March 12 2022, 11:30

Current joke

(My translation to English is at the end)

Radio broadcast:

1966

Announcer (joyfully): Hello comrades, we are starting the concert upon

listeners’ requests. We have a letter from a boy Vanya from the village

Zabubenskoe, Vanya asks us to play his favorite song

“Valenki”. Please, Vanya, listen to your favorite song “Valenki”!

1976

Announcer (joyfully): Hello comrades, we are starting the concert upon

listeners’ requests. We have a letter from a student

of the agricultural vocational technical school of the town Zadnezabroshensk

Vanya Petrov, Vanya asks us to play his favorite song “Valenki”.

Please, Vanya, listen to your favorite song “Valenki”!

1986

Announcer (joyfully): Hello comrades, we are starting the concert upon

listeners’ requests. We have a letter from the director of the kolkhoz named after Patrice

Lumumba from the village of Zabubenskoe, Ivan Petrov, Ivan asks us to broadcast his

favorite song “Valenki”. Please, Ivan, listen to your

favorite song “Valenki”!

1996

Announcer (joyfully): Hello comrades, we are starting the concert upon

listeners’ requests. We have a letter from a deputy of the State Duma,

academician of the Agricultural Academy Ivan Sidorovich Petrov.

Ivan Sidorovich asks us to play the composition by Johann

Sebastian Bach “Toccata and Fugue in D minor”. (Even more joyfully)

Dear Ivan Sidorovich, please, DO NOT SHOW OFF and

listen to your favorite song “Valenki”!

1966

Soviet radio; We’re starting up a request show with our dear listeners. We got a letter from a boy from the distant village, Vanya Petrov, asking us to play “Valenki”, a Russian folk song. Enjoy it, dear Vanya!

1976

Soviet radio; We’re starting up a request show with our dear listeners. We got a letter from agriculture academy student Ivan Petrov, asking us to play “Valenki”, a Russian folk song. Enjoy this wonderful song, Ivan!

1986

Soviet radio: We’re starting up a request show with our dear listeners. We’ve just got a letter from the collective farm director comrade Ivan Victorovich Petrov, asking us to play “Valenki”, a Russian folk song. We are happy to put it on, comrade Ivan Victorovich!

1996

Radio: We’re starting up a request show with our dear listeners. We got a letter from the State Duma deputy and honored academician Ivan Sidorovich Petrov, asking us to play J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

Don’t show off, Ivan Sidorovich, and listen to your favorite song “Valenki”!

March 09 2022, 16:15

Siri is so dumb!

Actually, it was my mistake. I needed it for 4:20pm. 😉 Instead of saying “set up an alarm for four twenty pm,” I said “setup an alarm, four twenty pm,” which the system interpreted as “setup an alarm for twenty pm.” Technically, if 20pm even exists, it’s actually eight in the morning (well, twenty hours past noon). Siri decided the pm at the end didn’t matter and left it at 8pm. This goes to show that voice assistants still operate on commands and don’t learn to guess the user’s intent by comparing the likelihood of what the user probably wants.

March 05 2022, 19:56

If you are assisting your parents in Russia with money from abroad, transfers through MoneyGram to a card might still work for another day or two, but then they are likely to stop for an undetermined length of time. Meaning, don’t delay, better do it today.

My request has been accepted, whether it will be fulfilled – I’ll find out in about 12 hours.

Yes, and there’s a daily limit of around 700 something dollars.