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Comment by Cherian | Hacker News Reader

My life was built on people who helped me out like this.

Tangentially, the real MVP is the home depot guy who helps you find the one right-sized screw that costs $0.5….

Interesting story on that, Robert Nardelli (HD CEO 2000-2007) fired all the ex-tradespeople that Home Depot employed in their stores, because they cost more than younger and less experienced labor.

Straight from the GE "How to mortgage a company's future for a small boost in the present" book.

There were also some hilarious anecdotes told about him refusing to get out of his car in the corporate parking lot until security met him and escorted him in, presumably because he understood how much employees disliked him.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nardelli#The_Home_Dep...

There's no better reminder that only a thimbleful of useful human knowledge is actually found on the internet.

I recently spent 4 hours online trying to solve a carpentry problem and not even knowing what words to use. I finally called my dad and in less than 2 minutes it was solved.

Now _that_ would be a good, hard challenge for ChatGPT and its ilk. Could you post question and correct answer here? Preferrably also something approximating the original version (when you still didn't know the correct technical terms).

The communication of solutions to untrained audiences through the employment of simplified semantics is definitely an interesting field of linguistics. Visual smacks of Ikea.

it's impossible to squeeze experience into text. that's one thing AI will never be able to replace: 20 years of carpentry projects.

I can show you how to do the thing with the chisel in this particular type of wood and humidity and grain and angle and pressure, but I can't write it down.

Fair point. In all seriousness though, it does often feel like Youtube is filling that niche quite nicely. It is almost as if the formerly wondrous power of written language to communicate across time and space is being debased and usurped by the power of video production and internet distribution...

> There's no better reminder that only a thimbleful of useful human knowledge is actually found on the internet.

Or in books, for that matter.

I remember the (reasonably-priced) hardware store back home being full of these guys, and home depot with no help, selling plastic plumbing supplies.

I guess home depot has won, and the employees have enough faq experience to help now.

Now if home depot sold 80/20 supplies...

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