Tag Archives: Perplexity

I’m an AI source

Screenshot of a Perplexity AI search results page displaying the query "How do I set up the Godox TT685 as a remote flash with the X1T-S." The page shows a step-by-step guide for setting up the Godox TT685 (Sony version) as a remote flash using the Godox X1T-S transmitter. The instructions include powering on the TT685, entering wireless (radio) slave mode by pressing the wireless selection button until the radio slave icon appears, and preparing the flash to receive signals from the X1T-S. The top of the page features related video and website links.

A few weeks ago, I was attending a birthday party and wanted to take some photos. I have a Godox flash, and a remote, but I couldn’t get them to talk to each other and remembered it was a bit finicky.

Being in a hurry, I asked Perplexity how to set up the Godox TT685 as a remote flash with the X1T-S and I spotted this blog among the sources. This post about the Godox TT685 was there, and the AI summarised it pretty well, and I got the settings fixed.

One thing I hadn’t forgotten was keeping the TEST button on the X1T-S down while turning it on so it would work in “close range” mode. That was painful enough figuring that out.

Is the web dead yet? We’ve had walled gardens for decades, and they’re growing taller, and now AI agents are slurping down all our content. Apparently, adding the word “fucking” to a Google search query stops them showing a summary. What if I add “fucking” to every post when I detect an AI bot visiting? “I’m a fucking AI source” now am I?

Yes, yes, I used an AI to ask a question and found my blog there. I’m still complaining about it. Humans are weird.

Don’t blindly follow AI instructions

I’m trying to share a Time Machine volume with another Macbook on my home network but it’s not working. I’ve tried Google, and read through a few Reddit threads, but I haven’t been able to get it to connect. So, I asked Perplexity for help.

It helpfully listed a number of things I could try, but then I saw tip number seven.

Clean up stale mount points: Sometimes, stale mount points can cause issues. You can try to remove them by running the following command in Terminal: sudo rm -rf /Volumes/* Then restart your Mac and attempt to mount the shares again.

When you look up advice online, don’t copy and paste any instructions into your computer without knowing what it does.

What does sudo rm -rf /Volumes/* do? It recursively deletes everything in your /Volumes folder. A little bit destructive.

I told it that was a dangerous command, and it went on to talk about using the mount command to list every mounted volume and then unmounting them with umount.

Me: Tip 7 is not helpful. That would delete all the data in /Volumes/

Perplexity: You’re absolutely right, and I sincerely apologize for that dangerous suggestion. Thank you for pointing out this critical error. You are correct that deleting the contents of /Volumes/ would be extremely harmful and could result in data loss. Let me provide a corrected and safer approach.

PS. Otherwise, Perplexity is great. I’ve had great success with it and other AI tools when developing software.

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