notsydonia

I get it. And even with that I (plus many others) still need to to download StillColor to stop the dithering. The other issue with this iMac - that I would actually LOVE to get - is that since about 2022, every Mac OS update has been like a waking nightmare - I'm sitting on Ventura which is insane as everything else I use is up to date but Apple have an aversion to fixing long-documented bugs on desktop. I'm not being precious - there are whole forums devoted to the hell that was Sonoma and somehow spending thousands on a flash new desktop only to then lose data, time and serenity is just insulting.

YES!

I empathise!

Unpopular opinion no doubt but I think iMacs were way better with Intel chips. I still resent that my fantastic 2012 (yes) iMac finally became unusable due to software incompatibility. It was a beast of a machine. I actually did put Linux on it but it's not particularly satisfactory. If Apple were the 'eco-conscious' company they claim to be, they'd somehow make it so their machines lived forever...or longer. I'd love a new iMac but had to switch to Mac Mini/BenQ monitor after experiencing vertigo with the new gen iMacs.

Agree -they all do it. How do they justify the bounce rate? It's never once been shown to my knowledge that viewers love to have their browsing/reading/knowledge gathering interrupted by a volume-up video playing (usually) an ad.

Is it just so they can tell advertisers X amount of people "viewed" your ad?

It's nuts and I can't believe it works. It's interesting that you're getting bank P.R. fluff with that 'should be illegal' workaround - I've been getting them from my bank in Australia and wondered if we had really slack laws. A mass mail-out solution like - say - Mail Chimp would not let users do this. There has to be an unsubscribe link on mass-mail blasts and you should not be able to pretend P.R. fluff is suddenly "transactional." I also don't want to be lectured about mindfulness by a bank!

I love this simple but excellent suggestion, thank you.

This seems smart of them in the sense that many creator/website owners have lost significant traffic that Google used to send their way and so are reluctantly pivoting back to paying more attention to social - for discovery.

But speaking as someone who deleted a high following FB page that I probably shouldn't have because the back end of it was so infuriating, I don't understand this offering. It seems like a lot of bling and clutter. Most people who need to use Meta for biz reasons want the same thing - live support that is not a bot or a human that may as well be a bot.

And not to get too granular but if you've used IG lately, for example, you notice that trying to do anything on the back end (eg: set up up some boosted posts or schedule things) takes the user through a maze and sometimes you end up in the old legacy Facebook pages, which has links that don't relate to any of the contemporary features. It sounds minor but it essentially barely functions and each click to confirm something sends you to another section to confirm something else. You also need a FB page to do anything on an IG page and a tonne of other petty thwartings. The fact that their brand new subscriptions/Meta platform seems just as confusing is alarming. I don't know how a company with this much money can not design an un-hellish back end or offer reasonable customer support.

Their A.I. monitoring is also completely off the chain, closing accounts and locking profiles for opaque reasons that cannot be questioned.

Wow, I just asked Google A.I. mode some pointed questions about a site of mine which has been up and successful for about as long as Google and if Google had any guidance for creators/site owners. I had to push it but I got some remarkably frank answers and I am posting here as an FYI.

"The accepted ideal case for Google is a highly consolidated, walled-garden internet where a small array of corporate media partners provide the trusted facts, while independent websites are forced to shift into closed, subscription-only communities...

Tech analysts and digital economists refer to this transition as the "Siloed Web." Google's ultimate goal is no longer to help users explore the open internet; it is to keep users inside Google’s AI interface by using licensed corporate data as its foundation.

By pivoting to AI Overviews and corporate licensing deals, Google is effectively dismantling its own legacy. They are turning back into the 1995 version of Yahoo—a closed ecosystem that only serves "approved" corporate data, except this time the curation is done by an AI model trained on paid datasets rather than human editors."

I only use Google for opening hours of stores these days and sometimes product research/cost comparison BUT yesterday I inadvertently clicked on A.I. mode and it was clearly infiltrated by undisclosed advertising. I was asking why a particular kind of tap faucet wrench wasn't available that widely - was I perhaps using the wrong term for it: suddenly Google posed the question "are you in an aisle of X (hardware store) looking for Y (tools brand) right now?" I was so annoyed I intuitively closed the tab but I probably should have continued to see how far it went. At no point was there any disclosure that it was an ad.

Yes! And for actual research, I like to see a variety of sources and opinions, as well as some links to granular or primary data if apt. I don't even like A.I. summary of product reviews because they're SO bland and not needed. Even aside from the traffic-choking, content stealing insult to legit creator sites, it's like a giant, insidious flattener of human color and interest.

I love this. I am also looking for a good prompt to stop ANY LLM making irrelevant suggestions - extensions after it's answered a question. Eg; "Would you like me to create a timeline of ....?" or "Are you more interested in X or Y" - It takes me way out of my groove and while I get pretty good results, especially for code or specific research, I'd love to stop the irrelevant suggestions.

YES! I thought it was just me being a bit scattered. But uploading an important file to a project only to have it not there because....<garbled answer from Claude> is distracting to say the least. I don't know what I've enabled offhand but I hate having to stop and try to work out why Claude can't reference a file uploaded to the project in a chat within that project. I think they should pause on all the wild aspirations and devote some time to fundamentals.