What if Clippy cost the GDP of Argentina?
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
531 points (98.9% liked)
me_irl
7048 readers
1088 users here now
All posts need to have the same title: me_irl it is allowed to use an emoji instead of the underscore _
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Don't use word then, it's so shit.
I always wonder, if I'm like experiencing extreme privilege or something, in that I'm able to write words to express what I want to say.
Like, I don't know, I've got a colleague who's probably got dyslexia and also sometimes struggles with how to word things in English. I can understand that he finds it useful for that.
But personally, I always think that if I would've wanted it to be written differently, I would've written it differently. I do not want a machine to put words into my mouth, because they will inevitably be different from what I wanted to say.
at work we are recommended to put things through AI to sound more ⚡️E X E C U T I V E ⚡️🔥🔥🔥🤙
so you do something like, "Got new images from design" and it'll rephrase to "Aligned on tactical operations with communications dept and successfully launched adoption of new collateral"
It's been eye-opening to see how much "leadership" is just "heavily reword simple things into complicated language to make them sound more impressive"
We have an AI tool that is apparently supposed to improve the tone of voice and shorten messages. It turns my short sentence into a paragraph with a bunch of pointless extra words.
Have it quote you?
I can never write what I intend to say. I'm never really sure of my intent when I sit down to write so that probably has a lot to do with it. I also don't want a machine to write it for me.
I’m with you. I wouldn’t appreciate someone standing over my shoulder trying to guess every word I’m about to write, so why would I tolerate that from a word processor? Maybe we are in the minority, but I take care to pick words and phrases that fit what I want to convey. Having a machine assume it can know what’s in my mind better than I do is nonsense.
There are at least a dozen countries around the world where less than half of residents would be able to read your post no matter what language it was translated into. Which is to say basic literacy, [which should be] a human right, is apparently a privilege in today's world.
Then what you're talking about goes beyond that to a strong command of the language—definitely an awesome power :) we are lucky to be able to do this. (usually, for me, and there’s usually some technological/social bridge for exceptions)
Would you like me to take what you've written and suck the humanity out of it?
Surely this reply to your masterful comment was written by a moist human! Bleep bloop.
Just bring it round to Stephen Fry's house and he'll rewrite it for you.
Ah, Down Cemetery Road - maybe you saw Slow Horses from the same author’s mind?
Both mentioned in this Mirror article (known for top journalism, OK maybe not but entertainment pieces could be all right)
Funny thing. I loved both shows, and really dislike the original writer.
I find him overly snarky; his style is like a bad Douglas Adams pastiche.
His plots aren't worth the slog; thank goodness for TV adaptations.
Clippy 2.0
That's an insult to Clippy. At least Clippy tried to be useful. These LLMs don't even try.
Not old enough to actually havd any experience with clippy (I think the earliest Windows UI I ever touched was XP, but that was made before i was born lol), but at least Clippy was local and didn't steal your data right? Even if he was useless he could be turned off and didn't stalk you.
someone should tell her about libreoffice
I’ve tried but Emma Thompson refuses my calls and never responds to my emails.
I’m trying but going from the ribbon interface I’ve been using since 2006 to the pre-ribbon interface feels like a time warp, in a bad way.
I'm old... i remember when everyone absolutely abhorred the ribbon interface.
Still hate it here!
that's so funny to hear, all I've been hearing from linux users for the last forever is how much they hate the ribbon!
Ephere below mentioned you can change it to a tabbed interface here: https://books.libreoffice.org/en/WG252/WG2521-UserInterfaceVariants.html#toc6
It’s resistance to change. When it was new, people hated it. Now when it’s old, it’s hard going back. If you never changed, it’s new and bad.
OSS isn’t known for its revolutionary user interface experiences.
Yeah, the OSS Office apps are so ugly and painful to use after using MS Office for over a decade. Really reminds me about how much I hated using MS Office before the redesigned UI.
(Really hoping to trigger Cunningham's Law on this one)
You want to select the Tabbed interface here: https://books.libreoffice.org/en/WG252/WG2521-UserInterfaceVariants.html#toc6
@CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
Sweet. Anyone recently install this for the first time?:
I’d think the installer could ask if the user is most familiar with Microsoft products or whatever, then confirm which interface will be defaulted as a result.
Would have to create an issue or something for this eh
I haven't installed it recently, but I swear a few months ago or so it came up with a selection screen for which UI I wanted. I can't remember which I picked rn, I just know I think I switched recently because i couldn't find the hanging indent to save my life, and I was writing a paper...
Not in the Settings for some reason.
Thank you, that’s very helpful.
It’s sorta typical of the OSS community. Engineers aren’t designers and it would seem that UI designers are either not as interested in OSS as engineering types or they’re squeezed out by curmudgeonly engineers.
Sauce?
A recent episode of Colbert's Late Show; I remember seeing this segment, should be on the YouTube page.