Defending the Constitutional right to be a dick.

I imagine the sequence would be different depending on the amount and range of body hair.

Personally, depends on delta-T to next task.

Last time, it didn’t go so well for the robot:

https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/7/17/15986042/dc-security-robot-k5-falls-into-water

The problem with Chinese EVs is that they show it’s possible to innovate, keep prices down, and mass produce.

Ford, GM, even Tesla, are spending all their time whining about how it’s just not possible to compete. They point the finger at worker wages, instead of improving engineering and design, materials, manufacturing processes, and not chasing stock-market gains.

Stop making $70K SUVs and start making $20K Taurus and Escort EVs. You did it once. You can do it again.

“KnowledgePanel has been at the forefront of conducting online research for more than two decades.”

Online poll = gift-wrapped bullshit.

Soon:

Cats are majority brown, gray, orange, black, and (gasp) mixed. They’re lying immigrants, decimating the white mice of this land.

Asked my buddy who is an L7/Principal at AWS with years of experience if this would affect him. He laughed. Said he had already decided to quit in January. This just clinched it. Said they kept hiring entry-level L4s. Lots more senior people going to leave.

Anyone who has played the ‘Risk’ board game has an idea what the next moves should be.

Good read. Sad ending that all that work ended up nowhere.

NEW feature: As you drive down the road, Ford cars will automatically take over and drive you to the nearest sponsor location. Hungry? It will take over and swerve into the nearest KFC drive-thru. Next stop, CVS pharmacy, then Office Depot.

Disclaimer: Disabling AutoAd feature requires monthly subscription.

When this whole ‘training’ trend started a few years ago, there were companies offering image and video labelling services.

It turned out they were mostly sweatshops in low-income countries, where people sat in front of monitors and just dragged boumding boxes around sections of images and picked from an icon menu. Here’s a car, here’s a person, here’s an apple. That sort of thing. You didn’t even need to know how to read or write.

Of course, the quality was questionable, so they needed a second layer of supervisors verifying the choices. But even with that, the cost was way lower than having an engineer or QA person do it. IIRC, there was a bit of hue and cry when stories came out of big tech companies supporting sweatshop conditions.

Sounds like it’s still ongoing.

NEW, automated children’s bicycle. Guaranteed to teach the little tyke how to ride! *

• ^Comes with training wheels, and adult monitor standing by at all times.^

Hate to be pedantic, but what kind of phone is that in the photo? It has the white, wired headphones, and an actual phone jack.

It says it’s a campaign event on Monday.

I actually like it when these code helpers guess from one line what the rest should be and suggest it. It’s even more fun when it keeps guessing and the suggestions get progressively more whacky. Then they just start making completely unrelated shit up.

Once you say no, it goes back to the beginning and meekly repeats the very first suggestion, like a scolded puppy.

Was listening to an interview with NY Governor on imposing cell phone ban in schools. Said if they left it to individual schools or school districts, there would be lots of pressure from parents or individual groups not to do it and the whole thing would fail. And if they made it voluntary, some kids would comply, but there would be social pressure to keep things as-is, due to FOMO.

Instead, the government would pass a uniform, mandatory law and take the heat.

Seems like that’s what will be needed to change everyone to a 4x8 week. Similar dynamic. Do, not ask.

Came across Openvibe. Mobile client that works across Mastodon, Bluesky, Nostr, and soon, Threads. Not perfect, but a good start.

May be one way to handle service migration fragmentation.

I’ve always kept a strict separation between work and personal projects, including a personal laptop, accounts, and yes, paying for AI services. For a while, a few years ago, while commuting on the company shuttle, I even had my own MiFi cell access point and a laptop battery booster so I could work on my own projects on the bus and not be accused of using company resources.

Most employment contracts spell out that anything you create using company resources is the property of the company. Legally, they own everything that passes though their computers, software, and networks.

Also, many corporations run system monitoring services on their laptops and MDM mobile data management on mobile phones (for example JAMF on Apple devices). These monitor things like file access, copying, communications, and web access. This data is sent to central servers for processing and looking for anomalies based on pre-set rules. This might sound tin-foily, but it’s mandated by legal in a lot of companies, including small and medium sized ones.

If you want to use non-company data to do AI work, or develop a service or idea on your own, or even keep your text messages and email private, you’ll want to use your own equipment, accounts, and services.

Edit: also, if you get laid-off or fired, you’ll want to have a decent personal rig so you can continue working on your own projects while looking for work. Even if working on a novel on the side, suggest keeping everything off company systems.

Google and Facebook already went down this route. Lots of amenities on-site (at least, in their headquarters). But they were more used as carrots to induce people to join the company and stay. The stick approach of ‘you can’t leave’ is an interesting variation.

Let’s see how long before the ‘apology/I was misquoted/retiring to spend more time with family’ tour kicks off…

Edit: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/29/arizona-wells-fargo-worker-death