This is part of why I’m so disappointed in the LLM craze, they basically sucked all attention including some promising uses of machine learning in medicine.

Instead now we put every last memory module towards generative AI…

Oh phone trees are terrible, I refer exclusively to online self service. I suppose an LLM might be able to help a caller connect to the correct set of humans better than phone trees…

If I’m resorting to phone, it’s because I really really need a human. I know there still exist some very old people stuck calling… But if they can’t work your online portal, they won’t be able to work a phone tree either…

The robo-bullshit is great, if the thing has no nuance. Self checkout, paying bills, buying stuff online.

The things is those things are great because they are so predictable. LLM takes the predictability out. It’s also generally not allowed to do anything that the self service portal was not allowed to do, so you get stuck with a more imprecise interface instead of the nice, precise interface of a traditional portal, and no access to more nuanced help. It’s the worst of both worlds.

Yeah, have a new executive who managed a vaguely segment appropriate “hello world” with code gen and so regularly rants about why we should be paying human developers.

The biggest improvement on the user side was to stop trying to weigh the bagging area to prevent loss.

The newer machine vision based systems are less likely to screw up. “Unexpected item in bagging area” was an almost universal experience, nowadays I have only been flagged for human review once.

Also, one store I was at just lets you put your items under a camera without finding barcodes, and you just confirm the identified products.

Think the issue is either a self service portal that works in very predictable way (like the self checkout) or a human to deal with nuance.

To the extent an LLM might be useful, it’s likely blocked from doing so because the operator doesn’t trust it either.

The biggest annoyance is that the LLM support tends to more aggressively refuse to bring a human in.

So, Windows is harder to use you say. And “incompetent” users should stick to Linux?

That’s a take that would have been absurd many years ago. I personally am willing to do things the hard way for some benefit, so I have a Windows PC for gaming. But all my other systems are Linux systems, laptop, workstation, or embedded. However Windiws is supposed to be the easier choice.

I’ll even grant that Windows PITA is mostly not deliberate action by Microsoft. It’s mostly letting vendors be their crappy self and messing up the experience, with a bit of windows driver model incompatibilities breaking hardware support abandoned by vendor, but kept alive Linux side.

Main issue is the inconsistent drivers naturally included in Windows update and just how many things demand you install a weird vendor specific driver, with the steward of what should be a generic Winfows driver sometimes breaking things for other vendors, and/or neglecting the Windows update vintage of their driver.

Architecturally, the Windows driver model should be saner, but for most random devices I have better luck with Linux in how drivers are maintained and supported over time.

I found it relatable because just last night same thing happened in my windows boot, but all of a sudden it decided I had no wifi adapter, even though it worked fine in Linux and hadn’t broken in Windows before. I see it indicating an error in device manager, found a “guide” that specifically called out that device manager error that suggests rebooting the router, because people writing websites troubleshooting guides are morons. The driver model has some weird behaviors that make device behavior more convoluted.

In Linux, generally it either loads and works or it doesn’t and if it doesn’t, you absolutely need a fixed driver or the hardware has a problem. In Windows it can absolutely not work and you go through some weird things, end up with exact same driver and version as before but suddenly it actually works…

Considering a lot of the full YouTube videos are full of padding, taking over ten minutes to get to the point, I can understand why the shorts would have appeal.

Problem is one way or another people are being incentivized to target a specific runtime regardless of whether they have the material to fit.

That indeed may be his goal

Easier to find the bodies at least.

Well yeah, I would assume Steam would be a big priority for this scenario…

Look at the people trashing AI 2 years ago, how it would constantly hallucinate and produce gibberish code.

In my experience, this is absolutely still the case…

There was also the prolific serial to USB components. The market was flooded with perfectly functional clones. Prolific deliberately broke support for clones, penalizing a ton of people who had no idea.

When people did too good a job cloning some of their chips, they made the driver break even their own chips.

Of course, in this case the vendor got their stuff into the standard Windows driver without even needing users to download anything…

The ultimate effect is that our datacenter just uses Linux laptops because in practice serial adapters for Windows are just too unreliable unless we try to be supply chain detectives for the cheap little serial adapters we buy.

Another thing to keep in mind, this was a bill for a 9 day hospital stay. Generally speaking a vaginal birth has you back out the door in 24 hours, maybe 48 if something warrants a little more observation.

Had a relative with a toddler that almost died due to his GCM overreporting his levels.

My mom had one and learned immediately not to trust it.

I’m shocked that both people I know personally had those devices turn out to be uselessly inaccurate…

Everything reminds me of him…

For the longest time the trickiest part was the LEDs and power buttons

Nah, AI code gen bugs are weird. As a person used to doing human review even from wildly incompetent people, AI messes up things that my mind never even thought needed to be double checked.