It's because their main business (ads, tracking) makes infinite money so it doesn't matter what all the other parts of the business do, are, or if they work or not.
Google are well-known, like Meta, for making products that never achieve any kind of traction, and are cancelled soon after launch.
I don't know about anyone else, but I've never managed to get Gemini to actually do anything useful (and I'm a regular user of other AI tools). I don't know what metric it gets into the top 2 on, but I've found it almost completely useless.
I agree they aren't building great user products anymore but gemini is solid (maybe because it's more an engineering/data achievement than a ux thing? the user controls are basically a chat window).
I asked for a deep research about a topic and it really helped my understanding backed with a lot of sources.
Maybe it helps that their search is getting worse, so Gemini looks better in comparison. But nowadays even kagi seems worse.
Kagi has their own AI assistant that let's you choose any model from the major, and some not so major, providers. You can even hop between them I the same chat. It is also able to search for results using Kagi. This includes any lenses you could configure.
It's worked extremely well for me. Their higher subscription was less than ChatGPT + Kagi. I haven't used Gemini on its own interface yet to compare, though.
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I feel I have a great example. Replacing the Google Assistant with Gemini has made my phone both slower and less accurate. More than once have I said "Hey Google, Play <SONG> by <ARTIST>" and had my phone will chirp back the song is available for streaming instead of just playing it. Once, I even had it claim it wasn't capable of playing music, I assume because that's true on other platforms.
The most spectacular failure was when I asked it to make a logo for a project. The project has "cogs" in the title but that refers to Cost of Goods Sold not the physical object, so I specified that it should not include a cog a in the logo. Of course, it included a cog in the logo.
I asked it to help me create a business plan. Partway through it switched to Indonesian language, for no reason I could see. Then, after about two hours work on the plan, with about 200K tokens in the context, it stopped outputting anything reasonable.
I have tried to get it to help with Google Sheets formulae about a dozen times so far. Not once has it actually got anything right. Not once.
It's serviceable as a chatbot, but completely useless if you try to get it to actually do anything.
Gemini just eclipsed ChatGPT to be #1 on the Apple app store for these kinds of apps. The 2.5 pro series is also good/SOTA at coding, but unfortunately poorly trained for the agentic workflows that have become predominant.
> When you call a business, the person picking up the phone almost always identifies the business itself (and sometimes gives their own name as well). But that didn't happen when the Google assistant called these "real" businesses:
No, because if you read the article you'd see that there's more, like the "business" not asking for customer information or the PR people being cagey when asked for details/confirmation.
Every PHP file can work without frameworks. The route is your filename, PHP by itself can do templating and input data is handled by the super globals.
But if you want some small and simple framework as guidance you can also try out Slim Framework.
I would love to self-host this stuff (using Immich, or Ente) but my family's bus factor is 1 and the risk of losing all the pictures really prevents me from taking this step. Sure, maybe my wife could reach out to my techie friends but why create the problem in the first place?
My Immich server performs a nightly backup to a 2tb flash drive labelled "PHOTOS" attached to the router. My partner knows where it is and what it's for, and everyone knows how to use a flash drive.
Are you rotating flash drives and such? I would worry about something happening to me, then she goes to use the flash drive, and the data is corrupt or the drive is fried.
This. It is true science how to preserve data long-term. And if you want to encrypt it (e2e or not), you better have very good plan how to recover it when you die
Nope. I recognize it's a risk, but it still seems like the solution with the least compromises and the highest probability of success.
My server sends me notifications for every update with the rsync output so I'll know if any problems arise while I'm around. The last drive in this position lasted 4 years without incident, and I only replaced it earlier this year because it was full.
Is there a way to export things like notes to a sidecar file? Basically need to have photo123.jpg and photo123.jpg_notes.txt available.
I’m trying to archive, document and make accessible family photos, but fear any work I do organizing information in immich may as well be throwing it into black hole.
I'm comfortable trading some metadata for a foolproof handoff of the assets themselves. The library is organized in year/month/day folders so it's navigable that way.
I back up the complete Immich filesystem and database, and include a docker-compose.yml, so if it was handed to someone technically inclined they'd have all that.
I feel the same, so I keep photos on hard drives and usb drives in different locations. I have a Restic backup at Backblaze but that is where the bus factor comes in. I don't know what would be best.
This is, I think, my favorite essay about building software. The style is charming (I can see why some might not like it) and the content is always relevant.
I love this project and don't want to disparage the work that goes into it, but 900 USD, and it has to be a book that is already transcribed online? That seems a bit much to me.
That sounds quite reasonable to me. That's about what a freelance proofreader charges to edit a book, if https://thewritelife.com/how-much-to-pay-for-a-book-editor/ is correct, and that's working with a (likely Word) document which isn't poorly scanned from paper.
Glad to see this, been noodling on it for a long time. My crazy proposal is to make advertising illegal, in the US... by nationalizing Craigslist. USList or some such.
No more billboards, no more ads on TV or radio or podcasts or when you're on a plane or when you're in an Uber and they have that screen. No more ads in something you've already paid for a la newspapers.
You want to advertise to, say, all the people in Arkansas? You have to pay them directly to post your ad on Arkansas USList. Want to target further? Great, you have to pay the county to post on their board. Then, people that want to see your ads can go to their local board, filter by their interests, and maybe see your ad. Want to target all the electricians in a county? Their union runs a board and you can pay them.
Cities/counties/states/${localeType}s could opt to, say, issue an advertising dividend to their residents.
My definition of advertising is the unwanted stealing of your attention by someone who wants you to buy something. Or be aware of something you could buy. It takes you out of a context you have put yourself in, stealing your attention (and therefore your time, which is all we really have in this life).
My stupid USList idea flips this on its head by making it possible to only see ads when you want to.
Movie trailers when you're at the cinema are ads, sure. But they are ads that fit the context you've put yourself in. If you're at the theater, it makes sense for the playbill to list other shows. If you're at a restaurant, the list of specials, or a wine recommended by your server are both appropriate. Even a list of specials or deals in the window of a restaurant, as long as it isn't 100x100ft and illuminaated, is fine by me.
But an LED billboard distracting you with a 2-for-1 meal deal as you drive down the freeway is out of your context (and dangerous! and needlessly polluting!) When we consider the tracking and spying that has become possible thanks to online advertising companies like Google, Facebook, etc... it's scary. And entirely needless.
Like I said, I've been noodling on this for a while and am definitely the crazy anti-advertising guy in my circles. But once I point out the prevalence of ads and how it's like being kicked in the knees all day, I've found people seem to start getting it. I've done more than a few pihole + wireguard installs, UBlock origin + Sponsorblock installs, etc.
You don't see how this could possibly be used by unethical politicians?
Like, only Company A (who completely coincidentally contributed to my political campaign) is allowed to advertise inside the political boundaries I control?
