Trying Out Google's Machine Learning Ads

[starshipeleven]

CGPGrey did an excellent video on how much we underestimate the potential strife on the horizon.

Nice video.

One thing he did not fully flesh out imho is the rise of AI directly interacting with humans. He talked of Watson which is a pretty complex and expensive one-of-a-kind thing, but Google Now, Cortana, Siri, the Amazon thing, and others are all AI software that is relatively capable to interact with humans and in a near future can go and replace jobs where human interaction is required (shops, phone calls, and so on) at a fraction of the cost of Watson, which is actually supposed to replace people more higher up.

Although I'm not seeing it as threatening as it might look like. In most cases we are already in a shitty situation because there aren't enough jobs (or enough jobs with a decent pay) because of de-localization and cheap labor from immigrants.
Most of the people at risk of losing their jobs to automation in the near future are also those at risk of losing their jobs to other humans that accept less $$$ for the same job.

And this situation is already taking its toll on developed countries, with low birth rates caused by younger generations not getting anywhere enough money to actually start a family.

So... whatever. As others said: "robots can't take my job if I have no job".

[starshipeleven]

You know, that is an excellent point, Suddenly more things make sense to me. Speaking of human accountability, I wonder what the bureaucracy is going to look like for self driving cars and trucks? Especially commercial trucking... Oh boy, it's coming real soon.

Also boats are in the same category as trains above.
I mean, most commercial cargo ships don't actually have a crew beyond the so-called "skeleton crew" of bridge officers to cover 24/7 and some deckchands for menial tasks that would not be required if you remove all human presence from the ship.
Only times when a human would be required is when they are going into docks or things like that where you need some kind of skill in fine maneuvering, and most commercial shipping is boarded and controlled by a local pilot in these situations already. (with modern technology even this would not be required)

Anyway, if you look at commercial drones laws, it's still bullshit-grade "the drone must remain in line of sight of the operator", which won't get them anywhere.

For cars owned by private citizens you can always blame the people onboard (and outlaw cars running around without passengers), so privately-owned self-driving stuff is fine, albeit a bit retarded (the whole point of a self-driving car is that it can go park its fat ass on its own and come back and take me for a ride, or go fetch stuff from other people I know, and similar)

Currently, the same applies to commercial stuff, you can have a self-driving truck, BUT it must have a driver onboard, for... reasons.

What laws we will see in the future will depend from how strong the lobbies lob for their own interests (we have already many big companies on it), which will depend from how much money they make (or think they can make) with their automated trucks.

[danieru]

Adds seem to be a bit more annoying now. So I guess its working since I notice them more than before. Can't complain though, they aren't very annoying either.

[linuxgeex]

Pretty much all the ads on Phoronix are pay-for-impression: paid simply if they load/visible to the user.

lol well in that case I should write a Stylus sheet for Phoronix that sets ad opacity to 1% and height to 1px... they'd still be 'visible' lol.

I already have one that sets opacity to 20% so that it makes it clear what content is ads and what isn't. This is needed to use the navigation sometimes, as I have routinely gotten ads that mimic the colors and appearance of the [next >] button and have bait & switched me into clicking them a dozen times. I've filled out the formal ad complaints for Google but they kept right on serving them.

[My8th]

I started getting these at the end of forum threads.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PUi0d3GZ1BfnvxD6IV70bfjxcEPUO6ke/view?usp=sharing

[chithanh]

Of course, in continually looking for ways to offset the losses incurred by those blocking ads, Phoronix.com is currently trying out this new technology.

Unfortunately, as the most annoying ads are the highest paying ones, this is done by entering a vicious circle of ever-more annoying ads and people who block them or turn away because they are fed up.

• Inserting ads between forum posts is only ok if this is clearly distinguishable (e.g. by background color) from user content.
• Inserting ads that consume 100% CPU is not ok.
• Floating ads that follow when scrolling and cover content are not ok either. Especially if they cannot be dismissed.

[RavFX]

I don't know if it's related but I got Ads on the forum (mobile version) that overlay posts an repeat x amount of pixel (like each 3-4 post I get a ad overlay that I can't close over peoples post text. To make the forum readable I got to re-install an ad blocker on my phone.

[linuxgeex]

Unfortunately, as the most annoying ads are the highest paying ones, this is done by entering a vicious circle of ever-more annoying ads and people who block them or turn away because they are fed up.

• Inserting ads between forum posts is only ok if this is clearly distinguishable (e.g. by background color) from user content.
• Inserting ads that consume 100% CPU is not ok.
• Floating ads that follow when scrolling and cover content are not ok either. Especially if they cannot be dismissed.

If you are paying attention Michael , maybe you should consider a poll of your users to determine whether removing some ads and certain ad providers, might motivate your visitors to use adblock less. In particular the inline ads above the next page button are super frustrating and are probably the largest motivation for people to turn on adblock for your site.

chithanh, absolutely, ads that pose as content and ads that make my CPU fan scream beg me to turn on adblock for the site in question. Ad services that do either of these things get added to /etc/hosts with 127.0.0.1 as IP.

Extremetech and Tom's Hardware (affiliated) use pseudorandom hostnames to avoid being blocked via /etc/hosts - rather than learn from their mistakes they try harder to ram it down our throats... so they get both scriptsafe and adblock permanently, not just on the odd occasion that I find their ad content too annoying to bear.

They could have kept their revenue if they hadn't been so aggressive. They forgot the first rule of business: Look out for number one, then look out for your customer too.

Phoronix sees Adblock turned on about 25% of the time. I only turn it on when the ads are disruptive. The floating ads are disruptive. The ads near the navigation are disruptive. I've been dismisising them to see if Google's AI is smart enough to learn not to show them. If they don't go away I'll simply write a Stylus rule to hide them, but I'm giving Google a fair chance to behave themselves.

[My8th]

I started whitelisting sites a year ago, I'm attempting to try Google's Ad-blocking feature instead. It's going well so far. Hopefully Mozilla follows with a similar implementation.

[angrypie]

Thanks for your support and understanding and please not use any ad-blocker on this web-site if you wish to see more great and thorough content.

I wish that were true, because I want Phoronix to die.