Agreed, good catch.

For me it’s the text (too regular and perfectly-ruled to be hand lettered, but too much variance between the letterforms to be a font) and the little AI artifact on the random doohickey directly under the bottom left corner of the AI computer monitor:

Aside from that, it’s just the weight of unmotivated choices. Why is the “good” side of the image grayscale while the “bad” side is in color (a human probably would’ve done it the other way)? Why are the desks drawn slightly differently while the person, chair, and computer are drawn the same (a human would’ve probably made everything identical to better illustrate their point)? Why all the random clutter on one but not the other (if the point was to make the AI computing experience look scattered and cluttered, surely they would’ve made it more overwhelmingly cluttered, but if it was for verisimilitude they’d have put clutter on both desks)? Also, subjectively, the “AI” logo on the screen suggests a pleasant experience, not an oppressive one.

An unmotivated choice on its own isn’t necessarily an AI calling card, but enough of them together alongside one or two smoking guns can definitely make the case pretty strongly.

It’s just not as useful as the rear-facing camera on a phone or tablet. You can’t aim it easily, so it’s stuck pointing slightly downward at the surface it’s sitting on, unless you’re interested in making your screen harder to see.

Plus it’s more expensive for a feature that few people would find useful.

It’s called Live Plus.

If you’ve never heard of Live Plus before, it’s a feature on LG smart TVs that uses ACR (automatic content recognition) to analyze what’s displayed on your screen (via The Markup). LG then uses that data to offer “personalized services,” including content recommendations and advertisements.

[…]

On Samsung smart TVs, for example, you can disable targeted ads by going to Privacy Choices, selecting Terms and Conditions, and toggling off Viewing Information Services and Internet-Based Advertisement Services. On Roku TVs, ACR can be turned off by disabling Use info from TV inputs, which is tucked away in the settings menu under Smart TV Experience.

Saved you a click.

Or with water, frankly. Is the only option for the switch inside the bathroom literally in the sink basin? There shouldn’t be that much splashing in a work bathroom.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it depends a little bit on the model of the e-reader (color takes more out of it, etc), but I only charge my Boox every other week, and I take notes on it, read on it, the works.

E-paper is easier to use outside or in bright light, and the battery tends to last longer. Anecdotally, it also doesn’t hurt my eyes as much.

I’ve only ever had it work for me once or twice, and it was always near the very beginning of a project when I was only losing a few days or a week of working code at most. When I discover that I fundamentally misunderstood or misjudged a core assumption and everything needs to be reoriented. Never when I already had code in production.

That’s fair, but even with that, it’s got to be easier to shove it into existing code. Especially if you’re trying to do it in a way that people don’t notice!

And actually, the Windows 10 start menu infamously had ads, too. So it can’t be that.

But this was four years ago! Actually it was released four years ago. This decision was almost certainly made before there were widespread code assistance AIs.

Tali Roth, the then product manager working on the core Windows user experience, including the Start menu, taskbar, and notifications, took up the question and talked about how building the taskbar from scratch meant that they had to cherry-pick things to put into the feature list first, and the ability to move the taskbar didn’t make the cut, for several reasons that Microsoft values.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!

If you have working code, why would you rewrite it from scratch? Refactor, sure. Overhaul, maybe. But why rewrite the whole thing?! You’re gaining nothing but unnecessary bugs.

I know all the joke answers. To justify a product manager’s salary, because Microsoft gonna Microsoft, whatever. I want to know the real reason. Why would you ever rewrite working code from scratch if you don’t have to?

Four years ago, Recall wasn’t a thing. Microsoft was caught as off-guard by the AI hype machine as the rest of us. So I doubt this was originally the reason.

Might be now, though.

It depends on who you ask. There are definitely people who hear it as “this is super slow and you should be faster.”

I’ve adopted “should I do something else and come back?” as a less-affronting way to ask this question. It’s not perfect, but it usually gets me decent results.

Electron (and Tauri, and Neutralino) also offers some deeper OS integration stuff that browsers don’t do or actively block; direct file management, USB peripheral control, that sort of thing.

But for something like Discord, you’re totally right. You just need the browser.

Definitely a fair point. But for the most part, being in the country that collapses is going to be worse than being in a different country.

This is just me, and I’m no expert. But I kind of think that, if you’re legitimately worried about your country’s currency collapsing, you might want to consider leaving your country. Any sort of collapse that leads to hyperinflation or the large-scale elimination of financial infrastructure is probably going to be difficult if not impossible for the average person to survive, gold or no.

That said, precious metals are a niche enough market that I can’t imagine it not being rife with predatory sellers; companies that aren’t offering scams per se—you’ll probably pay them and receive what you pay for—but companies which are counting on people not knowing anything about the market and accepting a terrible price or poor quality goods.

Again, not an expert. But my end-of-the-world investment would be in shelf-stable food, easily-stored seeds (for planting), medicine, hand tools, high-quality camping gear, books, that sort of thing. If there is a collapse, those sorts of things will be immediately useful and also tradeable.

It’s been a fun journey. And he’s on the Fediverse! https://mas.to/@TechConnectify

(not tagging him directly because I feel like he probably gets that enough)

Alec has been on a multi-year quest to get an incandescent color profile from LED Christmas lights. I haven’t watched this episode, but he usually does a pretty good job of recapping at the start of every episode.

It’s always super entertaining, in my opinion.

EDIT: I watched it. It is indeed super entertaining! This time, the recap comes after his special Christmas light repacking tip, so it’s a couple of minutes in.

Walking into a meeting at Kohler and keeping a straight face after saying the words “toilet camera”–and then maintaining that straight face throughout the product’s discussion, greenlighting, development, manufacture, and sale–deserves an Oscar.