My two favorites:

BentoPDF - A privacy-focused PDF editor that works client-side

Cobalt Tools - Video downloader with a clean interface and good compression (YouTube stopped working and hasn’t been updated, unfortunately, but community instances exist that may address this)

Yes. My company is trying to retain its workers and treats us very well, but also expects the best of us. I’m more than happy to do my job to the best of my ability in a (gasp) inclusive environment that celebrates diversity and goes out of its way to do so.

We also use AI as part of our job, but management has made it very clear that they won’t (and can’t) replace its human talent. They also seem to know what it can and cannot do and I appreciate that.

Outside of that, jeez, it’s hard to tell. Life’s a bit rough everywhere.

The Do is so underrated. Unfortunately, they disbanded but their music is eternal.

Oh yeah. YOU are a fentanyl trafficker, and YOU are a fentanyl trafficker, and YOU are a fentanyl trafficker! 🎤 😃 👉

I don’t rely on the LLM to give me the answer.

So why are you assuming that I do, again? Aren’t I the one telling you that I do manual searches precisely because the search function is so hit or miss?

it’s not good for creative works.

What creative work? This is basic communication that we carefully outline first and then feed it to the LLM to spit out the same thing in formal language. Lol

How can I possibly be doing it wrong when the page it’s citing mentions nothing of what it’s taking about, or when it tells me to do something that we as a company do not do?

I’ve been doing this shit for 20 years now.

Welcome to the club.

it’s an extremely useful tool

Sure, for writing letters but not for searching which is what I’m taking about.

My brain decided to remind me of how I was mistreated earlier this week. Not cool, brain.

It’s not harder, though, it’s actually quite instant if you know what you’re doing. A lot of documentation is literally one single web page, and the majority that is not can be navigated with the regular search and ctrl+F just fine.

There’s no substitute to taking 40 minutes to get acquainted with the documentation to know what you need rather than trial & error your way through a problem blindly.

you could get an LLM to return you the correct page in some documentation

It’s unreliable and prone to errors, and I say that after using LLM-based searches for months at work. Too many times it confuses areas, makes stuff up, or cites some irrelevant page just to give any answer at all.

You may think you’re being clever, but that is hardly a reasonable comparison while also ignoring the glaring corporate irresponsibility underlying both.

Better question is, when did you lose basic keyword-based searching skills? I know you may want your answers on a platter but realize that there’s value in manual searches. Searching for something with LLMs on the page that you’re on is questionable on so many levels.

Mother Nature

smugface.jpg

Bruh, how are you going to criticize others for the way they’re answering the question, and yet respond with this? 😂

Surgeon General Shirō Ishii (Japanese: 石井 四郎, Hepburn: Ishii Shirō; [iɕiː ɕiɾoː]; 25 June 1892 – 9 October 1959) was a Japanese biological weapons specialist, microbiologist and army medical officer who served as the director of Unit 731, the largest biological warfare and chemical warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Ishii led the development and application of biological weapons at Unit 731 in the puppet state of Manchukuo during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945. This included the Battle of Changde, the Kaimingjie germ weapon attack, and the planned Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night biological attack against the United States, which intended to spread a weaponized bubonic plague. Ishii and his colleagues also engaged in human experimentation, resulting in the deaths of thousands of subjects, most of them civilians or prisoners of war.

Ishii was later granted immunity in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East by the United States government in exchange for information and research for the U.S. biological warfare program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirō_Ishii

Don’t forget all the chemistry happening! You’re an ambulatory meat sack-shaped drug lab with feelings.

Not in my experience, but then again, I left a couple years ago so maybe they changed it when I wasn’t there.

I also have one! And it doesn’t work.

Japan was doing that a couple of years ago.

And a ladder!

Oh, no worries, I was more incredulous than upset. We had talked about religion at length over the years and even managed to nudge her away from organized religion at this point (thank god). I thought she understood where I was coming from, and then out of the blue, she tells me this on the rare occasion we argued, and I’m speechless.

“You’re an atheist because you want to rebel against God!” - My mother 😭