I do agree with you but have to note that this might be the most sensible use of Copilot I’ve seen so far.

Not really; mine was eventually too expensive and I only got that model because a) I could get it for cheaper through a leasing arrangement and b) I don’t need to pay for a car.

I must admit, though, that having a belt drive is extremely nice and worth the money. 10/10, top tier bike component.

I read that there are two “waves” of rapid biomolecular aging in the mid-40s and early 60s. Still affects everyone differently and of course a worn-out body will feel that much worse.

In general, though, our bodies start wearing out in our mid-teens, about a decade before we’re even fully grown! High-frequency hearing is one of the first things to suffer. Bodily decline is really a constant companion in our lives; it only becomes noticeable when it starts accelerating.

And don’t feel bad for getting an e-bike. Riding that is still a good workout if you get into the habit of going fast. E-bikes usually have a hard speed cutoff (25 km/h by law where I live); if you want to go faster it’s all you and the motor is just there to give you better acceleration and take the pain out of things like hills or opposing wind.

If you don’t want to go fast, the bike still expects you to put in a certain amount of work. Low-intensity training is still training. Most crucially, getting that bit of assistance might get you to use the bike when you otherwise wouldn’t, turning no exercise into some exercise.

People underestimate the benefits of light exercise. Even brisk walks or relatively leisurely motor-assisted bike rides can absolutely be beneficial if done regularly.

There’s also the fact that medical devices undergo a ridiculous amount of testing. A friend of mine works for a company that makes medical devices and even getting some non-essential UI changes to production took about two years from when he was finished implementing them. Critical stuff can take longer to get certified.

This is all so that nobody builds the next Therac-25, a radiotherapy device that, due to design flaws, could inadvertantly be turned into a literal death ray.

The upside: We can assume that any duly certified medical device is as safe as is humanly possible. The downside: Those medical devices may as well be made of solid gold as far as the price is concerned.

I hope you can get this sorted without having to spend a ludicrous amount of money. Perhaps the things can be fixed. Probably not, the day things are designed these days, but I’ll still hope.

Our brain generally relies on the first system way more than the second, to the point where what we think of as logical decisions are often actually intuitive ones that we then rationalize after the fact using system 2.

This is basically a power saving trick: Rational thinking uses way more energy than intuition.

I’m actually cool with this. It tells me all I need to know, although a shorter title like “generic pseudo-fantasy schlock with video game mechanics #3456” would’ve worked as well.

Remarkably, that somehow makes it slightly less ugly, if inly for breaking up the optical lines and making it look less like a drivable polygon. Then again, anything from a 90s geometric pattern to WWI dazzle camouflage would’ve had the same effect while being more dignified.

Okay, perhaps not dignified. It’s a Cybertruck.

And everyone is trying to muddle through, including your heroes. I think it’s good to keep this in mind; both to avoid feeling inferior for not having your shit figured out (because nobody has) and to be tolerant of people making mistakes – nobody’s perfect and everyone has issues besides getting your order exactly right.

Be chill with yourself and with other people.

You’re thinking of Boom Boom Boom Boom. Boom Boom Boom was by the Outhere Brothers.

Oh, and AFAIK is basically that you remember a part of the song but not the end so your brain, pattern matching machine that it is, goes nuts trying to complete the half-noticed pattern. At least that’s one explanation for it that also explains why listening to the song fully can end an earworm.

I have screens on my 3rd floor windows. Mine are attached to the window frame with long thin velcro strips but I think there’s other systems as well.

It’s true that LLMs (and GANs) are taking over a term that contains a lot of other stuff, from fuzzy logic to a fair chunk of computer linguistics.

If you look at what AI does, however, it’s mostly classification. Whether it’s fitting imprecise measurements into categories or analyzing waveform to figure out which word it represents regardless of diction and dialect; a lot of AI is just the attempt at classifying hard to classify stuff.

And then someone figure out how to hook that up to a Markov chain generator (LLMs) or run it repeatedly to “recognize” an image in pure noise (GANs). And those are cool little tricks but not really ones that solve a problem that needed solving. Okay, I’ll grant that GANs make a few things in image retouching more convenient but they’re also subject to a distressingly large number of failure modes and consume a monstrous amount of resources.

Plus the whole thing where they’re destroying the concept of photographic and videographic evidence. I dislike that as well.

I really like AI when used for what it’s good at: Taking messy input data and classifying it. We’re getting some really cool things done that way and some even justify the resources we’re spending. But I do agree with you that the vast majority of funding and resources gets spent on the next glorified chatbot in the vague hope that this one will actually generate some kind of profit. (I don’t think that any of the companies who are invested in AI still actually believe their products will generate a real benefit for the end user.)

Blockchain is an adequate solution to a problem that already has other, cheaper solutions.

AI is an adequate solution to a problem that has no other similarly adequate solutions (classification of complex information). Unfortunately, all the money is in that solution being applied to problems where it’s not adequate (content generation, user interaction).

Downside: Many companies use open-plan offices, which means it’s too busy to concentrate. So everyone wears noise-cancelling headphones in order to be able to work at all.

The only time I actually felt that being present was a benefit was in a company that had one from for every two people.

More specifically, “absolute” refers to being above the law or other oversight. An absolute ruler is not bound by the laws that govern everyone else; being able to rule by decree is a consequence of that as there can be no laws that prevent this.

The live-action version of The Enigma of Amigara Fault is surprisingly adorable.

You pay five million bucks to the government, presumably to be pocketed by the president. Under the legal concept of l’etat, c’est moi you have therefore substantially benefitted the United States.

A good foam pillow under my head, a bit of my blanket between my knees. Sometimes I think about getting one of those knee pillows but so far I haven’t bothered.

I won’t go back to a down-filled pillow. Those will inevitably stop supporting my head during the night.

I wouldn’t say pure rage… They were certainly high energy but not super focused on being angry. This may in part be due to Fred Durst adding major frat boy vibes.

I have no idea what they’re like these days.

What happens instead is that the established parties decide they can win the voters back if they adopt far-right policies. We get extra-shitty governance and they still lose voters. It’s a lose-lose situation but they’re committed.