Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has one of the clearest stories explaining ‘AI’, the misnomer used to describe the likes of Bing AI and ChatGPT (which, I understand, is French: Chat, j’ai pété translates to ‘Cat, I farted’). Vaughan-Nichols explains that LLMs (large language models) simply rely on statistics, which is why they get things factually wrong. […]
Read More… from ChatGPT and other ‘AI’ aren’t that mysterious, after all
Say what you will about Prince Harry making millions from his book and TV appearances. What if it’s to help fund the destruction of one Keith Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., and save the very fabric of democracy itself in the UK? It’s not going to be cheap, but the dude is out for blood. […]
After years of using the web, I think I know a little about how web spidering works. The web spider hits your home page (provided it knows about it), then proceeds to follow the links on it. Precedence is given to the pages within your site that are linked most, or are top-level: in Lucire’s […]
If Appledystopia is right in its 2020 article, Microsoft loses US$1·5 milliard per annum on Bing. So maybe that explains why it’s worsened so much. Microsoft might well be finding ways to cut its losses, and servers cost money. Pity that none of the Bing clones are saying anything, not even Duck Duck Go’s usually […]
Read More… from Is Microsoft trying to stem its losses from Bing?
I had a chuckle at Marissa Mayer saying that Google results are worse because the web is worse. As I’ve shown with a site:lucire.com search, which is a good one since our site pre-dates Google (just), Google is less capable of providing the relevant pages for a typical search. I know how web spiders work […]
The New York Times’ presence on Bing has plunged back to the thousands—it was 2,723 on August 2 Back in July, I ran site: searches on a small range of websites to see just how bad things had got with Bing. In January, I can report some have gone worse. And back in July […]
Here’s a site I’ve always liked: Techdirt. It’s incredibly influential, and reports on the technology sector. Mike Masnick’s run it for the same length of time as I’ve run Lucire (25 years, and counting). And when it comes to Bing’s index collapse—or whatever you wish to call it—it’s no more pronounced than here (well, at […]
Read More… from This surely makes it blatantly obvious that Bing is near death
‘Chinese Language Week’ has rolled around again, and if you look on Twitter, there are plenty of Chinese New Zealanders (myself included) and our allies miffed about this. And we get the usual trolls come by. First up, it’s not Chinese Language Week. It’s Mandarin Language Week. I have no problem with the promotion of […]
Read More… from The reality of Chinese Language Week for many Chinese New Zealanders
Among all the royal hoop-la, it’s nice to come across this vital 2014 article while on Mastodon. To the scientists who analysed 1,893 poos, and other waste, thank you for your mahi. All right, a couple of remarks about the royal coverage. First, I’ve heard from a legitimate news source, words to […]
I wrote the below in Lucire—even though plenty of publications have covered our monarch’s passing, it still felt right to acknowledge it. After all, she had appeared in Lucire a few times. With the passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday UK time, it would be remiss of this magazine to not mark […]