I’m using the default messages app on my Google phone. The biggest source of my annoyance is every iPhone user adding reactions and such, which act like a new message for me. So any group chat may as well be a fireworks display of sounds and vibrations when it is active. I’ve only set one rule to cool down on messages for 5 minutes and it’s already made an impact.

The app lets me make specific rules for each app, but I don’t see a way to do a rule per group chat, which would be ideal, but this is already an improvement

I just downloaded it!

Nope. I have an android. I just downloaded an app called buzzkill from a recommendation. We’ll see how well it works out for me

I think your last paragraph sums up the reason for my frustration. Most of my family and friends are only chatting via the standard text app for their respective phones, and so I specifically would want to configure those notifications

I imagine it would be “$GroupChatName has new messages…” And can be dismissed the same as any other push notification. Whether or an additional notification comes after that could be configurable

I was never told exactly what it was for. My suspicion was that it seemed more like acquiring training data for an audio processing machine learning library. This was about 10 years ago, so after the likes of siri, but way before something like chat gpt

I used to do mechanical turk jobs for some quick and easy pocket money. There were several types of tasks you could do, and there was a sort of ranking system to dissuade anyone from just inputting junk instead of answering seriously. I usually stuck to surveys and things I would describe as fancy captchas. I recall a few jobs where the task was to record yourself in different environments reading the same script of text. I can’t see that type of job for being anything other than training data for AI/ML

Not the OP, but I have been getting a bug where I select a show/movie to watch in the roku app, and instead of playing it will exit out to the list of shows/movies menu. These same shows work just fine in the app on a google android TV, or on a computer

Robots.txt is a file that is is accessible as part of an http request. It’s a backend configuration file that sets rules for what automatically running web crawlers are allowed. It can set both who is and who isn’t allowed. Google is usually the most widely allowed domain for bots just because their crawler is how they find websites for search results. But it’s basically the honor system. You could write a scraper today that goes to websites that it is being told it doesn’t have permission to view this page, ignore it, and still get the information

I do! In fact, I personally try to watch as many sci-fi movies in January as I can. I try not to discriminate, and give everything a chance that’s vaguely sci-fi. I’ll add Solaris to my list for sure

Okay, your comment is at the top, so here is my take on the list:

There is a lot of overlap on this list and other “best (whatever) scifi” that pop up every so often. Yes Blade Runner was iconic and influential, but I already knew that.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | Good start. great visuals. lacks some context in the ending that are half explained in interviews and such. Personally, I like the book’s take on it more.
• Interstellar (2014) | A Nolan film. Also great visuals. This is one of the first movies I saw that somewhat accurately portrays what black holes are supposed to look like. It has a bunch of scenes where space or relativity or physics, etc, things are explained to experts that should already know what is being said. It works to get that info the viewer, but I found it a bit jarring
• Gattaca (1997) | Anything produced by Danny DeVito (yes that one) gets my money. This is a big “What If” movie where the question is “In a world where most everyone can select the genetic makeup for their children, how does someone born naturally fit in and live?”.
• Solaris (1972) | Never seen it, but I’ve heard good things. I tried to watch the remake with George Clooney, but I couldnt get in to it.
• Ex Machina (2015) | Great movie on the idea of an actual concept call the “Turing test”. I will point out there are some trigger warnings
• Coherence (2013) | never seen it. I added it to my list
• Sunshine (2007) | I couldnt get in to this one. It may be because I just wasnt in the mood for some hard space scifi (They are trying to re-start the sun, how cool does that sounds?), or it could be because of the content. I’ve heard of a lot of people liking it, so check it out if it sounds interesting to you.
• Primer (2004) | This is a great take on how suddenly having the ability to time travel might affect someone. There are some nested time line stuff that could be hard to follow, but overall great
• Stalker (1979) | Haven’t seen. it sounds intriguing though
• Gravity (2013) | This is science fiction in the sense that this story is fictional and takes place in space. Without being a nasa expert, everything seems to be within today’s level of technology. You could think of it as a disaster movie, but set in space. Overall fun, but in a different way than some of the other movies on this list
• THX 1138 (1971) | I hated this movie. I find it derivative of Ayn Rand’s Anthem, or Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451. Those books, plus THX 1138 feature a protagonist who is a cog in their own dystopia who breaks free and goes on a massive escape, eventually finding that the world is not as destroyed as they were told to believe. I felt like it suffered from all the same criticisms that George Lucas was given during the original star wars trilogy, but without anyone to refine his idea into something more unique or appealing.
• Ad Astra (2019) | Great visuals, boring story about a man who cant move on from his deadbeat dad
• Contact (1997) | Carl Sagan’s story about humanity being contacted by an alien race and given further instructions. It does an interesting exploration of science vs faith when confronted by aliens
• The Martian (2015) | Silly space action where a botanist figures out how survive on Mars and contact Nasa who have no idea that he is alive
• Blade Runner (1982) | Humans have created manufactured clone robot people. they dont like being slaves by default and revolt. Now they are hunted to extinction. Harrison Ford is the type of officer assigned with tracking down some on Earth. Amazing visuals, weird narrative. There are like, 5 different cuts of this movie and I dont find any of them particularly good. I like the sequel more.