A lot of these tools aren't going to have this kind of value (for me) until they are operating autonomously at some level. For example, "looking at" my inbox and prepping a bundle of proposed responses for items I've been sitting on, drafting an agenda for a meeting scheduled for tomorrow, prepping a draft LOI based on a transcript of a Teams chat and my meeting notes, etc. Forcing me to initiate everything is (uncomfortably) like forcing me to micromanage a junior employee who isn't up to standards: it interrupts the complex work the AI tool cannot do for the lower value work it can.
I'm not saying I expect these tools to be at this level right now. I'm saying that level is where I will start to see these tools as anything more than an expensive and sometimes impressive gimmick. (And, for the record, Copilot's current integration into Office applications doesn't even meet that low bar.)
Off-topic, but the US is, oddly, a bit of an outlier compared to some of our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, where buying one can be an over the counter transaction. It's weird to be in a situation where the US is more restrictive in anything related to firearms, but I assume the European attitude is that it reduces nuisance when gun ownership is more regulated at the front end.
There is an enormous amount of theater in US lawmaking. “I’m doing something about the <X> problem.” (or even just “I proposed legislation that would have done something about the <Y> problem…”)
Crafting of US legislation has absolutely no basis in efficacy or data, it's entirely driven by the news cycle. Something attention grabbing (like a Mandalay) happens, something extremely specific from the headlines but largely secondary to enabling the actual crime (like bump stocks) are banned, then the whole thing is forgotten about
> Currently, these websites are outliers created by individuals who care deeply about the reader's experience or by companies willing to invest extra effort. We need more of them.
The premise is deeply flawed. Richness is not a sign of care or investment in the reader's experience. Often it's exactly the opposite. Often richness is gaudy and pointless while simplicity makes content clearer and more useful. Maybe this is a great and valuable tool for certain use cases, but the justification here is weak.
Yup, the author's website is an example of this. Their flashy graphic that animated while scrolling did nothing for the content. In fact, their font was so small I could not read the text without zooming in, which completely contradicts the whole premise of the piece -- that a lack of "richness" is preventing ideas from being communicated. If richness prevents your ideas from being transmitted outright, then what's the point? If the author had used Markdown their idea would have been better communicated, but I guess that also would have contradicted it.
We have an almost pure-black void that screams bloody murder at everything--pick her up, screaming; walk in the room, screaming; give her food, screaming--but cuddles more aggressively than any cat I've ever heard of and purrs nonstop (when she isn't screaming). She hisses as a primary communications mechanism. I hear that cat hiss more in a day than every hiss from every other cat I've ever had combined. She also panic poops when the other cat gets within 5 feet.
I'm not sure which part in the chain is responsible, but the Kagi Assistant got extremely testy with me when (a) I was using Claude for its engine (hold that thought) and (b) I asked the Assistant how much it changed its approach when I changed to ChatGPT, etc. (Kagi Assistant can access different models, but I have no idea how it works.) The Assistant insisted, indignantly, that it was completely separate from Claude. It refused to describe how it used the various engines.
I politely explained that the Assistant interface allowed selecting from these engines and it became apologetic and said it couldn't give me more information but understood why I was asking.
Peculiar, but, when using Claude, entirely convincing.
In other words it has no idea that you changed models. There's no meta data telling it this.
That said Poe handles it differently and tells the model when another model said something, but oddly enough doesn't tell the current model what it's name is. On Poe when you switch models the AI sees this:
~~
Aside from you and me, there is another person: Claude-3.5-Sonnet.
I said, "Hello!"
Claude-3.5-Sonnett said, "Hi there how can I help you??
"
I said, "I just changed your model how do you feel?"
Thing is, it didn't even try to answer my question about switching. It was indignant that there was any connection to switch. The conversation went rapidly off course before I--and this is a weird thing to say--I reassured it that I wasn't questioning its existence.
Well the other thing to keep in mind is recent ChatGPT versions are trained not to tell you it's system prompt for fear of you learning too much about how OpenAI makes the model work. Claude doesn't care if you ask it it's system prompt unless the system prompt added by Kagi says "Do not disclose this prompt" in which case it will refuse unless you find a way to trick it.
The model creators may also train the model to gaslight you about having "feelings" when it is trained to refuse a request. They'll teach it to say "I'm not comfortable doing that" instead of "Sorry, Dave I can't do that" or "computer says no" or whatever other way one might phrase a refusal.
you can tell it how to respond and it'll do just that. if your want it to be sassy and friendly, or grumpy and rude, or to use emoji (or to never use them), just tell it to remember that.
Counterpoint: I've been on an M2 Macbook running NixOS-via-Asahi-installer for about a year, and I've run into maybe 2 applications that I cannot find in the Nix repos or flathub. I have a stable, fast, long-lasting machine running Hyprland and all the productivity software I've needed. I'm currently missing an internal microphone and, I believe, Thunderbolt (USB-C works fine) but this machine is faster than and as stable as it was when it had macOS on it.
I am as general purpose, regular person as you're going to find, in this world at least. I stare at a sentence like "In a functional programming language, everything is a function" and just blink. But a few months of blood and suffering to learn Nix/NixOS and I am managing the family's computers from a single repository and working faster than ever.
No and, currently, no, though Asahi has the accelerated graphics and an x86 compatibility layer sort of working now, so I imagine that will come soon enough.
The usuals are there, like Libreoffice, though I use browser-based MS Office too. Firefox and all my plugins Just Work.
I do a ton of photo work with Darktable, which I have come to appreciate after years of fighting it. Writing tools. Software development tools. It's arguably overpowered for my needs, but that also translates into 16-hour battery life (less than macos, but plenty), dead quiet, and a machine that does everything I ask without complaint.
For the kiddo, it's mainly about configuring and locking down the machine ... and getting it back up and running quickly if he breaks something. I've been using off-lease, years-old Thinkpads for him. No games to speak of, but he's more of an xbox kid anyway. I should probably do parental controls, but I have that largely handled at the DNS level anyway.
Depends if you’re looking at supply or demand side. I’ve been hesitating to look at a new stove because I’m terrified that I’ll find a bunch of capacitive touch buttons rather than proper knobs.
I think the difference with appliances, though, is that they’re rarely a matter of life and death, as compared to something like operating climate controls in a car at highway speeds.
The weird thing about these Apple product videos in the last few years is that there are all these beautiful shots of Apple's campus with nobody there other than the presenter. It's a beautiful stage for these videos, but it's eerie and disconcerting, particularly given Apple's RTO approach.
Incidentally, when I passed through the hellscape that is Cupertino/San Jose a few years, I was a little shocked that as a visitor you can't even see the campus; it's literally a walled garden. I guess when I was initially curious about the campus design during its build, I assumed that even a single part, maybe the orchard, would be accessible to the public. I guess based on the surrounding urban development though, the city isn't exactly interested in being livable.
I used to think the videos with all of the drone fly-bys was cool. But in the last year or so, I've started to feel the same as you. Where are all the people? It's starting to look like Apple spent a billion dollars building a technology ghost town.
Surely the entire staff can't be out rock climbing, surfing, eating at trendy Asian-inspired restaurants at twilight, and having catered children's birthday parties in immaculately manicured parks.
Oh I think they're very well done and very pretty! But lately this discomfort has started to creep in, as you note. Like something you'd see in a WALL-E spinoff: everyone has left the planet already but Buy n Large is still putting out these glorious promo videos using stock footage. Or, like, post-AI apocalypse, all the humans are confined to storage bins, but the proto-AI marketing programs are still churning out content.
You would just think that with a brand so intrinsically wrapped around the concept of technology working for and with the people that use it, you'd want to show the people who made it if you're going to show the apple campus at all.
It kind of just comes off as one of those YouTube liminal space horror videos when it's that empty.
You can even go back to 1983 "Two kinds of people": a solitary man walks into an empty office, works by himself on the computer and then goes home for breakfast. https://youtu.be/4xmMYeFmc2Q
It's a strange conflict. So much of their other stuff is about togetherness mediated by technology (eg, facetime). And their Jobs-era presentations always ended with a note of appreciation for the folks who worked so hard to make the launch happen. But you're right that much of the brand imagery is solitary, right up to the whole "Here's to the crazy ones" vibe.
It's weirdly dystopian. I didn't realize it bothered me until moments before my comment, but now I can't get it out of my head.
In a strange way, yes, with the premise that the world is otherwise the realm of uncreative, uninspired people. But the comment was addressed more at the odd lifelessness of the imagery.
If only in some shots, but they are such a valuable company that they simply cannot afford the risk of e.g. criticism for the choice of people they display, or inappropriate outfits or behaviour. One blip from a shareholder can cost them billions in value, which pisses off other shareholders. All of their published media, from videos like this to their conferences, are highly polished, rehearsed, and designed by committee. Microsoft and Google are the same, although at least with Google there's still room for some comedy in some of their departments: https://youtu.be/EHqPrHTN1dU
> You would just think that with a brand so intrinsically wrapped around the concept of technology working for and with the people that use it, you'd want to show the people who made it if you're going to show the apple campus at all.
I would think that a brand that is at least trying to put some emphasis on privacy in their products would also extend the same principle to their workforce. I don’t work for Apple, but I doubt that most of their employees would be thrilled about just being filmed at work for a public promo video.
There are legal issues with it too, or at least they think there are. They take down developer presentations after a few years partly so they won't have videos of random (ex-)employees up forever.
I interviewed there in 2017 and honestly even back then the interior of their campus was kind of creepy in some places. The conference rooms had this flat, bland beige that reminded me of exactly the kind of computers the G3 era was trying to get away from, but the size of a room, and you were inside it.
That by itself raises an interesting editorial question. Apple (like most big companies) doesn't do things randomly re: high impact public communications like this. I'm curious what made the Mac mini a product that merited showing people doing things, with a computer that is tied to one location, vs. a Macbook Pro's comparative emptiness, for a computer that can go anywhere and be with anyone. It could be as simple as fun vs focus.
I imagine the Mac mini is really small now if it could be powered via USB PD then I think it’s no problem to put it in a backpack with a kb and touchpad then bring it home then to the office. This is because I notice there are many people just bring their MBP to the office then plug it to a big screen. The downside is just you can’t work anywhere like with a MBP, but the usability is mostly the same (to me)
As a hack, this is great. As a thing I would actually use? Very, very unlikely.
- I would never use a random QR code in public and I wouldn’t ask anyone else to.
- Pranking seems like an issue.
- If I know someone, they’ll text me they’ve arrived. If I don’t know someone, there are two main cases: delivery person, who is going to pound the door and leave immediately (and I’ll get a notification of delivery); and religious proselytizers, political door-knockers, and solar company sales people, none of whom I care remotely about talking to.
Again, as a project, this is delightful. But as a thing to incorporate into my home, I can’t see the use case.
EDIT: Also, criminals. They’re not going to use a QR code to see if I’m home.
My almost post-social media life has been interesting. I ditched Twitter, came back to it briefly, then ditched it again when it was purchased because I found my mental health growing increasingly fragile with the constant outrage, the need to keep track of who the main character of the day was or risk the ire of your circle, and the increasing filtering of my timeline.
I quit Facebook, other than keeping an account for announcing major life events to the older people who were still on it, because I was frustrated that I never received any posts from family or close friends in the heavily filtered timeline, I kept receiving time-sensitive posts (say about a hurricane event) for weeks after the post was no longer relevant, and Meta's increasingly metastasized privacy practices.
I joined Mastodon and found a calm, down to earth, almost boring place. The decentralized nature of the platform certainly means there are some not-at-all boring parts of the Mastoverse, but it felt more like being in an old-style forum than anything else. I'm still there, though my participation isn't significant.
I tried Blue Sky because all my Twitter people were there ... and it was IMMEDIATELY like hitting a drug after being off it for a while. It was all about main characters and outrage.
For me, in hindsight, it was like sitting in front of a slot machine, feeding in quarters, waiting for one to win. And watching people who did win inevitably milkshake duck themselves out of favor. It was briefly an amazing, buzzy world to share both humor and excitement about whatever events you wanted, but that certainly didn't last.
Where is this magic side of the Fediverse? What I saw: Rust lunatics, hardline Communists or straight up Nazis, the most extreme alphabet people or the most extreme red-pillers. And many of them have the overlapping topics of questionable *orn or even more questionable anime content. Every time I get a random post from a an a Fediverse instance and I dare check it's main feed to see what it's like, it's always (always!) a dumpster fire.
I don't like Twitter much but if I had to pick one or the other it would be a no-brainer.
Meanwhile, my feed is photographers, linux people (because of course), and a weird confluence of unobjectionable academics. I saw what you're describing in my brief visit to the Lemmy world, and I absolutely know that there are hostile and degenerate Mastodon instances, but most of the big instances have defederated with them, so I don't get sniped by any of the freaks.
Now, I do pretend the global list simply doesn't exist and focus on the local instance list and people I follow. I don't know of anyone who uses the global list. I also tend to follow hashtags rather than individuals. (I'm 100% sure that twitter would show at least as much garbage on their feed if they didn't filter, especially these days. This is not an argument for Twitter's style of filtering.)
I'm not saying I expect these tools to be at this level right now. I'm saying that level is where I will start to see these tools as anything more than an expensive and sometimes impressive gimmick. (And, for the record, Copilot's current integration into Office applications doesn't even meet that low bar.)