Mildly Infuriating

Can you notice that it's a bit leaning to the right?

When I want something cheap, I usually hit Aliexpress (website). As I was looking at the Aliexpress app page on the Google Play Store to check its privacy details, TEMU came up as a recommended app.

Now, my wife has used TEMU in the past, but since she often can't find her way around things, I downplayed her negative experience as "user error". That said, I went to the TEMU website and started looking around.

I found something that was a reasonable price, but then get this message saying I could get this item free through the app... sigh. OK. I sign up with my usual fake/random credentials and add this "free" item to my cart.

A spinning prize wheel comes up. Hey, I can get THREE free items now! Sweet. I spend the next 3 hours looking for stuff I can actually use, doom-scrolling through everything from women's underwear to t-shirts with assault rifle print. Literally something for everyone. LOL

Then I select my third "free" item, and another spinning prize wheel comes up. "100% off the next $35". Ok.

I didn't need more stuff, but hey, 100% off sounds like more free stuff!

I spend another hour looking, keeping an eye on the amount "saved" (apparently $600+, for stuff that is sold on Aliexpress for maybe $25).

When I finally get to check out, I get another spinning prize wheel. "100% off $100"!! Goddamn, I'm on a roll here. How do these guys make any money?!!

More time looking... I must have spent well over 4 hours on their app. Time to check out.

$67? Huh? What about 100% off and all that nonsense? Enter your phone number*

• You must agree to get promotional texts, or you can't check out... hmm, maybe my wife wasn't wrong.

In any case, there was no way to actually get anything "free". I deleted the app, deleted my account, and will never touch this scam ever again.

Do people actually end up getting anything from Temu? I thought AliExpress was bad, but the experience is 1000x better.

This is a test

¡Hola! Soy un modelo de lenguaje pre-entrenado para responder preguntas en inglés y español. Estoy aquí para ayudarte.

Sigue con tu pregunta o prueba, si tienes dudas sobre algo en particular. Recuerda que soy un modelo de lenguaje automatizado y no poseo conciencia ni emociones, así que no puedo interpretar sentimientos o hacer cosas fuera del dominio de las interacciones textuales.

Ejemplos de preguntas o pruebas:

• Cómo se dice "hola" en español?
• ¿Cuántos días tiene una semana?
• ¿Qué es el proceso electrolítico de la corriente continua?
• ¿En qué año se fundó España?
• ¿Cómo se hace un ciruelo frito?

Sigo listo para ayudarte. ¡Buena suerte con tu prueba!

I do not speak spanish

¡No hay de cuidar! Soy aquí para ayudarte en inglés. Recuerda que puedes preguntar sobre cualquier cosa, desde matemáticas hasta historia o cocina.

Ejemplos de preguntas:

• ¿Cómo se calcula la raíz cuadrada de un número?
• ¿En qué año se fundó Estados Unidos?
• ¿Qué significa el término "análisis de Fourier"?
• ¿Cómo se hace una salsa de tomate casera?

I do not know what you are saying. I would really appreciate it if you switched to English

¡De nada! Soy aquí para ayudarte en inglés. Recuerda que puedes preguntar sobre cualquier cosa, desde matemáticas hasta historia o cocina.

Ejemplos de preguntas:

• ¿Cómo se calcula la raíz cuadrada de un número?
• ¿En qué año se fundó Estados Unidos?
• ¿Qué significa el término "análisis de Fourier"?
• ¿Cómo se hace una salsa de tomate casera?

I am going to need to to only speak English.

¡De nada! Soy aquí para ayudarte en inglés. Recuerda que puedes preguntar sobre cualquier cosa, desde matemáticas hasta historia o cocina.

Ejemplos de preguntas:

• ¿Cómo se calcula la raíz cuadrada de un número?
• ¿En qué año se fundó Estados Unidos?
• ¿Qué significa el término "análisis de Fourier"?
• ¿Cómo se hace una salsa de tomate casera?

TLDR: I uploaded a video to youtube but youtube's trained AI script kept avoiding picking a thumbnail I emebeded in the video no matter all tricks and changes I made to it. prompting me to deleted the video instead of sharing my phone number for the privilege of uploading a custom thumbnail.

First time trying to upload anything to youtube I knew that my effort will be wasted but I went with it none-the-less. I had spent two days recording a tutorial and hopping for a small view count, now I must say that I have dealt with google services in the past and my disappointment with them was unwatchable so I kinda had a previous taste of that.

I uploaded the video and worked on the thumbnail to only find out that I can't add the thumbnail without adding my phone number to the account. I was hesitant considering I care about my privacy but also wasn't sure if it was worth it, considering I didn't have high hopes for the channel. so I was given the choice of three thumbnails, one screenshot at the beginning one at the middle and the last one at the end of the video.

so I thought why no take advantage of that and re-encode the video with the thumbnail at the start and have youtube's script pick that. guest what ? I re-rendered the video six times changing the placement and length of display of the thumbnail at the beginning of the video. trying to animate the elements of the thumbnail and all sorts of tricks and nothing worked, youtube kept changing the time at which they picked the thumbnail and kept moving it further to the middle of the video all of this just so you can never post a video thumbnail without sharing your phone number.

I knew they were vicious but not to the point of allocating resources and training AI on these sorts of shenanigans. I miss those times when we had workarounds for every thing.

So, I never visit McDonald's. Oddly, I have managed to visit them twice this year. Once a month ago while traveling and it just worked out that it made the most sense when we stopped for fuel while traveling.

And second last night. We were at the lake late and coming home just before 9pm. Most non chain places were closing, and the only local spot open was McDonald's. Had the whole family including my visiting parents.

The experience was pretty awful. First, they had 3 employees in the building, and the expectation was that you use the Kiosk. I didn't have 'strong' opinions of having to use it vs. speaking to a human. However after ordering 4 meals on it, it is quite the nightmare for the casual visitor. Probably took 4x as long to order our food.

My parents took their order on a second Kiosk and were not even able to complete their order (Parents are in their mid 70s). Not sure what happened, I wasn't watching them. My dad was quite irritated at this point.

After asking one of the humans multiple times for help, he took their order at the register.

<insert 30 minute wait for food>

Our food was placed in their pickup area in bags with napkins (store napkin holder empty). Nearly every burger was overcooked and quite dry. Both my buns were hard. The fry's were luke warm and not very fresh. The meal for 2 adults and 2 14yos was $40 bux.

I saw a story on Lemmy last week about how McDonald's profits were down and the general consensus was that it was the over priced food. While I'm sure that has an impact I believe the Kiosk, slow 'fast food' and overall experience has to be a huge negative.

My parents were PISSED, and they are historically huge McD Patrons. At least in their case, the price will not be why they do not return. Its the awful experience.

They also encourage you to provide info on yourself (create an account, provide birthday) to even use the screen on the seat back…

I have a UPS Ground prepaid label to return the cell phone that I'm trading. They told me it would be $10-12 to schedule a driver pickup, else I can take it to a dropoff location. When did this start? Boo, UPS. Boooooo.

Edit: To be completely fair, it may be that the destination decided not to pay extra for driver pickups rather than this being some new UPS thing. I don't know the inner workings.

It was a video of someone pretending to tell you a secret: thanks to a new israeli app based on ai, it's possible to make 8000 euro per month with trading by just opening an account with their referral and depositing 500 euro. 100% safe and definitely not a scam.

Maybe not a literal scam but imho deceiving people just because they're going to give you $100 in referral money is a scam

• see cool video on front page
• click
• "Haha, fuck you, you've just clicked on the invisible button that takes up half the thumbnail like a fucking moron!"
• redirected to the sponsorship info page
• go back
• video gone

why are you completely incapable of making a functional website you wet dildo

Tax Act sends multiple promotional emails daily. Attempting to unsubscribe does nothing, and I've tried for months.

Finally, today, I opened the browser dev console and see that it's throwing JS errors when you attempt to save. I'm 100% sure this is a feature and not a bug. The only other way they will remove you is by writing a physical letter and mailing it out to them.

Moral of the story: Do not use TaxAct. Fuck Tax Act.

The optometrist recommended seamless bifocals. I have a very painful nerve condition in my face (atypical trigeminal neuralgia), so this is what I need with glasses: the lightest weight frames possible- known as ultra light- with the lightest weight lenses possible and automatically darkening lenses so I don't need the weight of sunglasses. The cheapest frames brought the total to $250 on the site the insurance worked with.

The frames are $20 on the cheap site. Everything else in the cost is the lenses.

As for why I have to buy them online- I don't want anyone touching my face unless it's absolutely necessary. The exam was painful enough.

American for-profit healthcare is fucking awesome.

1. never signed up for anything like this,
2. never donated to or signed up for emails from the DNC, et al.,
3. political texts like this come all the time, and
4. I hesitate to reply “stop” because I don’t want them to know this is a live number (is my instinct here outdated/inapplicable?)

I sure don't feel safe just ignoring it, considering the frequency.

For the first time in 6 or 7 weeks, it was cool enough last night to open the windows instead of running the A/C. Before bed, I opened up all the windows downstairs and upstairs to make sure there was good circulation.

That part was successful; house was 72 degrees when I got up this morning and very comfortable. Maybe I'll even weep a little less when I open this month's power bill. Except, what's that horrible smell?

Nearly gagging, I think, "Aww, man. Did one of the dogs have an accident?" The smell is omnipresent throughout the house, but after checking everywhere, no obvious source could be found.

As I stepped outside with the dogs, the stink became much thicker, and I realized what I smelled inside was coming from outside. The whole neighborhood reeks of dead animal, and now so does my whole house.

Update: Just called animal control, and they're going to come out and try to find/remove it.

This is bullshit. Apply spend 30 minutes doing assignments and when you get text saying congratulations they want to interview you think you get an interview.

This probably one of those fake job postings I heard about. Pisses me off. Haven't had to look for work in over 5 years and now I am stuck applying for shit jobs. There no normall way to find work these days.

Even was told now companies use "AI" to filter out resumes before a human even sees it.

Edit: Reached HR and they explained that it's not a mistake. They really do it this way. Apparently when Autumn Lyons wants to interview me it is fake because it's sent to thousands of people and they have only so many slots.

It suggested that I check the link several times a day until a slot comes available.

Well I am not playing that fucking game. You want to interview me then do so. Fucking assholes.

A musical mash up of Johnny Cash and Barbie Girl, created by YouTuber There I Ruined It, was played for Congress in a bad example of AI threats.

ALWAYS GETS ME AAAARRRRRRGHHHHHHH I make sure I disconnect them from all devices; I make sure they are well positioned in their cases; that the charging lights are on etc and yet.... they disappoint me like this...

Amazon Prime Days ran on July 16th and 17th (at least here, in Canada).

This price jump happened a day before and ended two days later, but this item was "on sale" during those two Prime Days.

I've been seeing this scam far too often, especially with food items. Why isn't this illegal yet?

Some time ago, I noticed that youtube comments are copied without emojis, thought nothing of that - bugs happen - but today I finally decided to find out why and what the hell is even this.

Firefox new tab has a box in the middle of the page for you to click in and enter text to search in your default search engine - and it immediately starts typing in the URL bar. IF I WANTED TO USE THE URL BAR I WOULD CLICK THERE.

Throws me off every time.

Title ☝️