DamnInteresting

Agreed. I am required to use Teams at my day job, and it feels like a rushed product from a soulless company--because that's exactly what it is.

And a whole aisle full of splinter-free toiler paper![1]

[1] https://www.historydefined.net/splinter-free-toilet-paper-di...

From the article:

> This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.

I use my M1 iPad Pro for graphics work (from simple sketches to full illustrations), and for making music with multi-track recording apps. I don't bother with the keyboard since little of my input is text-oriented.

I have a 2017 Bolt EV, and I feel similarly. GM accidentally made an ideal EV for a reasonable price, and now they are correcting course by ruining future models.

I have an iPad Pro that sees infrequent use, but when I do use it, it is excellent. Its primary purpose is making music (background music for a podcast), but on occasion I also use it to sketch out ideas, and sometimes to create polished illustrations. It's not great for everything, but it's amazing at a few things.

For all intensive purposes.

The browser extension I created, and presumably many others, will see no benefit from this forced change. To the contrary, Manifest V3 will hinder the functionality of some extensions, including the widely used and beloved uBlock Origin[1].

Nevertheless, if I wish to keep my extension in the Chrome Web Store, and keep it working in Chrome browsers, I am required to bend to Google's demands and spend a considerable chunk of my time to perform this unnecessary update. And it must be done NOW!, with an artificial sense of urgency. Time is precious, and I'd really rather not donate mine to a multibillion dollar advertising corporation. Google is the primary beneficiary of Manifest V3. They are demonstrating why they abandoned their "Don't be evil" mantra[2].

My browser extension doesn't make money. I made it purely to improve my own browsing experience, and shared it for free with others. It's working fine on Manifest V2, and has done so for years. I have no desire to learn Google's crappy new implementation.

[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-chrome-manifest-v3-c...

[2] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

I have a Manifest V2 extension in the Chrome Web Store that has a "featured" badge, and Google has been sending me emails that feel a bit coercive:

> To maintain your extension's Featured status, you will need to migrate it to Manifest V3 by June 3rd. [...] Extensions that do not complete this transition will see their Featured badge removed

> Manifest Version 3 extensions will be prioritized in the Chrome Web Store, including in search results and recommendations

> Beginning June of this year, we will begin to gradually disable extensions running Manifest V2 for Chrome users

> Thank you for your cooperation and participation in the Chrome extension ecosystem.

I am really dismayed that an advertising company has such a stranglehold on the web. They are not good custodians.

> No car with paint you care about

The Cybertruck is bare stainless steel with plastic trim, isn't it? So paint damage shouldn't be a concern.

My Bolt EV has a car wash mode, but it is only necessary for car washes where you put the car in Neutral, then get out while the car is pushed through the tunnel. As far as I can tell, all it does is override a safety feature that puts the car in Park (or maybe engages the parking brake) after a a short time in Neutral. I have never had the need to use it, but it's there.

They completely botched the spelling of the astronomer's last name, it is Konstantin Batygin, not Konstantin Bogytin.

I built something similar to this for a client in 2002, I still have the Java source code. It was called CurbDiver [1], and the idea was that a local agent (a "broker") would list the thing for you on eBay (including taking nice photos), and if it sold, they would package/ship it for you and give you a percentage of the selling price (80% if memory serves).

It had some promising early uptake, but it fizzled after a few years. There just wasn't much money to be made, even when being discerning about what items were allowed. It was a weak, inconsistent stream of nickels and dimes, and a lot of work to get it.

One element that we underestimated was the volume of low value/no value stuff people wanted to try to push through. Pretty quickly agents learned when/how to say no, but even saying no consumes some resources.

At its core it's not a bad idea, but such an operation would have to be very optimized to be profitable.

[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/temp/curbdiver.jpg

Pros:

• No commute

• I can work for a company on the other side of the continent

• No one steals my lunch

• Can work from my treadmill desk

Cons:

• Lots of interruptions from family

• Always feeling like I'm at work

• Lack of human contact

• There's no "second place," let alone a third

I feel like the pros outweigh the cons, especially with regard to commuting. Driving to work is just more sitting, more fuel cost, more time lost.

When it comes to AI image generators and questionable content, I've wondered if AI companies can address the problem by using a pair of AIs. Use one AI to generate the image, then feed that image to another AI with a list of questions, such as "Does this image show nudity?", and "Does this image depict violence?" Just a list of everything the AI provider wants to omit from its output. If the answer to any is Yes, discard the image and try again (or just refuse to furnish any image).

I had the same thought. Also, it seems wildly improbable that a real news story about this tech would lack even a passing mention of The Hunt For Red October, yet here there is none.

> How is there any legitimate justification for designing it that way?

Without such an internal battery, automotive thieves could instantly mask the car's location by merely pulling the fuse or disconnecting the main battery. I imagine that is their justification (not that I agree with it).

I wrote an article about this exact technology almost 20 years ago, back in 2006[1]. Nifty to see the product actually reaching the market.

[1]https://www.damninteresting.com/retired/no-more-cavities/

My five year old watches some YouTube under supervision, and the algorithm has been recommending a new variety of "quiz" videos that are partially or entirely AI generated. It's usually around a theme, such as Super Mario Brothers, and it asks open-ended questions like "Would you marry him?" without revealing the "him" until after a countdown. Then it shows an obviously AI-generated image of a character such as Bowser.

Another variation asks the viewer things like "which car would you pick?", with options to select the "black", "white", "rainbow", or "gold" gift box, then after a countdown shows a grid of AI generated images corresponding to the colors, where one color seems to be the intended "correct" answer, but it is left to the viewer to decide.

These videos are dumb and lazy, and I'll bet they'll become a lot more common soon.

The tech job market is indeed brutal right now. Until recently I was in the same boat as you, applying for lots of jobs and hearing nothing back. For context, I am an early graybeard, I've been coding since the late 1990s. Until ~2020 I never had trouble finding a job--then it suddenly went from falling off a log to nigh impossible.

Rather than repeat some of the advice already given, I suggest you cultivate at least one uncommon niche skill. Doing so adds keywords to your resume that don't appear on all of the others, and demonstrates the ability and willingness to learn new things. It's also possible that there is some employer out there who really needs work in that niche, and they're struggling to find matching applicants.

One potential niche is legacy code. I landed my current position because I know Perl, and this employer has a lot of legacy code. I also found some traction with ColdFusion. If you can't stomach learning old-timey stuff like that, maybe learn how to build browser extensions, or Wordpress plugins. Those aren't super rare skills, but they're not as common these days as React or Angular. You don't have to master anything, just offer a running start.

Also: Don't be afraid to be slightly silly on your resume. The people who have to review those things see a lot of very boring stuff, and something with a little personality can stand out.

Good luck.

Anecdotally, I established a website in 2005 featuring long-form nonfiction, and it gained a respectable following. After years of posting several new articles per month, I started feeling the burnout, so I took a break, and then slowed my publication rate to one new post every few months. I soon became the recipient of a deluge of nasty emails from people who were furious that I had reduced the amount of free content I provided. This small, vocal subset of readers obviously enjoyed my work, otherwise they would be indifferent to a reduction in output, yet they were emailing me imploring me to kill myself because I am a failure.

I really wonder what their day-to-day internal monologue is like.

Point 1: Negative "kids these days" sentiments are as old as humanity, and so far they are universally incorrect[1].

Point 2: This is a link to a reddit post with zero citations. It is anecdote, not data.

[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aav5916

A better source than the tabloid New York Post: https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/someone-stole-a-jasper-radio...

If I'm not mistaken, 'play on demand' in this context is a backronym[1]. The iPod name is apparently a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey:

> The name came from a freelance copyrighter who, after seeing the prototype, thought of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the phrase "Open the pod bay door, Hal!"[2]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

2: https://www.pcmag.com/news/a-visual-history-of-apple-ipods

My kid has an Amazon kids Fire tablet. It allows parents to prevent specific apps from appearing on the home screen, and it seems to work fine, but it doesn't allow any kind of keyword blocking. For example, I have blocked a bunch of apps/videos/books by the YouTuber 'Blippi', but he releases new stuff all the time, and the new ones often pop up on the home screen. If I could preemptively block everything containing 'blippi' (or any other keywords) my life would be easier.

Regarding YouTube, the YouTube Kids app lets me block videos and whole channels, and it's great. But there is no equivalent functionality in the main YouTube app. On various devices (e.g., Roku, Google Nest) the kid sometimes manages to find some YouTube channels I'd rather they didn't watch. But I have to manually intervene each time, I can't just block those channels from being watched or recommended in the future. YouTube/Google obviously know that it's valuable to block videos/channels, since that feature exists in the kids app, yet they omit the feature from the main app, even for a paying customer like me. It is obnoxious.

> The problem isn't Google, it's the internet.

I partially agree, but Google itself has also been going downhill in my experience. For example, in recent months the topmost Google results often omit one or more of my search terms, and I have to search again with quotes to force words to be included. I understand the reasoning behind including results that omit a term, but putting those at the top is just silly. Yesterday I did a search that included "discontinued", and the top result along with most of the first page of results ignored "discontinued"[1], so the results were mostly the opposite of what I was searching for.

1: With the text below the result "Missing: discontinued ‎| Show results with: discontinued"

This documentary probably had something to do with it: https://vimeo.com/83750163

In it, a man investigates various means of execution, and concludes that nitrogen asphyxiation is the most 'humane' because the victim just passes out and then perishes. The presenter isn't necessarily wrong, but the caveats include a) the victim must breathe pure nitrogen, any oxygen present will prolong the experience; and b) if the victim is aware they are being executed, it is unlikely to be peaceful regardless.

Edit to add: Also, the physical discomfort from holding one's breath comes from increased concentration of CO2 in the blood, not the absence of oxygen. So as long as one can expel CO2 as usual, the lack of oxygen does not cause physical distress.

I've always liked this theory about Jar Jar, and it's fun to look at the little hints that his villainy might have been the original intent. But I suspect that the force (pun intended) that prevented such a thing was merchandising. George Lucas knows how to sell toys, and he likely foresaw the blowback if kids' beloved action figures, posters, etc. suddenly represented an evil character rather than a good one.

We humans are not very good at risk assessment. Realistically, flying in a 737 MAX is nowhere near as dangerous as making a left turn in a car (in the USA). Yet many of us do that every day without a second thought.

That being said, one underrated health risk is stress. If it alleviates your stress to avoid a particular air frame, you may be preserving your health by eliminating a burdensome worry.

Having known people who correspond with Stallman, he would likely reply to this comment with a rant about how you should call it "GNU/Linux" rather than just "Linux", then proceed to ignore the remainder of your points.