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01:49 As chat gptext has gray gooed the Internet, search has, predictably, gotten worse. Google said earlier this month, a major revision of their PageRank algorithm would seek to demote pages which are, quote, unhelpful, have a poor user experience, or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people. Ran Amadeo at Ars Technica points out, quote, Google's post is incredibly worded, not to mention AI. Google wants to style itself as an AI first company now, Amadeo continues. Apparently, that means never directly mentioning any of the downsides of the AI powered Internet Google played a role in creating.
19:59 But what I won't find out, unless I go to Google or Wikipedia, is that that is actually an astroturf website that is funded by the fossil fuel industry, let's say. The only way I can find that out is by asking questions about the website elsewhere. And that's called lateral reading, and it's very easy to do. And it's a lot of fun, because you can find out within 30 seconds whether somebody is trying to fool you, or whether it's a genuine website.
01:15 In related news, Mira Potni at Semaphore built a database of and for recently laid off journalists. Mira writes, amidst the tide of layoffs plaguing the media industry, there is now an extraordinary collective of award winning journalists without full time employment. I'm working on a database to make sure available talent is getting connected to those hiring in the media now and in the future. So I'll link to that in the show notes. Regarding also AI generated nonsense, Google looks upon its own works and despairs.