When I got to the Y today I saw a barbarbellbell on the mat in front of the big mirror. “Someone in love with his body,” I thought to myself. When I came out of the restroom this normal size young man is lifting this fucker. The mirror is for checking his form, not his bod. [Click the image above or this link for 15 second video]
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Siri makes renaming files a breeze
When I copied files from Google Drive to the Files app on my MacBook (and in iCloud), I spent hours (days?) renaming files. A file named 0002346.pdf tells you nothing… you have to open the file. The new OS (both MacBook and iPhone) makes this a snap. (Clip is only 24 seconds and has no audio)
Siri AI: Calendar search
It’s been a few years since I decided to move key elements of my online life from Google to Apple. I still have files in Google Drive and Google Docs but most of those are also in my Files app on my devices and in iCloud. As I recall, I wanted to have anything of importance in the Apple ecosystem.
With the arrival of the news and improved Siri AI, that has started to pay off. It’s early days but I’m impressed by what I’ve seen so far. Exhibit A: my Calendar app.
I spent hours entering every event (of any importance) in my Day-Timer’s to the Calendar app on my MacBook (The Great Calendar Project). Even attaching relevant PDFs when I had them. Don’t ask me why. Probably the same reason I’ve maintained this blog for 25 years. Siri AI now gives me a handy (fun?) new way to tap into this archive.
Pretty sure this is not what the Apple programmers had in mind as they worked on Siri AI. Most folks just want to know what’s coming up.
In the coming days and weeks I look forward to exploring what Siri AI can do with all of the data I have (obsessively) collected in various apps.
Siri AI: “It’s a phone-changer”
I’ve been playing with the new Siri AI and find myself more impressed with every little experiment. I think Apple finally got this right. In a recent Substack article (“125 Tests of the New AI Siri”), David Pogue calls it “a phone-changer.” (That will make more sense after you play with it a little)
It replaces most Google searches, most ChatGPT or Claude interactions, and cumulative hours of fumbling and searching and dragging and copying and finding and tapping and pasting. […] You can ChatGPT your own life […] The hardest part will be getting out of the habit of opening apps, and remembering that you have Siri.
It’s tempting to tell those around you, “Wow! Did you know Siri can…” but I’m going to resist that temptation. Here’s the thing… Android users (who all secretly suffer from Apple envy) will insist their phones have done xyz since the early 70s. The anti-AI crowd simply doesn’t want to hear about… anything AI related. So I’ll try to limit myself to sharing WHOA! moments here. Continue reading
DirecTV AI support better than human
Yesterday my wife lost the picture on the TV in her bedroom and called DirecTV Customer Support on the phone. The call went on for quite a while (as such calls do) with the support person having my wife check various settings, changing HDMI port, look up serial number, etc.
As I listened I was impressed with how good this support lady was. Patient, polite (“thanks for confirming”), knowledgable. Maybe the best support call I’ve heard which I mentioned to my wife.
“It’s an AI,” my wife replied.
I was speechless (rare occurrence). I’ve been playing with AI for three years and have heard countless examples of AI “voices” and I’ve always been able to recognize them as such. I was completely fooled by the DirecTV AI.
“Are you sure?” I asked my wife. “Yes. ’She’ said so at least three times during the call.”
Still skeptical, I went to Claude for confirmation:
Voice AI for customer support has gotten good enough that many people can’t tell — that’s actually one of the selling points companies look for. A few things make it convincing:
- Natural-sounding TTS— modern text-to-speech (services like ElevenLabs, or the voice layers built into platforms like Google’s Contact Center AI, Amazon Connect, etc.) captures pacing, intonation, and small imperfections that used to be a dead giveaway of “robot voice.”
- Patience is actually easier for AI — it doesn’t get tired, frustrated, or rushed, so infinite calm is a natural byproduct, not a performance.
- Scripted-but-flexible responses — large phone-support call trees have always been semi-scripted; an LLM just handles the branching more fluidly and can respond to unexpected phrasing.
- DIRECTV specifically — AT&T (DIRECTV’s former parent) and DIRECTV have both publicly discussed using AI/virtual agents in their support lines, so it’s plausible your wife’s call routed through one, especially for a first-tier troubleshooting step before escalating to a human.
Tells that usually surface eventually: it struggles with a genuinely novel or emotional situation, it can’t access account-specific systems a human rep would casually reference, or the call abruptly transfers once the issue gets complex. If your wife is unsure, she could ask directly — some companies require disclosure now, some don’t.
Am I concerned that I can no longer tell when I’m speaking with a human or an AI? Not really. In my experience, humans are really shitty at this job. Bored/apathetic if not just plain rude. Slow. Everyone knows the drill.