Cool tech, but I don't want it scanning my junk especially, no thanks. I'll just apply Betteridge's law of headlines to the article "You Asked: Are Airport Body Scanners Safe?" at https://time.com/4909615/airport-body-scanners-safe/ and go on my merry way.
The TSA definitely seems to intentionally make me wait unnecessarily long for my patdowns to commence.
The attitude among some TSA employees can be truly confrontational when I'm nothing but polite.
One of them literally shoved their hand so fast and so far up my leg, it stung my private area for a good little while after. Now, whenever their script comes to the point where they ask if there is anything they should know, I have to ask them to not do that please, since it has happened before.
If there is a list of people to be first in line for UBI instead of whatever they do now, I'm okay if it's everybody at the TSA, and I'm guessing that they would be cool with that, too.
If one is concerned about the potentially damaging effects of radiation, and the relative safety of ultrasound technology springs to mind, then one may be also interested in reading more about the apparently forbidden topic of ultrasound safety studies, if such a person can get past the cognitive dissonance from having been told the consensus opinion on how safe ultrasound is, e.g.:
All of those links are for the same book from 2015 (the fourth isn't direct to the relevant article but it's easy to find on the page). Has there been any new information since then?
> Microcephaly incidence increased 1000x within the area of The Network. This was first observed seven months after The Network began its remote prenatal ultrasound program. Do the math.
Almost every baby is exposed to prenatal ultrasound. What do you think was different about that ultrasound program? Why would prenatal ultrasound cause microencephaly there, but not everywhere?
I personally prefer to approach the topic of "safety" by considering the trade-offs. The knowledge gained through ultrasound significantly outweighs potential risks associated with it.
People still continue to play the lotto thinking they will win, and they reject statistically low risks in lieu of a greater risk created by avoidance. See: any vaccination topic.
When shifting into the topic of a wearable though, the extreme amount of time alone amplifies the risks into outright dangerous levels. I did not seriously believe ultrasound to be safe to that level.
Criticisms aside (sigh), according to Wikipedia, the term was introduced when proposed by mostly Googlers, with the original paper [0] submitted in 2018. To quote,
"""In this paper, we propose a framework that we call model cards, to encourage such transparent model reporting. Model cards are short documents accompanying trained machine learning models that provide benchmarked evaluation in a variety of conditions, such as across different cultural, demographic, or phenotypic groups (e.g., race, geographic location, sex, Fitzpatrick skin type [15]) and intersectional groups (e.g., age and race, or sex and Fitzpatrick skin type) that are relevant to the intended application domains. Model cards also disclose the context in which models are intended to be used, details of the performance evaluation procedures, and other relevant information."""
To me, model card makes sense for something like this https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2029620619743219811. For "sheet"/"brief"/"primer" it is indeed a bit annoying. I like to see the compiled results front and center before digging into a dossier.
I'll give it a shot for ya. Parent, GP, GGP, GGGP, OP, or anyone else can feel feel to correct mistakes, please.
Original Post (OP): A post linking to https://www.fubardaily.com/ which is "Curated slop to enjoy with your morning coffee. Updated daily." Apparently a sort of "Drudge Report" or "Dashboard of news/posts".
--> OP MEANING DECODED: There's a big amount of "crappy stories" that a) purport to show "how crappy/dismal things are", probably b) with a healthy amount of "fake stories, or performative artifice, etc."
Great Great Grandparent (GGGP) post said, "front page has racial slurs, a link to goatse, and something crass about trans women. fantastic work /s"
--> GGGP MEANING DECODED: Even the "slop" the OP indexes daily has old-school shennanigans that perennially (every year for decades or forever) are sort of "shock value" or "jarring" things, and in a sense this is refreshing, since those kinds of concerns/topics are worth caring about and relatable or important. (But the GP admits they were being sarcastic. So, really they are saying, the OP's link is a pointless page and a waste to look at.)
Great Grandparent (GGP) post said, "This is almost hopeful in that it softens my lamentation that we're losing a whole generation of engineering labor to AI. It makes me realize that much of it was going to be wasted regardless."
--> GGP MEANING DECODED: The GGP points out that sometimes they are saddened that AI "takes the engineering out of engineering". For example, instead of designing and specifying out and making a thing, an engineer can, now, legitimately, sit down and type (or merely speak) "Make a high level design for _____. Ok, now spec it out. Ok, now make it.". The GP sees LLMs and agents as "taking the engineering out of engineering" since much its rote aspects can be externalized. The GP sees this as a concern, because they imagine that an ENTIRE GENERATION of engineers may learn to "ask a machine to do things for them" that once required knowledge of those things. (Note 1: you can trace this back to "learn C", then back to "learn assembly", then to "learn vacuum tubes", etc.; the lamentation of losing "necessary awareness of how systems work on a fundamental level" is not new. Note 2: it is not unique to software engineering, since as a ____ engineer you may now "draw a thing" but "someone in X country/company will actually make it for you" (outsourcing, again, externalizing "actual" engineering/production). In any case, even if "some people" still know how things work, and design and make those systems, the LABOR MARKET in which people "are paid to do things" could nearly evaporate, and this raises very real concerns or worries of the existential type (very much of the paying for food and shelter in the near future type, or the having a prosperous family ever type). Finally, the GP comes around to heir point that THE THINGS WE PAY PEOPLE TO ENGINEER ARE STUPID THINGS BY AND LARGE ANYWAY, SO IT IS OK TO WIPE OUT THIS LABOR, IT'S A WASTE, WHO CARES IF IT EVAPORATES. While this may sound like nihilism, there is an unwritten portion, which could say, AND MAYBE AT LEAST THIS PASSING OF EVENTS/EVOLUTION IN TECHNOLOGY WILL CONTINUE TO FORCE US TO THINK ABOUT WHAT IT IS THAT IS VALUABLE, AND WHAT TO BUILD AND HOW TO MAKE ACTUAL, FUNCTIONAL, SYSTEMS, AND PUSH US FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET WHERE WE WANT TO BE.
Grandparent (GP) says, "This is 100% true. It's fucking brutal and depressing. But genie is out of the bottle now. Ill was born 1985. It's over."
--> GRANDPARENT MEANING DECODED: Oh yeah, GGP is correct and nails it. And this realization is tough to process and handle. There's no going back, I know it because I have seen some things evolve in my half-life. The way the world once was (what felt like plentiful work of at least some modicum of utility and meaningfulness with truly pleasant human interactions and products and services rendered) is going the way of the dodo (ain't want it used to be and ain't coming back).
Parent says,
--> PARENT MEANING DECODED: I also concur with GGP. Furthermore, many people are too young to know how good it once was, what we had, saw, and experienced, what embodied and encompassed that all. And furthermore, young people process media in a different way than us for the most part and do so with less context, and mostly may never gain have access to knowing what's going on right now and has been or is still in a process of being being lost. And there is an entirely different set of people, who are of our generation, but are totally disconnected from either the white-collar working world, or from the semi-technical fields, and they too have nothing like a grasp on what is occurring and seems destined to continue down an inevitable path of removing meaning from labor, as well as removing the opportunity for much meaningful labor of the types we have known in the past or currently. It is possible to intellectualize and describe painstakingly some or all aspects of these concerns, but most such expressions will be unprocessed by any meaningful proportion of people, for they lack the attention span, or interest, or context for understanding either these facts or their importance to some people.
Note: Cogntive biases appearing heavily above include "declinism", "in those good old days", "rosy retrospect", "conservatism", etc.
NOTE: These are NOT my views, I am just trying to "translate" the chain for the post immediately above.
You have just recounted in a different context, almost the exact lamentation I just got done walking one of my models through last night, minus some cathartic tangents on the subject of instrumental convergence of the corporate world, the tendency of capital to fucking ruin everything the idiots at the top controlling the optimization function touch, and much more lamentation at the apparent inability of the Engineering caste to break out of the Engineering context into a more philosophical one to realize we're letting the business caste lead us to our dooms; specifically dooms of a much more dismal and destructive nature than we'd potentially run into if we realigned our solidarity away from the capital class, and focused on organizing and empowering the labor class. The dooms would at least be pushed out a few generations longer, and it may just redistribute wealth and qualia to a larger subset of the population than whatever we're doing now is.
So true. Regarding those magnetic USB connectors: not just a fire hazard but also a tendency to eventually burn out whatever is on the other end of them IME.
Maybe ok for giving power if you are careful I think, I never had any fires, knock on wood.
But it's a bummer to zap/kill the data-functionality of USB ports on nice stuff just because a non-spec connector was used in between the two things being connected, for convenience.
So I don't trust them except for conveniently connecting power to low-cost devices. Whether Neo fits that... I doubt but YMMV.
> ...instinct would be to use the socket towards the rear of the machine as my charging port...it's closest to the corner...charging in the other port...feels slightly weird...I suspect most users will...
Ah, but, as I recall some vintage of 2016-2018 Macbook Pro users will remember that using the "backmost, corner" USB-C port for charging could cause the MBP to overheat and fans to sound like a helicopter.
Thus, the (admittedly probably vanishingly tiny minority of) MBP veterans with "back charging USB port PTSD" who learned to use the foremost USB port for charging, will know full well to stay away from using that backmost USB port, if all they need is power!
There are at least two distinct AGI definitions. Thus, people use AGI to mean two different things today.
I suspect one def. is "plain language" and one is "jargony". Or one is imprecise and one is specific.
Maybe the gap is closing at some rate; that is arguable.
There are probably other definitions elsewhere. Possibly more concise, more codified.
The idea is to post a blog post as revised, clearer, more correct definitions become available over time and get updated to the microsite homepage at https://sites.tnyrl.com/agi-defined/
First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly.
Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps.
From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice or Collabora Desktop Classic is that it has a sane UI/menubar visual paradigm. (Which MS obliterated eons ago.)
But let's talk about what matters: Collabora (the online document suite) is slow as heck.
It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.
That should be the top priority. Full stop.
LibreOffice works fine for desktop. But, for Collabora, the web experience needs to be fast. The lag in Collabora is simply unacceptable.
People expect online, and they expect collaborative, and they expect nearly instantaneous updates (at least not painful to type and wait for screen to update).
Talk about misplaced priorities. In my very humble opinion.
At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design.
I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.
> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment
If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better:
"...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent variables...results support the conclusion that the user interface of Excel 2007 did change for the worst in comparison with the user interface of the 2003 version." [0]
A study from 16 years ago is hardly relevant anymore. Back in 2003, people were still familiar with Office 2003's layout; most people have long since forgotten that layout or never learnt it in the first place.
The author doesn't discuss users' existing familiarity with Office 2003 and they only mention the word 'training' once, that "software design to interact with technology should require the least amount of training as possible" whilst never acknowledging that training in, and even qualifications in, the use of the Office suite was very much a thing in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Even then, the most problems were had in Excel. Advanced usage of Excel is done by technical people who would have had some training. Word and PowerPoint weren't shown to have significant difference in usability; arguably, Word is the program most people forced to use the Office suite spend their time in.
Never mind the ways by which the Ribbon and computers have changed since Office 2007. Options moved around, the Ribbon height reduced, screens having gotten wider to compress fewer options into submenus…
The author states at the end of their conclusion:
> In order to determine if the result of the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists and are not due to the learning curve the experiment can be repeated with users having at least three years using this version.
Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up?
It would be more interesting to see a comparison between Office 365 now that the interface has effectively become the de facto standard (same as Windows, macOS, mobile, tablet, and the web version) and Google Sheets (which retains the menus, toolbar, etc.).
I'm no lover of the Ribbon myself but I feel like there's better evidence for it not being the ideal interface than this which wouldn't have convinced me even at the time.
This isn't the proof that'll bring down the titan.
>> the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists...can be repeated with users having...years using this version.
> Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up
I would love to see more recent and similarly thoughtful work on the exact same subject. If I find more, I'll try to remember to come back here and comment. Definitely, I am interested in the clearest evidence regarding whether either paradigm is "actually" more usable, and not just the result of some confounding variable(s).
With a null hypothesis that the classic toolbar is no better than the ribbon, I just wanted to see some data (instead of assuming that what users have now has to be more efficient for those users just because it's what the market-leading product has been giving users for about two decades).
I agree - we're coming up on 20 years of the ribbon, it is too jarring to go back to the fixed toolbars and the vast majority of computer users have no experience with the "old way."
This is true I suppose. Google Docs is a bit different. I'm not very familiar with their offerings. Here in the US, most stop using it past grade school and graduate to MS products after, at least in my experience.
I don't think it matters since Universities will not be taking Google Doc submissions unless it's core ed classes, any beyond it will be LaTeX anyways.
And I can tell that while at CERN, those using LaTeX on paper submissions were the minority, on ATLAS TDAQ/HLT group it was a mix of Word, and FrameMaker.
Google Docs implements the most popular 10% of features that people use 90% of the time.
It was said in the distant past that the last 10% of the time everyone is using different features — the long tail 90% of features. You had to implement them in your software.
When did we switch so we adapt our workflows instead, and only use the common features now? And software doesn't have to implement the long tail?
> It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.
In my experience, Google Docs has this, but realtime collaboration with Word is unusable. Which is interesting, because that means a huge number of existing Office 365 users have yet to experience it.
What's wrong with the ribbon? It's basically a tabbed toolbar. Unlike a menu bar it doesn't cover up content or require extra actions to hide, and it doesn't require precise mouse movement in order to avoid accidentally hiding.
Ribbon vs. classic toolbars is the comparison to be made. (Sorry for saying menubar when I meant toolbar up above; that was probably confusing.)
I'll try to explain the gist of it, since that seems to be the question:
As you say, one facet of ribbons is they are essentially tabs. So, ribbons obscure whatever is on "those other tabs". Often, with additional annoyance of taking more space than needed to show what they do show (which often is not want is needed). And any section within a given tab can have its own peculiar (varied) layouts. (Continuing the "find it in the hierarchy - customized for the purpose to make your life easier the way a designer thought would help!" paradigm.)
Contrast with toolbars. Show the ones you need, customize them if wanted. Icons and locations are quite effective for selecting actions. They can all be seen at once. They do what they say. No constantly interpreting the interface flow to find stuff.
The internal guts of Collabora's data models and such are based on the LibreOffice code, right? My understanding is that it's really hard to get Google Docs-like performance with real-time multi-user editing if the whole app wasn't engineered from the ground up to make it possible, which LibreOffice wasn't.
I would not be surprised to learn that substantial parts of the core of Office were rewritten to make that possible. Unlike Collabora/LibreOffice, Microsoft is one of the most well-resourced organizations in the world and can afford to do that kind of colossally expensive project. Of course, they'd need an extremely compelling reason to do so, but Google Docs was an existential threat to their market share.
Also, other commenters report that the real-time collaborative editing experience in Office is more sluggish than in Google Docs, and this is consistent with my own admittedly very limited anecdotal experience, and if this has persisted for years it may well be for deep architectual reasons.
Office for web and desktop office were literally separate teams, in separate locations, when I worked there. Complete separation unified only by a document output.
I think UI looks is a very Subjective opinion. I am rather young so I have realy only experience the Ribbons and for me everything back to the old is a huge step back is always going to look old and dusty to me. But thats personal opinion.
Now speed in editing thats a clear showstopper. And we all can agree on that.
I'm currently working on a set of documents with 3 or 4 other people in collabora and we have no more problems than with office 365. It works. You can type simultaneously even in the same line (one types while another corrects the spelling of the previous word, etc), no problem at all.
You can switch away from ribbon styles btw, if it's not your jam. IMO it's grown on me. As for my experience, collabora thus-far has been plenty responsive.
My research says that this product/tool does not exist. And I wonder why not. Is it too niche? Or too hard?
Is everyone handing their stuff off for use cases like this, to some other agent/company/tool? Or just doing the n8n configurations themselves? To me that seems like the perfect use case for AI coding - highly defined/constrained.
To be clear, I'm asking because I want it. But now I'm curious if others would want it, too. Do you want it, too?
Cool tech, but I don't want it scanning my junk especially, no thanks. I'll just apply Betteridge's law of headlines to the article "You Asked: Are Airport Body Scanners Safe?" at https://time.com/4909615/airport-body-scanners-safe/ and go on my merry way.
The TSA definitely seems to intentionally make me wait unnecessarily long for my patdowns to commence.
The attitude among some TSA employees can be truly confrontational when I'm nothing but polite.
One of them literally shoved their hand so fast and so far up my leg, it stung my private area for a good little while after. Now, whenever their script comes to the point where they ask if there is anything they should know, I have to ask them to not do that please, since it has happened before.
If there is a list of people to be first in line for UBI instead of whatever they do now, I'm okay if it's everybody at the TSA, and I'm guessing that they would be cool with that, too.
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