"Notably, O3-MINI, despite being one of the best reasoning models, frequently skipped essential proof steps by labeling them as "trivial", even when their validity was crucial."

A tale of a man on the Internet who caught a cold

Based on a true story

Damn, the fever is down and the cough is easing up, but my nose feels like it's lined with sandpaper. What to do? Look it up!

Duck Duck Go: dry sinuses

>Results: >* (Amazon) Dry Nasal Passage – Deals on Dry Nasal Passage [ad] >* (Thrive Market) Banyan Sinus Nasal Drops – Organic Sinus Remedy [ad] >* (Healthline) Dry Sinuses: Inside Nose, Throat, Symptoms, Headache, and More… >* (Medical News Today) Dry sinuses: Remedies, causes, and how to treat them – Medical… >* (Healthline) 5 Effective Ways to Treat a Dry Nose

Alright, I'll take the bottom Healthline link, the one that doesn't look like it had a stroke.

Full screen popup:

># Please accept our privacy terms >Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse ut sapien iaculis, semper velit in, cursus neque. Donec sit amet commodo purus. Donec pretium mauris vel enim convallis semper. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis vehicula luctus enim. Praesent fermentum enim ut finibus tristique. Cras eleifend nunc quis fermentum molestie. Donec aliquet faucibus mi non volutpat. Cras ex metus, faucibus non volutpat tempor, sodales non sapien. >* ACCEPT AND CONTINUE TO SITE >* mANagE SEttInGS

manage deez nuts

># Privacy settings >Maecenas in leo leo. Duis quis nulla erat. Pellentesque in tellus vel nisi volutpat sagittis. Etiam tempor sit amet velit nec varius. Vivamus id libero commodo, interdum nisi eu, convallis purus. Pellentesque imperdiet metus mauris, non suscipit quam lobortis ac. Sed molestie eu dui et dapibus. >* DISALLOW ALL >* ALLOW ALL AND CONTINUE TO THE SITE

Are you threatening me with good time? Disallow all.

>You’re seeing this version because you disallowed cookies. {Update your privacy settings.}

># Welcome to our ad-free, tracking-free version of Healthline >We detect that you are in one of the member countries of the UK/EU/EEA, which is now subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Unfortunately, a tracking-free version of our full website is currently unavailable in these countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to even further buttfuck the dignity of people in this market. > >While we continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will allow all readers to experience our vampirism content, we are providing you with 10 articles that highlight the breadth and quality of our content, because that's why you're here, right? To read random articles about random medical conditions you didn't fucking ask about? You are on this page because you disallowed the purposes listed in the “How we use your data” section of our Privacy Settings page and don't forget to feel ashamed about it.

Alright, fine, go back. Try the Medical News Today link instead

># Please accept our

Old news, bucko. Manage deez nuts. Disallow all. Oh for the love of…

># Welcome to our ad-free, tracking-free version of Healthline

They're the same fucking site. Alright, maybe this is another of those cases where DDG is easy to SEO game.

Duck Duck Go: dry sinuses !g

I'll just fucking ignore the AI answer before it tells me to eat glue. Oh, the results are the fucking same, but there's a Mayo Clinic in there. I know from experience that one has also cucked itself from the EU. Fine, I'll throw the Healthline link to archive.is

>To verify you're not a robot, please click on tiny pixelated images of fire hydrants for five minutes while an actual robot pretends to know better than you what fire hydrants look like. Doesn't this make you so confident about self-driving cars?

One eternity of downloading later:

># How to treat dry sinuses >Dry sinuses occur when the mucous membranes in your sinuses lack proper moisture. This can lead to dry nasal passages, discomfort, nosebleeds, and similar unpleasant symptoms. >Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur sagittis eros vitae elit vehicula congue. Curabitur pellentesque risus sit amet ipsum vehicula, nec elementum sem iaculis. Mauris fermentum egestas est non tempus. Aenean urna diam, bibendum ac aliquet id, vulputate ut nunc. Ut luctus leo eu lacus consequat vulputate. In consequat augue at cursus tempor. Aenean tristique felis id fermentum tristique. Maecenas fermentum nunc vitae purus efficitur, id malesuada dui elementum. Etiam lobortis viverra turpis eu eleifend. Integer ac efficitur lacus. Nullam rutrum nisl lacus, bibendum maximus turpis vehicula eu. In at turpis lacus. Etiam libero tellus, imperdiet a fringilla non, tincidunt id ligula. Ut sodales convallis mauris sed semper. Nunc laoreet eros eget nulla mollis consectetur. >## What are the symptoms of dry sinuses? >Aliquam sem tellus, interdum non mattis eget, imperdiet nec odio. Duis est mauris, posuere at risus vel, eleifend iaculis tortor. Vivamus in nisi sit amet sapien vestibulum ultricies eu eu ante. Integer eleifend augue mollis, vehicula orci et, condimentum orci. In et ultricies ligula. Praesent vitae lacus neque. Aliquam venenatis aliquam nulla ut dapibus. Integer a ligula a tortor consequat interdum in quis mi. Nam hendrerit mauris vel augue mollis ullamcorper ac ut justo. Curabitur aliquet eros ipsum, sit amet tempus ipsum tincidunt ac. >## What causes dry sinuses? >Ut elementum elementum sapien, et interdum dolor commodo eu. Integer euismod rutrum augue in consectetur. Cras vel ultrices odio, nec congue massa. Proin et congue erat, et feugiat magna. Curabitur blandit vitae ligula sed sollicitudin. Nunc et suscipit quam. Morbi convallis, nisl vel tincidunt tempus, nisi dolor porta tellus, quis rhoncus urna enim vel libero. In iaculis ut elit sed interdum. Aliquam et felis at ante sodales pellentesque non vel diam. Donec consectetur eget metus aliquet gravida. Ut diam ipsum, ornare ac ullamcorper ac, tempus ut tortor. Maecenas dapibus auctor laoreet. Donec varius congue velit, id gravida ex ultricies vitae. Donec scelerisque condimentum erat. Donec auctor lacus sed risus vehicula placerat. >## How are dry sinuses treated? >There are many ways you can treat dry sinuses at home to alleviate discomfort caused by seasonal allergies, irritation from chemicals, or drying from medications or dry air. To get relief, you can: >* place a humidifier in your bedroom at night to keep the air from getting too dry >* stop taking drying medications, such as antihistamines (or ask your doctor or pharmacist to help you choose something with fewer side effects) >* drink plenty of water to stay hydrated get some fresh air if the air in your house is stale or stagnant >* remove as many allergens and irritants from your environment as possible >* irrigate your sinuses with sterile saline using a neti pot or similar product >* use nasal spray to hydrate and lubricate your nasal passages and sinuses >* take a hot shower and inhale the steam >* diffuse essential oils like lavender, peppermint, or lemon for allergies > >In some cases, your doctor might need to recommend treatment for your dry sinuses. Make an appointment with your doctor if you: >* have an autoimmune disorder like Sjögren syndrome >* praesent eget ipsum bibendum turpis blandit vulputate hendrerit quis lorem. >Sed aliquam feugiat bibendum. Pellentesque ornare erat id quam fermentum congue. Proin vitae pretium urna. Nunc tincidunt, lectus id fermentum aliquam, felis justo molestie est, quis viverra erat mauris at nulla. Fusce viverra justo dapibus, venenatis metus at, hendrerit dui. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Fusce eget neque luctus, euismod elit at, finibus erat. Vestibulum semper nunc a enim sagittis tristique. Praesent vestibulum tincidunt ex, eget luctus tortor iaculis et. Maecenas sit amet purus non orci dapibus pellentesque nec vitae lectus.

Alright, take it easy with antihistamines and dig out that nasal spray. Thanks, internet. This definitely needed all these steps to solve.

Edit: archive link to the actual article in case it'll save someone else a couple of minutes

As spotted by @mountainriver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXc9-oD_iFo - video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH39J3rUAmE - video

Now that AI got involved it's on topic for TechTakes I guess. Making a containment thread because there might be a lot to sneer about this.

!Train wreck at Montparnasse Station, at Place de Rennes side (now Place du 18 Juin 1940), Paris, France, 1895.

Boring version of of the main story: https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-5345802

Skynet declares trade war on penguins: https://archive.is/Nn5MC

Reactionary news outlet celebrates 77% drop in stock price by taking everyone else down with them: https://bsky.app/profile/brianmfloyd.bsky.social/post/3lluybov3i22o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7DZZuCi95o - video

my delivery was near perfect on this video, i'm very pleased

Capgemini has polled executives, customer service workers and consumers (but mostly executives) and found out that customer service sucks, and working in customer service sucks even more. Customers apparently want prompt solutions to problems. Customer service personnel feels that they are put in a position to upsell customers. For some reason this makes both sides unhappy.

Solution? Chatbots!

There is some nice rhetorical footwork going on in the report, so it was presumably written by a human. By conflating chatbots and live chat (you know, with someone actually alive) and never once asking whether the chatbots can actually solve the problems with customer service, they come to the conclusion that chatbots must be the answer. After all, lots of the surveyed executives think they will be the answer. And when have executives ever been wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aP1zUUcmjk - video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjgdohQk0IY - video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he0dAvl37BY - video

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

> The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > > Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, happy April Fool's in advance.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJtRz6fL790 - video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsL5ye55VA8 - video

also I have finally cracked mic technique and frankly the video sounds AWESOME, play on headphones for Pivot to ASMR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7m0eFi3EkU - video

So I signed up for a free month of their crap because I wanted to test if it solves novel variants of the river crossing puzzle.

Like this one:

> You have a duck, a carrot, and a potato. You want to transport them across the river using a boat that can take yourself and up to 2 other items. If the duck is left unsupervised, it will run away.

Unsurprisingly, it does not:

https://g.co/gemini/share/a79dc80c5c6c

https://g.co/gemini/share/59b024d0908b

The only 2 new things seem to be that old variants are no longer novel, and that it is no longer limited to producing incorrect solutions - now it can also incorrectly claim that the solution is impossible.

I think chain of thought / reasoning is a fundamentally dishonest technology. At the end of the day, just like older LLMs it requires that someone solved a similar problem (either online or perhaps in a problem solution pair they generated if they do that to augment the training data).

But it outputs quasi reasoning to pretend that it is actually solving the problem live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38T84uF771U - video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJhXihnZm-w - video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADGjb4vITpM - video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wZ-RRGti7U - video

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

> The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > > Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNIA6T0Xnis - video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcjaov88c8I - video, which came out well and I particularly recommend it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l10HJFbrxKE - video

The tech bro hive mind on HN is furiously flagging (i.e., voting into invisibility) any submissions dealing with Tesla, Elon Musk or the kafkaesque US immigration detention situation. Add "/active" to the URL to see.

The site's moderator says it's fine because users are "tired of the repetition". Repetition of what exactly? Attempts to get through the censorship wall?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYZzOZSe6_0 - video

Sorry, no sneer today. I'm tired of this to the point where I'm dreaming up new software licenses.

A trans person no longer felt safe in our community and is no longer developing. In response, at least four different forums full of a range of Linux users and developers (Lemmy #1, Lemmy #2, HN, Phoronix (screenshot)) posted their PII and anti-trans hate.

I don't have any solutions. I'm just so fucking disappointed in my peers and I feel a deep inadequacy at my inability to get these fuckwads to be less callous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBL_tD_x3OA - video, which came out very well

Orange site cites the smartest people in the world when it comes to using chemical weapons against protestors

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

> The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > > Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

https://youtu.be/eEgmF7x-G5o - video

The other day I realised something cursed, and maybe it's obvious but if you didn't think of it either, I now have to further ruin the world for you too.

Do you know how Google took a nosedive some three-four years ago when managers decided that retention matters more for engagement than user success and, as this process continued, all the results are now so vague and corporatey as to make many searches downright unusable? The way that your keywords are now only vague suggestions at best?

And do you know how that downward spiral got even worse after "AI" took off, not only because the Internet is now drowning in signal-shaped noise, not only because of the "AI snippets" that I'm told USA folk are forced to see, but because tech companies have bought into their own scam and started to use "AI" technology internally, with the effect of an overnight qualitative downstep in accuracy, speed, and resource usage?

So. imagine what this all looks like for the people who have substituted the search bar by the "AI" chatbot.

You search something in Google, say, "arrow materials designs Amazonian peoples". You only get fluff articles, clickbait news, videogame wikis, and a ton of identical "AI" noise articles barely connected to the keywords. No depth no details no info. Very frustrating experience.

You ask ChatGPT or Google Gemini or Duck.AI, as if it was a person, as if it had any idea what it's saying: What were the arrows of Amazonian cultures made of? What type of designs did they use? Can you compare arrows from different peoples? How did they change over time, are today's arrows different?

The bot happily responds in a wise, knowledgeable tone, weaving fiction into fact and conjecture into truth. Where it doesn't know something it just makes up an answer-shaped string of words. If you use an academese tone it will respond in a convincing pastiche of a journal article, and even link to references, though if you read the references they don't say what they're claimed to say but who ever checks that? And if you speak like a question-and-answer section it will respond like a geography magazine, and if you ask in a casual tone it will chat like your old buddy; like a succubus it will adapt to what you need it to be, all the while draining all the fluids you need to live.

From your point of view you had a great experience. no irrelevant results, no intrusive suggestion boxes, no spam articles; just you and the wise oracle who answered exactly what you wanted. Sometimes the bot says it doesn't know the answer, but you just ask again with different words ("prompt engineering") and a full answer comes. You compare that experience to the broken search bar. "Wow this is so much better!"

And sure, sometimes you find out an answer was fake, but what did you expect, perfection? It's a new technology and already so impressive, soon¹ they will fix the hallucination problem. It's my own dang fault for being lazy and not double-checking, haha, I'll be more careful next time.² (1: never.) (2: never.)

Imagine growing up with this. You've never even seen search bars that work. From your point of view, "AI" is just superior. You see some cool youtuber you like make a 45min detailed analysis of why "AI" does not and cannot ever work, and you're confused: it's already useful for me, though?

Like saying Marconi the mafia don already helped with my shop, what do you mean extortion? Mr Marconi is already beneficial to me? Why he even protected me from those thugs...

Meanwhile, from the point of view of the souless ghouls at Google? Engagement was atrocious when we had search bars that worked. People click the top result and are off their merry way, already out of the site. The search bar that doesn't work is a great improvement, it makes them hang around and click many more things for several minutes, number go up, ad opportunities, great success. And Gemini? whoa. So much user engagement out of Gemini. And how will Ublock Origin ever manage to block Gemini ads when we start monetising it by subtly recommending this or that product seamlessly within the answer text...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI1ZLKM2t0k - video

Once again, Kevin Roose has written an article. Once again, Kevin Roose has written nonsense, Once again, Kevin Roose has run of of ideas on how to start sentences