That’s one thing I noticed about NZ, during my first trip: the speed limits are generally sane. If anything, the rural speed limits have a genuine sense of reality to them.

In stark contrast, driving in Canada (Toronto area) and the US (Texas) most times I felt I could safely go faster, were it not for the constant threat of speed traps or random / stealth cruisers.

In NZ if you’re doing a long drive and you don’t heed the slower speed limits as you enter a bend in the road, you may have just fucked yourself. Especially if the roads have a layer of moisture, which is likely.

And the more built up areas have a decent amount of traffic calming, which is nice.

Toronto and really all of the GTA need a severe dose of NotJustBikes to get sorted.

Oh no!

Anyway, how’s your weekend been going?

A fellow Marlboro Coors Lite Ford Chevy SUV pickup banking insurance sportsball enthusiast, I see

2 years later, somewhere in their sales and marketing departments:

“Hey, you know what would make us even more money?”

“No, but do tell”

“Advertising”

“Genius - how is it nobody has ever thought of this before?”

Roku somehow thinking that the Ferengi rules of acquisition was a how-to guide book.

Jeff Geerling discusses having done the same, in one of his videos.

“We have also developed a tomato which can eject itself when an accident is imminent.”

Big fan of douchecanoe. Been using it for many years.

I once dropped ‘douchecanoe’ in a convo with my manager in reference to someone we both knew outside of the company, without thinking. She gave me one of those “hol’ up - what did you just say?” reactions. New to her, she was amused.

“WHOA THERE DUDE! Geez, didn’t you see that paper cup being blown by the wind?? Totally saved your ass.”

I did that for one neighbour in one apartment complex where we lived. Her laptop sucked ass beforehand.

You just need to avoid Alderaan places.

True, there’s that :)

And of course there are those times that Alexa completely misunderstands. Neither my wife nor I know how it happened, but some months back we discovered “blow job” on our list.

“Alexa, add bananas”

“Alexa, 3 minutes”

“Alexa, add 30 seconds”

I think that’s just about everything I’ve ever used it for.

Dunno about “usually”. Our last house was fairly nice, but didn’t have this sink feature. That said, you could walk around and see where the builder went for the cheapest option available.

That said, this kitchen sink feature should literally be the absolute minimum for consideration.

It really comes down to apps.

The only flag you mentioned that caught my attention was Word and Word templates. I’ve not tried Word templates.

I figure your options are either Libre Office or something cloud based, eg, Google Docs.

One thing you could try is to set up a VM or boot a live CD (USB) and try on the things that most concern you.

Very true, and along the lines of what I was thinking.

But it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a way to establish a voice print. In fact, isn’t that already a thing? Even if it is a little rough around the edges, it wouldn’t surprise me if we were even closer to a higher reliability than thought.

With or without that, consider the copyright infringement suits for someone wanting to protect their song, melody, or whatever. Someone could poke at the 8 keys of a toy piano, and if a music artist’s legal team felt it sounded close enough to the original? The ol’ beatdown-by-seeking-damages trick if not a cease and desist order.

Anyway. If someone has enough money and too much time, they’ll make a case out of anything.

Man, I misunderstood the headline. I thought the AI had created a likeness of her voice, and SJ was going after them for that.

Which begs the question, just how unique are our voices? There’s being distinct, and then there’s being literally one of a kind.

cahier

As a Canadian, thanks for giving me flashbacks to years of French studies :P

One floor should be reserved for running around barefoot on broken glass while bad guys chase after you to keep you from interfering with their elaborate heist.

A fartiste, you might say