SPAM random annoying things

[DaGaffer]

The new AI shit on Google is doing my head in. I don't want to know what you think, Google, I just want links to websites. Fuckoff.

I'm using Copilot loads; if you learn to prompt it properly it's really handy.

 

[Scouse]

I'm using Copilot loads; if you learn to prompt it properly it's really handy.

What you using it for? Other than a few excel formulas I've not really used it.

Any resources?

 

[MYstIC G]

Except to simplify my heating controls, I've yet to find a compelling home automation use case that's worth the effort.

Telling the TV to turn itself off and on or play what you want and starting the RoboVac are also acceptable use cases in my experience

 

[DaGaffer]

What you using it for? Other than a few excel formulas I've not really used it.

Any resources?

I started with excel, now I'm relearning algebra to help my daughter with her maths, and we've just got inside the network at work and it's helping me with a bunch of analytics and CRM effectiveness stuff, and I'm just starting to use it to write Powerpoints for me.

There's a copilot "how to" guide on Microsoft somewhere but I haven't looked at it much

 

[Scouse]

Fuck. Google discontinued media alarms.

It was their best feature - tell it to wake you up in the morning with a song from your spotify playlist.

What a crock of shit

 

[Overdriven]

Fuck. Google discontinued media alarms.

It was their best feature - tell it to wake you up in the morning with a song from your spotify playlist.

What a crock of shit

That's how I grew to hate certain Metallica songs. I now just use the generic android alarm for this.

 

[Scouse]

That's how I grew to hate certain Metallica songs. I now just use the generic android alarm for this.

I hate the genric alarms. We both used to wake up to a variety of really pleasing music that set a tone for the day.

It had a measurable impact on the o/h's morning rage too.

 

[Raven]

My cats get me up at 4am every day.

 

[Tom]

Opened my Google Wallet app today to pay for something and all the stored cards immediately vanished. Gone. I chanced it on the machine and it worked anyway.

Turns out its a stupid bug. Rebooting the phone did nothing. Couldn't add the cards back. But holding the icon down to reveal a shortcut to whichever card I wanted suddenly restored all the cards.

Crap design.

 

[Overdriven]

Phase 4 of Satisfactory.

(I just finished P3 and have seen what P4 takes...)

 

[TdC]

I had to abort a change in our IT a few days ago cos out of some 200+ firewall rules we forgot one. Ffs

 

[Embattle]

Generally the amount of things marketed with AI.

 

[Embattle]

I was trying to remember the most recent thing I had seen AI advertised on, the advert appeared again just now...a set of dumbbells.

 

[Raven]

A...adverts? What is this word?!

 

[TdC]

Generally the amount of things marketed with AI.

Emb I lecture at some unis and several times MS has been there with content that essentially is an AI sales pitch. The general response from the students is a mass face-palm. Tbh I don't know how MS can be more obtuse. These kids want to learn the math to make an AI, not how some model can summarize a lecture they should have been to in person.

To this extent I agree and disagree with @DaGaffer. Certain AI is great for creating slides or summarizing things. However the real issue that should be addressed is why you -the general you obvs- can't manage to do this in your working time in the first case. In my case my company is paying me for my domain knowledge and expertise I gained from 25+ years in my industry for a 36h week. They are most assuredly not paying me for the 60-70h+ they actually seem to want which, is what pushes me to use tools like AI to skip things that I whould have otherwise been present at to add my value or whatever bollocks mgmt call it these days. You'll notice that multiple different professors and a pretty large amount of "industry" people tend to have a pretty grim view of generative / any / AI model, as what is becoming practice tends to hide what the real issue is: not optimizing workflow or best practices but digging one hole to fill another.

 

[Ormorof]

Had an AI hackathon at work, consensus seems to be it's kinda cool, but mostly useless outside of very specific use cases

Feel we are going to see a bubble bursting that kills off all the nonsense and leaves only the useful stuff behind

 

[Tom]

There was a really interesting bit on the radio a few days ago (Radio 4 I think) about AI and how it has the potential to "kill" the internet. On how AI detection is really important because how would anyone know they're talking with a real person, vs a piece of software? If the internet was full of AI software replying to people, that people would lose faith and go elsewhere.

It was talking about Capchas and how initially they were designed to train software to recognise things it ordinarily couldn't. How they're used to train self-driving car software to recognise traffic lights and things. But that AIs are getting clever enough to do that themselves, bypassing website bot protection. One AI actually fooled a human by asking them to complete a Capcha that it couldn't complete itself.

 

[Ormorof]

We are getting closer to dead Internet theory all the time

 

[TdC]

One AI actually fooled a human by asking them to complete a Capcha that it couldn't complete itself.

Yes I heard about that. It didn't just ask; apparently it was deceitful. Now that's only really valid from the human perspective and let's please not go anthropomorphizing computer programs just yet. That said, imagine your car asking you how your day was, or ...lying to you about when it last had an oil change because it wants to talk to that hot mechanic robot again. Good times huh?

 

[Lamp]

Alexa...still coming out with classics

Me: Alexa, turn Light Two on
Alexa: There are currently no live Mexican soccer results

 

[Overdriven]

Quincy Jones died

 

[DaGaffer]

"W" key on my Corsair keyboard has broken, 15 quid to replace a single key. FFS.

 

[caLLous]

"W" key on my Corsair keyboard has broken, 15 quid to replace a single key. FFS.

Mechanical? Replacing switches yourself is easy if so (assuming they're using generic switches and not something proprietary).

 

[DaGaffer]

Mechanical? Replacing switches yourself is easy if so (assuming they're using generic switches and not something proprietary).

They're low profile backlit ones and apparently the stems breaking is a known problem and I've been lucky to go two years without breaking a key. Reddit and Corsair's own forums aren't throwing me many options apart from Corsair direct, and it feels like I might be throwing them 15 quid now only to rinse and repeat over and over. Probably not worth it. It's a nice keyboard, but not so nice I'm going to throw good money after bad.

 

[Scouse]

More asshattery:

Translated from the welsh - as it's not even on the English BBC news website.

Parc Eryri am barhau i ddefnyddio enwau Cymraeg yn unig

Mae disgwyl i barc cenedlaethol barhau gyda pholisi o ddefnyddio'r enwau Cymraeg yn unig ar gyfer Eryri a'r Wyddfa.

www-bbc-co-uk.translate.goog

 

[Embattle]

Yr Wyddfa: National park to continue using Welsh name for Snowdon

Snowdonia National Park Authority will continue to refer to Wales' tallest mountain as Yr Wyddfa.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Scouse]

Yr Wyddfa: National park to continue using Welsh name for Snowdon

Snowdonia National Park Authority will continue to refer to Wales' tallest mountain as Yr Wyddfa.

www.bbc.co.uk

Yeah, happened eventually.

"According to a survey carried out over the summer" and "Surveys from the summer found strong support for the move from locals"...

...nobody I know has ever been surveyed. Most people round here like Snowdonia - because that's where they've lived for their entire lives.

Maybe the survey was carried out in the "Plaid Cymru hates the English" headquarters...

 

[Scouse]

To be fair - it's this bunch of cunts (which includes two people who moved to Wales (one from America) to learn Welsh) who have agitated for this (Snowdonia was the original national park name, nobody knows where Eryri comes from). They were protesting about the train service being bilingual - they wanted everything only in Welsh.

They were part of a group that had Carnedd Uchaf sort-of renamed Carnedd Gwenllian - and the only reason for that is that princess Gwenllian's contribution of note was being locked up by the English in a convent in Lincolnshire. Anyone who looks it up can hate the English for transgressions committed half a millenium ago - just like they do.

 

[Raven]

We have a few Anglicised village names around here, mostly Saxon. Maybe we should revert to their old names too?

I mean, cool, learn your language, keep it alive, but it's daft to force it on everyone, especially one where they decided how to spell a word using the Countdown pick a letter game.

 

[DaGaffer]

Why is a 1TB microSD card three times the price of a 500GB one? But then why are there cheap 982GB microSDs as well, which obviously have some non-obvious drawback I'm not seeing.

In other news, GLS parcel delivery's tracking site is dogshit; ordered a Steam Deck for the boy's Christmas present and watched it go in and out of (apparently) the same Dutch logistics centre four times now.