Just a bit of folderol this morning, but it's on technology that's been in the news a lot lately, so I thought it worth bringing up. The other day, I sent a quip in an email to my friend Myles Berkowitz. It was something I think I had even posted here -- "If Trump is convicted by jury vote in the E. Jean Carroll case, I wonder if he'll call the jury foreman and ask him to find the few votes he needs for acquittal. 'Come on, just three votes, give me a break.'" Myles wrote back that he was trying out a new AI software from a service called Grammerly, wondering if it would help him write emails quicker. So, instead of writing me his own reaction, he thought instead that he would send along the AI response that the Grammerly AI came up with. You must understand, if it hasn't been clear in my other references to Myles here, that the good fellow has very few subtle bones in his body. Coming from New York, he's really more of an in-your-face kind of guy. He is, in fact, an incredibly nice guy who can be low-key, endearing, impressively thoughtful, and extremely gracious, but I get the sense it annoys him to be so too often. To put him in more perspective before getting to how his AI software should sound for coming from him, Myles occasionally coached his daughter's basketball team when she was in a kids league, which was impressive since he readily admitted he doesn't know all that much about basketball. (Football is his sport.) Other than telling the girls to hound the best player on the other team and also giving them Al Pacino's big locker room speech from the movie Any Given Sunday -- using a Pacino impersonation -- yes, really ("We're in hell right now, ladles. Believe me"), which mortified his then 11-year-old daughter, he basically told them to just run around. Myles is also the guy who wrote, directed and starred in the mock-documentary 21 Dates that followed him on his attempt to find true love over the course of his goal of going out on 21 dates. Though it was loosely written and fictional, it was mixed in with real footage, including some hidden footage from a few of his actual, failed dates. And actual phone calls from his producer yelling at him, as well as intercutting real material of some of his friends talking directly to the camera explaining how annoying Myles could sometimes be, after being told by Myles to be totally honest. Which is the kind of guy he is. It was all very funny. (If you're interested, he gave me permission a while back that I could embed the movie on my site. It's a lot of fun. If you're interested, you can find it here.) Okay, that then is who the guy is. And this is the response to my joke that the Grammerly AI thought would make me assume it was from Myles Berkowitz. Hello Bob, I acknowledge your worries about the potential outcomes if Trump is found guilty by the jury vote in the E. Jean Carroll case. It's understandable to be concerned that he may attempt to sway the jury foreman to secure the votes he needs for acquittal. This is certainly a stressful possibility. Let's hope that justice prevails and that the verdict is reached solely based on the presented evidence. Thank you for keeping me updated. Sincerely, Myles I wrote back to Myles, "It sounds SO much like you that it's eerie." As horrible as the response was to my quip, the funniest giveaway was that it was signed "Sincerely." I have never received an email from Myles signed "Sincerely." Funny, too, is that Myles wrote back to explain that when choosing what style the AI software should response with, he was given several options, like "Business." He chose the option for "Friendly"! Yes, this was what AI thought was friendly -- from Myles Berkowitz. In fairness, it was nicely written, and AI is still in the early stages. But it was so awful for being "Myles Berkowitz" that I got one sentence into the response and burst out laughing. The reality seems that for AI to be as accurate as possible, the person using it has to put a great deal more input into to. However, I did suggest to Myles that he nonetheless might want to consider studying what Grammerly AI wrote on his behalf for future reference. His response was one that I suspect goes over very well in New York, Though not so much elsewhere.
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We have a weird story today about a tech support problem. It’s a really easy one to describe, and sort of funny, so no need to go rushing off screaming in fear of high tech gobbledygook.
The story concerns a friend who had a Kindle Fire that he likes a lot. Though its main feature is as an ebook reader, it also has basic functions, mainly for browsing the Internet and streaming video. He’s had an annoying problem for a while though where the screen goes black far more often than ideal. (One time is less than ideal, but such hiccups do happen.) He went online to see if others had the same problem, and if so were any solutions offered. And, in fact, it turns out to be a very common problem, with many hundreds of people complaining. And no serious suggestions. He even tracked down tech articles written about the problem – that’s how prevalent the issue is. (One loony suggestion was that the device was likely overheating, so put it in the freezer to cool down. And this was from a tech journalist.) My friend finally called Kindle Fire tech support, and they were as bewildered as my friend and spent a long time on the phone trying to fix it. To no avail. So, in the end, they said they’d send him a new unit, because this one was still in warranty. A few hours later, my friend – who is pretty adept at technology – thought he’d check into something. He went into the Settings option and then Video section, and began searching through the various areas…until he found something SO basic, and SO obvious that he knew he had to be right. It was that there is a setting for when the screen should blank out after a certain period of time when there was no usage – and the default was set for just one minute!! This is to save battery power, but “one minute” is incredibly much too fast. So, he just changed it to 30 minutes – and it’s worked perfectly since there. He never has gone a half-hour with accessing the device. Either there’s TV news video streaming or a TV show or something like that, or he’s checking his email or browsing the Internet. But such an easy solution isn’t the weird thing. The weird thing is that Kindle tech support didn’t know this was the easy fix. It’s not that the guy on the phone didn’t know, but this sort of thing – especially an issue that has SO many user complaints online (and therefore, no doubt, phone calls to tech support) – will always have the fix noted in the official notes every tech support person has at their finger tips. And it’s not even “a problem,” it’s just a matter of changing the default setting. How in the world tech support doesn’t have this in their manual is just plain weird. Weird, too, is that when my friend checked online complaints, he didn’t come across anyone explaining the easy fix. I’m sure that out there across the Internet there probably were people who gave the fix, since my friend didn’t check out hundreds of complaints, but given how incredibly easy and (even more) basic this fix is – changing the default – it’s a bit surprising that it wasn’t given every time. Mainly, though, it’s amazing that Kindle tech support didn’t just say, “Change the default for screen time.” In their favor, they are sending a new Kindle Fire to my friend (though it’s under warranty, so they pretty much have to, but still, they did so without any hesitancy). So, that’s a good thing. And in the end, here’s a Tech Tip for you: if you have a Kindle Fire, and the screen keeps going to black – just go into settings and change when the default is set for the screen timing out. Okay, this is a bit weird (with "a bit" being an understatement), though really quite wonderful. Last year, Netflix said it commissioned a fellow named Keaton Patti to run 1,000 Christmas movies through a bot and “created our own mathematically perfect Holiday film made entirely by bots.” Now, of course, it’s possible that this is just a terrible video that they created to be funny. But it’s really SO nonsensical in insignificant ways that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s on the level. In fact, the only thing noticeably missing is a bakery, department store and Christmas tree farm. But otherwise, they've given Hallmark a run for its money... Though this comes from Al Franken’s podcast website, it’s not precisely one of his own podcasts. Rather, as he explains it’s a sketch he co-wrote and performs, which he made for the “What the Hack” podcast that deals with the issue of technology privacy. He does into the full story of how it came about, so I won’t repeat it here – but it has pretty amusing background that goes back to when he was in the Senate and wanted to do something like this for a committee he served on.
The premise of the sketch is a Senate committee hearing about privacy, where the two witnesses are Alexa and Siri answering questions exactly like Alexa and Siri would. And the sketch itself is (for my taste) hilarious. Franken plays the voices of Bernie Sanders, Chuck Grassley, Sherrod Brown, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell and himself. Playing the voice of Alexa is one of Franken’s compatriots from his days on Saturday Night Live, Larraine Newman. But best of all -- and this is joyously wonderful -- the voice of Siri is played by Susan Bennett. Who is Susan Bennett, I hear you ask? She’s the real voice of Siri!! But my favorite thing about the sketch (because this thing is weird, but a smart, “of course!” thing to do) is probably that every single time the name “Alexa” or “Siri” is mentioned during the hearing, we hear (just like in real life) Alexa or Siri recognize their name, react to it and beep. I love that idea enough on general comedy principle, but all the better it leads to some pretty fun, convoluted humor, as well. Though the audio says it’s 21 minutes, that’s the full podcast. The sketch and Franken’s introduction is only 12 minutes. If you missed Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sunday, the Main Story was about tech monopolies -- notably Apple, Google and Facebook, and how they control the flow of information you get. It's a very interesting story with a lot of room for humor, of which there's plenty. I think I need a bit of a breather after yesterday's article, so today's we're going to go all techie. The subject at hand is backup programs.
For a long while, I used Acronis as my backup program. Acronis was generally a top-rated program (or perhaps the top-rated), though I only needed about 8% of its capabilities, its yearly subscription was getting expensive, and it wasn’t the most user-friendly program. I mentioned this to my tech guru whiz friend Ed Bott (who’s written about 25 books on technology, including the official books for Microsoft Press on how to use Windows 11 – and before that, Windows 10). And his response was, “Why are you still using Acronis??” While he knew it was a high-regarded program, he also knew my needs, the issues some people have with Acronis and what the wider field of backup programs was. He pointed me to a recent article he’d written for his ZDNet column on backup software. I have limited, but specific needs with a backup program. In fact, one need predominates all – it has to back up in native format. That’s when a file is backed up as it exists in its original Windows form. Some programs use file compression, some use a proprietary format, all the make a smaller backup. But with huge hard disks these days, that’s less an issue. And besides – I just want my backed up files in their native format – if a .docx file is going to be backed up, I want it backed up as a .docx file. If a Quicken file is backed up…same thing, that’s the format that I want it backed up in. I want to be able to access my backed up files whether or not the back up program is accessible. There were a few programs on Ed’s list that intrigued me, and I ended up getting something with a lousy name called EaseUs ToDo Backup. It did less than some of the others, but it still did a lot – and everything I needed (including creating an “Image” file of my hard disk). And of course, backed up in native format. It also offered a free version, which did pretty much everything I needed. The few things it didn’t do that the paid versions did, I didn’t need. The one other thing I did is something that might be bothersome to many, though worth putting up for the free price – the free version of EaseUs ToDo is known for being relentless with pop-up ads asking if you’d like to upgrade to the paid version. But this is the point of writing this. A year subscription to EaseUs ToDo is $29. But right now, it’s on sale for $23.20. (Why the “20 cents” I have no idea.) But that’s not the point – because they also have a special on where for that same $23.20 price, you can get free lifetime upgrades. In other words, you pay $23.20 once – and that’s it. Whenever they release an upgrade, you get it for free. And there’s no annual subscription, just that one-time cost. That’s why I’m mentioning this now. I’m not even recommending the program – it works wonderfully for me, but it might not be to everyone’s test. But that’s the good thing about the free version – you can download it for nothing, use it for as long as you want to see if you like it, and then, if you do, decide whether you want to keep using the free version, or upgrade to the paid Home version and get rid of the pop-up reminders…and, right now, get free upgrades for life. (To be clear, I think they have offers a lot. When I bought my lifetime subscription, they had a lifetime offer. But it did eventually go away. And then returned. So, if for some reason you do like the program but they don’t have the lifetime special offer – hold off and wait a bit, and then check later.) You can find more about each version of the program here. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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