Sure, cats falling off things is funny, but NOTHING is funnier than robots miscalculating the speed, force or angle needed to complete a mundane task. NOTHING.
baby needs
S N A C K
People rarely think about the engineering of gala gowns, or of fashion at all. This is part of a larger problem of treating traditionally feminine interests as non-science-related. Baking is practical chemistry, knitting is manual programming, makeup is about crafting optical illusions, and adjusting pattern sizes relies on algebra.
But gala gowns never appear alongside the ubiquitous thrown baseball in physics books, or pop up as exam questions. As copyright library Nancy Sims pointed out to me on Twitter, while plenty of spacial reasoning tests ask which pieces fold into a cube, none ask which set of pattern pieces would fit together into a pair of pants.
ive been sitting on a phone call with a guy from microsoft for an hour now after my computer crashed so he can help me re-upgrade to win10 and 99% of it has been pure silence but 5 mins ago he asked me if he can go pee.
i told him bro u been sittin here watching my slow ass computer install windows 10 for over 50 minutes you can go make yourself a cup of tea and a sandwich if you want.
he came back and apologised for making me wait for him but he said he made a sandwich and a coffee and now he’s chilling at his desk having a bite to eat and we’re just hanging out watching my percentage climb.
im getting jack of the silence so i asked him where he’s from bc he has an accent and theres a slight delay and he said he’s in the philippines so now we’re talking about the girl who won silver in the weightlifting at rio and he’s so proud of her its adorable.
apparently it’s the first medal the philippines has won since the olympics in 1996 so this woman is a hero over there rn. i love hearing underdog stories i want to hear more.
shit boy now we’re talking about how countries like the US and australia are disappointed when they dont win gold medals but athletes from countries like the philippines are the pride of the nation if they even place and how it suggestive of the values of first world countries
BOY THIS IS GETTING DEEP
we’re two hours in and i asked him what his record was for the longest phone call and he said five and a half.
bRO. FIVE HOURS ON THE DAMN PHONE HOW DOES A MOFO DEAL WITH THAT.
im on hold again bc his supervisor wants something but apparently the five and a half hour phone call was because a guy was mad that he couldn’t figure out how to work windows 8 when he got a new computer so my tech guy spent nearly six hours teaching him how to use a fucking operating system.
this guy has the patience of a damn saint can we give him a medal or something like lets give the philippines their second medal in 20 years pleASE.
my computer finally entered its boot-reboot stage after installation and he asked me in the most polite way humanely possible if we could perhaps end the call and he will call me back tomorrow to make sure the upgrade finished properly.
this guy just spent over two hours chilling on the phone with me and he’s still gonna call me back tomorrow just to check that everything is ok.
i feel like ive entered a new plane of existence.
UPDATE
he called me back like he promised he would and asked whether everything was okay, and i told him it was and that ive reinstalled everything.
he said he was so happy that my computer is working again and that he was so glad that i was his customer because he’s not used to being able to chat and talk with the people on the other end just for the hell of it and it made his day yesterday.
his supervisor got on the phone and i gave him a glowing review, she said shes going to email me a survey so i can put it all on paper so he has the physical feedback to his name.
honestly that just made the whole stress of my computer crashing its pants so much better.
Client: “Is e-mail on the internet? I have no internet, can I still read my e-mail?”
Me: “Well yes, you must be able to get online to view your e-mail.”
Client: “Oh, dear. I can’t see my e-mail.”
Me: “Well, let’s see. Can you open up Internet Explorer for me and tell me what you see?”
Client: “Open what?”
Me: “Your browser, can you open up your browser?”
Client: “My…my…?”
Me: “What you click on when you want to browse the internet?”
Client: “I don’t use anything, I just turn my computer on, and it’s there.”
Me: “Okay. Do you see the little blue ‘e’ icon on your desktop?”
Client: “You mean I have to start writing letters again?”
Me: “I’m…what, I’m sorry?”
Client: “I don’t have any pens at my desk. I just want my e-mail again.”
Me: “No, ma’am, your desktop, on your computer screen. Can you click on the little blue ‘e’ on your computer screen for me?”
Client: “Oh, this is too much work. I’m too upset. Just send me my e-mail. Can’t you send me my e-mail?”
Me: “We…okay, ma’am. Can you tell me what color the lights are on your router right now?”
Client: “My what?”
Me: “The little box with green or possibly a couple of red lights on it right now – it’s most likely near your computer?”
Client: “Lights and boxes, boxes and lights, just get my e-mail for me.
Me: “My test is showing that you should be able to get online right now. Can you tell me what you’re seeing on your computer screen?”
Client: “It’s been the same thing for the last two hours.”
Me: “An error message?”
Client: “No, just stars. It’s black and moving stars.”
Me: “…Do you see your mouse next to your keyboard?”
Client: “Yes.”
Me: “Move it for me.”
Client: “Move it?”
Me: “Yes. Move it.”
Client: “My e-mail!”
This post gave me a fucking ulcer.
You meet people like this at the library. People who have been coming in every day for YEARS to use the computers and monopolize your time with conversations like this, that seem to go out of their way to avoid listening to anything you try to teach them because they’d rather you just do it for them.
So one day, this tiny, frail little woman comes to the desk with a huge folder of papers under her arm. She says “I need to use one of the computers,” and I’m like “alright, I’ll set you up with a guest account.”
And then she says “I’ll also need you to show me how to use a computer. I’m 97 years old and I’ve never even touched one before, but I need to file my health information and they told me I needed to do it using this,” and she holds out a little scrap of paper with a url scrawled on it in a shaky hand.
And I’m just mentally like ‘oh no,’ but I say of course I can help her. So I sit her down and sign her in, and she stops me to ask basically what the mouse is, and I explain it, but I’m just thinking that this is going to take a million years. But I start doing a quick and dirty run down of the parts of the computer, the programs, the desktop, what a url is and what the Internet is, what a search engine is, what websites are, and so on.
She doesn’t interrupt or ask any questions or anything, and then I’m like ‘okay let’s go to this url’ and it’s an interactive, multi-page form that she needs to put all that info in her folder into and submit, and I’m just terrified as I’m explaining it that I’m going to spend all day with this woman.
But she’s just like “alright. I think I’ve got it.” And she must have had a secretary job back in the typewriter days, because she just *whips* through the first page of the form and submits and goes on to the next, and tells me she’ll find me if she needs me.
She came over once to tell me she needed an email address and wanted to know how to set one up – I told her about her options and she picked Gmail and went back to the computer and set it up all by herself, and got her information all filed properly in about an hour and a half – and she’d NEVER used a computer before in her LIFE.
When she was done, she came over to ask me how to turn it off and I showed her and she thanked me for being so patient, and I told her quite honestly that I’d NEVER seen a novice adult pick up using a computer so fast.
And she said “oh, but it’s so simple! And so useful! My grandkids made it sound so difficult, but I’m going to pick up my own computer tomorrow!”
And I think she must have, because I never saw her in the library again.
Anyway I hope I’m that quick when I’m 97.
^ thank you for sharing this very positive experience because the experience from OP really gave me a headache. it was nice to end on a positive note.. gives hope
It’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, for short), which means that writers everywhere are embarking on writing projects – and when you’re faced with a blank page, sometimes it’s just hard to get started.
I wanted to see if I could train a computer program to help. I train computer programs called neural networks to imitate all kinds of human things, from paint colors to Dungeons and Dragons spells to Harry Potter fanfiction to Halloween costumes. All I have to do is give the neural network a long list of examples and it will try its best to teach itself to generate more like them.
So, I decided to give a neural network examples of first sentences of novels, to see if it could generate some that might help writers get started. The main problem turned out to be finding enough examples of first sentences – ideally, I need thousands. I could only find a couple hundred of the most famous lines, and the neural network proceeded to do what it usually does when faced with too little data, which is to give up on trying to understand what’s going on, and instead just try to read it back to me word for word. Think of it like cramming for a test by memorizing instead of learning how to apply rules to solve problems.
So, this is typical of what it generated:
The snow in the story of the best of times, it was the season of Darkness, it was the season of Light, it was the epoch of belief, it was the worst of times, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the season of exploding past of Eller, and Junner, a long sunset side of the World.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except the station steps; plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of people.
Most didn’t make much sense, and/or were obvious mishmashes of famous lines. A few turned out to be maybe usable, probably by accident:
There was a man and he had seventy first sight.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of my life, fire of my loins.
4 Had come to America from Europe Privet Drive.
The snow is gone sometime, and you said, Why, and I said, To be with the darkness.
It was like the imagination.
It was a wrong number that struggled against the darkness.
It was a dark and stormy night; the swall of the gods?
The moon turned out to see me.
It was a wrong number four Privet Drive.
That’s good thinking: a bowl of the carriage’s parts.
The sky above the present century had reached the snapping point.
Mrs. Can is sitting in the World.
The sheriff returned to the darkness.
It was a wrong number that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.
I was born in the darkness.
I shall turn to the pop-holes.
(Very minor punctuation edits by me: an “is” here, a semicolon there).
Clearly, the neural network needed help. Where could I get it more data? My searching sent me, unwisely, as it turned out, to the site of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which has over 900 archived first sentences of hypothetical novels. The problem is that it’s a contest to write the worst first sentence. One of the honorable mentions from 2017 was the following:
As he lay dying on the smoke-wreathed battlefield, General Winthrop finally realized the terrible toll the war had taken, and he wondered if the bloodshed had all been for naught as he exhaled his last breath in a sort of “meoooooh,” actually very similar to the sound his cat Mister Jingles made when he wanted some food or was doing that thing with the drapes. – Mike Christensen, Washington, DC
I added them all. It didn’t help.
Stop! I caused the Narguuse man who was new on Alabama, the screaming constipated eggs.
I am an angry grass, the symposium square, proved fatal to the throbbing, the howling wind tire…
The beans suddenly with him in the trunk of an out-of-balance has really dead, then all the time hammered his head in abject puzzlement as a bang, and a head tuxedo-failed law of ghansmothered eyes like a fine that the hell of her supposed by the rain flare of the waterhole where it is in a long was mad.
I have to stop that in the sidewalk aliens while your hands after he had to go in the top of the day a new work our eyes of the pumpkin but stands over another meaning in shortered to the sea, beautifickinary to be like that.
The crust shark began to pull up a small indent directions of the dead old dried and spect of the grassy sure and closed by the same stormy wind – they were always together.
It was a dark and stormy night and the secret being a silver-backed gorilla.
Would you like to help the neural network improve? I successfully crowdsourced a dataset for the Halloween costumes (and have an awesome post coming up soon on some crowdsourced D&D character backstories).
Steel Phoenix Studios 