gt24

joined 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Notably, Digg updated which also involved a worse interface and didn't have an "old Reddit" interface you could access. Going to a site that was like the old interface involved leaving Digg and joining Reddit.

That is likely why you can now access older Reddit interfaces. They feel that many people will stay if they can find a way to use the new interface (and they may be right about that). The Digg approach of forcing all to use the new interface was a step over the line for Digg and Reddit likely fears a similar thing could happen to them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I wonder what’s happening?

In general...

Microsoft is being pushy and has started to enjoy that far too much.

This started with things that could be argued as things that users shouldn't control (like refusing to patch update... you can't really refuse anymore).

It then pushed to things that is a little less defensible (you were asked to update from Windows 7 to Windows 10... but they really don't want you to say no).

Once you are on the newer Windows 10 or 11, features just arrive that you have no say about because Microsoft determined it is better for you (you have AI, now AI on your taskbar, in fact you have an AI key on your taskbar, you will use Microsoft AI... the AI will just sift through your entire computer so that it can jump in front of your face to emphasize that you should use their AI!).

They points all have the same theme. Microsoft knows best, you will do what Microsoft wants, and Microsoft won't really take no for answer but may let you say "bother me later"... maybe. Once you are really pissed off, your only option is to leave a Microsoft operating system... which Microsoft is pretty sure you can't figure out on your own (more reasonably, you won't care to put in the work to learn another way) so Microsoft OS it is! Microsoft is a tad worried that those people are starting to wander off to get Google Chromebooks or just use their Android smartphones... those take less effort and more people are opting for that...

Still, Microsoft is relatively sure that people will just put up with what they are doing. I'm pretty sure they will... until they won't. Microsoft will be fine so long as they don't cross the line into the "until they won't" territory. Once they won't put up with that nonsense anymore, it is far harder to woo them back to a Microsoft OS in the future.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (3 children)

There is a website of a person who catalogs Texas Instruments calculators. You can wonder over to the graphing calculator section to see how many different graphing calculators they made along with a bit of information on each one.

http://datamath.org/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I guess faster loading could be it? But generally it’s more of a layout problem than a bandwidth one.

There was a website which I allowed ads on to help support them. One day, I went to that site in my browser and my laptop fans spun up at that time. Turns out that ads on that site caused my processor usage to spike near 100%. A reload fixed the issue. Once that same thing happened 2 to 3 more times, I just blocked all ads on that site from then on.

There are times that people can't throw the resources of an Intel i5 processor towards rendering the advertisements on one website. I would think that is more common these days with Chromebooks running the modern equivalent of a Celeron processor. Phones also don't have much processing power to give and will warm up and drain batteries all towards the all important goal of "render those advertisements".

I think people tend to allow advertising until it becomes a major problem that needs resolved (such as if the site is bogging down your computer or if the advertising makes the site unable to be read easily). Since those people would then need to fix the issue and hopefully fix it for good, it is easy and efficient to just block out all advertising forever.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Looking around a bit, it seems like you have a myAudi app which you register your VIN to which then lets you access the additional features.

https://www.audiusa.com/us/web/en/about-myaudi/vehicle-functions.html

Problem with that is that it implies that you are the one purchasing the features for that vehicle. If the vehicle is sold as used then you unlink the VIN from your account so that the new buyer can register the VIN to them. Then the new buyer seems to have "nothing" and has to "purchase any of those features permanently" again.

With such a system in place, I could imagine that a proper Audi dealership can be authorized to "continue a permanent subscription" to a new used car buyer (or Audi can just offer those sorts of upcharges at the point of sale).

Regardless, permanent only likely applies to your ownership and not to the vehicle itself.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The quote about what is a hard brake exactly or heavy acceleration is most relevant to my thoughts. Without any context, are you hard braking to avoid dangers? How many hard brakes are acceptable? What is the penalty for hard braking, etc?

What happens if your specific vehicle has a sensor somewhat out of spec that keeps errantly triggering harsh braking? You wouldn't know the sensor is activating, you wouldn't know that the information is being fed to your insurance, and you wouldn't know why your insurance is priced as it is. You have no transparency as to what is going on nor any realistic way of fixing the issue (because the vehicle runs fine after all and nobody can define what "harsh braking" even is).

Such a hypothetical situation is unlikely but even several dozen or hundred examples is a bit too much...

Also, since you are never directly informed that you are harshly braking or accelerating, you are unlikely to improve how you drive to avoid those things. If you had a notification that the braking action was a bit too harsh then you could strive to avoid that in the future... not so much if you are never told that in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

I'm on the Samsung A54 right now. I had one too many times using Google devices which decided to suddenly die on me (Nexus 5x, Google Pixel 4a) and Internet mummers seem to hint that newer Pixel devices seem to be continuing that same lack reliability. I have an older Samsung tablet that is still working (better described as something that just won't die) so I decided to try the Samsung world of things to see if I can get the reliability I desire. So far, so good.

Curious about the Google device issues? The Nexus 5x worked great until it just died for good one night. The Pixel 4a worked great until it "turned off" at night making me miss all my alarms and requiring me to turn it back on. Now it is a coin toss if it will stay on overnight or just turn off for no reason making me miss all alarms. Apparently it can turn off when you are not using it which is a bit concerning for a device that should receive phone calls and sound alarms...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

With AI comes the potential for systems to detect AI generated content as well. Any system tends to have a counter system made against it but for a while things are a bit unbalanced.

A search engine company making their own AI system turns that system towards analyzing all of their search results. The AI is to determine if the content is genuine human based content and useful for other humans while filtering out SEO generated nonsense, AI generated fluff, and other low tier results. In other words, search results improve because of in depth analysis of the site content (of a sort that only AI requires).

While I'm sure that system wouldn't hold out the garbage websites forever, it should improve search result quality for some duration of time. Since AI is a rather new topic, it isn't obvious how one would "game" that system so that should keep the search results better for longer. Hopefully such AI classification systems can also categorize styles of sites allowing you to select what style results you want for your search query (such categories as a site is more scientific research, written more for children, better for people with short attention spans, etc.)

AI search categorization could have some pretty significant drawbacks but the overall result has a good chance of being better than what we have now...

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)
>> "We are an AI company now! Hey Bob, do you know AI?"
## "No... ?"
>> "FIRED!  Joe, do you know AI?"
## "I can learn about..."
>> "FIRED! Bill, do you know AI?
## "... yes?"
>> "You can stay. I'm heading to the next floor to ask if they know AI!"