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Pxtl

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Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Those ceramic/glasstop ovens are shit. An old school coil will always be better, or modern induction.

Health-care system is 'broken,' Niagara woman says after dad dies suddenly in emergency room ( www.cbc.ca )

The (Ontario Health) coalition, which advocates for improvements to the public health care system, is documenting experiences like Zammit's at hearings around rural Ontario this month. With input from opposition critics, the network of over 400 grassroot organizations wants to draft recommendations on how to improve local...

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Don't worry, Ontario voters are still overwhelmingly supporting the pcpo, I'm sure things will get better.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Never turn on remote admin. You don't need to admin your router from outside of your house.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Source? That would be exceptionally bone-headed messaging to say out loud, and while the Liberals are masters at cramming their feet in their mouths (Freeland in particular) that level of pooping-out-toes is beyond even her.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Absolutely.

Bing Chat Assistant is better than Google, Bing search, or DDG today. If I search for "how do I do X in software Y" on a normal search, I get zillions of dead-link-filled MS pages, some interesting tangentially-related stackoverflow posts, and a bunch of old blogspam.

If I ask the robot, I often get "no, there's no supported way to do that officially" which is the clear clean answer I can't find elsewhere. Or sometimes it misunderstands the question and gives me a tangentially-related result, which is bad but is the same thing I get from Google via StackOverflow, except Bing is much more responsive to me saying "no, I didn't mean that way, I meant this" in which case I often get either the right answer or the "no" answer, which is still good and accurate! The problem is as you iterate, the conversation accumulates cruft and becomes more erratic and hallucinatory.

But right now, with the level of SEO that has ruined all major search engines (ironically partially caused by AI), Bing Chat is the best search on the market now imho. <homer>The cause of and solution to all of life's problems </homer>

So yeah, in terms of "things where AI has lived up to its potential"? It is winning the search war today. Everything else is something on the horizon in various distances (art, music, text generation, true general AI) but better search for information is here right now.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Bing Chat provides its sources.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

I mean yeah. I'm not disagreeing with any of that (except the fact that AI caused it - search engines got destroyed by SEO before AI textgen started crapflooding).

But it is what it is. The SEO spammers won. They defeated Google and Microsoft and DDG's respective search algorithms. Traditional search got killed. The internet got worse instead of better.

In light of this miserable new reality, AI-based content synthesizers (particularly ones that can coherently point to the references for their synthesis) are the current solution to SEO spam. Maybe this is another temporary plateau that the SEO spammers will murder. And yes, it's tragic that this energy-pig of AI is the best solution to something that used to be doable with a simple trie.

But still: there is a real problem today for which an AI-based tech provides the current best solution. In this one specific case, the AI lives up to the hype. It swallows the hellscape of noise of the internet and gives you the signal.

4 months durability for an $800 phone!

My old $200 Motorola G9 Power phone lasted almost 4 years with only very minor scratches. Obviously in that period I have dropped it a few times getting out of the car, where the phone sometimes work itself out of my pant pocket while I drive, and then it slips out when I get out of the car. But no problem on my previous phones,...

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Glass backs are the dumbest idea in the history of stupid.

The only way things like that could be defensible if they were easy to replace (bring back Moto-Z style magnetic backs!), but since phones are all held together with glue now, that's not a thing.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

I wish they could come up with a more honest term for it than "vegan leather". Call it "upholstery vinyl" or something. Frustrating how there's no good standard quality grades for that stuff too. Like, the seats in my Prius don't wear the way my belt and my boots do, and they're all made of pleather vinyl.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Okay but I still have to fold my own laundry.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

And I don't make my own paints either when doing art. I still agree with the basic original point:

It is disappointing that we're currently automating creativity far faster than manual labour. I'm angry that my art is getting automated away faster than my folding of laundry.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Except there isn't much of a Google stealing their thunder. Bing isn't better. DDG isn't better.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

I have a simple opinion on paywall bypassers:

If it's possible to bypass the paywall, that means there's already a class of unauthenticated clients you're allowing to see it. I have no interest in complying with whatever infrastructure you use to implement this discrimination.

Implementing a true hard paywall is trivial software. The only reason bypassing is possible is because they're trying to have their cake and eat it too by allowing (eg) search engines to see it unauthenticated.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

I actually rather like win 10. Win 11 I'm holding off on until they fix the taskbar.

If they go subscription, I go Ubuntu.

Pxtl ,
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Authentication servers do not run themselves, they need babysitting and patching and upgrading because this is users' passwords and secrets. Microsoft obviously does not want to keep managing this old login system because it's miserable unrewarding janitorial work for a sysadmin or a developer.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

It shows that "no rent control" basically means "your landlord can throw you out at any time without notice" by raising rent to a ludicrous amount. It completely undermines all other tenant protections. Even conservatives should be supporting at least modest rent controls to prevent cases like this.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Jesus, I'm getting it from both ends here, somebody else is dumping on me for suggesting that a rent-control system that's a few points above inflation so that landlords could adapt to the market without abruptly bankrupting their tenants was somehow a reasonable compromise.

I'm not arguing for extreme rent-control policies, just that no rent control is bad because it lets landlords write their own eviction laws.

Peg it at like 2.5% or 5% per year above inflation and you can't use it as a sudden backdoor eviction but you also let landlords adapt to market reality over time.

Capping rents might be stupid for all the reasons economists say, but putting a damper on sudden price shifts is just being humane.

Pxtl ,
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A bird died for this.

Pxtl ,
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Did a black bear post this?

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