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Notes -
Just noticed some obvious botting action on Reddit. I know this is likely common knowledge, but it's still freaky to see it firsthand.
Currently, the top post on all of reddit is this thread complaining about LED Lights on cars: https://old.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/z6wiz7/getting_blinded_any_time_i_drive_after_sunset/
But more interesting are the replies nested under the top two comments. Emphasis mine.
First:
Second:
I only noticed because of the emphatic capitalization of "jack". I thought I was having a deja vu.
Of course, notice the usernames look like they were randomly generated in batch using noun+adjective+4 digits.
I assume these are GPT bots deployed by spammers, scammers, state actors, all the other dregs of society. Or maybe it's less sophisticated than that, considering the identical quotes.
It's deeply worrying as I still find value in Reddit both for general entertainment and specific info finding (like product reviews, or Quora-like research). As automation like this becomes pervasive and impossible to tell apart from actual posting, Reddit will become ever less useful of a platform to me. This might be ok for a few more years, but at some point, I think enough users will demand a platform that uses some sort of real person verification because otherwise everything just becomes advertising and scams. But then there is more impetus to virtue signal given the lack of anonymity. I trust that VCs and entrepreneurs will somehow figure out clever solutions, but until they do, it sure feels helpless to be subject to forces that seem impossible to combat.
OTOH, I almost hit a cyclist when going home today because I didn't see him because all I saw was lights in the darkness.
If the bots manage to get something done about the megawatt floodlights on rich people's cars nowadays, then I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.
My understanding is that it is slightly less about the brightness of the headlights and more about cars getting taller and thus the angle of the headlights isn't quite sufficient to keep them out of your eyes if you drive a car that seats the driver lower to the ground.
Also we don't use Adaptive beam headlights whilst Europe does.
Source is mostly this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=c2J91UG6Fn8
It's actually safer for the driver of such a car since they get visibility further out, but obviously if everyone does this it just leads to everyone being blinded.
I'm in the Netherlands. Southkraut is in Germany, it apparently doesn't help.
No surprise: nothing is going to be sensitive and accurate enough for that to ever work well. The manufacturers don't really even have to care, after all, it's not their customers who are blinded, it's the other guys. And it's always going to err on the side of not dimming, since that's what the customer would want - and on the other hand, thank God for that, imagine driving along and your car turns your headlights off all of a sudden because it has somehow decided someone's coming.
This so-called driver assistance technology never works well. I've never seen any work well. Even the self-canceling turn signals only ever self-cancel when you don't want them to. But that's another rant for another time.
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Aye, I thought I was the only one who's bothered by the proliferation of ever-brighter headlights.
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