Regarding quality, I have noticed a considerable decline in non-on-demand quality of paperback books in recent years as well. Paper is often really bad, printing quality even worse. Very often the text is grayish pixelated, I'm guessing this is because the publishers have stored some subpar digitized version of prior editions, which on reprints comes out like an ereader from 20 years ago.
I often specifically look up old or first print editions of books (paperback or hardcover) and then buy them used from Abebooks etc.
However, the quality of the on-demand books via Amazon is hit and miss. It's not universally bad. Sometimes it is very good paper and sharp print. Sometimes it is cheapish white copy paper. The covers are universally bad. In Berlin they apparently come from Poland.
I also got on demand books in similar qualities from other German book sellers (buecher.de for example). On their page at least it's somewhat recognizable that it will be on demand, because they have some details about the manufacturer (themselves in this case).
I'm not necessarily against those on demand books, but I would really like if Amazon and other sites would
- let me know when I have to expect those books
- customize the quality options (e.g. paper color)
One of the odd things about Hackers is how it created a cultural feedback loop. When it came out, the style it showed was pretty weird and kind of campy, but I think it got integrated into actual hacker culture over time (e.g. visible in hacker spaces, conferences, online culture etc), and because of that today the movie as a whole seems less weird than originally.
This experience of different devices competing for a BT headphone is really the most annoying aspect of BT to me. I pair my headphones regularly with my work laptop, my phone and my private laptop, and when working from home and walking around in my apartment, the headphones sometimes just randomly pick another device, even if the current device has audio going, and the other does nothing. Sometimes the Macbook does that when it's on standby, which is bizarre. I always wondered if that is an implementation bug on one of the sides. I fixed it by forcing the Macbook to shut off BT when going on standby.
This is very true. Especially for sport, they are just great. I always found wired headphones annoying when running, because I need to take care of the wire somehow. Wired-together bluetooth in-ears like the Bose SoundSport kind of fill that niche, as I don't need to worry about one of them falling out. Looks like they don't make them anymore.
Yeah sport is main reason companies are making them.
I also have to say i haven't checked this for two years but there seem to be some new models now (under banner of neckband earbuds). So maybe there is something nicer now.
It's actually a valuable signal to the phone scammer if you're mean, because that means they can stop wasting their own effort of scamming you, and call somebody else.
That is hilarious. I love that you believe that. Being mean to a phone scammer is about your feelings and your time. They do not care. More importantly, the next person who calls you is not gonna be the same person. It’s like slamming the door on some Mormons expecting that that’ll be the end of that, when there’s just two entirely different Mormons that are gonna come by a month later. They cannot have a memory of the thing you did to the other Mormons.
Congratulations for not getting the point. Which was that for the scammer this is a business transaction, and if they can get an early signal that it is not going to work, they can cancel and get to the next one. So they optimize for any potential candidates to get off as early as possible if they figure it isn't going to happen.
I get the naming from the other thread, but is any of this particularly Microsoft-specific? Google creates a mess in search and their docs as well, slop code is one the main artifact of all these AI tools, and bloat, hallucinations and the sloppification of web content is a general problem.
People hate me, maybe its the Google employees on HN but Google search for me has been garbage for at least 10 years now. Even in the late 2000s they crippled it, every 5 years or so they make it worse and worse.
I think part of the problem is there's a lot of SEO farming type sites too, it feels like a lot of high quality content (even before AI slop was so common) is just gone. I hope Google takes this issue seriously and works on a true PageRank algo / service that fixes their search because its been bad for a while. Now I just ask Perplexity or any model for links to things instead.
IME this is the consensus view. Google's search quality is abysmal. DDG was the 1st popular alternative, but it's been supplanted by Kagi. Kagi costs a few $ /mo but that's part of its appeal, it's a great deal and a game-changer for the service (vs the user) to be the product.
I understand that people are fed up of it running on their operating system (and perceived poor performance of Windows 11), but yes, google/duckduckgo are all running LLM queries with every search.
I have to use Windows 11 at work, it can literally take half a minute before a Win key, then, say, "ou" will find the program Outlook*.
* I was also completely unable to find a keyboard shortcut for New Outlook to filter by 'Unread' without performing a search and respecting the inbox search order etc.. Turns out the filter button just above the inbox is a React component and it can't be called from the Alt - key shortcut.
It's due to both: the deranged AI push MS did in last 3 years and continuous degradation of their flagship product - Windows, for last 10.
I think no other company managed to get a punny nickname due to their questionable pursuits and actions around new trends. Tho most of them were ridiculed in memes and countless critical posts on the Internet when something have surfaced.
Also, it appears that Microslop was coined first in 1994, acc. to wikitionary [1]
TBH, I discovered the website by just domain checking the word. It might be that someone has been inspired by the same incident to write down their general thoughts and if not for it, the website would've been slopgularity.com.
Speaking of Google Search, I absolutely hate that the AI answers push down the whole content and you constantly misclick. Not to mention these are often hilariously wrong. Trying Brave Search currently and the AI answers are way more accurate and actually don't push the content down (it's a fixed container).
checks out
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