Notes is a very different app to Notepad though. Nobody uses the Notes app to edit plain text files, which is the sole use case of Notepad. Notes is for writing, well, notes. Notes also has a lot of other editing modes and features like drawing with the apple pencil, scanning documents, cross device syncing, etc. As far as I’m aware Notepad can only edit plain text files.
I wonder when the environmentalists will realize what is going on right now, and start to protest AI usage in general. I was already wondering the same when the open source community started to CI every damn PR and commit, but I guess I was too optimistic with that one.
Windows Update is another big one, the way it makes every Windows computer spin the fans like crazy on a regular basis. Probably room for improvement there.
Manga Library Z, a manga archiving site that distributed old and out-of-print manga for free has been forced to close down due to all major credit card companies refusing to provide payment services. If some hypothetical widespread decentralized payment system can prevent scenarios like this one from happening, then it would be worth the "enormous waste of resources". These days, you're essentially relegated to a non-person if card companies stop allowing you to use their services.
I don't want to sound skeptical, but this is what Crypto people used to say when it was very new.
It was supposedly worth all the power expenditure, because changing the world needed energy. Now we see where we are.
I'm inside this "newfangled AI thing". There are groups which create value, but they create value for everybody. The humans and the nature in general, and they use AI for scientific ends. Medical image processing, ecosystem monitoring, etc. etc.
Letting bots loose on the internet, letting them consume what they say and making them answer "Sauce is a food taste enhancer, and dressing is used to keep wounds clean while allowing them to heal. A standard serving of a dressing is two spoons".
To be fair, newer research is demonstrating that smaller more power efficient models with the same performance are possible, so the hope is that these giant LLMs are just a stepping stone to a less energy hungry place. In contrast, proof of work fundamentally needs more energy then bigger the network gets. It's no guarantee but we can at least see some hope that as energy impact drops and increasing value is found that 'AI' will cross the threshold of being worth the energy.
Edit: although yes I do agree that the 'value' part is tricky. If internet spam can generate more 'value' for some people than doing science, then when intelligence is cheap we are in for a rough time.
To be clear, I'm not against AI or LLM as a technology in general. What I'm against is the unethical way how these LLMs trained and how people are dismissive of the damage they're doing and saying "we're doing something amazing, we need no permission".
Also, I'm very aware that there are many smaller models in production which can run real-time with negligible power and memory requirements (i.e. see human/animal detection models in mirrorless cameras, esp. Sony and Fuji).
However, to be honest I didn't see the same research on LLMs yet. Can you share if you have any, because I'd be glad to read them.
Lastly, I'm aware that AI is not something only covers object detection, NLP, etc. You can create very useful and light AI systems for many problems, but how LLMs pumped with that unstopping hype machine bothers me a lot.
I disagree. Crypto people kept suggesting that crypto was a solution to an X problem while ignoring that a database was a better solution the problem.
I’ve yet to hear any good use cases for crypto, and I’ve been asking for years on here. Meanwhile there are a bunch of AI tools out there that are working and helping.
AI is a gigantic landscape with tons of different applications to different problems, and there are many solutions which work for a given problem.
However, if we narrow what AI is to LLMs, we have a stochastic parrot which needs to be fed the world literally to enable it to create semi-coherent sentences about something being asked. More importantly, what that parrot says doesn't have to be true, it can't be guaranteed to be true, and can't be verified about its accuracy about its slop.
And you spend gigawatts of power just to train this thing which selects and prints words based on probability and some randomness.
Strange. Microsoft seems to struggle with the fact that they named it "Notepad" and some subset of users took this to heart and used it as a note pad, but due to backwards compatibility concerns it must never save rich text formatted files, else it could cause confusing data loss scenarios for users just trying to edit config files. Hence, the odd combination of LLM features added to a text editor that will never support rich text or rendered markdown.
The addition of tabs to Notepad has made me stop using it entirely. My entire workflow around it was having separate windows for each document that I could move and close freely. Having an all-in-one-place Notepad filled with the ghosts of API tokens past is precisely the opposite of what I needed.
Yeah, not everything needs an LLM tacked on. Notepad is a lesson in tool minimalism; it serves a lot of use cases precisely because it has a small feature set.
Unless and until I see a clear privacy police analyzed by a lawyer, stating categorically that this doesn't happen, I think it's wise to assume that you are correct here.
While it's possible they meant something nefarious, I think the goal was probably just to prevent confusion around shared computers. Such confusion might seem unlikely, but when your market is as big as Microsoft's even unlikely things happen all the time.
I hate that Win11 Notepad has so many tabs open even after you close the app.
Many times, I just paste my copied text in Notepad to strip the formatting + special characters and close it after re-copying the data. Pretty efficient.
Now that I open Notepad.. all my previous tabs are open asking me to close them one after the other (extra click on not so save the file) :@ so annoying
It a result of a rather sad trend, which I think started with Google. Rather than going out and doing market research you just throw things against the wall, measure and see if people are using it at any significant rate.
The difference between Google and Microsoft is that Google have no problems just killing of things that doesn't perform to their standard (which is bad in it's own way). With Microsoft backwards compatibility is everything, so once something is in Windows, it says around for a very, very, long time.
AI assistance in writing isn't a bad idea, but maybe not in Notepad. I know that this isn't they way modern Microsoft wants to do things, but exposing an API that would allow 3rd. party vendors to AI support in Windows seems like a more sensible approach. Except they'd probably have to make it accessible from Javascript to make anyone use it.
A while ago I wrote about my experience using Windows for work after 10 years of being a Linux-only user [1]. One of the positive notes I had was:
> As a positive note, the default text editor Notepad is nice and lightweight, a good piece of software.
Unfortunately, they screwed it up with Windows 11. And apparently they are doubling down on this.
[1] https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2023-01-28-windows-deskto...
When you have a (very very expensive) hammer, everything looks like a nail
Honestly, the “Notes” app on Mac has at least the autocomplete now and I find it quite useful.
I’m very sceptical about all these AI announcements but text editing is case where I think this “AI” stuff can actually be used for good.
Notes is a very different app to Notepad though. Nobody uses the Notes app to edit plain text files, which is the sole use case of Notepad. Notes is for writing, well, notes. Notes also has a lot of other editing modes and features like drawing with the apple pencil, scanning documents, cross device syncing, etc. As far as I’m aware Notepad can only edit plain text files.
I wonder when the environmentalists will realize what is going on right now, and start to protest AI usage in general. I was already wondering the same when the open source community started to CI every damn PR and commit, but I guess I was too optimistic with that one.
Windows Update is another big one, the way it makes every Windows computer spin the fans like crazy on a regular basis. Probably room for improvement there.
For Microsoft's credit, Windows has systems in place to install your updates when you're powered by more renewables than fossil fuels [0].
[0]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-update-i...
We are aware. AI at least have the potential to create some value, which can’t be said about crypto currencies that still waste enormous resources.
Manga Library Z, a manga archiving site that distributed old and out-of-print manga for free has been forced to close down due to all major credit card companies refusing to provide payment services. If some hypothetical widespread decentralized payment system can prevent scenarios like this one from happening, then it would be worth the "enormous waste of resources". These days, you're essentially relegated to a non-person if card companies stop allowing you to use their services.
I don't want to sound skeptical, but this is what Crypto people used to say when it was very new.
It was supposedly worth all the power expenditure, because changing the world needed energy. Now we see where we are.
I'm inside this "newfangled AI thing". There are groups which create value, but they create value for everybody. The humans and the nature in general, and they use AI for scientific ends. Medical image processing, ecosystem monitoring, etc. etc.
Letting bots loose on the internet, letting them consume what they say and making them answer "Sauce is a food taste enhancer, and dressing is used to keep wounds clean while allowing them to heal. A standard serving of a dressing is two spoons".
To be fair, newer research is demonstrating that smaller more power efficient models with the same performance are possible, so the hope is that these giant LLMs are just a stepping stone to a less energy hungry place. In contrast, proof of work fundamentally needs more energy then bigger the network gets. It's no guarantee but we can at least see some hope that as energy impact drops and increasing value is found that 'AI' will cross the threshold of being worth the energy.
Edit: although yes I do agree that the 'value' part is tricky. If internet spam can generate more 'value' for some people than doing science, then when intelligence is cheap we are in for a rough time.
To be clear, I'm not against AI or LLM as a technology in general. What I'm against is the unethical way how these LLMs trained and how people are dismissive of the damage they're doing and saying "we're doing something amazing, we need no permission".
Also, I'm very aware that there are many smaller models in production which can run real-time with negligible power and memory requirements (i.e. see human/animal detection models in mirrorless cameras, esp. Sony and Fuji).
However, to be honest I didn't see the same research on LLMs yet. Can you share if you have any, because I'd be glad to read them.
Lastly, I'm aware that AI is not something only covers object detection, NLP, etc. You can create very useful and light AI systems for many problems, but how LLMs pumped with that unstopping hype machine bothers me a lot.
I disagree. Crypto people kept suggesting that crypto was a solution to an X problem while ignoring that a database was a better solution the problem.
I’ve yet to hear any good use cases for crypto, and I’ve been asking for years on here. Meanwhile there are a bunch of AI tools out there that are working and helping.
AI is a gigantic landscape with tons of different applications to different problems, and there are many solutions which work for a given problem.
However, if we narrow what AI is to LLMs, we have a stochastic parrot which needs to be fed the world literally to enable it to create semi-coherent sentences about something being asked. More importantly, what that parrot says doesn't have to be true, it can't be guaranteed to be true, and can't be verified about its accuracy about its slop.
And you spend gigawatts of power just to train this thing which selects and prints words based on probability and some randomness.
That doesn't solve any problems.
>> I wonder when the environmentalists will realize what is going on right now, and start to protest AI usage in general.
Never, in just 2-3 months we will have much, much bigger problems
Why is it that liberals/leftists are such doomsayers with a general hint of depression? This starts to feel like group mental illness.
why do you try labeling me without knowing ANYTHING about me? This starts to feel like mental illness.
Who genuinely gives a fuck about them? They’ve ruined the earth by opposing nuclear power.
Strange. Microsoft seems to struggle with the fact that they named it "Notepad" and some subset of users took this to heart and used it as a note pad, but due to backwards compatibility concerns it must never save rich text formatted files, else it could cause confusing data loss scenarios for users just trying to edit config files. Hence, the odd combination of LLM features added to a text editor that will never support rich text or rendered markdown.
What is the reason it should not be able to support rendering markdown?
The underlying files are still just plain text and if it's not .md (or whatever other extensions may make sense) it's not rendered.
Notepad and plain text is the last place I want AI. I just want a place to type and paste non-formatted (outside of whitespace) text.
There’s probably a way to turn it off but I hate how it auto opens the last file now.
The addition of tabs to Notepad has made me stop using it entirely. My entire workflow around it was having separate windows for each document that I could move and close freely. Having an all-in-one-place Notepad filled with the ghosts of API tokens past is precisely the opposite of what I needed.
But you can still open multiple windows?
Yeah, not everything needs an LLM tacked on. Notepad is a lesson in tool minimalism; it serves a lot of use cases precisely because it has a small feature set.
https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html if you feel threatened or got tired of encoding/newline issues. Works as a drop-in replacement (replaces .exe).
https://sourceforge.net/p/notepad2/code/HEAD/tree/ for source code.
Sends everything you write to Microsoft.
Unless and until I see a clear privacy police analyzed by a lawyer, stating categorically that this doesn't happen, I think it's wise to assume that you are correct here.
There's a reason Windows went from 'MyComputer' to 'This PC'.
While it's possible they meant something nefarious, I think the goal was probably just to prevent confusion around shared computers. Such confusion might seem unlikely, but when your market is as big as Microsoft's even unlikely things happen all the time.
"Our PC"
Kinda defeats the point of “AI PCs” then…
You've got it reversed. AI PCs are just SPAs. You offload the workload to the client then send the resulting payload back.
When you want to rewrite something with such kind of AI, do you intend to send it somewhere else or you want to keep for yourself?
Yes, I intend to send it to its intended recipient, which most of the time happens to NOT be Microsoft or its affiliates.
Is it safe to say we've crested the peak of the Gartner Hype Cycle for AI?
I've seen several essays/posts describing "AI Fatigue" recently.
I hate that Win11 Notepad has so many tabs open even after you close the app.
Many times, I just paste my copied text in Notepad to strip the formatting + special characters and close it after re-copying the data. Pretty efficient.
Now that I open Notepad.. all my previous tabs are open asking me to close them one after the other (extra click on not so save the file) :@ so annoying
They should also convert it to Electron.
Calm down, Satan.
The “TURBO” of this generation
what about MS Paint? Can it get AI assistant to create shitty pixel art?
Edit: Oh. It does too.
First tabbed documents and now this!
Signing in to MS to use notepad? Nah I don't think so
At this point I wouldn't even bat an eye if someone tried to sell me an AI toilet that uses an image recognition model to analyze my bowel movements.
These are in the work [0] for a few years already. [1]
[0] https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/toilet-camera-uses-a...
[1] https://today.duke.edu/2021/05/smart-toilet-uses-artificial-... (from before the LLM hype cycle, even!)
I just bought a washing machine that has an AI wash mode.
I think those exist already...!
I would be surprised if Toylet-companies weren't already working on something like that.
One more reason to stick to Notepad++.
Throwing AI at everything is starting to make cryptocurrency seem positively environmentally friendly. At least it serves some kind of purpose.
It a result of a rather sad trend, which I think started with Google. Rather than going out and doing market research you just throw things against the wall, measure and see if people are using it at any significant rate.
The difference between Google and Microsoft is that Google have no problems just killing of things that doesn't perform to their standard (which is bad in it's own way). With Microsoft backwards compatibility is everything, so once something is in Windows, it says around for a very, very, long time.
AI assistance in writing isn't a bad idea, but maybe not in Notepad. I know that this isn't they way modern Microsoft wants to do things, but exposing an API that would allow 3rd. party vendors to AI support in Windows seems like a more sensible approach. Except they'd probably have to make it accessible from Javascript to make anyone use it.
i dont think we need that
ms copied other AI companies
They all need your data to train on!