What grinds my gears!

[Snarky]

That English has two verbs, "to rifle" and "to riffle," with, in some situations, very similar yet definitely distinct meanings:

rifle,
v. tr.
1. To search (an area or container, for example) thoroughly, especially using the hands with the intent to steal or remove something: rifled the desk, looking for the keys.
v. intr.
To search vigorously: rifling through my drawers to find matching socks.

Synonyms: search, comb, hunt, rummage, scour, rake

riffle
v. tr.
1. to flip hastily with the fingers; flutter: to riffle papers.
v. intr.
1. (often followed by through) to flick rapidly through (the pages of a book, magazine, etc), especially in a desultory manner: riffle through the catalog.

So if you are looking for something in a book you can rifle through it or you can riffle through it, and the difference is how energetic you are about it.

[milkanannan]

I annoyed that my body will only allow me to have one cup of coffee per day. Any more than that and I'm an anxious wreck. Decaf just doesn't have the same edge, so that's not an option, and I've never been a tea person.

[Danvzare]

I annoyed that my body will only allow me to have one cup of coffee per day. Any more than that and I'm an anxious wreck. Decaf just doesn't have the same edge, so that's not an option, and I've never been a tea person.

Have you tried cocoa instead? 

[KyriakosCH]

I don't drink coffee at all. Just never liked it 

[Stupot]

This is not a blue tick.
Why is everyone calling it a blue tick?
It is clearly a white tick on a blue background.*

Maybe I'm missing something obvious but I can't think of any other instance where we describe an item by the colour of the background it sits on, rather than the colour it actually is.


[* Yes, pedant, I'm aware that the above tick technically is blue because I chose a PNG where the WHITE is transparent and posted it on a forum with blue pages. Thanks in advance for pointing that out.]

[Creamy]

Prices for Olympic Games tickets Paris 2024 (I don't have any information about the precedent editions).

They claim that "more than one million tickets will be offered at EUR 24. Nearly 50% of tickets reserved for the general public will have a price less than or equal to EUR 50."
Yet, for some sports like athletics, volleyball or swimming you can't find anything under 170 € - a whole year before the event.

[Snarky]

I can't think of any other instance where we describe an item by the colour of the background it sits on, rather than the colour it actually is.

Apropos of nothing, here's the AGS splash screen with the big blue cup logo:

[Danvzare]

I can't think of any other instance where we describe an item by the colour of the background it sits on, rather than the colour it actually is.

Apropos of nothing, here's the AGS splash screen with the big blue cup logo:

All in favour of renaming the logo to the "Big White Cup" say aye. 

[Danvzare]

It grinds my gears how people act like there's only two types of games.
Either super high budgeted AAA games or zero budget Indie games. With absolutely nothing in between.

It's like watching people passionately argue between McDonalds and home cooked food, as though those are literally the only two options to get food in the entire world. 

[KyriakosCH]

Even budget-wise, a myriad of Kickstarter funded ones would be in between.
If they aren't just exit scams, of course 

Unrelated:

Apart from the rest of the craziness, I find it kind of awesome that the Bog tried to prove mathematically they were right in their claim that phi is a transcendental number
Ok, they soon gave up and said it was an editor's typo (LOL), but still.

[Snarky]

I often connect from a VPN, which makes Google give me ReCaptcha challenges before I can ask urgent questions like "How do the lyrics to that song go?"

My frustration is that it is always asking me to select which parts of an image that contain a bicycle, a motorbike, or a staircase. And this turns out to be very difficult!

-What is meant by a "staircase"? Just the steps? The banister? The whole structure? Does a staircase seen from an angle where the steps aren't visible count as a staircase?
-Does a bike or motorbike include the rider?
-Does it include side mirrors?
-Does is include sidecars, trailers, or cargo?
-If a bike is mostly but not entirely obscured by some other object in a particular square (a fence, for example), does it count?

Apparently, my answers to these questions are more robotic than human, because I usually fail the test many times over before I am able to convince Google to let me through.

[Cassiebsg]

I always have the same doubts, except I rarely fail these... I think.
I just go with "if I can identify it as X, then click on it!" even if it's like just a few pixels on that square.

[AndreasBlack]

My frustration is that it is always asking me to select which parts of an image that contain a bicycle, a motorbike, or a staircase. And this turns out to be very difficult!

  100% Maybe you could create an automated AI script that knows his bicycles, motorbikes, red lights, stairs, etc! Have it epoch a lot on those things so it's infallible 

Alltho that would defeat the purpose of showing that you are a "real human"   To be serious i also fail them a lot. When i tried to join this forum was fun, i had to do Captcha's to be able to post, i was frustrated to say the least! NOT only that the scripting was impossible for me back then but that i had to deal with those aswell?!

[LimpingFish]

My frustration is that it is always asking me to select which parts of an image that contain a bicycle, a motorbike, or a staircase. And this turns out to be very difficult!

The worst one, imho, is the "pedestrian crossing" test. Eight squares or so are clearly depicting a pedestrian crossing, but do I select that extra square that happens to have a pixel or two of white paint in it? Ditto the "traffic light" test.

Also...this.

[Stupot]

I'm not so sure these days as I haven't tested it for a while but you used to be able to get away with clicking a wrong square or two on those things.

[Danvzare]

I'm not so sure these days as I haven't tested it for a while but you used to be able to get away with clicking a wrong square or two on those things.

If I'm not mistaken, aren't the answers based on the answers of everyone else?
I'm fairly sure these captchas are used to train algorithms, so presumably what it usually does is average out people's answers to increase it's own understanding.

I definitely remember hearing that whenever it forces you to do it twice, it's because it knows the answer to one, but is collecting your answer for the other.

[KyriakosCH]

I'm not so sure these days as I haven't tested it for a while but you used to be able to get away with clicking a wrong square or two on those things.

If I'm not mistaken, aren't the answers based on the answers of everyone else?
I'm fairly sure these captchas are used to train algorithms, so presumably what it usually does is average out people's answers to increase it's own understanding.

I definitely remember hearing that whenever it forces you to do it twice, it's because it knows the answer to one, but is collecting your answer for the other.

I will find an anodyne situation to put that to the test (answer false for the other), but can we be sure it presents the one it knows the answer to first? ^^

[Snarky]

I'm not so sure these days as I haven't tested it for a while but you used to be able to get away with clicking a wrong square or two on those things.

If I'm not mistaken, aren't the answers based on the answers of everyone else?
I'm fairly sure these captchas are used to train algorithms, so presumably what it usually does is average out people's answers to increase it's own understanding.

I definitely remember hearing that whenever it forces you to do it twice, it's because it knows the answer to one, but is collecting your answer for the other.

I think ReCaptcha has changed a lot on the backend over the years, so that much of what used to be true about it no longer is. For example, I believe that these days it uses some kind of Bayesian inference to decide how much proof is good enough to accept you as human, based on things like your IP address (and other traffic from that IP) and your mouse movements just as much as your actual answers to the challenge. If it basically trusts you, you might only have to click the checkbox, or it will be more accepting of a non-perfect answer, but if it distrusts you you might need to do a dozen challenges "perfectly" before it is satisfied. (And even that may be more a matter of "we have imposed a sufficiently high cost on this bot to discourage frivolous abuse" than really believing the user to be human.)

Its "correct" answers are probably a mix of human consensus and machine intelligence at this point. As pointed out in LF's link, computer vision can do these just as easily as—or better than—humans can these days, unless adversarial signals are overlaid onto the image (e.g. the noise ReCaptcha occasionally adds to the pictures).

[Cassiebsg]

There's noise to the pics? :O

[Khris]

I hate setting up multiple monitors on Windows.
Currently I can choose between
a) a correct projection menu but I don't see anything on my monitor after turning on the PC until the lock screen
b) everything is as its supposed to be, except the goddamn projection menu, which labels my monitor as external / secondary screen despite it being identified as display #1 as of nvidia's hardware numbering and Windows itself(!)

Look at this shit (click for full size):