Little Things That Irk You IX

[Brad]

Who pronounces APT?

[Neon Ignition]

Bruno Mars and Rose for two

[eastyy]

Started to irk me more recently but YouTube sponsorships, some are OK but feels like they have become way more jarring and more like contractually obliged rather then stuff they actually find useful and often will be so out of leftfield of what the channel is about, and worse when it's channels I really like. When someone promotes raid shadow legends for me they do cash in some of their credibility as its not a good game at all
...though I do know they pay a lot.

[charlesr]

Youtube (along with other websites) have got so much worse, searching for stuff seems worse, results often have nothing to do with what i actually searched for. They have also subtly increased the time before the Skip ad appears....and the worse thing the same bloody adverts popping up over and over even though i have selected block them (PocketFm and those Mobile game ads keep appearing)

Google Search is now rubbish too. I searched "rice per person". Top result (non-advert) was a BBC Food article which had everything there was to know about cooking rice, but not how much to use per person.

[QualityChimp]

It's been quite gradual. I remembering a meme where someone said if you're on page 2 of a Google search, you're never going to find it, but with all the sponsored links and ads, I regularly sifting through the chaff for the wheat.

I've heard good things about Ecosia (who plant tress with searches) and Brave (pretty secure).

[Neon Ignition]

Google search is so poor I've actually started using Edge's AI tool more often

[wakka]

Yeah for more nuanced results on more specific queries I sometimes use AI - CoPilot, ChatGPT, or Perplexity. The thing it can do pretty well is synthesise information from multiple sources to give you a quick answer.

Its capabilities are still far below the hype, but as an additional web search tool it can be useful.

[briareos_kerensky]

Switched completely to DuckDuckGo when Google started to prioritise AI results over real web pages.

[Anpanman]

Switched completely to DuckDuckGo when Google started to prioritise AI results over real web pages.

I went to DuckDuckGo a few years ago on my laptop but it kept returning American search results even though I wanted UK.

Went back to Google but like yourself recently I became pissed off with the AI results, I found out a way of getting the Web results on the PC.

https://tenbluelinks.org/

There is help for mobile as well which I haven't tried yet but the PC help works fine on mine.

[importaku]

Well that was fun random torrential rainpour just as i was leaving for home it was pretty brutal, couldn't get home this evening as traffic was gridlocked so had to get out of taxi and walk rest of way when i got close to home i saw why the road was blocked rain was so hard the river has flooded and it's over the road. Totally cut me off from the estate, had to track back and go through the woodland path that's got no lights to see if the other footbridge was open. And nope it wasn't it was about a foot above where th footpath bridge is so i had to wade across upto my knees in god knows what thats floating in that dirty river. Luckily there's rails on the side or i'd be white water rafting back into town

Got home looking like a dunked witch & smelling of wet dog, remind me to take the long way home tomorrow at least i wont have to swim home.

[speedlolita]

Thanks to being lax with my account security (no 2fa) some idiot got into my Instagram account and set up 2fa on their end. Additionally, the two processes Instagram offer to overrule this authenticator do not work. I'm not especially bothered about the account but I do want my username back. Gave me a kick up the backside to set 2fa up on my more important accounts though so there is that I suppose.

[Brad]

The Google AI results are absolute dog****:

I asked how to make a Blofeld synthesiser patch be monophonic:

"How to set Blofeld patch to mono"

"To set a patch to mono on a Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer, you can try these steps:

1. In the Blofeld's Global menu, make sure "Ctrl Receive" is set to "on". This will allow the Blofeld to receive change messages from Patch Base.

"

Asking it a second time (same prompt)
"
Here's how to set a patch to mono on a Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer:

1. Press Shift+Multi three times in a row

"

Neither of these are remotely correct. I can;t get it to spit out what it did originally yesterday but it was something like:

"Turn the volume back and forth rapidly whilst powering the device on"

Absolute nonsense

[eastyy]

Sponsorship sections in Youtube videos.....I know many have to pay the bills but they have started to really irk me the past year or so, some sponsorships sections taking up so much of a vid. I sort of know the rough ad revenue but of course i suspect some channels get better deals but for me its around $1 per 1000. The problem is some of the stuff being advertised it sounds so forced and heavily scripted and i really doubt they have looked to much into the sponsors, of course there are some sponsors that when people advertise they take a drastic hit to credibility, like with Raid shadow legends....as its really not a good game at all.

[Yakumo]

I always skip those ads. Normally they're about a minute in length. In fact, I don't know why anyone would watch them during a video.
At least some good channels have a progress bar on the screen or timer which help when skipping the ads.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/20/sue-gray-given-peerage-as-labour-seeks-to-rebalance-lords