
Nice one, love a good pun
I’ll steer clear, thank you. Now about that sex club?
"Your favourite chef is worried about you!" I am utterly distraught to hear this. To think that the individual at the top of my list of kitchen professionals is experiencing distress for my wellbeing! Like everybody, I carry a notebook around with me so that I might keep track of the many expert cooks and caterers whom I …
'On Instagram I follow professional cartoonists and the official feeds from my trade union and the local town hall, so Instagram’s algorithm naturally determines I must want to pick new friends from a never-ending scrolling row of pole-dancers'
Well, that's what you tell your missus, Dabbsy!
Yeah, 'big data' analytics are only as good as the data put into it, and the query built on top of it.
For example, Amazon should store a field 'is this item usually purchased often or rarely' for each item they sell, so that when I buy that once-a-decade clothes horse, I don't get recommended clothes horses for months afterwards - well, until a decade later - that's when I need the suggestion!
The only recommendation algorithm that does work well is the one that recommends music based upon what other people listen to, that listen to what you listen to as well. But even so, as soon as you have more than a single-track music mind, it starts breaking down, or being so limited in recommendations to be useless. And other people have their own eclectic range of music which leads to odd recommendations just because they listen to industrial and light jazz, doesn't mean I want the light jazz recommendations!
I recently bought a glass cover for an oven lamp from Amazon. They now email me with suggestions for similar glass covers. And, just in case I should accidentally render them relevant by breaking the replacement, the covers are for different models of oven.
Though I do wonder if the "obviously stupid" suggestions are a cover for more subtle stuff.
Nah.
How many sheds does the AI think I need? (Correct answer is "one more")
It's always "one more". Our garden currently sports four sheds, five if you count the diddy one which is only used for storing wellies... and the batteries when I get around to it, or maybe I need one more for the batteries...
Oh, and a greenhouse (sans glass right now because we're moving it).
M.
It is about 4ft tall, 4ft wide and 18 inches deep. It has doors, not a lid, tongue & groove on a wooden frame and a sloping felt roof just like a shed. It has shelves we built. There is plenty of room in it for a small box containing two bog standard SLA batteries. It's a shed - a box would have a removable lid
:-)
M.
> having just purchased a shed ...
Has "50 Sheds of Grey" been recommended? This is an actual book (still available on amazon) given to be by a friend. He also used to call me "Two Sheds" because I had one and was thinking about building another. Now I have 3. It's a addiction.
Good book if your are into small garden structures for storage.
> Though I do wonder if the "obviously stupid" suggestions are a cover for more subtle stuff.
It's not so much "obviously stupid" as "obviously borderline fraudulent". The advertiser is being told "yes, these clicks you're paying us a large amount of money for are from people who have definitely expressed an interest in buying a shed in the last 3 months.
And our AI algorithm has inferred this with 20:20 hindsight because we know the punter actually bought a shed from one of your competitors last week.
"well, until a decade later - that's when I need the suggestion!"
Actually, no. You NEVER need the suggestion. The only prompt you should ever need for a new clotheshorse is when you break the old one, or give it away, or sell it, or ... none of which Amazon should ever know about. So Amazon should never offer you another. Period.
Anything else is pure intentional annoyance, and one of the many reasons that I will never purchase anything online ... the assholes in charge of the advertising companies assume that they know more about my needs and wants than I do, and flat out refuse to take "NO!" for an answer.
Fuck 'em, and the horse they rode in on.
For me, usage of 'wacky' implies something out of the 1960's (Wacky Races etc). Use of 'zany' for example implies an American 1950's sitcom with a redhead (© Sir Pterry). For 2020+ I would use 'sinister' as an adjective since just about every algorithm now seems to have the sole purpose of depriving us of hard-earned money or almost non-existent online privacy.
"Just _maybe_ it's all about which ads are more profitable to display?"
Yes, it's that. I mean, clearly if you just bought a shed the algorithm really out to be promoting related products, such as wood treatment/paint, barbecues, garden furniture, garden tools, lawn treatments, etc.
Likewise, if you order spare parts to repair an oven, they should be pushing cooking implements and ingredients at you, not more of the same part you just bought.
It's blindingly obvious to most people that these algorithms either don't work or have a much different purpose to that claimed.
> the algorithm really out to be promoting related products, such as wood treatment/paint, barbecues, garden furniture, garden tools, lawn treatments, etc.
Nah, coding all those dependencies for every single product would be hard work, way over budget...
No, you're paid to make "targeted suggestions", and a simple "you bought a type X product, do you want more type X products" algorithm works fine for skin care products, so why wouldn't it work for a washing machine, a shed or a coffin?
And then there is also the issue of additional-profit-making products (or those which should be sold ASAP), so stay ready for the occasional "you bought sanitary towels, you might be interested in this beard care product". It doesn't have to make sense, it has to make profit.
That's the thing where anyone unfortunate enough to be different, poor,horribly disfigured or odd, elicits an emotion in the sensitive human psyche to join with other like minded folk who will then as a social group get their pitchforks and flaming brands out of the shed and hound the poor unfortunates to death.
Or am I being a little harsh?
I see this on Youtube as well. For the most part I subscribe to bands on there, but the one anomaly is Binging with Babish because making food inspired by films and TV appeals to my nerdy side, so of course Youtube recommends me nothing but food channels, or switches to nothing but DIY channels because I watched a video to fix something that I never need to know how to do again.
> The Pig and Butcher
Hmmm. Trying to imagine: Is this a serving of pork with butcher on the side, or maybe a butcher living like a pig? Unless of course it's the unlikely friendship between a pig and a butcher, and all you get there is lamb chops. Whatever it is, it can't be a pork restaurant, if it were it would be named "The Late Pig and Butcher".
I was happier when it was just a river... bookstore chains take all the fun out of shopping for books. Shopping for books used to be a sociallogical (is it a word? it feels right, spell check says no) expedition, you never knew what kind lifeforms you would meet!
>>Shopping for books used to be a.... sociological expedition
Yes... once upon a time,
I used to go to the library every Saturday so I'd have a fresh stack of books at home. For good measure, on the way back home I'd also check out the used bookstore by the university. I gave up the habit sometime in the 90's and reclaimed quite a bit of living space when I donated (almost) all my books. The way I get/store reading materials today may be more efficient but not very many "fond memories" generated along the way now.
Some are actually killed and gnawed on by carnivores before they expire of old age. Youngsters are prey for larger carnivores, especially if they are ill or incapacitated. After they die, the meat-eating scavengers move in.
Note that my point was that there are no vegan ecosystems on Earth.
Poachers are indeed scum, but that's another story.
Certified 0% AI powered: a new album from a local band whose first track could well fit this column: Nothing to Sell