Away with Google (and Bing)

nivek

nivek

As Above So Below

Cell networks down nationwide: 911 services across America crash as AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile customers from New York to LA report no service or connection with many phones displaying SOS messages​

At&T, Verizon and T-Mobile users reported early Thursday that they are having network issues nationwide.

The issue has left At&T iPhone users stuck in SOS mode, meaning that users can only make calls to emergency services.

According to DownDetector, the spike in the outages occurred around 4am Eastern time. Service disruptions have been reported in New York, Boston, Washington, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco.

The major cellphone companies have yet make any statement regarding the outages. It's not clear what the cause of the problem is.

Other smaller providers including Boost Mobile, Consumer Cellular and Straight Talk also reported similar outages.

In Erie, Pennsylvania, local 911 operators confirmed the outage saying that it had impacted connections, reports YourErie.

WSB-TV in Atlanta reports that this is the second time in a week that the region's Verizon customers have experienced an outage.

In Orlando, the city's Fox-affiliate confirmed that its reporters in the field were having trouble making contact. While in Tampa, some users told WFLA that their phone service went out as early as 2am.

Customers in New Orleans reported that while calling was impossible, texting appeared to be working.

(More on the link)

.
 
nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
This from the Twitter post below:

"I'm done with Google. I know many good individuals working there, but as a company they've irrevocably lost my trust. I'm "moving out". Here's why: I've been reading Google's Gemini damage control posts. I think they're simply not telling the truth. For one, their text-only product has the same (if not worse) issues. And second, if you know a bit about how these models are built, you know you don't get these "incorrect" answers through one-off innocent mistakes. Gemini's outputs reflect the many, many, FTE-years of labeling efforts, training, fine-tuning, prompt design, QA/verification -- all iteratively guided by the team who built it. You can also be certain that before releasing it, many people have tried the product internally, that many demos were given to senior PMs and VPs, that they all thought it was fine, and that they all ultimately signed off on the release. With that prior, the balance of probabilities is strongly against the outputs being an innocent bug -- as @googlepubpolicy is now trying to spin it: Gemini is a product that functions exactly as designed, and an accurate reflection of the values people who built it.

Those values appear to include a desire to reshape the world in a specific way that is so strong that it allowed the people involved to rationalize to themselves that it's not just acceptable but desirable to train their AI to prioritize ideology ahead of giving user the facts. To revise history, to obfuscate the present, and to outright hide information that doesn't align with the company's (staff's) impression of what is "good". I don't care if some of that ideology may or may not align with your or my thinking about what would make the world a better place: for anyone with a shred of awareness of human history it should be clear how unbelievably irresponsible it is to build a system that aims to become an authoritative compendium of human knowledge (remember Google's mission statement?), but which actually prioritizes ideology over facts. History is littered with many who have tried this sort of moral flexibility "for the greater good"; rather than helping, they typically resulted in decades of setbacks (and tens of millions of victims).

Setting social irresponsibility aside, in a purely business sense, it is beyond stupid to build a product which will explicitly put your company's social agenda before the customer's needs. Think about it: G's Search -- for all its issues -- has been perceived as a good tool, because it focused on providing accurate and useful information. Its mission was aligned with the users' goals ("get me to the correct answer for the stuff I need, and fast!"). That's why we all use(d) it. I always assumed Google's AI efforts would follow the pattern, which would transfer over the user base & lock in another 1-2 decade of dominance.

But they've done the opposite. After Gemini, rather than as a user-centric company, Google will be perceived as an activist organization first -- ready to lie to the user to advance their (staff's) social agenda. That's huge. Would you hire a personal assistant who openly has an unaligned (and secret -- they hide the system prompts) agenda, who you fundamentally can't trust? Who strongly believes they know better than you? Who you suspect will covertly lie to you (directly or through omission) when your interests diverge? Forget the cookies, ads, privacy issues, or YouTube content moderation; Google just made 50%+ of the population run through this scenario and question the trustworthiness of the core business and the people running it. And not at the typical financial ("they're fleecing me!") level, but ideological level ("they hate people like me!"). That'll be hard to reset, IMHO.

What about the future? Take a look at Google's AI Responsibility Principles and ask yourself what would Search look like if the staff who brought you Gemini was tasked to interpret them & rebuild it accordingly? Would you trust that product? Would you use it? Well, with Google's promise to include Gemini everywhere, that's what we'll be getting (https://technologyreview.com/2024/02/08/1087911/googles-gemini-is-now-in-everything-heres-how-you-can-try-it-out/). In this brave new world, every time you run a search you'll be asking yourself "did it tell me the truth, or did it lie, or hide something?". That's lethal for a company built around organizing information.

And that's why, as of this weekend, I've started divorcing my personal life and taking my information out of the Google ecosystem. It will probably take a ~year (having invested in nearly everything, from Search to Pixel to Assistant to more obscure things like Voice), but has to be done. Still, really, really sad..."


View: https://twitter.com/mjuric/status/1761981816125469064


.
 
J Randall Murphy

J Randall Murphy

Trying To Stay Awake
nivek said:
This from the Twitter post below:

"I'm done with Google. I know many good individuals working there, but as a company they've irrevocably lost my trust. I'm "moving out". Here's why: I've been reading Google's Gemini damage control posts. I think they're simply not telling the truth. For one, their text-only product has the same (if not worse) issues. And second, if you know a bit about how these models are built, you know you don't get these "incorrect" answers through one-off innocent mistakes. Gemini's outputs reflect the many, many, FTE-years of labeling efforts, training, fine-tuning, prompt design, QA/verification -- all iteratively guided by the team who built it. You can also be certain that before releasing it, many people have tried the product internally, that many demos were given to senior PMs and VPs, that they all thought it was fine, and that they all ultimately signed off on the release. With that prior, the balance of probabilities is strongly against the outputs being an innocent bug -- as @googlepubpolicy is now trying to spin it: Gemini is a product that functions exactly as designed, and an accurate reflection of the values people who built it.

Those values appear to include a desire to reshape the world in a specific way that is so strong that it allowed the people involved to rationalize to themselves that it's not just acceptable but desirable to train their AI to prioritize ideology ahead of giving user the facts. To revise history, to obfuscate the present, and to outright hide information that doesn't align with the company's (staff's) impression of what is "good". I don't care if some of that ideology may or may not align with your or my thinking about what would make the world a better place: for anyone with a shred of awareness of human history it should be clear how unbelievably irresponsible it is to build a system that aims to become an authoritative compendium of human knowledge (remember Google's mission statement?), but which actually prioritizes ideology over facts. History is littered with many who have tried this sort of moral flexibility "for the greater good"; rather than helping, they typically resulted in decades of setbacks (and tens of millions of victims).

Setting social irresponsibility aside, in a purely business sense, it is beyond stupid to build a product which will explicitly put your company's social agenda before the customer's needs. Think about it: G's Search -- for all its issues -- has been perceived as a good tool, because it focused on providing accurate and useful information. Its mission was aligned with the users' goals ("get me to the correct answer for the stuff I need, and fast!"). That's why we all use(d) it. I always assumed Google's AI efforts would follow the pattern, which would transfer over the user base & lock in another 1-2 decade of dominance.

But they've done the opposite. After Gemini, rather than as a user-centric company, Google will be perceived as an activist organization first -- ready to lie to the user to advance their (staff's) social agenda. That's huge. Would you hire a personal assistant who openly has an unaligned (and secret -- they hide the system prompts) agenda, who you fundamentally can't trust? Who strongly believes they know better than you? Who you suspect will covertly lie to you (directly or through omission) when your interests diverge? Forget the cookies, ads, privacy issues, or YouTube content moderation; Google just made 50%+ of the population run through this scenario and question the trustworthiness of the core business and the people running it. And not at the typical financial ("they're fleecing me!") level, but ideological level ("they hate people like me!"). That'll be hard to reset, IMHO.

What about the future? Take a look at Google's AI Responsibility Principles and ask yourself what would Search look like if the staff who brought you Gemini was tasked to interpret them & rebuild it accordingly? Would you trust that product? Would you use it? Well, with Google's promise to include Gemini everywhere, that's what we'll be getting (https://technologyreview.com/2024/02/08/1087911/googles-gemini-is-now-in-everything-heres-how-you-can-try-it-out/). In this brave new world, every time you run a search you'll be asking yourself "did it tell me the truth, or did it lie, or hide something?". That's lethal for a company built around organizing information.

And that's why, as of this weekend, I've started divorcing my personal life and taking my information out of the Google ecosystem. It will probably take a ~year (having invested in nearly everything, from Search to Pixel to Assistant to more obscure things like Voice), but has to be done. Still, really, really sad..."


View: https://twitter.com/mjuric/status/1761981816125469064
Click to expand...

Very interesting.
For those who wonder what Gemini is: ‎Gemini - chat to supercharge your ideas
 
nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
I have also been using DuckDuckGo for some time now...I will very very rarely use Google search...Soon I will have a Google free mobile phone (Can't wait!)...

...
 
J Randall Murphy

J Randall Murphy

Trying To Stay Awake
nivek said:
I have also been using DuckDuckGo for some time now...I will very very rarely use Google search...Soon I will have a Google free mobile phone (Can't wait!)...

...
Click to expand...
I'm still on Gmail. Sometimes I use Google. I don't own or use a cellphone. My thinking is as follows:
Using a product for the purpose of resistance against the said product is in essence using the said product against itself — to the advantage of the resistance.
For example. knowledge that data from a platform will be used for some sort of propaganda or tracking, can work in favor of a resistance by revealing how such propaganda and tracking manifests itself.
This knowledge can then be used to counter that narrative or to deliver tracking data to the platform that you want it to have.
Therefore having access to such platforms by the resistance can actually be advantageous — when considered in this context.
 
Last edited:
nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
J Randall Murphy said:
I'm still on Gmail.
Click to expand...

I do have a Gmail account I use but it does not have any personal information through it...I've had that account about 20 years now lol...When I go to a Google free phone I will no longer use that Gmail account for much of anything...

...
 
nivek

nivek

As Above So Below

Google has ‘interfered’ with elections 41 times over the last 16 years, Media Research Center says​

Google has been getting away with election interference for at least 16 years, and it is showing no signs of stopping.

MRC Free Speech America researchers compiled 41 times Google was caught interfering in U.S. elections, beginning in 2008, intensifying in 2016 and continuing into 2024. MRC researchers found carefully crafted studies and numerous reports (from 2008 through February 2024) that have consistently demonstrated the tech behemoth’s election meddling.

MRC founder and President Brent Bozell highlighted just how dangerous Google’s election interference is. “Google’s massive and deliberate efforts to interfere in U.S. elections for the past 16 years is unacceptable and the biggest threat to American democracy today,” said Bozell.

Over the years, Google has repeatedly used its power to help push the most liberal candidates to electoral victory while targeting their opponents.

(More on the link)

.
 
Dejan Corovic

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
I just switched off that News thing in Windows. First, its eating processing time on my PC, second its spying on me. It knows all the stuff I read, it knows where I am and what I do. I mean, that's Stalin's and Kim Il Song's wet dream.
 
nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
GLe95vyWQAA7QxM.jpeg

.
 
Dejan Corovic

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
Google now has SkyNet up and running. It works even when an Android phone is off. One can be located with accuracy of few inches even when he's inside a building. This is Pier-to-Pier network, so it doesn't need Internet, and its global, so one can't escape, except to the Moon.


View: https://youtu.be/9xPjIfJI5Jk
 
nivek

nivek

As Above So Below
Dejan Corovic said:
Google now has SkyNet up and running. It works even when an Android phone is off. One can be located with accuracy of few inches even when he's inside a building. This is Pier-to-Pier network, so it doesn't need Internet, and its global, so one can't escape, except to the Moon.


View: https://youtu.be/9xPjIfJI5Jk
Click to expand...


In older model cell phones we could remove the battery, but the new phone models do not allow this...If the battery was removed there could be no location tracking or tracing...

...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top