No, but I remember the N64 controller having the shittiest joystick imaginable.
Spoken like someone who missed the entire Atari 2600 / IntelliVision era. *shudder* And don't even mention the Atari 5200. There was absolutely no joy in that stick.
I'm kind of mystified by the absolute visceral hostility of a large number of Americans towards recycling.
I think a big part is that recycling is very inconsistent here. Different geographic regions have very different rules on what materials can be recycled, what condition it needs to be in, and how it can be packaged. Even moving from one town to the neighboring one means having to learn a whole new set of recycling rules.
Plus, all recycling here typically goes together in one bin, maybe two if paper is separated from plastic, glass, and metal. This has to get sorted at the recycling center, and there's going to be a lot of contamination from things that can't actually be recycled. (Coated magazine pages, for example, or the wrong kinds of plastics mixed together.) I've seen places in Europe which have half a dozen different containers for different materials. That seems like someone in charge is at least taking it seriously. Here it feels like officials are paying lip service to the idea but don't really give a damn. If they're going to do a half-assed job, so are the citizens.
In short, inconsistent rules and a lack of faith that items are going to actually be recycled rather than just end up in a landfill, mixed with typical American resistance to regulations of any sort, all combine to make recycling look like a bad joke.
I predict that this Ohio initiative won't prompt people to do better at sorting their recyclables. Rather, it will just give people more excuse to give up on recycling altogether.
Not to mention a "change for change's sake" mentality that decreases comfort and productivity in the name of changing stuff "just because".
A solid, usable UI design will last for years. But how does that drive new sales? You need to change it up every season to keep people on the upgrade treadmill. It stopped being about usability decades ago, now it's about the latest UI fashion trend.
My bet is that with the way they're going, in a few more iterations they're going to land on the most sublime and minimalist UI possible, giving us a pure gray screen with gray text just one shade darker. They'll need to design an entirely new display technology that can even differentiate the shades, that's how subtle the difference is. And they'll somehow still manage to break dark mode.
I agree with your last paragraph. The problem isn't that it was changed, but that the changes weren't revealed. That's why I said that changes (additions or redactions) should be obvious like a blacked-out area. Even for PR purposes.
There was certainly more intentionally changed than the addition of the logo. The "COOKIES" stickers on the right didn't disappear by accident. Someone had to purposefully remove them and touch up the background to hide the removal. Not cool. Whether or not they had a good reason to redact them, the fact that they tried to hide the redaction looks shady. Nothing's wrong with the good old-fashioned black rectangle. It's faster and avoids even the appearance of impropriety.
The article has a comparison of the photo before and after. The department logo was added, and it looks like an "auto beautify" or clean-up pass was that made all the AI artifacts. So far so good.
But they *also* removed some items and tried to disguise the fact that they were removed. It looks like some stickers (maybe?) reading "COOKIES" were edited out. That may have been by an AI "remove this" sort of feature or it may have been by hand. Either way it's a pretty poor job. I could freehand the replacement background (a yellow sticky pad) better than they did. Also, a rubber band was removed for no obvious reason. I can imagine reasons why they might want to remove the stickers, but removal of something as innocuous as a rubber band is baffling. Especially because the rubber band goes in front of one item and behind another translucent item, which means it at least takes some effort to remove. Why bother?
I'm willing to give the police the benefit of the doubt and say that the AI artifacts were unintended. I don't know if they're the result of the sticker removal or if they were put there by a separate auto-beautify feature but I don't think there was any malice intended.
I'm less willing to forgive the sticker removal. I don't know why they were removed, but it should have been done with a black "REDACTED" box so the viewer knows that the image has been modified.
IMHO (and IANAL), any changes at all should be obvious. The department logo should be in an inset box or clearly an overlaid watermark; as it is it looks like it might have been a physical plaque on the wall. Guys, this is an evidence photo. Even though it's (probably) not intended for use in court, you have no business modifying it. Adding a logo or making redactions is fine, as long as it's obvious they're not actually part of the photo. Otherwise, keep your grubby little hands off! If for no other reason than it gives the impression that you're being dishonest.
Am I the only one who noticed that the quotes from Google conspicuously say that they're ending the trial, not the feature? And that there is more than one possibility about what happens after the trial is over? Just sayin', there's nothing here that actually confirms that the feature is going away.
There's one killer app I'd absolutely love: Name tags. I want facial recognition and a person's name to pop up over their head like in an MMO. Give me that, and shut up and take my money. Even if it was privacy-limited to, say, only showing me names of people in my contact list it'd be worthwhile.
- A popular Washington state high school Spanish teacher was recently FIRED after reading a passage from "To Kill a Mockingbird" - responding to a dare by his students. In fact, that same book is now BANNED in multiple âoeprogressiveâ high schools.
- The latest edition of 1984? Prefaced with trigger warnings, and a new introduction apologizing that its characters arenâ(TM)t diverse enough.
I'm pretty much Lefty McLeftface myself, and I agree with you that these things are stupid. While I don't know the political leanings of the schoolboard in question, I'll note that banning books outright is not a typical leftist approach. Most of us would go with, "Yeah, this is a teaching moment," which is what it sounds like the teacher in question did. The book is about racism, it would be pretty dumb to try to eliminate the racist elements. I don't think most lefties would try to prevent teaching "To Kill A Mockingbird". I suspect that most of the objections come from right-wingers who feel oppressed by any suggestion that whites have historically oppressed minorities in the US.
Speaking of teaching moments, that's pretty much what your description of the new 1984 forward sounds like. I haven't read that edition myself so I can't really comment on it. Doesn't sound like it affects the text of the novel itself though, and it may even clarify it by giving context. Like I said, I don't know. Haven't read it.
As for LLMs' characterization of Heather Cox Richardson, I'd need you to show your work on either of those claims. I'd be interested to see the unfiltered chat logs of the prompts and responses. FWIW, I think LLMs in general have pretty much the same accuracy as a Magic 8-Ball. Blind faith in anything Grok or the others say is itself the height of stupidity.
As for HCR herself, I'd put her in the "left-leaning" category. Her letters tend to mix relatively neutral descriptions of the events of the day and her own mildly leftist interpretation of them. Definitely not neutral, but if you think she is FAR left you need to re-calibrate.
Your computer account is overdrawn. Please see Big Brother.
