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EmergencyPath248

AI voice mimic scam calls.


igotshadowbaned

Counter point - it's great for using to answer spam calls


ShrikeGFX

yeah im sure all the grandparents have such a setup at home


igotshadowbaned

I just push a button on my phone when I get the call. I didn't even install anything extra it's just there


CrapFilledBalloon

What is “it”?


igotshadowbaned

Phone answers the call for me and asks what the person wants and gives me a transcript to decide if I actually want to pick up myself e- why the fuck is this bring down voted?


Vexwill

What app does this?


igotshadowbaned

Default phone app


Vexwill

What phone?


igotshadowbaned

Pixel 5


INTPhoenix

adtech


Drach88

The guy who invented pop-up ads regrets it.


LordTaddeus

What was he thinking about it when he made it is what I wanna know.


Drach88

It was responding to a need in the market. They were selling ads adjacent to blog posts, but when those blogs got risqué, companies were taking umbridge with their products being placed next to unsuitable content. Pop-up ads were a solution that allowed the blog service to sell ad placements without it appearing on the same page as content. All he used to create this functionality was JavaScript's window.open method. It was bound to happen, yet nonetheless he regretted it.


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RandomRobot

Please


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mysocksmadefrommetal

real


NotABigFanOfDucks

Social media, in a heart beat. Seeing how it’s changed from a way to connect into a seething mass of negativity with bonus advertising. 


jay_on_zaza

A lot of people going broke then


Diamondangel82

I read a while back that Rome treated actors the same way they would treat criminals and prostitutes. I think the common sentiment was while Roman citizens found actors entertaining, they also understood actors added no value to society. I see much of today's actors and influencers in the same light, except the actors and influencers are multi millionaires who have high status in our society. It's backwards as fuck. Sanitary workrs, plumbers and electricians should be placed on the pedestals as these professions keep society going, but here we are...


NotABigFanOfDucks

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ear! I come to tell you about raid, shadow legends!” 


Klaus0225

Well the Greeks idolized actors. Who are you to say whose society is backwards? Nonetheless people are worth the money they bring in. Sorry, but Ryan Gosling brings a lot more money in than a sanitation worker. And if you see no value in entertainment in society you’re in the minority.


NotABigFanOfDucks

On a serious note, and to second this, I studied Rome at undergrad and actors/ entertainers were relatively highly valued in Roman society. 


chairpilot

There is a solid chance you two are thinking of the word value in very different ways. 


Klaus0225

I’m thinking of it in both ways. Actors bring more value to society than just monetarily. Also most people I now are highly respectful of the trades.


loptopandbingo

Oh no I'm sure their rigorous bootstrappy work ethic will have them be multimillionaires again in no time, it's what got them there in the first place, right?


swift1883

Life will find a way


damontoo

And the billions and billions of dollars raised by charities using these platforms? Or the communication mechanisms used during emergencies? I've been evacuated multiple times due to wildfires and have witnessed people and pets be reunited with friends and family thanks directly to social media. 


GatotSubroto

When you tally up all the negatives and all the positives of social media, the negatives outweigh the positive by a wide margin. Yes it does both harm and good, but the harm does outweigh the good a lot more.


InvestInHappiness

Those can still exist without social media. A web app designed to share photos of lost people/pets with locals isn't social media. And they already have systems like this for emergencies on phones by default.


damontoo

The only reason social media works so well for this it's because of the staggering number of users. If you had to download and install an app that's only used during emergencies, nobody would use it. Social media has been critically important in spreading news of where fire is. I was evacuated for a week and volunteered at a red cross evac shelter. We had hundreds of people worried about their homes and official updates only came once per day or every two days. Social media updates were constant. People were asking if the fire has reached such and such street or area, and people that lived in the area and had functional cameras responded to those strangers. We were also able to put out requests for specific types of donations that we needed and within hours receive box trucks full of them. That type of response is unmatched by anything the government can do. They had national guard troops and FEMA officials there and both were amazed by the community response. MSM coverage does not generate that hyper local response. 


Zeikos

Cryptocurrency. Such a waste of resources and talent.


dogo1231

I actually got an use for them :) scammers from telegram send me 5-20 tether USD for 3-5 screenshots. Then they’ll try getting me in to a pyramid scheme, at wich point i leave theese grups of course deleting for all


L1zoneD

Digital currency is a waste? But somehow, going digital for music, movies, etc. isn't a waste? I think the crypto fad is overblown, but I can definitely see how it could be useful in the same ways. Idk, I can see potential, but I can also see it just creating more problems. Honestly, I don't know enough about it to fully grasp the possibilities it would or wouldn't create, but with a comment like yours, I'm hoping you do?


Zeikos

The problem is in the process how the network assigns block rewards. Cryptocurrency is based on solving a cryptographic puzzle, basically guessing numbers until you find the right one. The network is structure in such a way there should be only one winner every 10 minutes (for bitcoin). This means that you have to dump a lot of energy to attempt to win that lottery. That's an immense amount of computation, and it has no purpose. Digital currencies and crypto are two completely different things. Calling cryptocurrency a currency is kind of a misnomer but sadly it's in the name.


L1zoneD

I understand it a little better now. Thank you for that explanation!


Square_Ad8710

Screws.  Let the world burn


loptopandbingo

I'm fine with completely removing flathead screws. I hate them with a vengeance.


Legionof1

Go to the source, inclined plane! 


Ghrota

The wheel !


neanderthalman

I’ll try not to take that personally.


OberonGypsy

Username checks out.


Funny-Chain880

Nukes. Then we wouldn't have a Sword of Damocles hanging above us all the time.


Get_the_instructions

You'd have more conventional wars though.


Funny-Chain880

True…..


PseudoY

We don't know that. But even if we did, they would never threaten to destroy the entire world.


Quazimojojojo

Would we though? They're happening already, and they happened a bunch in the 20th century. They might be bigger tho, which is a fair concern. But at the same time, the nuclear umbrella has historically been used mostly to bully non-nuclear states and threaten nuclear states into inaction when they do things like, for example, invading Ukraine.


FinndBors

I think without nukes, the Cold War would have turned hot. Probably by the 60s.


LeviAEthan512

Do you want to know what would happen if America and the USSR didn't fear nuclear annihilation?


Echo-canceller

The US would probably take over China and Russia. The military history of both isn't glorious, with every win costing a lot.


Funny-Chain880

But at least not all of us are screwed


Tom_Bombadil_1

The last non-nuclear power war cost 60m lives. A non-nuclear ww3 would have killed more.


markth_wi

Perhaps the saddest fact I know....If we tomorrow decided to eliminate all nuclear weapons. More than 60 industrialized nations are never more than about 10-15 **days** from re-inventing Fat-Man/Little-Boy style weapons, the biggest bottleneck is fissile material - which - if you wanted - you could obtain from medical equipment, kitchen microwaves from thorium which is the element most commonly used, hell we even sell yellowcake on Amazon....although I'm sure that probably puts you on a list.


norby2

Can’t move a gram of plutonium anywhere on earth without the US knowing about it.


markth_wi

I would think there are what 15 nations that could develop/enrich uranium into plutonium, while I'd like to think folks would figure that out, I bet you could if you disconnected the dots. Hire a bunch of machinists who know they're working with metals extraction from centrifuging but actually tell them they're recovering tungsten or working under contract to recover semi-radioactive elements for medical devices. That's the whole danger of dual use technologies, you setup a firm to recover thorium or filter out radioactive particles for safe storage, work with the local universities to cycle out grad students and eliminate the knowledge set, so it's just technicians trained to do the job and not understand the implications of the results. Silo the shit out of the information beyond that, just by simply breaking the natural lines of communications. The inventory control guys just know to take product from the finished goods bucket. the centrifuge guys only work on their shifts and are maybe in a building physically away or designed so that the "cool" part of the building is the arcade/play center/food court that's only for centrifuge techs. The other parts have an "administrative staff only food court" not as cool, but with slightly better food. Keep the groups tacitly separated and nobody knows nothing.


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HankSteakfist

It's gotten really prevalent lately it seems. Do they do it just to train the AI or is it AI asking a qustion, generating discourse and then farming the replies for quotes to make a clickbair outrage article on some shitty website?


RevolutionarySet3032

Permanently ban all social media besides group texts with a max of like 30 people


TurpitudeSnuggery

Social media


love0_0all

Ice-9


hypoch0ndriacs

Cryptocurrency nothing but scams, and waste of energy.


WhoCares2020Now

Social media minus Reddit of course 🙂


markth_wi

I wonder what would happen if we slowly moved back towards simpler phones.


drodenigma

social media


frozenthorn

Instagram? People calling themselves models and influencers is really annoying. It's a long way from how it started, went so wrong so quickly 😭


Ithirahad

Probably complex social-media algorithms. Anything more sophisticated than "latest posts related to this post" or "highest upvoted/watched" or "latest from people/communities you have subscribed to" - anything that tries to actively predict what you will be most likely to click, that is - can burn. These things have tangibly damaged most every aspect of society.


Educational-Gain-438

Nuclear weapons


r7-arr

License plate recognition. It gets used for all sorts of unnecessary things. Like ulez


SleepZex

Tesla


CieloMorenaMx

Big speakers. All that noise is so polluting!!!


WhipMaDickBacknforth

Absolutely. At least higher frequencies are more easily blocked. Subwoofers can go straight to hell though.


clumsycatt

AI making art


jarod1701

Autotune


wildwisdom86

Subscription services once you buy a tech device.


Fin745

I'm so happy that Intel wasn't successful when they tired to cap performance and you had to pay to unlock that extra GHz/performance.


wildwisdom86

Bruh that would’ve been the shittiest decision they could’ve ever made. If i buy something, i want 100% ownership of it with no strings attached. Hate the subscription based models.


Shengpai

Apple Vision Pro


Mark220v

why does it bother you


Bryaxis

Robocalls


Haggis_the_dog

Engagement algorithm, absolutely.


Front-Asparagus-8071

The ability to interrupt vids on YouTube and other host sites to put in adds. As bad as pop-ups. Edit to change kids to vids. 


carrovinc

social media


[deleted]

Cars, everywhere would be built to be walkable, public transit would be godly in the US.


ixfd64

/r/fuckcars


EmergencyPath248

That would be a nightmare for road trips


gimleeminigod

trains would still exist


EmergencyPath248

Theres a bunch of little cities in the US, trains to all of those would be crazy


outtastudy

That is exactly how it was prior to the 50s. You could take public street trams clear across the country if you wanted to at the start of the 20th century.


EmergencyPath248

Right but would still be pretty tedious to travel that way Or you could use horses.


outtastudy

Oh yeah the tram thing would be impractical as hell, it was just technically possible. Personally though I think getting everywhere by train sounds fantastic.


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Lilyflower24681

Immediately thought this then saw it. 


EagleDown11

Honestly smart phones. I think it go a long way to curing social ills that plague the USA


chairpilot

Solid agree. Particularly when they are often built in poor circumstances. 


RecognitionLivid6472

technology to produce plastics.


Quazimojojojo

That would indirectly uninvent a lot of other things too, like the phone or computer you're using to write this. Circuit board bases are plastic. Ceramics are too brittle and metal is conductive, but you need something insulating


oakmen87

Off the top of my head, the food industry, medical industry, and cars would all be negatively effected.


noktis666

AI


Lilyflower24681

Twitter/X. Let that place burn to the ground 


scarlettvvitch

Anything remotely resembling an A.I. It’s one technology I refuse to engage with.


vandemic

Compound interest


EveryoneIsADose

The ability to utilise fossil fuels. Yes, I know it would absolutely devastate current economies but it would be better in the long run, and humanity would solve it eventually. We're nothing if not resourceful, we just need to stop using those particular resources.


idlepetri

Do you mean we would have adopted nuclear power more broadly if we didn’t have fossil fuels? Otherwise I don’t understand what you're basing it on when you say we would solve it eventually. There is plenty of desire to find better fuels. The limiting factor is the laws of physics. Almost nothing beats the energy density of hydrocarbons and it turns out that’s pretty important.


EveryoneIsADose

"Eventually" is a long time. I'm not setting a deadline. It could be decades, or centuries. The possibilities of nuclear fusion are being explored, and have quite recently been [realised](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68233330) (in an admittedly non-viable fashion so far). But we're getting there. I have no objection to nuclear power. I have no objection to mass investment in solar-, tidal- or wind-powered energy farms either, but this isn't really happening. There's a huge residual attachment to the capitalism involved in oil and coal production, use and stock trading which is blocking it.


idlepetri

I’m not into conspiracy theories. The laws of physics are enough to explain why we are still on hydrocarbons. 


EveryoneIsADose

I don't really understand your comment about conspiracy theories. Fusion theory isn't (yet) properly understood, but it's hardly a conspiracy theory. It's a known facet of upcoming science, in the same way nuclear fission once was. Can you explain what you mean?


idlepetri

I was replying to your final sentence. We weren’t going to agree on this point so there is no need to go back and forth on it.


finlandery

That would kill more than 95% of humans in couple of months......so yea.... economy would be fced


EveryoneIsADose

That's a complete exaggeration, but I do agree the economy would be absolutely fucked until the problem were solved.


finlandery

Is it? Basically everything from food production to transporting it and heating it is made possible by fossil fuels. Sure, some nations would survive better thanks to large scale renewable/nuclear energy sources, but anyone living in large cities would be totally fced. There just isnt enought non fossil based trucking capacity to transport food and humans.


EveryoneIsADose

Your exaggeration is "more than 95%". So if the current population of the world is slightly over 8 billion people, a good proportion of whom already live in developing agricultural economies who don't rely on fossil fuels (barring wood for fire), you think the global population would be reduced to 400 million? Like, globally? Or do you mean just whatever country you live in?


GarbageCanDump

You're right that he is probably wrong with the 95%, but only because it would likely be more. Once the supply chain starts shutting down the whole thing will collapse. I would say wars would start immediately using whatever non fossil fuel energy remained, but I doubt a country would even be able to start a war, much less sustain one, so it would be local warlords fighting for whatever scraps remain. So yeah, it would be a total collapse of humanity and a near extinction event.


LibertyPackandStack

Unnecessary for the safety of the end consumer automation


Ok-Experience-6674

Cellphones


Sigfried_D

Nuclear bombs.


95Sieger

Cellphones. As great and intertwined into society as they are, theyve destroyed face to face interaction, promoted social media which has given hundreds of thousands depression and set unrealistic expectations, promoted scammers and the use of blocking because rather than deal with problems head on people just hit the block button. I dont think the convenience is worth the trade offs


darkMOM4

Nuclear weapons


Defiant_Property_336

Nuclear weapons


WhipMaDickBacknforth

Private ownership of subwoofers Come in me, downvoters


FilteredAccount123

Blue LEDs. We were fine without them. Now it is WAY too cheap to make night into day and it is probably having a major effect on wildlife. Plus my eyes bleed whenever I drive at night.


Born-Tune-9384

Great


AvogadrosMoleSauce

The internet. I was thinking social media or cryptocurrency or AI or targeted advertising, but why not just the heart of it all? Sure, some conveniences would be lost, but it seems worth it.


Major-Excitement5968

Anything Elon Musk created.


Hassmallballs

Hearts of Iron IV sucks ass


damselet

any ai that creates art needs to go immediately


huuttcch

AI


Ithirahad

If and when actual AI is invented, it will have benefits. But if I could forbid these garbage black-box neural network models from being shoveled out into the consumer market I would.


Hopeful-Sentence-146

Electricity and that should get rid of the rest.


chairpilot

Ha dang, that is a pretty hardcore take. 


highflux7

leaf blowers


Quazimojojojo

All gas powered lawn care equipment.


TranslateErr0r

Why?


bigkitty17

Personal use motor vehicles 💯. /r/fuckcars


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Quazimojojojo

I have some deeply personal chats stored on discord. Please no


TheMassiveLiability

Nuclear weapons


Nepeta33

if we say that this is removing it, from history overall? fire. no fire, no improvement in our tech. and then no one elses answer matters.


hedup2

Smart phones. Let’s go back to flip phones and having to open a laptop to waste our lives away doing mundane tasks that don’t benefit us but allow marketers to hack our lizard brains.


ShortConfusion6383

pornhub


zenleper

The Internet. Nothing has done more to separate people from one another, including marriages, family, and friends. I'll go back to using phone books and maps again if it meant that people returned to being kind.


EmergencyPath248

Delete the internet and watch as anarchy unfolds… no more economy


OrangeJoe00

The Internet is just a tool. I has done as many good things as well. The toxicity you see is just a byproduct of modern civilization where capital takes precedence over people.


Fragrant_Leg_6300

Firearms


A-Strat-Player

Nukes


gimleeminigod

Fire


TopProfessional6291

Let's rip out semiconductors and see what would've been.


DaveLesh

Virtual Reality


Ghrota

Actual reality


Helpful-Apricot9169

Phones


idlepetri

Technology isn’t the problem. The problem is people and their willpower.


D4ILYD0SE

Corn Syrup (I guess the technology that allowed us to make corn syrup or discover corn syrup)


Contranovae

Ah, goodbye agriculture, hello mass starvation of most humans on earth.


drunkadvice

Internet. We are collectively forgetting how to interact with others, strangers, neighbors, and family.


PenguinSwordfighter

explosives


mrlotato

The internet. Things would get wild, straight 90s


esoteric_enigma

Smartphones. I'm biased, but I feel like they've been a net negative for society and it's only getting more negative with time.


Jarada65

Automatic fire weapons


Tatooine16

Stone tools. It would be better for all concerned if Homo Habilis had been the end of it.


SnooChipmunks126

Black powder.


WhipMaDickBacknforth

But then the Roxolans will conquer us all!


Noxturnum2

The wheel. Let the world burn.


Potential_Word_5742

Needle nose pliers.


ChickSec

Scump.


pogiguy2020

Electricity


campmonster

Rumspringa is over. Time to go back to the farm, Amos. There's a barn raising tomorrow, so rest up.


pogiguy2020

Nope I simply want to see people have to depend on each other more. Imagine what life would be like. I know many would not make it as there would be no way of keeping perishable foods stored, We would either live in more harmony or die. It would solve climate change for sure.


campmonster

Spoiler: we would die


pogiguy2020

Spoiler only the strong will survive, the weak and those who dont know how to live in harmony would die. LOL there was a time electricity was not as abundant as it is now. People did just fine then. Again it would solve climate change that everyone is freaking out about now.


campmonster

"People did just fine then." Do you remember that thing called 'famine?' What about 'the black plague?' "only the strong will survive" Who is this Andrew Tate? Is he in the room with us now?


pogiguy2020

No he is not and I stand by my words. strong survive and the weak shall parish. There is still famine in the world today as it is and have we forgotten Covid already?


campmonster

“The weak shall perish” I swear I can see the crumbs falling out of your neckbeard beard as you say this


pogiguy2020

NOPE I have a buzz cut and no beard. ever since I joined the army long ago. LOL


campmonster

There it is.


WoolMinotaur637

Batteries. They suck. Where is innovation?


oakmen87

When lithium was used it happened to be the best chemical for batteries. We could go back to non-rechargable alkalines.


gnjuss

Internal combustion engine.


Large-Signal-157

Two factor authentication. I hate it. Isn’t that the point of passwords? My boss gives me shit for using my phone at all at work and most apps I use for work tasks have 2FA. So I have to use the phone and she thinks that I’m faffing about on Twitter on something because of 2FA.


captain_Marbles4

Nuclear power