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My favorite example is how Google implemented "AI" in their search console, because it just shows how completely worthless "AI" is even when used by a company that should have all the resources in the world and all the expertise to do it right.

One of the sample prompts is "How is my traffic compared to last month?" So if you type all of this text, click send, wait for Google servers to burn a liter of water to calculate a probable answer, what it gives you isn't even the answer, but an option that you can "apply." If you click on "apply," it refresh the page with a filter using the functionality that already existed in the search console. In other words, this entire LLM can't do more than you can already do by clicking on the extremely simplified buttons of the existing UI. How do you do the same thing via the UI? Click "More -> Compare -> Apply". A whole LLM to replace 3 clicks with 2 clicks + typing the prompt.

By the way, just think: if we gave people an LLM in this analytics thing, what is the number 1 question people would ask? The answer is obviously "how do I increase my clicks?" or "how do I become number 1 on Google?" You don't even need to be a product person to figure that out. That's obvious. Just completely obvious. And of course, the Google's chatbot can't answer that. Because they probably realized, instantly, that is going to be a lawsuit if they said "do X to get more clicks" and you did X and you didn't get more clicks.


Good website. It's responsive.


I was writing a comment after some code I wrote and Copilot autocompleted saying "This is hacky, but..."

I thought it was funny so I put a comment above saying "This is what Copilot said about my code:" and it autocompleted a line after it saying "Copilot was correct, but..."


I guess you're intentionally proving the parent comment's point?


Whoosh


Just look at lotteries.

I don't believe in them because when you consider operational costs, less money comes out of the lottery than goes in, so if everyone simply didn't bet on the lottery, they would have more money than if they bet on it.

But everyone who bets thinks "but what if I win?"


That ”but what if I win” is realistically what you’re paying for if you buy a ticket.

Maybe the sum of enjoyment lottery participants get from daydreaming about winning is >= the cost of running the lottery?


at least the lotteries and las vegas publish their odds. Losing to the terrible math is probably better than playing against someone with inside information.


Vivaldi is the only browser I feel actually has features. Built-in RSS client, mail client, vertical tabs, workspaces, notes, saved sessions, tab groups, side by side tabs, profiles, etc.

To put more simply, just look at how many preferences its preference dialog has compared to other browsers. It feels like nobody else is even doing anything except coming up with a new CSS property nobody is going to use every 3 months.

Everyone says they love Firefox, but every time Firefox adds a new feature it's a feature Vivaldi already had for years.


Does it have a torrent client like Opera did? I really miss that browser


Unfortunately that is one feature they haven't added back. That died with Opera 10 (or 11? idr)


Just prevent VS Code from accessing the entire $HOME.

The idea is that a well-made, modern desktop operating system would extremely limit an executable's access to user files and provide intuitive tools to allow access. Most applications shouldn't even need any access beyond their own configuration directory and maybe something like ~/Document/Source Code for source code editors and IDE. It shouldn't need to access ~/Pictures, ~/Videos, ~/Downloads, etc.

The problem is that Windows would rather sell you OneDrive, and Linux is very far from a well-made modern desktop OS, so a transitive dependency on a linter installed by a VS Code plugin can rm -rf $HOME, I guess.


For linux we have bubblewrap, firejail, apparmor and selinux (popular ones, there are far more). But it is often complicated and annoying to set up. Normally one would expect sw developers would write security rules for their apps but it is difficult due to amount of different sandboxing tools and various distro-specific configuration changes.

It would be nice to have it sorted out somehow. Actually Snap is an interesting example of something done in that regard.


Yes, and I wish Linux developers would see their own hypocrisy.

Linux users love to say that "fragmentation is good" but they also depend fully on root, sudo, users/groups, and RWX file permissions. Those are "standards" enforced by having only 1 way of doing something, the kernel.


Don’t forget that Linux is Unix inspired. And unix were meant to be used on servers and mainframe where root were used by a trained sysadmin. Users were not meant to install applications, and their actions has little impact on the system integrity (if they’re not actively attacking it)

But now with PC, you are root on your local machine, and some abuse that power without even knowing what it entails. You could easily sandbox npm, by creating a user for your js dev persona. But that’s not convenient, so no one does it.


Don't forget user accounts!


So you want websites to rely on traffic from Google instead of building their own newsletter? Interesting.


Adding a subscription form at the end of the article when the user is ready for the next task always made more sense to ne


I want web pages to stand alone, not be part of a newsletter I'm meant to subscribe to. Maybe we could, shock horror, share links to individual good pages.


I don't mind newsletters but I'd prefer a public RSS feed and I absolutely detest unsolicited or otherwise unnecessary modals.


People don't like Google because it's bad. If competition wins, maybe they'll stop being so bad. But if they become badder themselves, that's not good.


But Reddit also doesn't want you visiting new websites.


Not only Reddit the company but mods can be very hostile to linking to websites as well.


The impression I get from Google's own marketing material is that Google doesn't believe in "the web". And it hasn't believed in the web for years.

Think about it. Pretty much every time they show a search box with someone asking for directions to reach a physical place, what hours is it open, etc.

The greatest thing about the internet is that it has removed distances around the whole world, but Google's major value proposition seems to be that... it can accurately index and query information about local businesses?


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