brailsafe

Probably helps that movies are still quite happy to feature smoking prominently, even to the point of giving an Oscar to the person who played a character called "Smoke" who's portrayal of any emotion was entirely communicated through... smoking or trying to smoke. I can't unsee how much on-screen time cigarettes get.

I mean it seems like you have a valid reason, but the raw cost in terms of just the loan payment isn't a trivial difference. "already over a third of my car payment" means your car payment alone is 3x the total cost otherwise, which is... a lot. Once you factor in maintenance, insurance, depreciation (which has been lower in recent years), it seems like it would be quite a leap if you didn't have a disability that made public transit more difficult.

I think the difference between transit methods within a city that has built-in alternative options has been interesting to examine now that I have a motor vehicle myself (that I got for free, but costs a lot to actually drive). I went without one for 8 years before someone offered it to me, and I do value the flexibility to occasionally get out of town wherever I want, but the tires alone will cost $2000 when I need to replace them, and the gas is crazy, so it's perfect in the sense that it sits there taking up street parking until I really need to get someone that a bike, scooter, bus, train, or walking doesn't work as well for. I'm not encouraged to use it for anything that it's really not needed for, and if it died tomorrow I wouldn't replace it with anything.

Relying on only the bus, even if the transit system is well-funded, has never been a particularly ideal situation, but the advantage is that I get that time back instead of being singularly occupied by driving. If there's traffic, I'd wildly rather be on the bus, but the train is always better.

That's how I'm treating it! Thanks

and this is such a liability imo. I recently got fired for what I think was apparently merging a change to Kubeconfig that both the CTO and DevOps person approved. I made as damn sure as I could that the proposed change was good, but I needed their eyes on it and they clearly weren't, possibly be cause every other repo had a review bot and no special automatic deployment automations. The DevOps person literally commented and said "It's good to merge", who to trust

No, I wasn't commenting about your kid, I was commenting on my generalized observations about the tendency for people, including parents, to accept the possible cost of risk when there's the prospect of even minor amounts of increased convenience. A friend of mine who doesn't earn much took out a large amount of debt to get a car so he could drive just himself to and from work even though there's a train that would get him there faster and more safely because he has weird prejudices and has control issues, which are not uncommon among parents who move to the burbs to raise their kids and keep a watchful eye in an isolated environment. My comment was about why I wouldn't be surprised by any shortcuts people take even if there's some risk involved, because being alive is time intensive and many people intentionally put themselves in situations where they feel they need a stack of shortcuts at their disposal to get even extremely trivial tasks done. Could be smoking or not going to the gym or not having a strong social circle or whatever.

> a comment from the kind of parent who argues its okay for their kid to spend 16 hours with their eyes glued to a screen because "blippi is educational".

This seems like the opposite of what I wrote

I get that these are things you might do regularly and feel more empowered to use Siri for them... but they're rather banal and could be done with literally a one or two step process previously, especially if you're already using Apple's first-party apps which seem to be a requirement here. In both email cases, Spotlight handles searches like that just fine, and moving a calendar event only requires clicking and dragging.

I'm here wondering why so much extra space is warranted, or how to take it back, not so much how I can find a document with specific text in it or use Siri to do something else that was already very easy.

One task I'm wondering about is for example, asking Siri (on the mac) to analyze a huge dump of arbitrary PDFs that may or may not have non-OCRed text in them, and efficiently reorg and rename them based on what the documents should be. This also seems like a mundane task, but requires a little more than just a standard search and would allow someone to take their entire paper archive of private business documents and create a digital archive without too much risk or work. This is something that all local models I've tried so far really struggle with.

Parents—in many places—already let themselves rely entirely on driving their kids to every activity, which puts them at much higher risk of getting maimed in an accident under a guise of efficiency and spurious claims of other danger imposed by living closer to people and the activities that their kids could get themselves to. Many people are lazy, fearful, and prioritize comfort and control over all else, therefore it doesn't surprise me at all to hear people would opt for the convenience whenever an opportunity strikes.

> In an honest discussion there's an assumption that the other person won't straight up lie to me so if someone shows me ten examples for why my argument is wrong I may be inclined to believe them

This is incidental, but in an honest discussion, if someone throws 10 examples at me, I'll just say "great, congrats" and let them believe whatever the hell they want about their own argument. An honest discussion—as opposed to a debate—isn't served well by having one unyielding relentless participant. Even if it's important instead of friendly, the conclusion of that specific conversation is rarely so important that it can't be paused in order to validate the claims being made.

When I was in my early twenties, I was the type to argue with people that I thought were wildly wrong, but now I know that I may not have enough information to be certain, or I simply don't care, or I care but I know it doesn't matter. People who have 10 examples in their back pocket, or literally search up answers in real time because they're afraid of being vulnerable, imo are overvaluing answers and facts over discussion for discussion's sake. Now in my thirties, I'm much more interested in curiosity, wonder, and speculation over what the answer to anything actually is. Speaking of which, I wonder if this is why I'm kind of not that interested in using LLMs for much; I'm usually so much more interested in the journey than the result, that if I can get the result quickly with little work, I probably won't care to do anything with it.

and those 70-80 year olds may have children old enough to be going through menopause and any number of health issues themselves, along with their own adult children who may not have viable prospects for leaving home yet (if the dynamic is at all similar to other G7 countries). In Canada, I would be plenty old enough by now to have my own kids, and my grandparents, lucky though I am to still have them around, are old enough to be needing some help in their 80s. Thankfully they all have their own homes and can take care of themselves financially, but even if I was interested in having kids, there isn't really a viable financial strategy for creating a support structure viable for even myself long-term. Adding one other person to the mix isn't feasible and won't be in foreseeable future unless I made some dramatic changes solely for that purpose. Thankfully the Gen Xers in my family got in early to the whole "social contract" thing and seem to be handling what they can, and I contribute when I'm visiting by putting in the physical labor where it's useful. I can barely reliably pay for a basement apartment, and the way things are looking, that's about as far as it's ever going to get.

Hmm, I wonder if this could be the source of an issue with my gaming PC that's using some super budget SATA3 SSDs connected by miscellaneous cables to my relatively newer psu and mobo. Everytime I turn the PC on, it seems to fail to recognize the boot drive and won't POST, but then after force shutdown and restart it succeeds. I think the power cables did ship with the PSU though, the SATA cables came from wherever

Very different experience though. Fast and deeply uncomfortable vs long and chill. I'd prefer the latter when feasible but it obviously isn't always.

Spectacular. Many people have been disappointed with moves by Blizz in the last 5-10 years and anything that improves livability for those that make what used to be great games is a huge win

> Unfortunately, right now your only choices in the developed world are: an extremely fancy luxurious living arrangement (most condos, apartments, houses, etc) far beyond your means or an illegal tent under the highway.

In the city where the author is based, there's plenty of derision of "luxury" places, but it's just Nimby code for "don't build anything, I want to keep renting my basement at $2k/m". Actual luxury places are the ones they live in, paid for presumably by borrowing against their land value.

Even at $1.4m, new builds have a veneer of what amounts to AirBnBification, as far as I've seen from the few I've actually visited. They're expensive and poor quality with relatively little space, fake wood finishes, vinyl flooring like anything else, and a standard package of appliances

The way I've been framing this is that it costs basically $2m CAD in this city to paint your house, if you wanted to be able to. You can buy something below that, but you don't have the same amount of agency over it that you would with a detached house.

Point is though that I find it's rare for any rented place or condo to be fancy by any stretch, it's all pretty ordinary stuff you'd expect but dressed up like it's expensive. The kitchen is still in the living room and has 4 sq ft of space to move around in, the cupboards are usually still particleboard, where there might have been a closet 20 yrs ago there's now machinery or venting, and the doorknobs are crunchy.

They might own it, but at a certain point it only matters whether the concept of ownership means anything to the people who don't "own" it. Ownership only works for those with assets because they have police working for them to protect the concept of ownership to begin with, but that only works at a certain scale of disenfranchisement and lack of upheaval. There isn't that much in-practice stopping a sufficiently angry group from attacking most politicians or even every-day wealthy people in their home. Money talks, but if the amount everyone else earns isn't enough to meaningfully contribute to "owning" anything, then those people would reasonably stop agreeing to respect the idea of property or non-violence. People without assets, facing down a continual decline in living standards from 15 years ago, should evaluate whether the system they operate in does anything beneficial for them at all, or whether it mainly serves those who they serve.

We're starting to see it in discrete bursts with Mangione, the paper warehouse fire, and in other non-violent ways with farmer protests, trucker protests, etc.. which have varying levels of support from regular people depending on their wealth class, background, and inclination to agree with the government.

That tends to be true now as well for a variety of reasons. I'd be more interested in the cost then between both modes of travel.

That was my experience and is my opinion, and I do try not to judge others, but 15 year olds are past the point where they can have jobs and are doing the babysitting. If my friend was treating their teenager this way—assuming their kid wasn't significantly mentally or physically handicapped—I'd ask them why they insist on maintaining such an absurd level of control as to infantilize said teenager on their way into secondary school. I wouldn't insult or suggest overall bad parenting—that's rude and not my place—but if they couldn't grapple with that, I'd probably question my relationship with them in much the same way I'd question my relationship with a parent who refused to let their kid learn about sex or evolution.

Based on their level of maturity and actual evident danger in the immediate surrounding area, 8 on the low end, 12 or maaybe 13 on the high end, anything higher and I'd say something's gone wrong, perhaps at the societal level.

Perhaps a bit pedantic, but ironically I don't think Chevrolet makes any normal price range hybrids atm

8-12 unless they have serious developmental issues. 15 is ridiculous

Something like that, I just looked up whether there was a newer one and added an A for Apple since they try to present perhaps the most sterile public image in all of their dev videos and presentations. Maybe we need 3 As and two Ms

Microsoft Meta Anthropic Apple Amazon Netflix Google OpenAI

I thought Turd Sandwich fairly accurately captured what was and still is often a common sentiment that hasn't gone away just because the U.S federal government is conducting itself in such an uncommonly (although not that uncommonly) abhorrent way. A similar sort of election plays out every year and many levels of government in many countries. It's usually between some douche and some turd, and things rarely change for the better as a consequence, so people who feel apathetic and forgotten about don't bother, while people who fear what the other side will do try to convince everyone else theirs is correct. Tale as old as any two-party system.

I never felt as though it was a "both sides are equally stupid" sort of perspective, but rather more like "both sides are at least worth making fun of" along with the people who religiously feel that only their side isn't worth mocking. As in, whichever group seems to be trying to be the most pious, most sanctimonious, the most evidently rediculous, is effectively the one most worth mocking.

I think they have a lot of good material to work with going into this next season, and some of it will hit, and some will miss, for varying reasons, as is the way of all previous seasons. I personally worry that it'll be too politically oriented, because as a subject it just gets boring, but as a Canadian I've always got a kick of out the stupidity that is whatever comes out of the U.S. We're facing the side-effects of our own internal misgivings and trusting the U.S too much, but the U.S seems to be burning itself to the ground.

> when getting your first colonoscopy

This must be why MAANGO companies require 24hrs of fasting prior to the on-site

It's also a likely contender for contributing to the spread of what people thought was smallpox after the arrival of Europeans to what became the U.S

"guy with bad knees recommends we all take the gondola down"

While reading this I pictured an irate BillG screaming at his shitty pc first thing in the morning, probably after getting off a Skype or WebEx call, like the guy in The Onion's classic "Sony releases stupid piece of shit that doesn't fucking work" https://youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQ

And that's exactly how I felt trying to reinstall Windows 10/11 on a new motherboard recently.

When I got fired a few months ago—which I'd somewhat anticipated since the CTO was becoming ever more temperamental—I took the money I'd aggressively not spent and decided to spend the summer doing things I enjoyed, letting the stages of grief subside, and letting myself get bored, instead of trying to force myself to AI this or that or even apply to more than a few jobs. I turned off my website that I wasn't doing anything with anyway, and I've been letting my brain churn on the prospect of leaving software entirely. I still don't feel confident that if I do spend the time trying to land another contract, that it'll be a fruitful endeavor, nor if I pursue something else, but I've got some great hiking done, spent lots of time with family and friends, and I'm glad I haven't wasted it while being mired in the swamp of anxiety that I presume a more Type A person would. It was cheap to buy this time, and it's better to buy it back when it can be spent doing physically adventurous things.

I may go back to applying for the few jobs around, or I might decide it's such an unlikely venture that I'll just see if I can meet someone on a hiring team at a climbing gym or something. Either way, I don't really care to spend much of it behind a screen until winter rolls around.

Completely agree. If you're the main character, let it be incidental to how you choose to live instead of trying to be that character. Author isn't arguing for a specifically boring life, just a "Type B" life, which is how I've enjoyed doing it for ages.

Right, but it's still kind of a joke because that's just what you would pay on any normal investment's appreciation. Land is treated as a commodity that can't go down in price.

I'd like to see both an automatically adjusting dynamic tax on owning more than one property in the same municipal or arbitrarily useful region, as well as dynamically banning the ownership of more than one. Everytime I mention this, I get "blah blah we have a democracy blah blah freedom" etc.. but it's no such a democracy if one particular age-range dor demographic of people owns all the assets and politically protects them from diminishing in value or facing competition. Pending presumably complex implementation details, but a healthy system that prevents generational fiefdoms would probably adjust to severely disincentivise even the possibility of acquiring more than one of the most important finite resources in urban areas.

> We live in wild times. I hope everyone is taking advantage while they can.

Yep, I'm taking advantage of the times by using the exact same tools I have been for years, and if those fail me, I'll pay for one of the multitude of other high quality editors offered by companies who's business it is to make them, so I get back to writing things in them instead of paying even more to companies trying to persuade me to believe that those products are obselete.