Remember That DNA You Gave 23andMe?

No. When did I do that?

I definitely miss the cached pages. I found that I was using the feature very frequently. Maybe it’s just the relative obscurity of some of my hobbies and interests, but a lot of the information online that shows up in search engines seems to come from old forums. Often times those old forums are no longer around or have migrated to new software (obliterating the old URLs and old posts as well).

The conservative folks I talk to always, always, always bring up the price of eggs and the price of gas when they are talking about how bad the economy is these days.

I’ve heard “Groceries have doubled in price.” many times. Obviously I can’t prove that’s not true for them, but then I ask what items that they buy regularly have doubled in price? The answer: “Eggs”.

Okay, so what else, I know that eggs alone do not make up your entire grocery bill? “Everything”. That’s pretty much all I get.

Even if they can tell me a few more things that have doubled in price, it’s basically going to be outliers or things I know for a fact they rarely/never buy. Like when it comes to the eggs, they’ll make claims like “eggs are $10 a dozen”, but when pressed about it, you find out they’re talking about the gourmet premium brand that’s always been way more expensive than the cheap ones and which they’ve never purchased in their entire lives.

Nah, that’s just a cop-out if not an outright strawman.

It’s not surprising here on Lemmy, but on pretty much every other site I’ve ever mentioned issues I’ve had with Amazon, the replies would be filled with people claiming it is the best customer service, that they’ve never had any issues with Amazon at all, and that it must be something I did to cause the problem.

Personally I stopped using Amazon on a regular basis almost a decade ago after it was clear that the company I first started using back in the mid 2000s was irrevocably changed for the worse.

Sort of weird looking by current standards. I don’t know how long it will be before I see one of these. I live in a rural area, and our local USPS seems to use personal vehicles I guess? I don’t really know for sure, but they don’t drive the standard white and blue box that USPS drivers had when I lived in more urban/suburban settings.

I found it interesting that Trump claims if he wins the election, he’ll have the Russia / Ukraine conflict resolved BEFORE he even takes office. I’m paraphrasing there, but that’s how I interpreted what he stated.

If that’s the case, then it seems like he could choose to end the conflict at any time. Why doesn’t he just end it now? Save countless lives. Minimize injuries. Prevent suffering. Save money. I’m sure that’d change some voters’ minds if he did it. Might even win him the election.

Yes, this is a rhetorical question. I have no doubt that he can’t actually end it without basically giving in entirely to Russia.

To make this all about me, me, me: Another part of my childhood is now gone. But I have to say, 93 years of living a good life is something to aspire to! I can only hope I live that long or live half as amazing a life. I can also only hope to have that deep of a voice. DOES IT HELP IF I TYPE IN ALL CAPS TO DEMONSTRATE?

Earlier this year one of my relatives came for an extended visit. We were discussing what we might have for dinner that week and both of us were on board for the same ingredients, such as asparagus. My relative was also happy with the video services I’m currently subscribed to because I have a couple options they don’t have at home, so they were telling me about how they were rewatching some older Harrison Ford movies. And then there’s the age-old (or old age) conversations about our current health issues.

In the following days, my relative kept bringing up the fact that their phone and tablet are listening to our conversations. Proof? After we had the food conversation, their news feed was suddenly filled with asparagus recipes. They were also getting ads for more Harrison Ford content on the service that they don’t subscribe to. And to top it off, they were seeing ads for a prescription my dog takes but that they had never even heard of before our conversation the day or two before. Isn’t it obvious? They’re listening to our conversations.

To me this was easily explainable by Occam’s Razor. All our devices are on the same IP address. After we discussed the asparagus I went online that night and did a search for asparagus recipes. And when we were talking about my dog’s health condition, I used my phone to look up the active ingredient because I couldn’t recall off the top of my head. Plus, when Hulu or whatever random service sees you’re watching a lot of Harrison Ford movies, it makes sense they’d advertise others you might like.

That makes a lot more sense and is a lot less complicated of an explanation than “our devices are always recording our conversations and uploading them to the internet as a basis to send us advertisements”.

Sure it’s technically feasible, but if it were happening, surely they would be a lot more incontrovertible proof than a questionable and likely misinterpreted news source that seems to be more of a “sly” advertisement for a tech solution that the big players aren’t actually using.

I don’t really ever travel with my laptops, at least not to put them in bags. I think the Mac laptops had a known issue with defective batteries, though.

If by quality deli meat you mean “Small flying gnat like insect meat” then I’m really sorry for your town.

It’s true! My last mac cost me nothing because it was provided by my job. And the case popped open after the battery swelled within a year of me getting it, something my personal laptops have never done before.

Technically yes, but didnyoubgo to work to earn money to pay taxes as a child?

No. But technically speaking, ididnbgo to work to earn money to pay taxes as an adult either. So I’m not sure where this line of questioning is going.

I don’t think I got that free trial. Where I live, pretty much everyone pays taxes regardless of their age.

Are you finding that the assistance it provides has gotten worse over time? When I first started using it, it was quite helpful the majority of the time. In truth, it’s still pretty decent with autocomplete, just less consistently good than before. However the chat help has truly gone into decline. The amount of unfounded statements it returns is terrible.

And the latest issue is that I’ve started getting responses where it starts to show me an answer, but then hides the response and gives me an error that the response was filtered by Responsible AI.

Glad I’m not directly paying for it.