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Bing: Corporate AI Echo Chamber
The AI-enabled version of Bing is useless for search… Imagine using the bare bones search engines of the 90s on all of the useless filler on the web today, navigating by command line to a toddler – that’s the new Bing experience. You can pare down on its idiot responses by tweaking prompts, but it’s a huge step backwards from just Googling something. It’s also noticeably clunkier than using vanilla ChatGPT. I’m not the only one who noticed.
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Nissan Did Something Right
…and it wasn’t even RWD. Behold the 4-hour car ad:
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An SEO copywriter
An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor…
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Chicano Subculture in Thailand and Japan
There was a resurgence of interest in “Thai Chicanos” last year, resulting in a few articles and videos across the web. The most entertaining video, however, is the one from almost a decade ago, about the “Cholos of Bangkok,” by Coconuts TV. Also last year, an interesting YouTube video documenting “Japan’s Chicano Culture In LA” was published by Peter Santenello: However, the true counterpart to the “Cholos of Bangkok” is “Inside Japan’s Chicano Subculture” by the NYT: From a language and culture standpoint, all of these are enthralling. I’ve watched them all multiple times and pick up on new details every time.
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It’s Been Twenty Years and One Day…
…since I started this blog! In that first uninspiring post, I think I was referring to NTT cutting off my dual ISDN (64 + 64kbps !!) service or refusing my application for the then cutting-edge FTTH service to my rental home in Sumoto, Japan. I can’t say it seems like only yesterday; it actually feels like a few lifetimes ago. The first few years, blogging was new and exciting! I actually had a blog before this one up at Blogger. If I recall correctly, back then it required making a Blogger account (was it even named that?) and a separate Blogspot account and performing some kind of manual registration/installation. I…
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Blue vs Red Kapom/Gapom Species
No photos here, just a link to a 13 year old post I updated about some local lizard species which are called the same thing in Thai/Isan languages: กะปอม/กิ้งก่า), but ended up being distinct species with different common names: Oriental garden lizard (Calotes versicolor) vs. Calotes mystaceus (the Indo-Chinese forest lizard). For the sake of posterity, I hereby shorten their names to Bob(s) and Dan(s). Bobs are the red ones, Dans are the blue ones (did you know that roughly 75% of people on social media would have used apostrophes to indicate plurality in that sentence?) Update: Uh oh, there are Emmas (green when mating) in Thailand as well: Calotes…
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Is openai.com written by AI?
It certainly looks like it: “We spent 6 months making GPT-4 safer and more aligned. GPT-4 is 82% less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content and 40% more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5 on our internal evaluations.” I asked ChatGPT if it could write the next line and it replied: “These improvements have been made possible through a combination of rigorous testing, enhanced training data, and algorithmic updates that prioritize responsible language generation.” Used as (possibly) my last prompt into NightCafe, it becomes:
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ChatGPT Detector Hack
I was pleasantly surprised to find that ChatGPT can obscure its output from the top listed detectors in search results. You just have to tweak your prompts a bit.
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Bangkok Cubano
Had some nice sandwiches at a new café called Nick on Soi Ruamrudee. Very chill place with excellent ingredients and no fear of salt. Nam’s could have been better with feta cubes instead of tofu, but it was still pretty good! Nick on Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/PQmjByBNwtUHsUfv8
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Paperwork Crossfire
Having lived and worked at a large company in Japan for over a decade, I got used to dealing with red tape, idiot bureaucracy, and daunting stacks of interoffice paperwork and documentation. When I moved to Thailand to live a “simpler” life, it never occurred to me that I might find a tangled mess of paperwork to rival that of any developed country. However, today I find myself in the crossfire of two separate government offices that simply cannot agree with each other and hope to silence the other by firing enormous salvos of paperwork at each other. It seems like every other day I’m getting a new form from…
