Little Things That Make You Smile 7: The Joy Department

[Asura]

Firstly, this only describes the current state of AI, which is evolving at a pretty incredible rate so it won’t be true for long. Secondly, the point about its understanding quickly becomes irrelevant when it functions to a degree where that understanding no longer matters. Google translate doesn’t actually know what it’s translating. It doesn’t understand the words or the context or think about the content in any way that could be considered understanding and yet it doesn’t matter for most use cases. Yes, a person who does have that understanding and fluency in two languages will do a much better job as a result but, for most use cases, Google translate wins due to speed and the sheer amount of languages it can have a go at. Give it time and it will likely be improved to do a way better job, and yet still without actually understanding what it’s doing. That won’t matter at that point.

When it’s getting the results, the level of understanding is really only a point of curiosity or something to be debated.

My point is that it won't get results because it lacks the ability to comprehend the text.

There are certainly things for which AI is going to change everything, irrevocably, forever (short of a regression in human progress). A very good example is the one you've listed; language translation and localisation. We're already seeing that; the share price for some of the bigger localisation firms has taken an absolute nose-dive in the last 12 months. I have massive sympathy for anyone who works as a localiser; it was already a low-paying job, but now, with AI, if you want to localise, say, manga, before, where you needed an office of 10 professionals, now you probably just need 8 competent operators for the AI and 2 people to fix where it screws up.

But that's a specific example of the absolute best use-case.

Secondly, yes, what I'm saying is based on the current state of AI; but the sort of "functional understanding" you're suggesting is a real leap over where we are now; it's arguable the present AI just climbed over the garden fence while that sort of understanding is Everest. I strongly suspect it'll get there but it's not going to happen at the same pace.

I just think people have an inflated expectation of some of this stuff, and they have it because people want to sell that technology, sell shares in those businesses, just like the DotCom wave, or the Crypto wave, or the NFT wave. AI is admittedly closer to Web2.0, insofar as unlike NFTs it does have a use that's easy to explain, but I still think it's being exaggerated.

It's going to change things. But Photoshop changed things. It didn't destroy the media industry. I just think AI's really far from that point.

EDIT: BTW [MENTION=3144]Dogg Thang[/MENTION], I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong, or anything like that. I think we've both looked at these tools a great deal as they've matured. I think we've just reached different conclusions. I totally respect your concerns; I mean, those are why I looked into it in the first place!

[eastyy]

I dunno if anyone heard about The Escapist but editor-in-chief Nick Calandra was fired and a load of people quit including Yahtzee croshaw aka Zero punctuation which many people had only subbed to the channel because of him....anyway they all banded together to create a new channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2ttRgc5Zk&t

Makes me smile as how quickly it was set up and the amount of support they have got

[briareos_kerensky]

I always thought 90% of people knew The Escapist only thanks to Zero Punctuation and actually never went to the main website, or went there just a couple of times...like I did.

[Asura]

I dunno if anyone heard about The Escapist but editor-in-chief Nick Calandra was fired and a load of people quit including Yahtzee croshaw aka Zero punctuation which many people had only subbed to the channel because of him....anyway they all banded together to create a new channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2ttRgc5Zk&t

Makes me smile as how quickly it was set up and the amount of support they have got

I heard it's related to what happened back in June; they were going to start padding out their content with AI.

[eastyy]

I heard it's related to what happened back in June; they were going to start padding out their content with AI.

In the video it was mentioned he was fired due to poorly defined targets not being met....but you are probably right though just wanted a excuse. Anyway I would think it would have killed the channel but will see

[Blobcat]

Most Christmases my poor stepdad probably gets the less amazing end of Christmas in regards of gifts and surprises and such as he does all the legwork and is the yes man to all my mums demands as she rules the roost especially at Christmas. Most of Christmas time its a gaggle of us girls (my mum, my sister, my sister's wife and myself). Most years I will buy whatever my mum suggests for him as its rare I can find something special for him specifically (got him the Tailor Swift album he wanted last year as he really likes music and my mum suggested it).

This year not only have I bought him lots of little gifts as part of an advent calendar my sister is making for both our parents this year (we have usually done it for mum on and off the last couple of years) which broke the bank for me last month, but today I made history by buying my stepdad's gifts all and done first before anyone else in the family and without being told what to buy.

I'm really chuffed with my choices, Season One of Star Trek Strange New worlds on Blu-ray and a 3d Wallace and Gromit model thing ( he loves building those laser cut 3d models, and W&G).

[MrKirov]

So my missus ordered a statue from a website for me for christmas, it was supposed to be out in October, and she paid in full upfront. At the time, the site was well reviewed apparently. Here we are in November, the item is "out of stock" on their website and her order just says "order placed" still.

She emailed the company 5 times over a month, with not a single reply, and the site doent have any other contact method. She came to me not knowing what to do.

I investigated and found everywhere like Trustpilot, Facebook, ebay, all of them have poor reviews as of late all saying the same thing- taken money and stonewalled contact.

After some investigation, I found the guys full name and further details on companies house when looking for a phone number- but got no further than that. I left a poor trustpilot review (along with all the others) and mentioned his name within the review.

A day later I had a response from the guy on there, who took umbrage at me daring to mention his full name, as apparently its "personal information"... but then went on to give some sob story about how his mental health and that he took a break from the online business and focused on his physical store... and that he got stung in customs when ordering items, and then had to resource them.

To me not good enough- judging by the number of similar complaints he's just taking money and then "taking a break" -what about the mental health of the people who are now out of pocket? Why couldnt you have contacted the people effected?

He then said in the reply to email his again with the details to resolve and figure out what to do. I gave the benefit of the doubt and did so, and no response... and updates from other peoples reviews saying the same, than they still didnt get a reply.

So, I decided to do my best Nev and Max impression, and track the guy down. He had no phone number anywhere, but his mention of a physical store gave me something to go off- I found the store, used google maps to find it was part of an arcade, and found a phone number for the arcade and rung them.

I explained what was happening and that I wanted a way to contact the owner- and it just so happened he walked into the arcade office and she passed the phone to him.

He was very arsey. Apparently I was "posting personal details" about him online (I literally put his name) and that it was out of order that I was ringing his place of business. I politely told him that takign peoples money and stonewalling them is whats out of order, and that you cant expect to hide behind anonymity. He continued to argue about personal information, I said all that information is publicly available, and that he actually registered his business initially to his home address, which I can see in front of me- so no, I didnt post that, as that is what I would consider "personal information".

He went a bit more silent and went less arsey. After some conversation, he processed the refund, which my missus has now got confirmation of in email.

I cant believe that someone can take people money- in some cases 2 years according to reviews, not deliver the items, completely stone wall them, and then get arsey that someone has tracked him down. But on the other hand im hoping its **** him up a bit so he replies to all the other people and sorts it out.

Now the real question, do I post the contact number/details and how the call went on trustpilot for other people to be able to sort their issues out?

[Neon Ignition]

I'd be willing to bet yours is the only refund issued. When an item releases, if X amount of time passes without a refund (assuming no delay in launch) a refund should be automatic or else it considered theft.

[briareos_kerensky]

Nevermind.

[speedlolita]

Bought an untested USA PS2 and it works and boots games like new. Well pleased.

[Neon Ignition]

[Anpanman]

You do so much for us Neon with your news and so on, this for me is the best of the year. Thanks.

[importaku]

Now we are in new place it feels a little strange to have a garden again haven't had one in 26 years, the streetlights dont reach our front door so the garden gets pretty dark so i have hit up amazons garden lights section. Put some solar powered ones down the side of the path to outline it so mum doesn't fall and decided on these fun mushroom lights for under apple tree, planning on filling it with more solar powered lights dotted here & there in between plants as we slowly plant everything back up. They are all super cheap but look nice when actually in between plants.

[Hirst]

As you might know as I've poked my head in here every so often to ask for advice (microphone coming soon!), I've been messing around for what seems like an absolute age trying to produce videos about computer games so I can be one of the handful of creators on the Internet who might actually genuinely like playing old games that aren't Mario and talking about their merits. But one absolute bugbear that has been holding me back (other than lack of a microphone) has been that I couldn't figure out how to get my notoriously fussy OSSC scaler to play nicely with my capture card with interlaced content. It was either no signal or an extremely bad shimmering mess - not just the necessary compromises of deinterlacing but absolutely unwatchable, seizure-inducing, just awful.

But being that a lot of games I'd like to talk about are either partly (Saturn, PS1) or almost wholly (PS2) interlaced, it's been a stumbling block that I needed to get my head wrapped around or I'll really never get started. It was getting to the point where I was looking at replacing my whole equipment setup at a cost of a few hundred and starting all over again, very frustrating. Spent ages tinkering and messing around.

Somehow, tonight, after about 4 solid hours of further messing around with scaler, capture card and video grabber settings I finally got it sorted. When I saw the video output screen suddenly go rock solid I could have cried.

We can now see a brief test video of DecAthlete on the Saturn in all its glory, dumped on my testing channel. I imagine I can and will do some further tweaking, but at least I've got video content that is very much usable at this stage (non-interlaced content was fine).

Don't watch the video if you're American though, they didn't put him in that version.

[Anpanman]

Have a look at the product review;

https://rockrun.com/products/petzl-ange-s?variant=12295206830144