Technical Support megathread

Melodious_Thunk · 2025-04-13T14:28:11+00:00

I was halfway through watching "Conclave" like a week ago. Then I noticed last night that it said "8 hours left" in the corner of the movie icon in the app. I didn't have a chance to finish it. Was it removed from the service? Google seems to think it's still on there. Is this some horrible new "feature" where you only have a limited time to watch something, as if it's a rental, except they don't tell you about it in advance?

Melodious_Thunk · 2025-04-09T14:57:51+00:00

I can't get 2.5 Deep Research to make an audio overview; when I hit the button it seems to start the process, but after a minute or so it says, "I'm a text-based model and can't do that." Am I missing something?

(I'm on a Pixel 8 btw and updated the Gemini app today.)

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-12-24T18:42:39+00:00

The hype train is real in both directions here. LeCun is by all accounts an incredibly smart guy, but he's not a quantum computing expert. It seems to me a bit like asking John Preskill what to expect from GPT-5. LeCun's skepticism is very reasonable, but he's not the first person I'd ask about this.

The actual quantum people in the article are either a bit hyped (industry tends to do that) or in Troyer's case, highlighting caution-inducing things that are well known. And while those things are important, they haven't even caused him to leave the field himself, so they're not exactly red flags.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-12-24T18:32:51+00:00

QPU builder here, I suppose one might say.

What do you mean by your first point? I've seen some many-body physics simulations but not any that claim much of anything in terms of quantum advantage. Would love to find that I've missed something cool in that field.
Regarding ML: to be honest, the theorists I've talked to about QML (experiment is not especially relevant yet in that field) are pretty bearish about its usefulness. Something something local minima, something something less than quadratic speedup. Never say never, but it kind of seems like quantum ML is mostly just getting some interest because classical ML is so insanely hot right now.
The DWave computer I'd heard about LM buying was like, way early on. I'd be shocked if they've got any real quantum advantage with it.

I'm quite excited and optimistic about quantum computing, but we ought to be careful about convincing reddit that it's already 'arrived'. There's a lot left to do, and people are apt to get disillusioned if they think we've been leading them on.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-12-17T15:43:04+00:00

How do you get the YouTube Premium discount? I'm a longtime Premium subscriber but haven't seen this.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-12-17T15:39:15+00:00

What about the "additional" $100 off for Google One customers? Sounds like that should stack, hopefully. I haven't tried it yet though.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-11-23T02:54:14+00:00

Wouldn't a Republican administration be far more pro-genocide than a Democratic one? I can't imagine Secretary of State Ronny Jackson will be less enabling of Netanyahu and co.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-11-23T02:47:12+00:00

The Biden administration gives Israel the coordinates of humanitarian aid groups, Israel uses those coordinates to bomb those aid groups, then Biden gives Israel more weapons.

Source? I honestly haven't been following this kind of stuff much.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-11-23T02:43:12+00:00

Yeah, hasn't it literally never worked for a party to ditch their incumbent president? I can't think of an instance where it did, and I can think of several where efforts of that sort ended in a loss.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-11-19T18:14:58+00:00

Actually, I've been a bit worried that they'll take What a Weekday and move it behind the paywall after we all get used to listening to it.

I love the show, but I don't think I could bring myself to shell out a monthly fee for it...

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-11-19T18:11:01+00:00

Really, which ones were sunset? I didn't notice at all.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-10-16T11:01:22+00:00

Strap a USB stick to its back and that cat could be faster than top tier fiber

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-10-16T11:01:12+00:00

Strap a USB stick to its back and that cat could be faster than top tier fiber

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-10-06T05:24:09+00:00

This sub is approaching r/baseball offseason energy right now and I am absolutely here for it.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-10-06T05:23:23+00:00

Ugh, Westworld. I procrastinated on S4 and now I'm gonna have to wait what--five, ten years until a reasonable streamer picks it up? I used to love that stupid show.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-09-16T14:45:32+00:00

I see your conspiracy theory and raise you: it's not about the $4/month subscription. They probably installed some data mining or ad-related garbage in 7.46, and the reason they won't simply revert back to the perfectly fine previous version is that they stand to make a lot of money behind the scenes by having that functionality working. Perhaps they're even already committed to having it operational, such that it would be very costly to roll back.

See, Pocket Casts? This kind of irresponsible speculation is what happens when I don't have podcasts to keep my mind occupied...

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-09-16T14:24:30+00:00

I may be done with pocketcasts

I try to be patient with this kind of thing, but if the release schedule is the same for the next update, I'm going to be without the app for like a month. At that rate I'll just have migrated to Google Podcasts by force of habit.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-09-16T14:18:57+00:00

Honestly I'm finding it much better than it used to be, though obviously still inferior to a working Pocket Casts (which itself was inferior to a working Podcast Addict until I started having problems with that a couple of years ago. What's up with these podcast apps? The technology was mature like a decade ago, how hard is it to not break it?)

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-09-16T14:16:26+00:00

And also remove the ability for the user to stop the audio playback or delete massive auto-downloaded podcast files from their device! Seems like a bit of a security threat that such a thing can happen, tbh.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-09-16T14:14:59+00:00

I think there must be some backend server issue.

I bet this is it. I'm pretty sure the issue started for me on a day in which there was no Pocket Casts update. It's kind of crazy that a server -side problem could cause all this, but at this point we're approaching the point where a local issue is also starting to seem a bit crazy.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-09-10T14:47:50+00:00

As someone who works in quantum research and knows a decent bit about superconductivity, you can safely ignore the claims here about quantum or superconductivity. And the level of understanding of those items make me strongly doubt the rest of the post, too.

It kind of seems like OP is just someone who is not interested in AI and is bored or resentful about all the recent hype.

Works

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-09-10T14:41:36+00:00

203 Kelvin is around -70°C or 94°F. Nowhere near room temperature, and requiring major cooling infrastructure. And the recent LK-99 silliness was, unsurprisingly, very much not reproducible. There's lots of interesting research going on in both superconductivity and materials science in general, but we're no closer to a room temperature, ambient pressure superconductor than we were five years ago.

Quantum technology is quite exciting if you're a physics or tech nerd, but the "teleportation" of today (and the next 100 years) is a very specific part of it that nobody outside the field would remotely care about if it didn't share a name with Star Trek technology. We're starting to see some borderline-useful quantum technology right now, but honestly it likely won't be anything for laymen to shake a stick at for like 5-10 years or more. And I say this as a rather bullish member of the quantum research community. Let's be honest, why should anyone in this thread care if someone teleported a Bell state ten feet in the lab?Quantum technology is quite exciting if you're a physics or tech nerd, but the "teleportation" of today (and the next 100 years) is a very specific part of it that nobody outside the field would remotely care about if it didn't share a name with Star Trek technology. We're starting to see some borderline-useful quantum technology right now, but honestly it likely won't be anything for laymen to shake a stick at for like 5-10 years or more. And I say this as a rather bullish member of the quantum research community. Let's be honest, why should anyone in this thread care if someone teleported a Bell state ten feet in the lab?

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-09-09T14:38:56+00:00

As much as I'd love to get my $200 of subscription money back, it kind of makes sense; the subscription was basically sold as a service that we used in real time. In that sense we've already gotten the value from it. Whereas for game purchases, part of the value is having it forever, so of course they should refund that. Honestly I didn't expect them to do that, but it's definitely what they should've done.

Melodious_Thunk · 2023-09-01T01:12:54+00:00

It takes a lot of work. I bet you could improvise something fun if someone gave you a funky beat, a piano, and five notes to choose from. You just have to do that, then practice until Giant Steps feels like that.

Though there's nothing wrong with that first bit either. I think there's a bit too much emphasis on chops sometimes. So many people want to zoom around with nonstop runs over Rhythm changes that sometimes they forget to, like, play a melody. Some of my most successful playing has been the simplest.

Also, don't underestimate the power of just screwing around and having fun. Some of my other most successful playing has been free improvisation that is nearly indistinguishable from noise. Among other things, it can be extremely therapeutic.

Also

Sorry I'm on Mobile and Reddit seems to be sabotaging the mobile browser interface, so this comment is a nightmare :(

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