#Gmail Labs

[on-stolen-sunbeams]

at this point I’m equal parts research assistant and tech support.

[moonindoon]

Understanding Google SGE

Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) is a new way to search on Google. It's an experiment using artificial intelligence (AI) to give quick summaries of search topics without clicking on individual web pages.

It can help with:

Finding answers

Getting overviews of topics

Summarizing key points

Finding how-to instructions

Let's understand this with an example of how Google SGE could enhance a search query:

Imagine you're planning a weekend getaway to a new city and you want to find the best places to visit. In the past, when you searched on Google, you would have to click on various travel websites to gather information about attractions, restaurants, and activities. However, with Google SGE, when you search for "best things to do in Dehradun," instead of scrolling through multiple web pages, Google presents you with a concise list of top-rated attractions, dining spots, and activities directly at the top of the search results. These suggestions are curated from various trusted sources, making it easier for you to plan your trip quickly and efficiently.

How to Turn on Google SGE?

To use Google SGE, you'll need:

Chrome browser

Google account

To be 18 or over

To be in one of the 120+ countries where Google SGE is available

You have to opt in to see it. Here's how:

Open Chrome and sign in to your Google Account.

Go to Google on a new tab.

If available in your country, click the "Labs" icon at the top right.

On the "SGE, generative AI in Search" card, click the toggle icon.

After that, you should see AI-generated responses for some of your searches.

How Does Google SGE Work?

Google SGE uses generative AI, which means it can create content like text based on its training on lots of data. Google's model is called Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2). It uses technologies like natural language processing and machine learning to understand your search and respond appropriately.

For example, you're interested in learning about the benefits of meditation for mental health. Usually, when you search for "benefits of meditation," you'd have to browse through multiple articles and research papers to gather information. However, with Google SGE, instead of sifting through various sources, Google provides you with a summarized list of the key benefits of meditation, such as stress reduction, improved focus, and enhanced emotional well-being. Additionally, Google may suggest follow-up questions like "How to start a meditation practice" or "Scientific studies on meditation benefits," allowing you to explore the topic further with just a few clicks..

Benefits of Google’s Generative AI Search

Easy-to-understand summaries of complex topics

More interactive experience with conversational results

Quick and direct information without navigating multiple websites

Potential Downsides of Google’s Generative AI Search

Limited availability in certain regions

Possibility of inaccurate information, especially for important topics like health

Impact on traditional search advertising revenue

Comparison with Similar AI-Powered Tools

Google SGE is different from ChatGPT and Bing's AI search. ChatGPT is more conversational, while Bing's AI search is already available worldwide.

Impact on SEO

Generative AI might reduce website traffic but could also bring higher-quality leads. Optimizing for SGE involves using long-tail keywords, creating quality content aligned with search intent, and implementing structured data.

Prepare for the Future

Google SGE is changing how people find information online. Keep optimizing your site and focus on creating helpful content in natural language that meets search intent.

[hitsuyou-fukaketsu]

Oh my god i found replies and things from my g+ account

[happy-meat-farms-gimmick]

Hello! We are the HMF, here to present the HEaLthiest meat Produce!

SOURCE ; MOD IS A MINOR. {Romance/shipping = ok, sex = not ok}

triggers, tags and the general OCS lores under the cut.

Triggers; body horror, animal body horror, lab experiments, general horror, some gore, containment, and more! This is a HORROR blog.

Lores;

Dr. Lee ; 24 year old doctor, making the VIDEOS, alive. Runs the main points of the blog. He/they

Cassidy ; Unaware of the blog, test subject 0291, she's 19..it/she

Torri ; 26, unaware of the negative/cries of helps but aware of the blog itself, the one who sells. They/it/xe/he

MOTHER ; the flesh. feed her. feed her. feed it. feed feed fe- any pronouns/no pronouns (nonhuman terms)

HR. ; aware of everything but the cries of helps, experimenting on Cassidy. 29 any prns

--

@bingle-official , @wikipedia-the-non-official , @officially-lowes , @walmart-the-official

@the-real-gmail @the-real-google , @unofficially-grammarly , @pizza-hut-official

@starry-unofficial , @the-mcdonalds and whoever else. No bing supporters please.../gen

(PLEASE DNI if you start / int with drama ... we wish to not int with it and are extremely paranoid, do not involve us...private DMS are always open on our main @mothco002 )

(also tagging our moot @aristarxs ! ! ! For protection against creeps haha.../silly)

[tealin]

McMurdo Internet

Internet service is supplied to Antarctica via a geostationary satellite. This far south, the satellite is only a few degrees above the horizon, and unfortunately for McMurdo, it's behind Mt Erebus. So the signal is beamed to a receiver on Black Island, about 20 miles away to the southwest, and bounced over to the sheltered alcove at the end of the Hut Point Peninsula where McMurdo sits.

The Chalet, administrative hub, with Black Island in the distance

The Black Island telecommunications infrastructure was installed in the 1980s, long before the internet we know and love today. It was upgraded in 2010 to allow more data transfer, mainly realtime weather data to feed into global forecast models. For this reason, it's probably the only place I've ever been where upload speed is remarkably faster than download speed – 60Mbps for outbound traffic, but only 20Mbps for inbound. Most regular internet use is receiving, not sending, so that's an entire base running on a connection that's only marginally faster than the average American smartphone. As you can imagine, this is somewhat limiting.

The limits to one's internet access actually begin before one even reaches the Ice. At the orientation in Christchurch, one is directed to a URL from which one must download and install a security programme from the U.S. government. It may feel like a hippie commune full of nerds, but McMurdo is an installation of the American state, and as such its computer network is a target of whatever disgruntled conspiracy theorist decides to hack The Man on any given day. Computers that are allowed onto this network (such as the one on which I am typing right now) have to have an approved firewall and antivirus service installed, then this extra programme on top of them. I am not sure what it does. For all I know the CIA is spying on me even now. (Hi, guys!) But you need to install it to get on the McMurdo Internet, such as it is, so I did.

To be honest, I was rather looking forward to a month cut off entirely from the hyperconnected world, so I was a tiny bit disappointed that quite a lot of day-to-day communication is done by email, and I would need to be on my computer a fair bit to get it. Had I known just how important email would be, I'd have installed an email client that actually downloads one's messages instead of just fetching them; as it was, the cycle of loading an email and sending the reply, even in Gmail's "HTML for slow connections" mode, took about five minutes, not counting the time it took to write. Tending one's email was a serious time commitment; sometimes I felt like I was spending more time on the computer in Antarctica than I did at home.

Crary scientists waiting, and waiting, and waiting

In a way, though, I was lucky, because I was technically a scientist and therefore had access to the one building on base with WiFi, the Crary Lab. And don't think you can just waltz into Crary with your laptop and poach the WiFi – in order to access it at all, you have to get set up by Crary IT with your own personal WiFi login. If you do not have Crary access, your portal to the Internet is one of a handful of ethernet cables in each of the dorm common rooms, or some public terminals in the main building. You can hop on, download your emails, maybe check the news or Google something you needed to look up, and then leave it for someone else. When most online time sinks are either blocked or too heavy to load, it’s amazing how little internet time you actually turn out to need.

Things that we have come to take for granted in The World are not a part of McMurdo life. Social media is pretty much out – the main platforms are bandwidth hogs even before you try to load a video or an animated GIF. There is no sharing of YouTube links, and no Netflix and chill. Someone was once sent home mid-season for trying to download a movie. Video calls with family and friends? Forget it. People do occasionally do video calls from Antarctica, often to media outlets or schools, but these have to be booked in advance so as to have the requisite bandwidth reserved. Jumping on FaceTime does not happen – not least because handheld devices have to be in airplane mode at all times for security reasons. Your phone might be secure enough for your internet banking, but not for US government internet!

It is, unavoidably, still a digital environment, it just gets by largely without internet access. Nearly everyone has an external hard drive, mostly for media that they've brought down to fill their off hours. If you want to share files you just swap hard drives, or hand over a memory stick. When the Antarctic Heritage Trust wanted some book material from me, I dropped it onto an SD card and ran it over to Scott Base on foot – a droll juxtaposition of high- and low-tech, not to mention a good excuse for a hike over The Gap on a beautiful day. It took half an hour, but was still faster than emailing it.

There is also a McMurdo Intranet, which includes a server for file sharing. Emailing someone your photos will take ages, but popping them into a folder on the I: drive and sending them a note to say you've done so (or, better yet, phoning them, or poking your head into their office) is much more efficient. To conserve space, this informal server partition is wiped every week, so you have to be quick about it, but it's an effective workaround, and also a good way to get relatively heavy resources to a large number of people in one go.

The telecommunications centre on Black Island is mostly automated, but like anything – perhaps more than some things, given the conditions – it needs to be maintained. There is a small hut out there for an equally small team of electricians and IT engineers; Black Island duty attracts the sort of person who might have been a lighthouse keeper back in the day.

Towards the end of my time on the Ice there was a spell where they needed to shut off the connection overnight, to do some necessary work. Given that most people's workdays extended at least to the shutoff time at 5:30 p.m., this meant essentially no internet for a large portion of the population, and some amusing flyers were posted up to notify everyone of the impending hardship.

Someday, faster, more accessible internet will come to Antarctica.  It's more or less unavoidable, as communications technology improves, and everyone's work – especially the scientists' – depends more and more on having a broadband connection at all times.  It will make a lot of things more convenient, and will make the long separation from friends and family much easier.  But I'm pretty sure that many more people will mourn the upgrade than celebrate it.  One can, theoretically, curtail one's internet use whenever one likes, but even before the pandemic it was almost impossible to live this way with the demands of modern life: I know from personal experience that opting out of Facebook alone can have a real detrimental effect on relationships, even with people one sees in the flesh fairly regularly, simply because everyone assumes that is how everyone else communicates.  Being in a community where no one has access to assumed channels, and is more or less cut off from the rest of the world in a pocket universe of its own, levels the playing field and brings a certain unity.  The planned (and, unarguably, necessary) updating of the physical infrastructure of McMurdo will wipe out a lot of the improvised, make-do-and-mend character of the place; how much would free and easy access to the online world change it in a less tangible way?

I'm sure the genuine Antarctic old-timers would shake their heads at the phone and email connections we have now, and say that no, this has already ruined Antarctica.  It's not Antarctica unless your only link to the outside world is a dodgy radio.  It's not Antarctica unless you only get mail once a year when the relief ship arrives.  Doubtless the shiny new McMurdo will be seen as 'the good old days' by someone, someday, too.  Change may happen slower there than elsewhere, but just like the rust on the tins at Cape Evans, it comes eventually, regardless. 

For my own part, I'm glad I got to see 'old' McMurdo, such as it was, all plywood and cheap '90s prefab.  The update will be much more efficient, and tidy, but yet another generation removed from the raw experience of the old explorers.  My generation is probably the last to remember clearly what life was like before ubiquitous broadband; to some extent, Antarctica is a sort of time capsule of that world, just as the huts are a time capsule of Edwardian frontier life.  I hope they'll find a way to hang on to the positive aspects of that. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to waste an hour mindlessly refreshing Twitter ...

If you'd like to learn more about the Black Island facility, there's a lot of good information (and some photos!) here: https://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/90s/blackisland.html

And this Antarctic Sunarticle goes into greater depth on the 2010 upgrade: https://antarcticsun.usap.gov/features/2114/

[mrsfoone]

Incoming technology rant:

Sometimes I'm in an app for my doctor or banking services and I want to take a screenshot. Most of the time this is to share non-confidential information (e.g. appointment info or payment confirmation). Sometimes I might want to save or share typically confidential info as well (e.g. lab results). EXCEPT I CAN'T!

Why, do you ask? Well, quite simply, someone somewhere along the way decided to program their app so that IT WON'T ALLOW YOU TO TAKE SCREENSHOTS.

And I kinda get wanting to cover your own ass from lawsuits or whatever. And I also understand how it's easier to just tell the app a blanket "NOPE" for screenshots.

HOWEVER. You allowed me to sign in using my godsdamned fingerprint. Give me an option. Add another scan or captcha. I'll tell you which images contain bicycles all day long if you'll just let me take a screenshot so I can easily send my appointment info or test results to my loving spouse and family.

An example from yesterday (and yes I'm still salty): I had to take a pic of my phone screen with my tablet. Upload that to my google drive (because the gmail app on my tablet refuses to send anything with an attachment for some reason). Open the drive on my phone. Download the image. Then send it to my spouse.

Please app makers, I'm begging you. LET ME TAKE A GODSDAMNED SCREENSHOT.

Thank you for coming to my tech rant.

[trialsandtrivialed]

Loading...

Loading Complete!

Leaked Email from Nurse Allysia Carmelins, head of lab department at Mount Macklemore Hospital and Pharmancy:

CONNECTION TERMINATED NOW LOGGING OFF

Creators note: Please keep in mind all characters, emails, documents, anything from this universe is completely fictonal. nothing was leaked, these are just quick, unsaved drafts from gmail. Thanks!

[babybluebanshee]

Stuff I've Had to Deal With as a City Librarian - Plus Ultra Edition

Been a while, huh? Have some public library nonsense!

TW for racism and bodily fluids.

Julie found a half-used tube of toothpaste in the computer lab. Just chilling by one of the computers.

Lori had to fish a pair of shitty underwear out of a toilet in the men's room.

We'd been trying to convince the children's librarian to stop using liquid glue for her various kids' craft projects or on the craft table. Two incidents finally lead to her doing this. First a lady put her purse on the craft table to tie her shoe. She set it directly in an enormous puddle of glue a kid had left behind. Then second was a kid getting glue on the bottom of his shoe after story time and tracking it everywhere. She's since switched to glue sticks and everyone is much happier.

When people lose books, they have to pay for them, and if they find the books, they can either bring them back to us (and get a refund if they bring them within a year) or keep them. A lady came in and said she lost some books and was ready for them. I check her card so I can see what she has and write them up, and she, totally unprompted says, "Yeah, I know where they are, they're just massively overdue and buying them outright would be cheaper than paying the fines." I told her she couldn't do that; if she still has the items and they aren't damaged, we would like to have our materials back so we don't have to spend any money getting replacements. She replies, "But why can't I just buy them?" It took every ounce of resistance in my body to tell her that we're not a bookstore, she has to bring the goddamn things back, that's how libraries work.

We caught a guy shaving in the lab. He didn't seem to find this strange at all, and when we asked why he didn't just go in the bathroom, he replied he didn't know he could do it there. And your first thought was not to ask, but to do it in our computer lab?!

One of my coworkers checked the cafe and found a guy sleeping. The city has been riding us not to let people do that, but we generally just kind of shake them a little, remind them they can't sleep there, then let them immediately go back to sleep when we walk away. We generally don't care. But when my coworker tried to stir this guy, he didn't move. Shook him by the shoulder. Nothing. Nearly shouted. Nary a stir. The way the dude is sitting makes it hard to see if he's breathing, so she starts to get concerned. She goes back to the desk and tells Julie what's going on; Julie tries to rouse him, doesn't succeed. They ended up having to call the police for a wellness check, because they were genuinely starting to get concerned for the guy's safety. The cop finally managed to wake him up, and it turns out the dude was fine. He's apparently just a very heavy sleeper.

We had a bad ice storm one day, so the library didn't open. Rachel checked the messages the next day when we reopened, and a woman called three times in a row to ask why we weren't open, she tried the doors and they didn't work, we're supposed to be open, why aren't we open, all with increasing frantic tone. In one call you could hear her yanking on the doors.

A patron parked outside called us and said that there was a woman in the parking lot writing down people's license plate numbers. Travis had to call the police (protocol for "suspicious behavior"). Turns out the police are well aware of this woman's antics all around town, to the point where it's a city effort to get her some help with what is clearly unchecked mental illness. A week later, the same woman got in trouble in the Walmart parking lot, doing the same nonsense, and calling the woman who caught her a human trafficker.

Someone opened and ate a can of chicken in the men's bathroom, though they couldn't have eaten much because most of it seemed to be on the floor. Poor Becky and Sam had to clean it up. The smell alone was horrible.

A man couldn't get into his gmail account, so I went over to help him. It turned out he had two-factor authentication set up, so it was trying to send a code to his phone. He refused to confirm his phone number because "I don't want these people tracking me". I had to fight the urge to laugh in his face, because he simply would not accept that he had to do that in order to get into his gmail, and the absolute irony of not wanting to be tracked while using motherfucking Google's email service.

A girl and her grandmother came in, and the girl forgot her library card. Grandma was fully prepared to check out the book she wanted...until she saw it was a book about Ted Bundy. She proceeded to go on a hellfire and brimstone rant about how the book was Satanic and she shouldn't have even touched it. She kept looking to my poor coworker for support her, and you could just tell that my coworker wanted to just fade away into the chair she was sitting in.

One night, I found an abandoned pair of shorts in the men's bathroom. Julie found a pair of sunglasses in the cafe, and Macey found a travel coffee mug (coffee still in it) in one of the study rooms. Tit's out kind of outfit.

A guy ate absolute shit on his motorized scooter on the sidewalk outside the library. Donna had to call 911, but the guy refused to go to the hospital because he couldn't afford it, no matter how worried the EMTs were about the bleeding gash on his forehead or the possibility of a concussion. Hope he'll be alright. And that's why we always wear our helmets, kids.

A woman came in at 8:47 (we close at 9) and had Rachel make 89 copies of her handwritten conspiracy theory journal. The lady had called in advance to check when we closed, and still came in that close to closing with her bullshit, and tried to stay after they were finished. Luckily, she was chased out.

Donna, Julie, and Rachel were leaving for the evening, and someone pulled up, opened their car door, yelled the n-word, and drove off. All three of those women are white as the driven snow.

The city sets up a ceramic Christmas village display in our rotunda area every year, and this year, Lori decided to have fun with it. She put a little plastic alien and dragon somewhere in the village, and anyone who found them got a sticker. Obviously, kids were really into it, but the adults were even more so. You've never seen so many people over forty excitedly looking for little plastic toys before.

A absolutely gorgeous woman in the most beautiful African dress came in and asked to use a computer. When I told her how to log on, she said "Thank you, my love." and floated off. Her perfume made me feel a way.

[l8rhader]

I didn't screenshot it, but if you're enrolled in Google's Workplace Labs, they're allowing all of your google accounts to be mined by their AI service, Gemini, as well.

To turn it off, you have to go to settings in your linked gmail account and turn off Workspace Labs permanently. Especially if you're a writer who uses Docs.

[cream-stew]

hey Idk if you use google docs but I just saw this is happening and am sending this message to as many authors as I can:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJ4cGmXo/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJ4cPHRp/

VERY short summary: Google is fucking around with AI for drive and docs. Run before it's too late.

can't see the videos bc I don't have a tiktok account but I think I've read this on twitter already, and if it's the same thing then it's not that dire bc google is doing this only on their... "labs" service? or something so it's not actually on google docs/gmail/drive but on a separate thing AND you have to opt in, it's not default

I do use google docs tho and thank you for letting me know <3

[brotherblaze]

Google isn't scraping your private* google docs (or gmail) to train their AI ffs. Do you know how many lawyers would be frothing at the mouth to take on a case where they could legally fuck google in the ass if this were actually true? Literally anyone who deals with the slightest amount of confidential data in google docs/drive would be stampeding for lawyers. You'd hear about it from everywhere not from the fucking tiktok echochamber, stop it with the fearmongering.

(*the scraping for AI training apparently comes from Google Labs beta, which is opt-in)

[talenlee]

Towards a Cozier Internet

Towards a Cozier Internet

The number one priority of Google is keeping your attention on Google. This is not a controversial position, it’s not a conspiracy theory. The priority of the systems that relate to that create an intention towards things like a search engine, or gmail or whatever, are all just functions in the name of keeping your attention on Google. They want you looking at them so they can make sure your attention is where they can monetise it, through advertisers.

This command of attention is prime: even just being a trustworthy source of search information is secondary to the command of attention in the name of making money. I’ve talked about the form advertising takes, in that its job is not to sell you products, but to sell advertising to the people who buy advertising, and anything you do is incidental to that goal. This drive towards the retention of attention and serving the needs of advertisers is so all-consuming that Google literally does not care if people paying for their services use them for exploitative harm, like how in 2022, an advertiser made a malware fake version of widespread software package OBS. Google would happily put this above searches for OBS proper, because they paid for it.

Simply put: Google’s not great.

Neither is Twitter, a service I’ve been using pretty much constantly for nine years. In June, I’ll get a notification about my ten years on the site, even though based on the way the API is behaving, the last post I made to it was February 22, and that was something a blog software was handling. It was, for the latter part of its presence in my life, doing a very bad job of what I wanted it to do. What I wanted Twitter to do was give me an audience who I could direct to things I thought were cool; instead, it mostly became about screaming, and demanding why you weren’t also screaming.

I’ve stopped using them, sort of. I still use gmail addresses, because I’ve been using them for over a decade now, but I don’t use gmail’s web interface (and never really have). I’ve stopped opening twitter, and I don’t post on twitter. I eased out of twitter by checking it, occasionally, you know, seeing what my friends were tweeting about, see if I needed to check in on them. Then a bit more, a bit further along and what I saw people tweeting about was mostly about how bad twitter was, or how much This Guy Over Here Sucks.

It made it easier to stop paying attention.

The result of this is that the internet I’ve been using, mostly, is now the internet of things that replace those typical functions. Mastodon is part of it, and so is Cohost, smaller, more indie services. Particularly, one of the things that I have to deal with is a non-google search engine. This time, I’m using DuckDuckGo — which is really quite good!

, but,

And that’s the thing. Not going to pretend I’m not giving up a powerful search engine like this. If I want to, for example, reverse image search an artist? The Duckduckgo RIS isn’t as strong as the google one. It’s a bit clueless. It’s a bit confused about some things, and I think it doesn’t do a good job of telling famous people from random nobodies. If you search for names, it tends to look for a bunch of related names, as well, because �� well, almost any given site with names on it has lots of names on it. It can be a bit weak in that regard.

And that means that my searches are a little slower. I don’t just get a first page of ‘probably what I want.’ I get a first page, where there’s a lot of ambiguity, but that ambiguity tends to feel reasonable. So let’s say for example I search up a short acronym, like, let’s say, BUD. Google has a history for me that figures I probably mean a Block Update Detector, and I’m looking into the history of Etho’s Lab, a youtuber I’ve followed for (goodness me) like twelve years. DuckDuckGo won’t prioritise that, so it’ll show me hey, that could mean this, or that, or the other, please be more specific if you want more specific results.

And that means that searches are much less immediate, but they’re also a little more thoughtful. Browse the first page, learn oh, right, I need to narrow this by putting in another term. Or I need to make sure it knows these two terms are linked, and it means that searches are a little more thoughtful.

It gets me thinking about the processes I get through on a daily basis. When do I need to do a dozen searches? When do I need to do things as quick as possible? Sometimes in class, sure (and now I think about it, it’s going to be funny if my students see me type in a search on DuckDuckGo, in the way of seeing a teacher with an off-brand soft drink or something), but largely, this pause, this care, means that when I’m searching the internet for something, I’m more likely to take a moment and be careful about what I’m hoping to see, rather than blurting a demand, then refining it.

It means I do fewer searches to get where I’m going, if I’m being thoughtful. If I’m taking my time.

It got me thinking about a simpler time of the internet, where you’d have a small grouping of tools for specific tasks. You didn’t have a big internet tube for getting movies and music and books, you’d have a single program you ran for music, and maybe an IRC channel of swapped information for anime, and another place for movies. It’s not like I’m saying convenience is bad, but it’s got me thinking about the ways that it’s okay to slow down, and be more deliberate.

Spend some time sorting your files, check your bookmarks. Get an RSS feed, and use it, go check things out in these divided ways. And do it because these divided up chunks of ways, the time between things, the time that slows me down, is stuff that reduces the tension. It makes me think more between things.

I’ve been thinking about what coziness feels like in the context of a digital space. What it means to try and replicate a pre-digital, disconnected but communally related space, in a digital connected space. And I think part of what gets me a little way there, is taking the time between things. Be willing to take a moment, be willing to breathe, be willing to care, and weirdly, part of that is about using a less convenient form of a thing.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media

[preternatural-codes-by-minski]

100 Days of Code: Day 7-9

Didn't log these days. But here's what I did:

My progress for Day 7: 30/09/2023

Worked on email scripts in Python to send out customized mails to people. You can send out mails from your Gmail address by enabling 2FA (2-Factor Authentication)! This was for an event we're organizing. I found out about React Emails a bit too late. We'll use it next time. 📨

Read some interesting articles about LLMs [this one creeped me out] 📜

My progress for Day 8: 01/10/2023

Learnt how to use HTML in emails. ::before, ::after doesn't work and you can't work with external stylesheets but you can work with colors and `<div>` to design pretty layouts. 📨

Worked on a lab assignment for college. We had to work with some knowledge bases in SWI-Prolog. I couldn't understand how values are bound to variables in queries, or in what order are queries evaluated. I spent 6 hours understanding why ?- head_of(X, draco) and ?- head_of(snape, X) weren't working for the same knowledge base even though it should. 💻

My progress for Day 9: 02/10/2023

Not really proud of what I did, but I managed to speed run through 60% of the GCCF course material in 8 hours. I was so panicked that I blindly copied some of the challenge lab's solutions from YouTube. I know I should be focused on learning and not earning the completion badge but somehow I always get more obsessed with getting the validation rather than getting any actual benefit from these courses. ☁

[nonbinarynightcrawler]

growing increasingly more annoyed by the person who came in earlier today and asked me if there were any lab attendants who would be willing to "teach [her] stuff like gmail and microsoft word, yknow?" because she got hired onto a new job and didn't know how to use any software apparently

she was annoyed from the jump because she'd already been to the IT department and was not happy with the answer of "we can show you how to google some youtube tutorials on the subjects you need"

ma'am our job is not to teach people the comprehensive ins and outs of software suites. we will help senior auditors open google docs but we're not running community courses here

she needed this info because she just started a new job and apparently doesn't know how to use any of the software that's required

I'm not even mad that she was asking anymore, I'm mad someone who's knowledge starts and ends with "move physical mouse to move computer cursor" managed to get an office job while my friends are out here overqualified as hell, killing themselves trying to get even an interview

[thatstormygeek]

Because printers are the way they are, I could not print a copy of my lab order as mine decided it needed yellow ink to print in black.

Because all of this tech that supposedly talks to each other doesn't, Quest apparently could not use any of the information on the digital copy of my paperwork to pull up said order on their system.

Because Google actually is evil (wtg, guys), gmail refused to actually send the email with the lab order attached to the dude at Quest.

Because T-mobile devoured Sprint, my cell service is exceptionally shitty, making everything much more time consuming than it needed to be.

Because I'm just one human with no power to change the system, I'm expected to eat shit and smile while clambering over and around the obstacles put in the way of every aspect of life by greedy assholes.

It didn't have to be this way.

Because of that, the rest of it is just so much more infuriating.

[radical-rad1986]

"Good news!"

I don't think anything in here says they're scraping my writing... Input peeps?

Eta: It sounds like I'm testing new AI features for writing, not it scraping my stuff. I'm just very cautious with AI tools. Mostly I hear about AI scraping/stealing art and writing.

--- You've been selected to be one of the first few to test new AI features in Google Workspace, as a part of the Labs program. This is your opportunity to try out the latest AI-assisted writing capabilities in Google Docs and Gmail and provide feedback to help us improve AI-assisted Workspace features and broader Google efforts in AI.

After you opt-in via the sign up form below, we’ll let you know when it’s your turn to try the Labs program. Review the terms of service below to get started.

Labs in Google Workspace Privacy Notice

This notice and our Privacy Policy describe how Labs in Google Workspace handles your data collected as you interact with Labs features. Please read them carefully.

When you or your Workspace admin opt-in to Labs in Google Workspace, you’ll get early access to generative AI features integrated within Workspace products like Gmail and Docs. When you interact with Labs generative AI features, Google LLC (Google) collects your Labs data, including your prompts and input, prompt and input refinements, generated output, generated output refinements, and feedback. Google also collects metrics on the usage of these features. Google uses Labs data and metrics to provide, improve, and develop products, services, and machine learning technologies across Google, including Google’s enterprise products. You can opt-out of Labs in Google Workspace anytime.

Please do not include sensitive, confidential, or personal information that can be used to identify you or others in your interactions with Labs features. Labs data, as described above, is stored in a manner that is not associated with your Google account and will be retained for 18 months. To help with quality and improve our products, human reviewers read, annotate, and process your Labs data. We take steps to protect your privacy as part of this process. Copies of Labs data that have been reviewed or annotated by human reviewers may be retained for up to 4 years.

Terms of Service

You or your Workspace admin agree that your use of Labs in Google Workspace is subject to the Google Terms of Service and the Generative AI Additional Terms of Service.

Labs in Google Workspace is an experimental technology and may sometimes display inaccurate or offensive information that doesn’t represent Google’s views. Don’t rely on responses generated by Labs features as medical, legal, financial, or other professional advice.

If we believe violations of our terms have occurred, your account may be suspended from participation in Labs in Google Workspace. If you think you have been incorrectly suspended, you can contact us at contact-workspace-labs@google.com. In order to provide more users the opportunity to join Labs, we reserve the right to terminate your participation in order to invite new users to join. Google reserves the right to modify or discontinue Labs in Google Workspace features at any time.