Latest news with #reddit.com
Buzz Feed
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Gen Z Is Being Weird About Answering The Phone, And Other Things The Internet Talked About This Week
What you're about to read is an issue of the Only Good Internet newsletter, which brings you the funniest, weirdest, and most interesting content from around the internet, no doomscrolling required. Subscribe here and you'll get the web's best stuff in your inbox every week! BuzzFeed Welcome to Only Good Internet, where I give you a little bit of good internet content, as a treat. I want to talk to my fellow millennials for a bit, here (Gen X, you too). Because I came across this tweet this week: …That Gen Z answers the phone and doesn't say anything. Apparently, this is a thing: Zoomers will answer the phone and, instead of saying 'hello,' they'll wait there silently for the person calling to speak first. Now, as a millennial, my first thought was, 'What the f***?' But after reading some replies from Gen Z, it started to make more sense…a lot of them are concerned about spam calls (which, let's be honest, are like 90% of the calls we get these days) and how the bot on the other end is waiting for you to say 'hello' so that it knows there's a real person at this phone number, and it can therefore keep spam-calling you. There were also some concerns from Zoomers about AI stealing your voice with these calls and using it to scam your relatives. Obviously, the only way to fight back is to use a voice changer — you know, like in Scream — to answer your calls. Throw off the bots, terrify your friends, win-win. This is the cutest dang thing I've seen in a while: 'Sir, there's a situation on platform 2!' 'Don't tell me…' u/liberty4now / Via 'Yes, sir, it's a Level 5.' I always like to finish every week by leaving you with a little something that I can't get out of my head. This week, it's all about this thought:
Buzz Feed
09-07-2025
- General
- Buzz Feed
"McDonald's Should Be Embarrassed": 53 Infuriating Shrinkflation Photos That Prove We're All Getting Ripped Off
1. This has to be a joke, right? 2. I hate that this photo made me crave McDonald's. I guess I'd better order four large fries to get an actual large fry! 3. This is a disgrace. 4. Speaking of McDonald's, this is what their McChicken patty looks like now. 5. Oreos have completely gone downhill. 6. Childhood nostalgia is dead. 7. I guess I'm done with KFC. 8. Et tu, Popeye's? 9. To be fair to Taco Bell, I don't know that people really need that much soda, but still, this feels like a scam. 10. I swear this problem gets worse every year. 11. Oh, so they're just straight-up lying now. 12. They got Pringles, too. :( 13. LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO MY BOY!!!! 14. Pop Tarts are getting smaller, too! 15. They even got Swiss Cakes, my favorite childhood treat. 16. This is not the Happy Meal I remember. 17. More like "made with M&M." 18. Is this how big McDonald's burgers are now??? 19. This is a sad excuse for a popsicle. 20. Same with this one. 21. They're just trying to trick us at this point! 22. Because I love eating my candy in literally one small bite. 24. Not Five Guys, too! :((( u/ripndipp / Via 25. We must storm the Lunchables factory and locate all the missing protein!!! WE RIDE AT DAWN! Kraft-Heinz / u/ParaClaw / Via 26. No more candy in Lunchables. :( u/Swimming-Thing-9873 / Via 27. What a deal! Pay a dollar more for 3oz less product! u/RadioWhispers / Via 28. In a few years, there'll just be half a bar in a box. u/Twitchris / Via 29. Why make the box that big if the actual product is so much smaller? u/rdh_3000 / Via 30. How is this legal? SturmgeistX / Via 31. It SHOULD be illegal for this snack pack to come with *this* many crackers, IMO. u/DigitalSundialClock / Via 32. A 34% increase? In this economy? No thanks. u/Mellanderthist / Via 33. How are they even still calling this a $5 meal? u/casey_the_evil_snail / Via 34. How are you even supposed to fit an egg on this? u/brentis / Via 35. Share size? Yeah, this snack's gonna be sharing space in my stomach with a second pack. u/sukonetei / Via 36. I'm gonna start checking my deodorant after this, because I feel like it runs out unusually fast. u/I-I2O / Via 37. Full, my ass. u/RaphaTlr / Via 38. What is the one on the left, string cheese for ants? u/Adorable-Cookie-733 / Via 39. Ah, the ol' water-it-down, sell-it-for-more trick. u/Sim14CH / Via 40. Look on the bright side — with the economy the way it is, maybe you'll only be able to buy two or three presents. :( u/Denelo / Via 41. For the same price, of course. u/ageric / Via 42. Great, another product decrease with a price increase. u/urbanachiever1012 / Via 43. I'm no good at math, but that's gotta be at least a 1/4 decrease! u/Perfect_Tension_3611 / Via 44. I TRUSTED YOU, Oreos! u/ThatDerpiousGuy / Via 45. They totally did this bottle redesign to hide that it has less product, IMO. u/sockpenis / Via 46. Packaged foods just loveee to leave extra space. u/lt2362 / Via 47. When will the lies end? u/mikieballz / Via 48. Caught mid-shrinkflation! u/gotshmam / Via 49. Every year, it gets worse. :( u/Xxambersky89 / Via 50. They really thought we wouldn't notice! u/dspyk77 / Via 51. But we see all!!! u/ThrownOffAwy / Via 52. CONSTANT VIGILANCE! They'll hit you in the places you least expect. u/kjacmuse / Via 53. And forget what they took from us. u/deepscroll / Via
Tom's Guide
09-07-2025
- Tom's Guide
AI slop is killing search results — here's how to stop it
If you've noticed your Google searches getting worse lately, you're not imagining things. Whether you're looking for the best travel gear, a banana bread recipe or how to fix your Wi-Fi, you're likely wading through a sea of vague, repetitive, AI-generated content. Welcome to the era of AI slop that's quietly polluting the internet. AI slop refers to low-quality, mass-produced content generated by artificial intelligence. Unlike Claude's AI-generated blog, AI slop is often published with minimal or no human editing. These posts are typically filled with robotic phrasing, recycled phrasing and surface-level information that clog actual search results you may be seeing AI slop without even realizing it, but you can recognize the blog articles that feel oddly stiff, reviews that don't offer any real insights or listicles that read like they were written by a machine (because they were). In many cases, these posts cite ChatGPT or other AI models as sources, or worse, they cite each other in a loop of low-value content. Because they're optimized to game search algorithms, AI slop floods the top of search results. And it's spreading fast. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. There are a few reasons AI slop is taking over your search results. First, it's profitable. Even if only a small percentage of people click on these articles or purchase something from affiliate links, the sheer volume makes the strategy worth it for publishers. Second, it scales infinitely. One person using AI tools can generate hundreds of articles in a single day; no editorial team required. Finally, search engines can't keep up. Platforms like Google are constantly adjusting their algorithms to detect low-quality content, but AI is evolving faster. As models like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini become more capable, the line between passable and polished gets blurrier, and the slop gets harder to detect. This surge in AI-generated content is actively undermining how we make decisions, solve problems and learn online. Trust is eroding as search results increasingly feel generic or suspicious. Even basic questions now return shallow answers that leave users more confused than informed. Human creators are also paying the price. Valuable, original content from real writers often gets buried beneath a flood of AI-generated filler. And for users, the cost is time: having to click through five or six unhelpful pages just to find one good answer is frustrating, and frankly exhausting. Until search engines catch up, there are simple tricks you can use to find better, more human-written information. One of the most effective methods is to use search operators, which are special phrases you can add to your Google search to narrow the results. For example, if you're looking for genuine product reviews or personal experiences, you can add: site: to your search. This tells Google to only show results from Reddit, where real people are sharing firsthand opinions. Let's say you want recommendations for running shoes. Instead of typing: Try: You can do the same with other trusted sites, too, like Reddit. This will give you Reddit threads and comments, real conversations, not generic blog posts written by an AI or SEO team. These small tweaks help you bypass the 'AI slop' and surface content that's more likely to be helpful, opinionated, and written by actual humans. It also helps to filter results by date. Since many AI content farms push out evergreen content with no timestamps, limiting your search to the 'Past Month' or 'Past Year' can surface more relevant, fresher content. You can also try alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo, or which often emphasize transparency and quality over quantity. What once felt like a place for useful information, is starting to feel more like a junk drawer. If we want to fix the problem at scale, platforms need to act. That starts with penalizing low-effort, AI-generated content and rewarding original reporting and expert insight. AI-generated articles should be clearly labeled, and search engines should elevate content created by verified humans, especially when it comes to advice, reviews and news. As it stands, platforms are still playing catch-up. But if they want users to keep trusting them, they need to stop rewarding volume and start rewarding value. Use site-specific queries, filter by date and stick to trusted sources. Ironically, some of the best AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude may actually be more helpful than what search engines serve up. These chatbots can summarize research, answer specific questions, or help you cut through noise. Just be sure to verify anything they generate; AI slop can happen inside a chatbot, too. The cleanest, most helpful information is still out there, you just have to be more intentional about how you search.
Cedar News
07-07-2025
- Cedar News
WATCH: New video shows the shootout in Grays Ferry area in Philadelphia
Police have released new surveillance footage capturing the intense gunfire exchange near a Chinese takeout on 27th and Dickinson Streets last night. The rapid-fire shootout erupted around 10:30 p.m., with multiple masked gunmen exiting a dark SUV—likely a Jeep Grand Cherokee—to open fire at the restaurant. At least 3 people were killed and 10 others injured in the attack, according to local reports. WATCH: New video shows the shootout in Grays Ferry area in Philadelphia — Lebanon Post (@lebanonpost) July 7, 2025 Multiple angles in the video show gunmen unleashing dozens of shots from both inside and outside the restaurant. Victims—ranging in age—were struck in the legs, arms, and core; they were taken to hospitals in police vehicles and private cars. The shooters fled in a dark Jeep Grand Cherokee suspected to have been used as a getaway vehicle. What we know so far: 📍 Event: Shootout in Grays Ferry, South Philadelphia 🕤 Time: Around 10:30 p.m. last night ⚠️ Casualties: 3 confirmed dead, at least 10 wounded 🚗 Vehicle: Dark Jeep Grand Cherokee used by suspects 🚨 Status: Video evidence released; investigation ongoing Police are actively seeking information from the public to identify the gunmen and locate the vehicle. If you have any tips, please contact the Philadelphia Shooting Investigation Group at 215‑686‑8271 or submit anonymously via 215‑686‑TIPS. Context on Grays Ferry: This area of South Philadelphia has experienced several violent incidents in recent years, but last night's events mark one of the deadliest in recent memory.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Analyst sends Alphabet warning amid major market shakeup
Analyst sends Alphabet warning amid major market shakeup originally appeared on TheStreet. Do you trust Google? Would Google lie to you? I just "googled" pizza. Now lying hidden behind the tools section is what used to be front and center: a ridiculous estimate of 2,030,000,000 search results. I clicked on the last page of search results, and voilà, it now says: Page 18 of about 179 results. What a lie. But if you are making an estimate it is OK. You can estimate whatever you want. All's fair in love and war, and business I what about the measly 179 pages it found? Am I living the Truman Show? I guess my island is just a little bit bigger than Truman's, and that is why I got 179 results. I hope you will agree that it is extremely improbable that there are only 179 web pages containing word pizza on the internet. We all trust Google. We have to. There is no better search engine available yet, sadly. We are all stuck inside these hideous bubbles. Little prison islands. Things are changing and not for the better. Many people now do their searches with in the search query, to find the information they are looking for on Reddit. They are replacing one bubble with another. When Google launched the artificial intelligence overview feature last year, it quickly turned into a scandal. AI was giving "amazing" advice to people, like telling them to use glue to stick cheese to pizza. Eating rocks is fine, as long as you stick with one a day. The problems were quickly patched, but the issue is that the number of potentially dangerous hallucinations is infinite. You have to keep patching the damned thing ad infinitum. Does that sound like a good and viable plan to you? In their National AI Opinion Monitor: AI trust and knowledge in America, Katherine Ognyanova, and Vivek Singh from Rutgers University, write: "Americans across all demographic groups trust information produced by mainstream media journalists more than AI-generated information. Overall, 62% trust journalistic content 'some' or 'a lot', compared to 48% who trust AI content."This statistic tells me that people have a short memory, and that the previously mentioned incident is now ancient history. Google is faced with a new kind of competition, which now doesn't have to crawl the "whole" internet to provide search results. The agentic AI era has led us to internet scraping of a lesser scale being able to provide the answers to user's queries in the form of chatbots. For some users (perhaps the 48% mentioned before) these answers are good enough. The company is pushed into providing the same service. But there is a negative side effect that will slowly unravel. More Tech Stocks: Amazon tries to make AI great again (or maybe for the first time) Veteran portfolio manager raises eyebrows with latest Meta Platforms move Google plans major AI shift after Meta's surprising $14 billion move AI powered search services are causing "zero-click" searches. Users get their answers directly on the search page, they don't need to visit any website. Websites that create valuable content get less traffic. This will result in fewer websites offering good content, and in turn, make the search worse. That is the serpent eating its tail. Bank of America analysts, Justin Post and Nitin Bansal, shared their opinions on the Alphabet () / () stock. "The starting point for access to information and transactions will shift from browser based to mobile O/S [and] app based, with at least 5 tech titans (Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, OpenAI) targeting the opportunity. This shift will erode Google's long-standing competitive moats and reduce usage share," said noted three important threats for Google: OpenAI is well-funded for the near term. It is scaling rapidly and is likely to introduce ads. Meta could launch Agentic AI capabilities to its 1 billion assistant users. Amazon has built an agent that can shop across other sites. They set the price objective of $200/$200, retaining the buy rating, based on 18 times the estimate for core Google GAAP earnings per share plus cash per share estimate for 2026. Alphabet has traded at an average multiple of 22 times GAAP price-to-earnings ratio over the last ten years. Analysts concluded that their multiple is reasonable compared to history given expectations for double-digit revenue growth, cloud margin expansion, and opportunity to capitalize on strong AI assets. However, it remains to be seen how AI will transform search, and whether Alphabet's Google will be able to maintain its sends Alphabet warning amid major market shakeup first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 24, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 24, 2025, where it first appeared. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
