Auto-flush, seat warmer, scheduled seat warmer, cleaning cycle, scent dispenser, "you haven't been going as often" sensing, auto high/low flush depending on time on toilet...
Just off the top of my head, and I'm no toilet engineer. I'm sure there are lots of possibilities with just a sensor or two.
I don't think it's overly pedantic or even really pedantic at all as there's only one reason for any author to make such assumptions knowing full well that it won't hold for the entire audience. (The reason being editorializing the title to make it sound more appealing than it might otherwise be)
What's wrong with "9000 RPM is faster than my screen refreshes" or "9000 RPM is faster than most screen refreshes" or "9000 RPM is faster than an average screen refreshes"?
"Shocking" news that is anything but. "Little known facts" that are widely known. "Mistakes your making with ..." that you've never once made. It's all just trying to get you to consume the content.
I've had no end of trouble registering an account on our corporate SIMs as the phone numbers (not the actual SIM cards) had been recycled as employees leave.
So many systems cannot handle known pattern of a phone number changing. Who's decided these are imutable values? That I have only one? That it's not shared?
You're still the product of your environment. You'd not be using words like 'uncritical', 'agentic', 'maximalist', 'cringe', 'cultivating' etc were you not.
You're just as branded as an LLM user by your admission that you read hours of its output daily as any potential use of 'load-bearing'.
'Cringe' for instance, rose to popularity once, became cringe itself, fell to obscurity, and was only relatively recently restored to frequent use. 'load-bearing', 'circle back', and 'let's be honest' were all also once heavily used in particular communities and are therefore heavily represented in any algorithm supplied with this data that is trained to sound professional and authoritative.
These words and phrases are simply suffering the same oversaturation point that all the greats (groovy, radicle, spiffy, cool) do at some point. At some point, some population that is not native to the word (say adults for 'fire' or junior devs for 'circle back') start to use them and the original culture begins to see that the term has been diluted and is therefore disfavored for some new or re-used construction.
My point is that the phenomenon of choosing ones words as a reflection of one's environment is not a new thing. It's really nothing to do with the machine generation component. As when the masses refuse eloquence as a snub against the bourgeoisie it's not really about the money itself so much as signalling a particular identity. This is just the latest hotness to signal distance from.
> Cringe' for instance, rose to popularity once, became cringe itself, fell to obscurity, and was only relatively recently restored to frequent use
When were those changes supposed to happen? Cause saying cringe was never cringy in my neck of woods. And the word was in use the whole time.
> load-bearing', 'circle back', and 'let's be honest' were all also once heavily used in particular communities and are therefore heavily represented in any algorithm supplied with this data that is trained to sound professional and authoritative.
They dont sound professional nor authoritative. And never did. Load bearing was rarely use, circle back is just empty business jargon. Lets be honest is neither professional not authoritative. Never was. That is what people say when they are about to say something negative or ironic.
> My point is that the phenomenon of choosing ones words as a reflection of one's environment is not a new thing.
And that choice oftentimes used to flag you with negative implications ... precisedly because it made it clear which circles you are in.
Ho-ly. Curius, I searched: tomshardware requesting I download file and got:
Recent reports from August 2026 indicate that users accessing Tom's Hardware on mobile browsers experienced unexpected file download requests (with a link to your comment) while viewing specific content. Similar issues occurred historically, where buggy ad servers or site scripts triggered empty "usnc" file downloads or 0-byte files on devices lacking adblockers.
Current and Historical Context
The unexpected prompt you are seeing is a known behavior that has resurfaced recently. On August 30, 2026, mobile users browsing via Safari on iOS reported that loading articles—specifically regarding a recent 12TB Steam leak—triggered an unsolicited prompt asking them to download a file.
This matches historical patterns where technical glitches or external elements on the platform caused automated downloads...
And then it lists a couple of times it happened in the past.
I've noticed it being heavily used in non-native and accesibility type situations.
To them, people who do not necessarily spend swathes of their day reading generated text, it does not sound any particular way other than "yes, this is what I would like to communicate to my perspective audience".
It's really becoming a sort of cultural thing in which one people (from your culture) are turned away and another people (from the author's culture) see it as a massive benefit.
To me, the bad thing about generated posts online aren't their existence. I've already spent a life clicking off of blogs and posts I don't like. Perhaps as much as 90% of the web is not made for me, and that has alway been the case. What I've never understood, which has also existed forever but less so here, is people who will spend their time adding nothing of value to a conversation adding only some complaint about something as trivial as the writing style. You know, the commenters who take their time to click on to a video and actually type out "this dumb you dumb" without offering any kind of constructive criticism or engaging in the conversation at all.
Like, you wouldn't do that in public, would you? Walk up to someone with a shirt you don't like, say that you don't like it, and walk away? "Why even go out in public if you can't be fucked to dress yourself?"
>they are orbital sanders that operate correctly only 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time they do the wrong thing and cause you to do more work and/or damage the wood
So more of a home-gamer chainsaw? Except that I'm not positive the once/twice per year chainsaw is nearly so effective.
Just off the top of my head, and I'm no toilet engineer. I'm sure there are lots of possibilities with just a sensor or two.
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