Not to mention how voice assistants can just mishear you. Told google once to put dental floss on my shopping list and it said “got it, I added applesauce.” Good try I guess. Pretty trivial this time, but they expect me to trust that for tasks with financial stakes?

So glad I’m not the only one

That feel when your Etsy purchase comes with an Amazon receipt in the package :(

You would think so wouldn’t you? But Google usually still tries to be “helpful” about everything. “100 linen” does work better, although still not perfect.

That also doesn’t fix the issue with being unable to ignore Amazon and Walmart. On the standard search, the dash to ban a specific term makes it not the first result but it still shows up further down the page. On the dedicated product search it doesn’t seem to do anything at all.

Here’s an example of how well search operators do these days.

I just signed up for the free trial of Kagi, I’ll have to see how it compares.

It’s even bad for finding something to purchase honestly. I’ll search for a specific part number, and most of the results are other similar but not interchangeable products. No Google I cannot just shove this random other battery pack into my UPS, but thanks anyway.

I tried searching for airtight drawers and all the results were either airtight or drawers. Only one was both and it was a ten thousand dollar museum specimen cabinet.

It’s especially terrible if you care about the fiber content of your clothes. Searching for linen or even 100% linen gets me linen blend, linen-look, linen color. 100% wool gets mostly acrylic wool blends. Wool toe socks gets me either wool socks or toe socks but again, not both.

Plus I can’t block Amazon and Walmart from the results anymore, so that’s a ton of extra junk to filter through manually.

Man I can haul 3 2x4s in my Camry

Part of it, as I understand, is that vehicles classed as light trucks instead of passenger cars (i.e. pickups and SUVs) are exempt from certain safety and testing requirements. Car manufacturers push them super hard because less money on regulatory compliance = more profit.

There’s also been the cultural tie between big vehicles and masculinity, I’m sure the marketing teams haven’t been shy about reinforcing that attitude.

I get why a lay person would misunderstand the capabilities of LLMs. They sound like a thinking person should sound, so they treat it like it’s coming from a thinking person.

But how are all the (presumably) tech-literate Microsoft employees also confused by this? Anyone paying even a little attention should have seen numerous instances of LLMs confidently asserting “facts” that they pulled out of their asses. They are not the right tool for most of the stuff people use a voice/OS assistant for.

I have to assume it’s the business guys up top hearing the “AI” buzzword and getting horny for capitalism but god damn

Awesome, thanks so much!

Where do you find those metrics you’re following? I’m also hesitant to drop all precautions as I don’t think my mental health could take an extended bout of brain fog. I’m a bit of a hermit anyway, and like you said, masking is easy.

I hardly see masks in public at all anymore, though, so I’m feeling unsure about how to tell if everybody’s just acting like it’s over when it isn’t, or if I’m holding out way longer than necessary.