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don’t forget the burning paper bag of shit that is Paramount+ on PS5. There is no shame anymore.

Good luck getting kids to watch them. Kids today have a hate on for movies or TV older than themselves. It makes sense since there has only been a handful of great movies in the last 20 years. Dumping B grade and lower stuff on YouTube is only going to reinforce the idea.

It’s hard to believe how far Hollywood has fallen. I haven’t paid much attention to trailers in years.

I’m nearly 100% migrated to Pop. MS gave lots of warning, but I still have a VM on 10 for a couple apps I rarely using including Office in case I absolutely need it. Hoping that Steam Console is real.

For work, I am stuck dealing with 11. There are many things I hate about 11, but why is it so damned slow and laggy on a brand new Copilot PC? File explorer is like loading file lists with a 2400 bps modem, and Office apps take far too long to load. It’s absurd how bad it is, and I can’t figure out why.

I’m getting old, I forget why I load an app before it loads…

And it is accurate in the Caribbean, unlike Google Maps that insists on sending me over cliffs to my death, people’s back yards, non existent or dead end roads, as well as other areas best avoided.

The team that wrote the Windows 11 file explorer are clearly scared to death of any optimization whatsoever.

Farms are also an excellent source of losses tax for high income tax deductions that want a large plot of land in remote place.

Many places all over the world including the Caribbean. The locals warn people not to use Google Maps.

My problem with Google is that they have a wildly inaccurate maps that would destroy the reputation of any cartographer, yet they publish their app giving dangerous and deadly routes happily gathering the ad revenue without so much a warning that their directions are certain to result in a horrible outcome. I am still appalled, but all we can do is warn people and share stories.

In Toronto, we have a serious problem with out old combined sewage system and the lack of transparency from all levels of government on the reality of the water quality. I appreciate the work by Swim Drink Fish:

The name Swim Drink Fish comes from signs that are all too often found on shorelines around Canada: no swimming, no fishing, and no drinking. Our organisation’s goal is simple: restore the health of local waters so that every last one of those signs is removed. We strive for a world where every watershed can be enjoyed by the communities, doing what they love.

https://www.swimdrinkfish.ca/

I love my Flip, well the hardware. Samsung software is annoying, especially Bixby. But it fits in my pocket, which is all I wanted since the iPhone SE.

There is strong evidence that attempts to fix the depression actually made it worse and prolonged it. One take of many: https://www.econlib.org/policy-failure-during-the-great-depr...

So this explanation is neat and tidy. The problem we learned in COVID payouts is that people would rather watch Netflix and smoke weed all day than do any amount of low skilled work at a job they hate. So they start demanding exorbitant wages, show up late, if at all. This is productive work, and productive work that frees higher skilled resources to be more productive.

Based on the employers explaining this problem, they are asshole bosses. And in our 'normal' system of jobs and no UBI or other payouts, they can get away with treating people poorly. However, low skilled jobs don't have to be bad jobs, people enjoy all sorts of work and even find meaning in them. In this UBI / cash transfer role: employers can't get away with being an asshole(without spending big $$$) and have to connect meaning for the employee to the work they need done.

This is exactly what not to do. I'd expect customer sat and churn to be a catastrophe. Video calls with high stress customers is a much better and probably far less expensive solution.

It was nearly 30 years ago, I was in high school and heard about 1984. I couldn't find it in the school library, so I asked the librarian and in the most surreal experience, she looked at me and said, "Follow me."

A few corridors later, we arrived at a double door. She unlocked it and led me to the back. There were stacks of them. She handed me one and said, bring it back when you're done with it. I asked why it wasn't in the library, and she said, "They say it is outdated and no longer relevant." Her facial expression clearly stated she disagreed. They had pulled it from the curriculum, it used to be taught it class, and by the 90's already missing from the school library.

Excellent book. As the article quotes, many people think they know the book, yet have never read it. Completely worth it, I recommend some tea and Drone Station on Soma FM. Speaking of Soma, be sure to read Brave New World as well.

Then this blog post isn't very powerful.

Exactly. I bought my couch and chair $4400 (CAD) on sale (about 40% off list) in 2008. I recall some people thought I was insane for spending so much money on a couch. I thought the price was fair after doing a lot of research, and the sale at the time was awesome. Also, a 20 year warranty on the frame.

Today, buying a couch and chair on sale for $6300 sounds like a lot of money, but I imagine I'd need to budget at least as much. Not from the same company though, they now sell shit couches for $2500 and people complain the quality is garbage and capitalism is failing. Or.... maybe you are just a cheap SOB.

I still have the same couch and chair, now super comfy, though it took years to break in. Leather is in excellent condition.

Keep asking the same question until you get the answer you want to hear. It's common behaviour in all organizations. That faint hope that a more convenient answer is found so we can proceed BAU.

What I don't understand is why all these people that knew better that works d there didn't do more. Very cult like following, where faith in the organization's mission allows for the mental gymnastics described in this article. A few tech and specifically AI companies come to mind and it is disconcerting.

EZ Air in the Caribbean, there are no sest numbers on the ticket, just sit wherever. Fastest I've ever seen a plane, albeit small, load. The staff were very friendly too. It was so novel, I was excited for my return flight to experience it again.

IBM is a finance company with a tech brand. Business units are black (profitable) or red. They buy them, juice their profits, eventually they extract too much, they turn red. They bundle a few husks together, sell them off eg. Lenovo, or IPO them eg. Kyndryl.

Yes, they are and they also know it isn't foolproof so that isn't the only information being compared against. Some services compare the calling number is compared against live activity on the PSTN (ie, subscriber's phone is not in an active call, but their number is being presented as as the caller ID is one such metric). Many of these deep fake generators with public access have watermarks in the audio. The audio stream comparison continues, it needs to speak like you, word and phrase choices. There are other fingerprints of generated audio that you can't hear, but are still obvious at the moment. With security, it always cat and mouse with fraudsters on one hand and the effort/frustration with customers on the other.

Asking customers questions that they don't remember and that fraudsters have in front of them isn't working and the time it takes for agents to authenticate is very expensive.

While there is no doubt that companies will screw up with security, you are making wild accusations without reference to any evidence.

LOL, Redis CEO Rowan Trollope. Man I despise that guy. After successfully navigating the Cisco Contact Center, UC and WebEx business into oblivion, he ends up at Five9 architecting the crash and burn Zoom acquisition that failed 'successfully', and now he pops up at Redis.

Run away screaming as fast as you can.

Guess it wasn't a toilet seat. Life imitates art.

Dead Like Me, love that show: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348913/

Amazon Prime had the series and removed the episode, but has since dropped the series. Which is the other annoying thing about streaming services, they keep dropping shows often unannounced.

When the Betty White is being censored for blackface, which wasn't blackface, it was obvious we are in trouble. It's modern book burning, just less dramatic without the pyres.

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/entertainment/2020/06/29/...

The shocking side of becoming a doctor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Going_to_Hurt

A medical student keeps a journal, becomes a doctor, hates his life, publishes his journal. One post I am laughing my ass off, the next I am in tears. It changed my perspective entirely and I recommend anyone read it.

Interesting Airbus omitted it from their report, Yeti sure appears to be a commercial airline: https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/stories/2024-03-2023-a-ye...

Praise me! I only murdered 1 customer a year, some of them basically children. /S

WTAF is with these assholes commenting this is acceptable? It's not. Not even close. In spite of Boeing's efforts, no one died in a commercial aviation disaster in 2023. Zero is the bar. Not 1.

Exactly. Especially for contract negotiations & track changes with a counterparty. Only MS can figure out their screwed up document formats. Office is terrible these days, it is so damned slow. I remember Office 97, so fast and responsive on a Pentium 90, now back in the dark ages of slow bloatware and network latency. It takes so long to open a document, I forget what I was doing the week I double clicked on the file.

Recently there was a book written about Delaware and this problem.

What’s the Matter with Delaware?: How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—and How It Costs Us All

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691180007/wh...

Impersonating without informing and intentionally trying to trick a person into thinking they are talking to a human is unethical and creepy. There is nothing wrong with using virtual agents, but there is a thick black line and companies are clearly willing to leap over it. These laws are necessary.

Also. There is no rule that customer service must follow a script. Some poorly run companies follow this awful practice and it is extremely harmful to the customer experience and a gent engagement / work satisfaction. It's the result of incompetent management.

Yes it does. BMO is a bank in Canada that has a virtual agent impersonating a human, and it is pretty convincing. It is unethical, creepy, and offensive.

Making people follow scripts is merely a bad practice insisted upon by misinformed or stupid management.