Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!
Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!
Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.
So, how’s it going?
Why do people sharing slides in online meetings not put powerpoint into presentation mode?
Ah ha ha ha ha ha
Omg is that still a thing? That was one of my pet hates like, 15 years ago. I thought it was because the tech was relatively new.
And then instead of using the remote like a normal person they have to hunch over their laptop fussily looking to click onto the next slide…
It seems to only be online meetings. Like everyone regressed, except they still do it properly when it’s an in person presentation.
Oh ok so it’s more like a tech equivalent of how they look presentable but only from the waist up.
A similar peeve of mine:
I once watched my father watch a whole movie on his HTPC connected to his TV with the seek bar/controls and cursor on the screen. I waited to see if he would move the mouse to make it disappear, but nope. Watched the whole thing like that.
Haha oh that’s almost as annoying as watchlist the video without making it fullscreen.
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I think in this case it’s not that they don’t know how. They can do it fine for in-peson presentations, but suddenly they are doing an online presentation and they don’t feel the need to go into presentation mode anymore.
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I have no idea.
It’s a failure in education. Companies just don’t train staff in how to use Office. You’re expected to just already know how.
Office is incredibly complex and powerful, and most users probably only know of a hundredth of the feature available.
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Fortunately, I get to refuse to use it ;-)
Occasionally I’ll use LibreOfice Calc if I need a spreadsheet.
I just can’t find anything in Calc :(. I’m too used to Excel, which I made a career out of at one point.
I can’t find anything in excel either!
Haha at least in newer versions of excel you can search for what you want and it will tell you which menu to find it in. I haven’t seen that in calc.
Yeah, that’s my pet peeve as well. And it’s just as worse when they’re sharing a Word screen in edit mode (instead of going to fullscreen/reader mode), so half the screen is filled with the ribbon bar and everyone’s like “you need to zoom in…” >_<
Oh man you reminded me how much I hate being sent Word documents that should have been PDFs.
In other news, we’ve crossed 50 comments in the daily post! Must be a record of some sorts?
Ok now it’s a record
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67 on 22/8/2023.
This post comes in 4th most comments on a daily thread (so far).
Thought for the day
Do you run thought experiments?
I was discussing with a friend the other day about the bullshit around OpenAI. The fun kernel of the conversation was “what if the board was correct”; if we assume that they have an AI that can reason. We ran a thought experiment; what if an AI can reason, how long before AI can do every job?.. and we kept going.
I like running thought experiments; they can be a lot of fun.
I do this. It’s good to keep my brain occupied while I do mundane stuff. I have to keep it occupied or it runs into other stuff
Definitely. I can relate so hard to the “middle out” scene in Silicon Valley.
As far as I can see it’s a good thing and part of intellectual curiousity. But some people seem to find thought experiments annoying, and it would be interesting to find out why.
Well now you mention it, how come AI is so crap in Star Trek and most other TV set in the future? Other than Data and the occasional other AI cameo, everything is surprisingly manual.
If it’s possible to create an AI better than a person, and that AI creates an AI even better, and this repeats, are there still going to be jobs that only humans can do?
What you are referring to is an AI superintelligence; the exponential growth is part of it.
As for science fiction, AI superintelligence makes humans irrelevant.
Haha yeah I guess in a world with AI superintelligence, you don’t need any humans, then the show isn’t very interesting.
Which raises the next question. In a galaxy with 100 billion stars, why hasn’t life on one planet somewhere that evolved a billion or half a billion years before us managed to make an AI replicating explorer that explores the galaxy? Maybe a superintelligent AI has no need to explore the galaxy?
That is an interesting question in its own right.
There are lots of theories on this:
- From the mundane, maybe we are the first.
- To the exotic, the “zoo” hypothesis states: that there is at least one group that are keeping us “blind” to the real universe by manipulating our measurements / ability to measure.
Even if no “far future tech” is available, using just fusion based propulsion (near future tech). The galaxy could be colonized in a few million years. Which considering the age of the universe/galaxy is an extremely short time.
Yeah, I love the fermi paradox. What if AI is the great filter? Civilizations eventually build AI that can build better versions of itself, and the result is always that the AI kills the civilization (or some equivalent - say, people stop knowing how things work, the AI eventually breaks in some way, then people can’t survive in the world built for AI).
I also like the Dark Forest idea too. From the book The Dark Forest which is the sequel to The Three Body Problem. But knowing about it might spoil the book so I don’t want to explain it here.
I know about the dark forest idea, but it is a little flawed (a long with most of the solutions) it is predicated on the assumption where ALL civilizations follow the script.
No it doesn’t require that, because as soon as one doesn’t follow the script, they poke their metaphorical head up and BAM, get them before they get you. No one will have their head up for long because they get wiped out.
This is part of The Fermi Paradox.
TL;DR: If the universe is ancient and infinite, where is everybody?
Super AI is one possible answer: Everyone creates it, is subsumed by it.
If you’ve got effectively unlimited computational power, you just simulate everything rather than having to explore it
Whoops I sorta responded to the wrong post with my thoughts but yes, maybe life loses all meaning if you have super AI. Or maybe they eventually put you in a version of the matrix after reasoning happiness is the only meaning of life and so they can optimise our happiness this way.
Maybe it has already happened.
It’s simulations all the way down.
Got an email advertising cyber monday sales on firewood. Yup, logs of wood. For cyber monday.
Cyber wood. I feel there’s a joke to be made about graphite or carbon here but I can’t think of it.
Are you gatekeeping cyber?
I’m not even from New Zealand, I just love reading these 😊. My best friend is a Kiwi and I visited him for a month last year.
Nice to have you here!
Thank you 😊
Feeling quite good. I have a problem at this time of year where I want to go outside where there is sun but it’s way more tiring than being inside. Thinking if I can get my hands on a second hand lawn chair that might help.
Taxes almost done, thanks to IRD and Dave. -)
Just finishing up a very nice 4 day break away to the Marlborough Sounds with the fam. My last chance to get away before the silly season starts for us. Good weather, good food, lots of fun and laughter
That sounds lovely! I’m glad you got to recharge.
After looking at them for a while, and waiting to see if they’d have some sales during Black Friday, went and pulled the trigger on a Weber Q.
Tried it for the first time yesterday, making some slow cooked lamb shanks. Never cooked lamb before, and tbh only have ever had lamb a handful of times. Came out better than expected!
Yum!
Nice! Glad it turns out you were a good cook after all.
I’ve always told people that I don’t think I’m a good cook (e.g., I don’t yet quite understand how different ingredients work together to enhance certain things etc,) but I can usually follow instructions. The more detail the better haha.
Haha I get told I’m a good cook, but really the secret is to add as much salt as you can get away with before it tastes salty. Plus lots of butter if appropriate (before the salt, in case the salt in the butter make it too salty).
Everything gets way more salt than it should. Pasta water? Salty like the sea. Boiling potatoes? Salty like the sea. Mashing potatoes? Loads of butter, then some milk to get the right consistency.
And if a recipe says 1/2 clove of garlic like one we have does, that’s obviously not enough. If you don’t like garlic don’t put it in, otherwise at least double what the recipe says.
But yeah, if you like your heart don’t eat at my house.
Other tips I know of:
Get a bag of Ajinomoto MSG from the asian supermarket. Use it similarly to salt (e.g don’t overuse it or you’ll feel thirsty), but it makes anything savoury better.
A lot of times when something tastes “missing” from a dish, adding acidity can help balance the flavour. A splash of lemon juice/vinegar/worcestershire sauce etc. can really help.
and like you said, lots of delicious butter!
Haha I’m a massive sucker for salt too. Though my partner is the complete opposite. It’s a bit of a wrestle as to who flavours when cooking lol.
We looove our garlic though 😂
Salt is a flavour enhancer, so it makes things yummier so long as they were yummy to start with.
Your comment reminded me of someone I used to work with complaining their food was “too flavourful”.
Hahaha, I can’t quite wrap my head around “too flavourful” lol. It’s like complaining that “my life is too good at the moment”
You got the right idea, under promise and over deliver :)
I don’t know about anyone else but I had a full day with kids yesterday. Went to the market, then my wife took one kid to a play date while I took the others on trains and busses and up the cable car and to Te Papa, and ended at their Grandparents’ for dinner before taking three grumpy kids home for an early bed time.
Also sorry for the down time on Saturday evening, this was an issue on the host’s end and all the services run by them were down (mastodon.nz, bookworm.nz, etc).
Thanks for keeping it all together! I am going kiwi spotting on Stewart Island tonight. Unfortunately the tour is fully booked, so we’re just gonna go walk around at night and hope for the best.
Good luck!
Good luck, that is so exciting!!! If you get there early, casually ask a local for some tips.
We had a crazy weekend, didn’t get the last kid to bed till after 9 last night. Huge weekend.
I got a rona jab and now my arm hurts. Small price to pay for not catching the rona again.
Someone I was talking to in Wellington mentioned a plane flying low between buildings in the CBD with smoke coming out of it. Anyone know what that might have been?
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Wasn’t this by any chance? RNZAF farewell flight becomes most tracked in the world
Apparently it was flying low going over Parliament on its way down south.
It would have been near parliament, they said it flew over 50 metres about them but they may have been exaggerating. This is the best guess so far!
Can you track the flight after the fact? (i.e. can I go and see the route closer in?)
Yeah can see the flight history here: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/nz7004#32fad10f
Looks like it flew over the beehive about 2:49 (I think, site says 1:49 AM UTC) at about 950 ft up.
Thanks! Lower, even!
It’s remarkably low. From memory, there’s a minimum of 1000ft over built up areas. Though this area would be under the control of Wellington Airport so anything they allow would be ok. Still feels unusual to fly so low over Wellington in an aircraft being retired because it’s age makes it unsafe 😆
Made gyoza for the first time tonight, turned out far better than I thought it would. Took a bit of prep work, but was far cheaper and tastier than the frozen stuff from the supermarket. Even got two thumbs up from the four year old, and the seven year old went back for seconds.
We occasionally (because of all the work) make Chinese style pan fried dumplings (TBH I’m not too sure of the difference between them and gyoza but the recipe we follow says Chinese). We make the casings from scratch as well. The kids generally just eat the casings 🤷.
Oh, except the 3yo that just wanted to drink the soy sauce on it’s own.
We do them with bought wrappers every now and then - my 12 year old is a big fan and has got the pleating down pat now. We’ve done them from scratch once before - never again lol
Haha it’s hard work!
