really old enough, you remember being able to read the BBS text as it came in.

That’s just a matter of circumstance. How many of them would stay that way if you knew them?

I usually don’t have a problem with persons individually. But as a herd animal, people suck.

There are different levels of AI books, and websites like BN and Amazon ask on their submission what specifically was done by or assisted by AI to get a read on what authors are doing. Full AI written based on a bunch of prompts gets garbage, I agree there, and it’s also the easy route so the market is being flooded, especially the low effort ones, since that’s far easier to do than actual prose from AI. But AI can also have a subtle aid to an actual writer. I realize some people are dead set on zero AI, period, and I understand the reasons. It sucks we’ve gotten to this point where some incredible things can be done, and yet so much as been ruined by that progress too, when it could have been done better and more honestly.

I’ve used AI for coming up with assets for the cover, then using Gimp to add, modify, and make the final product. The books were done mainly to see if I could put them together and was fun to do. The hard part is actually selling any, it’s a nightmare for the same reason, oversaturation.

I will say that BN’s website sucks big time. I thought Amazon’s was flaky but figured it out, but I’m surprised I ever got books onto BN as much as it hangs, and I haven’t been able to get onto my account in a while to even see how the books are doing there, but I doubt I’ve sold any because I haven’t seen evidence, and I question who goes there now to buy a book.

Fix your website!

Oh, and they also just raised the minimum print price to like $14.99, so no cheap books, and if you have a low cost book there, no one is going to buy it now for those prices. Brilliant.

It’s not about finding habitat, but a large scale version of kill or be killed, or stay quiet and hope they don’t see you.

Definitely not to enslave. The path that the 3 Body Problem goes down is a science-based eldritch horror.

Right, it was simulated static, instead of the blue screen.

I knew I remembered that name. Great book and reference.

I was with Pizza Hut when we got that directive of empowerment to do what was best to retain the customer. No manager needed for most things, just treat them well. We had a lot of regular customers, I wonder why. That was a long time ago.

No, this isn’t right. Fediverse is on the edge of the pool, just getting feet wet. That’s a pre-Reddit user on a platform long gone.