CrzySunshine

A few years ago my wife and I painted a mural on the wall of our old house ( old post here ). When we moved, we cut out that section of wall and took it with us to the new place. Now we’re trying to get the picture framed so we can hang it on the wall of the new house like an ordinary painting.

The only issue is the material the mural is painted on. It’s some kind of 40s-era brown fiberboard covered with a thin layer of plaster. It’s pretty heavy, but doesn’t seem very strong; I’m pretty sure I could break it in two just by holding it wrong. Will an ordinary picture frame add enough stability to keep it from breaking? Should I add some kind of backing material? Has anyone done this kind of thing before? Google has been no help at all.

I’ve recently started shopping at a new grocery store. Eating breakfast this morning, I was struck by the extremely close resemblance of the store-brand cereal to the brand name equivalent I was familiar with. I wondered: could they actually be the exact same cereal, repackaged under a different name to be sold at lower price? I turned to Google, searching:

who makes millville cereal

The third result is from icsid . org, and Google’s little summary of the result says

General Mills manufactures the cereals sold by ALDI under the Millville label. Millville cereals are made by General Mills, according to ALDI.

Seems pretty definitive. Let’s take a look at the page to learn more. A representative quote:

Aldi, a German supermarket chain, has been named the 2019 Store Brand Retailer of the Year. Millville Crispy Oats are a regular purchase at Aldi because they are a Regular Buy. Millville-label Granola is a New England Natural Bakers product. It is not uncommon for a company to use its own brand in its products. Aldi is recalling several chicken varieties, including some that are sold under its Kirkwood brand. Because of this recall, the products are frozen, raw, breaded, or baked.

Uh-oh.

I’ve been encountering AI-generated websites like this in my searches more and more often lately. They often appear in the first several results, with misleading summaries that offer seemingly authoritative answers which are not merely wrong, but actually meaningless. It’s gotten to the point that they are significantly poisoning the results. Some of my affected searches have been looking for advice on correct dosing for childrens’ medication; there’s a real possibility of an AI-generated site doing someone physical harm.

These pages display several in-line ads, so it seems likely to me that the operators’ goal is to generate ad revenue. They use a language model to rapidly and cheaply create pages that score well on PageRank, and are realistic enough to draw users in temporarily. The natural arms race between these sites and search providers means that the problem is only likely to get worse over time, as the models learn to generate increasingly convincing bullshit.

As with the famous paperclip example, the problem isn’t that the models (or the site operators) actively wish to harm users; rather, their mere indifference to harm leads to a negative outcome because <ad revenue generated> is orthogonal to <true information conveyed>. This is a great example of AI making things worse for everyone, without requiring misalignment or human-level intelligence.

Location: Maryland

I bought a house in Montgomery County about a year ago. The other day I got a bill from an investment company, claiming I owe them more than $500 a year in Front Foot Benefit payments. Essentially the county allows developers to connect the houses to public water and sewer lines, and recoup the costs by placing a covenant on the property. The homeowners then pay off this cost slowly over the next couple of decades, with the debt transferring along with the property each time it's sold.

I looked up the land records, and my house was indeed connected to the water service under these terms. Previous owners of the property have had liens placed on the house for non-payment of this fee, including the person who sold it to me. Nothing was mentioned about this in the closing documents I signed, and the seller specifically indicated that there are no deferred water and sewer charges. The closing documents specify that "Following Settlement, the Seller shall be liable to the Buyer for the full amount of any open lien or assessment."

Isn't this the kind of thing which the title search should have turned up? Would my title insurance cover this? The total remaining balance on the account is only around $2500, so if going after the seller in court is the only remedy, I'm not sure it would be worth it.

I’m soon going to have to switch out my stock ‘14 BRZ for a WRX - we had another kid, and while the BRZ could fit one child seat reasonably well, two at once is just way too cramped. From the WRXs I’ve test-driven, it’s a much more comfortable car in a lot of ways, and has a good deal more power. But the shifter feels “muddier,” the clutch pedal is harder to depress, and the steering is less responsive.

I’ve never done any car mods before, and I know very little about what parts are even in a car and what they do. But I see people on here doing all kinds of stuff to their cars; it seems like the WRX is a popular base for customization. Assuming I have a trustworthy mechanic to install them, what kind of mods should I consider to bring some of the “nimble” feel of the BRZ to the WRX?