Jonathan Kamens 86 47
It annoys me to no end that #MicrosoftOutlook for #macOS doesn't delete draft messages (or ask you whether you want to delete them) when you close an editing window.
Today I decided to see what I could do about this, and discovered that there is a "Discard" command on the "Draft" menu.
I'd really love for there to be a key binding, and indeed, there is one, but… I couldn't figure out what key it's telling me to press.
(Spoiler alert: it's the ESC key, but there's a story.)
(1/n)
Mar 16 at 10:05pmWeb
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 471d ago
I decided to ask heypi.com (the only LLM I am wiling to use, and I use it as rarely as possible) about this symbol to see what it would say. I asked:
"I am looking at a menu on my Mac which shows a keybinding to a key I don't recognize. The symbol for this key appears to be a circle with an arrow pointing northwest outward from the center of the circle. Do you have any idea what key that is supposed to represent?"
(2/n)
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 471d ago
It responded by claiming that I had described the command key (⌘). Go back and look at my description and I'm sure you'll agree that the symbol I described is nothing like the command symbol. A very bad answer from Pi!
So I told it that: "No, what I described absolutely isn't the command key symbol."
(3/n)
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 471d ago
It responded by claiming I was referring to the symbol for the Enter key. Yikes!
I replied: "No, it's not the Enter symbol, and now you're giving me dangerous info. The menu command I'm looking at is the one for discarding a draft message without sending at. Its key binding is the command key plus the symbol I described. If I listened to you and believed it was the Enter or Return symbol then by hitting that key combination I would actually SEND the message rather than discarding it."
(4/n)
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 471d ago
It replied with four more answers, the first three of which were wrong (one of which, the eject symbol, comically so), and then finally said, "Hold on—there's a chance you're seeing the 'Escape' (⎋) symbol."
I'm both impressed that it eventually got it right and impressed by how badly it repeatedly got it wrong first.
These LLMs have no intelligence, folks, they're just fancy autocomplete.
(5/5)
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 471d ago
P.S. With so many keys on Mac keyboards having symbols printed on them, why the heck doesn't the ESC key have the ⎋ symbol printed on it in addition to the label "ESC"?
Show threadDa_Gut1d ago
@jik I had absolutely no idea that was the escape key.
So hopefully, I can remember this long enough for it to be useful to me
Show threadskua1d ago

@jik

"Happy shift time, hapless human.

Check the box next to the name of your chosen auto-complete persona for today and your value will start being extracted."

John Solly (former DOGE)
0%
TechBro Melange 💩
0%
SARS-CoV-2
0%
Masked ICE agent (in murder-mode)
0%
Poll ended at .
Show thread🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦1d ago
@jik I wonder how well an image search would have worked.
Show threadKiki Buber1d ago
@jik Side complaint, I’ve always hated that shortcut. I’ve sent many a half-finished email by doing things like trying to hit enter, then command-something else …
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 471d ago
@kmck isn't there a confirmation pop-up when you hit Command Enter, unless you've disabled the pop-up?
Show threadKiki Buber1d ago
@jik I don’t remember seeing one… thankfully I’m not on outlook anymore