Microsoft adds another Copilot hotkey – this time for AI voice chat Microsoft has added yet another Copilot tweak for Windows Insiders. Hold down Alt + Spacebar for two seconds, and the AI assistant will pop up for a voice chat. The change comes via an update to the Copilot app in the Microsoft Store and is gradually reaching all Windows Insiders. Instead of typing out a request, users can now …
It feels like those printers which have only one button, no display, and a morse-LED about its status.
The windows version is: Alt+Space 1 second - 2 second - 1 second to open the start menu. Alt+Space 1 second - 2 second - 2 second to initiate forced shutdown, closing all programs.
dit-dit-dit dah-dah-dah dit-dit-dit
Translated: Gawd Help Us!
An important application is signalling for help through SOS, " ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ". This can be sent many ways: keying a radio on and off, flashing a mirror, toggling a flashlight, and similar methods. The SOS signal is not sent as three separate characters; rather, it is a prosign SOS, and is keyed without gaps between characters.[45]
Hello user, yes I can open Microsoft excel for you. Have you considered all the possibilities that PowerPoint has to offer? Or Teams For Work Or School or Home or one or two or all three (new) (classic)? What's that you say? Shut up? OK, would you like to order Microsoft Office For Teams for Work For Home Premium Classic Business CoPilot Rectangles in a Grid? It's a simple £9.99 per month per user per work per home per seat per screen connected per CPU core? Ordering now...
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EMH: Emeergency Medical Hologram, what is the nature of the emergency? Hello captain, are you here about those unsightly bags under the eyes?
Janeway: Why are you shaped like a giant paper clip and why does the ship drop to sub-light speed whenever you appear?
EMH: It's my new programming. I can change to an equally annoying dog if you prefer.
Janeway: No, I just needed an aspirin, but better make it a shot of Melorazine now.
ALT-SPACE is already a hot key combo in the software I use to earn money to pay my mortgage. Will this unprovement(*) take priority? Does this mean that microshit is actively going to make it harder for me to make a living? FFS!
(*) unprovement - an addition to software inflicted by a software house that reduces the user's efficiency
TL;DR - HOW DO I AUTO EJECT THE COPOILOT?
Wait, is Unreal Tournament still a thing?
I know that about a year ago I hopped onto the UT (1999? Game of the Year edition) internet server browser, and found a surprising number of games still active. Even played a co-op map with some rando, who was probably as surprised as me to find a real living person sharing the map with him...
Can just see the Windows development office in Redmond when Satya Nadella walks through the door ..
SN - hey guys, you fixed any Windows bugs this month?
DEVS - nah but we have this new cool AI voice chat.
SN - Nice, anything else?
DEVS - Yeh, we assigned it a new key, so users will to invest another keyboard, more hardware sales.
SN - Nice, a productive month, see you next month.
DEVS - Isn't he a great boss!
Well, if MS don't provide a "disable this shortcut" option, I am sure the aftermarket will. They do seem very determined to push their Co-Crappy in our faces don't they? Sad really, as that kind of marketing NEVER works because all you do is get peoples backs up who then create a way for others to avoid your crap. It's like those "interactive" adverts on Android games, where you have to click 3 times to close the advert. All that does is reinforce my determination to never ever use/buy that product or anything made by that company.
The thing about stakeholders—a term that traditionally referred to people who held large, pointy sticks—is that they tend to think they know what people want. The problem is that what people actually want is usually something along the lines of “a quiet life,” “a cup of tea,” or, failing that, “at least one moment where they don’t have to click a button to make something they never wanted go away.”
And yet, in the gleaming halls of Software Development—where people with Important Titles sit around large tables, nodding at PowerPoint presentations made by people with Slightly Less Important Titles—someone, somewhere, actually stood up and said, “What if we added a shortcut for this?”
And nobody laughed.
Which is how we ended up here, with Clippy 2.0, the undead spectre of helpfulness, suddenly requiring its own dedicated shortcut. Because, you see, in their heads—those heads so full of Strategy and Vision—they imagined a world where users, millions of them, clamored for quicker access to something they never asked for in the first place.
It’s a special kind of arrogance, the sort that assumes that not only is their product beloved, but so indispensable that, at any moment, someone might cry out, “Oh gods, if only I could summon Clippy 2.0 just a fraction of a second faster! If only there were a shortcut! Think of the time I could save, the efficiency I could achieve! This is why the Great Wheel of Progress must turn!”
And so the wheels did turn, gears grinding in the vast machine of Software Updates, churning through the stages: Design, Development, Testing, User Acceptance Testing (where, presumably, someone accepted it, though nobody knows who), and finally Release.
All this, of course, justified by an airtight argument of metrics. Ah yes, the sacred numbers. Look, they say, see how usage has increased! Why, it’s doubled! (From zero to two.) At this rate, in a mere million years, everyone shall be using Clippy 2.0, and all will look back on the Shortcut Initiative as the work of prophets.
Meanwhile, out here in the real world, the users sit, blinking at their screens, fingers hovering uncertainly over a new and mysterious key combination, muttering under their breath, What fresh hell is this?
And somewhere, in the great corporate ether, another stakeholder nods, self-satisfied, and moves on to the next bright idea.
What shocked me most about this relentless push?
Finding Co-Pilot and Search with Bing inside NOTEPAD
Yes, the application designed specifically to let you quickly tweak configuration files, had frigging Co-Pilot and Search functionality, what's more, it'd automatically signed into my Microsoft account.
A step for far, so I found a registry hack to let you go back to the old Notepad design.
