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   Cassandra 📍 San Francisco (for real!) (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 00:02:16 JST Cassandra 📍 San Francisco (for real!)

   I have less ad blocking up at the moment (see my travel router saga), which means being exposed to the absurdity of the home-search AI ad campaign. It is so on point that everything they are advertising as being new and amazing was already trivial to do with filters on Redfin, Zillow, et al. The lack of imagination is simply stunning.

   • Embed this notice
     Cassandra 📍 San Francisco (for real!) (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 00:02:16 JST Cassandra 📍 San Francisco (for real!)

     in reply to

     Like, these are the boosters paying good money to put their best case forward and to inject their message right into my eyeballs. And what do they come up with?

     Filters on queries.

     That's it.

     Filters.

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     cthos 🐱 (cthos@mastodon.cthos.dev)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 00:02:34 JST cthos 🐱

     in reply to

     @xgranade What if .... , but natural language!!?? Seems to be a startlingly common pitch.

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     Matthew Lyon (mattly@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jul-2026 00:02:34 JST Matthew Lyon

     in reply to

     • cthos 🐱

     @cthos as someone who used to do a LOT of query interfaces and results screens, often for things where the consequences of misunderstanding the results were severe,

     most people would rather have a natural language interface that gives them the wrong results (and misrepresents them so you’re not aware they’re wrong) than something which took fifteen minutes to learn but gave you a near-perfect understanding of what you were asking for

     it doesn’t matter that an error in the query or a mistake in undertstanding the data could bankrupt the business, or result in patient harm, or whatever, people would rather use natural language than be perfectly understood