footydude

There's something very beautiful about the attention to detail and forethought that has gone into rooms like this.

The wonderful combination of beauty through a clear focus on functionality, supported by just enough of a sense of majesty to lift the whole space beyond pure functionality makes it a little more special.

This is probably a place that was always considered at least somewhat beautiful given its strong design, but more generally speaking I find it really interesting seeing how functional ~1930-1970s era industrial units like this have kinda become fascinating and (in their own way) beautiful places in the eyes of so many (me included).

I often wonder how people in the future will look back at our current humdrum infrastructure and what they might think of it. No doubt there'll be just as much nostalgia and fascination in some quarters, but i have to admit it's a little hard at times for me to see what elements of modern infrastructure will become the focal point of curious minds in, say, the 2050s.

That said, I did visit a museum last year that had some pylon insulators and some other old 1990s electric-grid equipment and I found it kinda interesting and beautiful in its own way so what do I know?!

The iPhone came about 6 years after the iPod, which itself was wildly successful so certainly Apple was nowhere near bankruptcy when the iPhone launched.

They also weren't on the brink of bankruptcy when they made the iPod either - the original iPod launched in 2001 which was ~4 years after the Microsoft investment you mention (that happened in 1997).

Apple actually launched the highly successful iMac (the colourful ones) back in 1998, and it was arguably the success of that which restored Apple to having good profitable. I.e. it was already well on the 'up' by the time the iPod launched and propelled them to even greater financial success.

Can't speak for everyone but in my experience using public toilets (predominantly UK, pubs and train stations):

* there's not always a properly functioning seat / seat at all

* the seat is not always dry

* the cubicles do not always have a functioning lock

* the bowl is not always 'clear'...for reasons probably best left unexplored, people seem to choose public toilets as a place to carry out the most incomprehensible and unimaginable of all bowel movements. I've been greeted with bowls that let's just say would be benefit being assessed by a trained professional

Public toilets are also often pretty grim places in general due to the smells, sounds and general lack of hygiene/cleanliness.

All that said...IF the toilets look in decent repair I personally will use the cubicle and sit down, but it's probably less than 30% of toilets that feel like that's an option.

Also just to say I am someone who always sits to pee whenever at home/in a person's home and i'm not someone who anyone would ever call a germaphobe, so I do generally choose to sit rather than stand.

> "ai" companies are simply burning our cultural context ...

Most developed countries have a 'legal deposit' system with a national archive/national library that requires publishers to send a copy of their works to them. They've existed in some form for centuries in some countries.

Example for the UK - British Library guidance: https://www.bl.uk/services/legal-deposit

> Another example is used car sales. Before the internet it was local and required work to find cars for sale.

Certainly in the UK there were plenty of established options pre 'internet' to make finding cars easier.

Physical weekly magazines like Autotrader existed prior to the internet which had a small photo of the car a brief description and key details and asking price. People also used magazines like Parkers Guide to estimate the valuation of their/prospective cars based on mileage/condition etc.(Kelly blue book I think is equivalent in the US?...based on sitcom knowledge)

There were local used car garages too of course, but many of those also had their cars listed for sale in autotrader listed as 'trade' sale rather than 'private'. Or they'd be in the local newspaper on a set day of the week (where I was - Wednesday had a special 10+ page pull out of 'house listings', can't remember what day cars were but same happened)>

I know people travelled very long distance to buy cars using autotrader because my dad made an amount of side-money in the 1980s and 1990s from it. typically he'd buy a used (often damaged, 'no MOT') car, repair it, run it for a few months, sell it for a profit and repeating the process. He went all over the country to buy cars and he sold his cars privately to people from all over.

Also larger used car retailers and approved-used car garages have long since moved stock around their locations to support sales and used to have similar in-house magazines/brochures that showed all their available stock.

You lament the 'hustlers' scouring FB but arguably that's a much less problem than the risks pre-internet whereby local car garages could rip off local consumers because those customers quite probably only a limited field of reference to understand the value / worth of a car and so could easily be sold something for way more than it's true worth due to lack of comparable data. One of the biggest benefits of the online world is you can quickly see what is a 'normal' price for an item and so it's a little harder for people to be completely ripped off (though of course it still happens, savviness as a consumer takes a bit of work/time and a willingness to shop-around/do research).

> The reason we have declining birth rates is phones

US Live births per 1000 people from Macrotrends:

* 1960 - 22.70

* 1970 - 16.83

* 1980 - 14.99

* 1990 - 15.57

* 2000 - 14.18

* 2010 - 13.31

* 2020 - 11.99

* 2026 - 11.98

In the 30 years 1960 - 1990 which predate widespread adoption of mobile phones, we see a drop of ~7 live births per 1000 people.

In the 35 years since then (during which mobile phones have become ubiquitous) it has dropped by a further 3.5 live births per 1000 which is half the prior reduction.

If we look at US fertility rates the situation is even more dramatic. Births per woman:

* 1960 - 3.44

* 1970 - 2.34

* 1980 - 1.79

* 1990 - 1.96

* 2000 - 2.01

* 2010 - 1.98

* 2020 - 1.78

* 2026 - 1.79

The 30 years from 1960-1990 see a drop of almost 1.5 vs. a drop of about 0.2 in the 35 years since.

All of which is to say that the trend for declining birth rates predates mobile phone adoption, the biggest declines came prior to mobile phones being in widespread use. I've not researched the matter but my understanding is the primary drives in declining birth-rates are A) widespread availability of reliable birth control (the pill) and B)population wealth increases which tend to correlate quite strongly with the number of children a person has.

I don't discount phones having at least some impact, but seems highly unlikely that it's 'the' reason.

live births - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni... fertility rate - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...

> If everyone is using LLMs then nobody has advantage

LLMs are a tool like any other - and like any tool there will be people who are better at utilising the tool to achieve an outcome than other users of the tool.

Those differences typically come down to a combination of experience, in-depth understanding of your subject/objective and an awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of the tool.

TBH the rise of LLMs reminds me a lot of the era when google search emerged. People's ability to utilise a search engine to achieve their aims was massively varied.

* Some people were absolutely useless - they struggled to use a search engine to find anything beyond the most basic of things.

* Others were ok - they'd be able to dig a little deeper, they knew a few of the tricks of the searching trade and they had a bit of an understanding of where to look/how to look for something obscure.

* Some were good - they knew all the key search constraints, they had a good understanding around how data is structured and what keywords and approaches to use when to get to the thing they need

* and some had 'google fu' - those people seemed to have a god-like ability to navigate the internet to find the most obscure things in a matter of seconds.

LLMs are different to search engines but their rise shares many similarities to them - they are changing the rules of the game in a monumental way; they have fundamentally reduced the barriers to entry in many fields.

The skills that made someone valuable in a pre LLM world do still matter, but IMO we're currently starting to go through a major change where the people who learn how to best utilise LLMs within their field will find themselves leapfrogging people with stronger skills who obstinately seek to avoid using the new tools becoming available to them.

That does sound pretty poor, surprised it's not mandated that there needs to be an onscreen warning as well, not just an unexplained beep.

For my experience i've found the safety features helpful and don't mind them. I turn off the audible warning but the onscreen warnings are helpful nudges/reminders.

The lane-assist bit I leave on and whilst I do occasionally have to 'wrestle' with the car a little in some scenarios, it doesn't ever feel like I lose control I just have to overcome a little bit more resistance when the system is concerned about me departing the lane inadvertently. For me that's not really a problem, but I do see how others might find it frustrating.

> But car beeps generally give no clue what they're beeping about.

Can't speak to all vehicles, but my VW ID3 clearly indicates what the issue is on the dashboard.

So if it's the lane-keeping assist it highlights which lane(s) it is monitoring and it provides a written prompt on screen (e.g. "drive in the centre of the lane") if it's not happy.

If the speed limiter is on it shows the current signed speed limit in the dashboard and it flashes that speed limit if I am driving over the speed limit.

If the car believes I am not concentrating on the road and instead interacting too much with the touch-screen it puts a large warning in the middle of the touchscreen to pay attention to the road and prevents me using the infotainment system for a few second.

I'd be surprised if most other modern/new cars didn't also include instrument display feedback like this alongside audible warnings.

In my mind, 'tinkering for fun and knowledge' was never meant to be profitable - if you're tinkering with the express aim of making a profit i'm not sure you're really 'tinkering' so much as you're trying to create a product/service/output for someone else to pay for?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that - I'm just not sure the 'ethos' of tinkering has anything to do with trying to make money and is usually reserved for describing someone playing about with something for their own enjoyment/fun with no desire to make money.

Now, of course some people did find that their tinkerings were able to make them money, but I think at its base it's a term I'd tend to say implies doing something for fun/for themselves, rather than doing it for profit?

In my experience there's still plenty of people out there tinkering just for their own personal satisfaction, but of course there's almost certain a whole load more people out there 'tinkering' to try make a profit.

> Rampant use of AI for cheating is not at all incompatible with negative opinions of AI.

Possibly. Either way it (for me at least) neatly highlights why AI will succeed.

The students you talk about don't abstain from AI use entirely - they utilise AI for things they consider 'unworthy' of their attention/effort.

That is precisely the market AI will capture first - the tasks and processes that people (in general) have to do but don't really have any passion/interest in doing and for which perfection isn't critical.

And what may surprise many people in this thread (given its flow so far)...there are a whole heap of things that you and I care about, that 10s if not 100s of millions of other people consider 'unworthy' of their attention/effort and for which they will happily make do with a 'sub par' AI experience if it's cheaper, easier, more convenient.

> it isn't even really finished but it gets a couple thousand plays every day somehow.

Having just spent 5 minutes on it...I imagine it gets played because it's pretty good fun (good work!)

The inclusion of showing the trajectory of your previous (failed) attempts is really neat - it means I can refine my shots more accurately.

Ahh ok - that's fair enough - hand-reviewed/not controlled by the agent seems a sensible approach (wasn't sure if it was instructive of a complete distrust of AI generated code)

> But it should only be able to "hit a button" to send a 2FA email to the address attached to the account, all run with hand-written code.

Genuine question...why would that need to be hand-written?

It makes absolute sense as a general statement and is kinda crazy that this wasn't a built-in limitation, but I'm not quite sure why the code for that bit must be hand-written (provided the code functionally does what you describe).

Absolutely, it's definitely worth emphasising.

> But most people sat there watching, clearly wanting to take part but scared. People have learned that creativity and participation are not welcome.

In my experience, a decent proportion of people have always been nervous about joining in. I'd wager that for many of the onlookers it isn't driven by a creativity/participation thing, it's just a (pretty normal) fear of embarrassing themselves. Scroll back 30 years and I would undoubtedly be one of those awkward teenagers wanting to join in but scared to do so out of fear of embarrassing myself.

That said...There probably is a reasonable argument to be made that in the modern world the potential for everything you do to be filmed and shared with others amplifies those fear more than ever.

Absolutely.

Though, we do have to be very careful with interpreting online commentary as representative the collective, when trying to understanding whether something is considered good/bad.

Firstly because only a small proportion of people voice their opinion publicly at all - so only a small proportion of opinions get heard.

Secondly because opinions that are voiced are much more likely to be definitive in nature (it's great / it's terrible) as people tend to be less willing to comment "it's ok" - so vociferous voices tend to dominant online discourse.

Finally, because online communities often represent a niche/specific demographic and so if you only see the views from a particularly online community it's a fair bet they are not very representative.

You can also (generally) turn off the taps of the cost of the £120k/year incredibly quickly.

By comparison it is much harder (and also much more likely to generate negative newspaper headlines) to make 500 people redundant.

From about 5 minutes of digging, I found the below which perhaps helps to put the 29m gallons in context.

> The Fayette County Water System has a total production capacity of 22.8 million gallons per day (MGD).

Source: hhttps://fayettega.org/doing-business/global-access-infrastru...

So...keeping things simple and using months of 30 days:

Using 29M gallons over 15 months = 29,000,000 / (15 * 30) = 64,444 gallons per day avg

Based on 22.8m daily production capacity that's less than 0.3% of the total production capacity per day.

(Happy to be corrected if my napkin maths is wrong / i'm missing something here!)

> Or are we talking about it only because it’s AI-related?

We're absolutely only talking about it because it's AI.

From about 5 minutes of digging, I found the below which perhaps helps to put the 29m gallons in context.

> The Fayette County Water System has a total production capacity of 22.8 million gallons per day (MGD).

Source: https://fayettega.org/doing-business/global-access-infrastru...

So...keeping things simple and using 30d months:

Using 29M gallons over 15 months = 29,000,000 / (15 * 30) = 64,444 gallons per day avg

Based on 22.8m daily production capacity that's less than 0.3% of the total production capacity per day.

(Happy to be corrected if my napkin maths is wrong / i'm missing something here!)

I don't know whether it's a sign of it being AI or not but I did find it a bit weird that within the first 3 sentences there were 2 different "less like X and more like Y" statements:

> the reason is that this is less like painting a wooden fence, which is easy, and more like changing the colour of a carbon-fibre Formula 1 part, which requires re-calculating the weight, strength and aerodynamics.

and

> this is less like making ice cubes and more like baking a complex soufflé where every degree of temperature and milligram of ingredients matters.

Not a problem, but it felt odd enough that I noticed it, so maybe that's what got them thinking it was AI written/assisted?

> seems to imply they have to pick and choose what they pursue. They really don't, especially if it's hard- vs software.

Money can often just be one part of the equation.

To do things well you also need - available & capable technical resource, suitable facilities, available & capable leadership and management (with engaging at the right level in the business) and a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve/working towards.

Given how Apple appears to operate, I wonder if a strong desire for senior management control/oversight over major developments means they (artificially) limit how many concurrent large-scale things they can work on at any given time?

Maybe not, but that'd be my guess.

Nah, though I imagine every insurance company that did these sorts of mail shots got the same stuff back.

Apparently there used to be people who would buy the policy purely for the parker pen. They'd get the pen then cancel the policy for a full refund. There's some weird people out there.

Interesting stuff - and lovely to see positive/nice examples of interaction with the game developers. Very cute.

It reminded me of a job nigh on 25 years ago I had - I worked at a large insurance firm as part of a team delivering a specialist service to high value customers...but it was often under-subscribed so if things were quieter we'd get roped into doing all manner of different tasks to keep us busy/help out.

One thing we occasionally got roped into was opening returned mail from mail-shots advertising 'over 50s whole of life' insurance (basically a policy over 50s would take out with guaranteed payment on death that would primarily be used to cover funeral costs).

The mail shots were sent with a pre-paid envelope and a form to fill in to buy the product. It's going back a while now but some days it'd be 100s of letters coming back - my rough estimate would be:

* ~2-3% of the return envelopes were people buying the product

* ~95% were people return the application form in ripped up form

* ~1-2% were people sending something weird back

The weird stuff we got back varied massively, but a few that have lived long in my memory:

* A sheet of paper with a hand written note saying they'd farted on it

* Toe-nail clippings

* A stash of cuttings taken from pretty graphic porn magazines

* Hand written notes, often so apoplectic in their rage that they were hilarious to read

* 'Filled in' forms but where all the information was clearly fake/puns/nonsense ('Mr Hugh Janus' that sort of thing)

* Randomly (to me at least) peeled off labels from jars/etc. were quite common to get back

For what was a pretty dull task (open envelopes, if genuine, scan for the processing team and return a 'parker pen' to the applicant, if not dispose of) the occasional weird responses we'd get made the task much more amusing.

{all mail had already been through some sort of security scan process for metals/etc. so we didn't tend to get anything truly dodgy back}

> Like there was some point in time when people decided to start abusing the policy, necessitating the change. Like people cared about new ll bean so much they'd scour garage sales and do the return fraud.

It's entirely possible that a hack/fraud like this existed at a relatively small scale that was 'tolerable' to the business, but subsequently became more popular to the extent it became unsustainable to continue to offer the guarantee.

I could easily image that happening a couple of ways -

* a 'life hack' like mentioned gets spread around in forums/online, raising awareness of the 'hack' which sees return volumes increase beyond what they had modelled/expected when pricing the cost of the guarantee into their product

* The above, combined with the growth in peer-to-peer used clothing sales (things like Vinted in the UK, or ThreadUp? in the US) means there's money to be made taking advantage of things like this - people could absolutely earn a living/earn money finding used clothes in thrift stores, cashing in on the manufacturer guarantee and then reselling the subsequent items on via peer-to-peer sales as unused/unwanted clothing where they'd undoubtedly make a sizeable mark-up vs. the cost of buying potentially quite used clothing in a thrift-store.

On that second point - I personally know people who supplement their modest incomes by doing similar things - scouring things like Facebook marketplace/freecycle for items they know they can turn around and resell online for a small profit. Feels like way too much work per £/$ earned for me, but undoubtedly it happens).

Of course...you could be absolute right, it could just be a convenient scapegoat to point to when removing a previously offered service that the business has deemed no longer viable/not worthwhile to offer.

> in e.g. the Iran War just have to place their bets 3 days before?

It certainly wouldn't perfectly solve things but the further out a prediction is made the more risk there is that the outcome could change - even for someone with insider knowledge.

E.g. I've worked in businesses where an M&A has looked a nail on cert - as part of a small discreet team involved we were being readied for the announcement etc. only for it to stumble a few days before completion.

Obviously there are some markets/situations where a few extra days won't make a difference at all, but I could see how something like that would introduce more risk/uncertainty for those with insider knowledge.

0.0042 apparently https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/?r=AaYkKP___-u-

There's was 2 or 3 where i had no idea, guessed and was a way off.

There's was 1 where i did a hail Mary and got it. It was interesting how some even towards the end were really obvious and others were really subtle - I'd say I did better with purple tones and worst with the blue / greys.

Yeah the UK isn't really very 'cold', but figured would include my example to show that not a problem in UK-equivalent of cold climates.

From a quick skim around it appears ASHPs can continue to work at -20c even -30c IF they are units that were designed for cold climate operation, albeit they can't secure the same SCOP/efficiency as they can with warmer temps.

It also looks like homes in these colder areas will often install the ASHP + have some form of additional heating as a back-up (e.g. electric heating) to compensate for the limitations of the ASHP in the coldest weather.

> Heat pumps don’t work well on old, poorly insulated houses in cold climates. If they can keep up, which is a big if, the price of electricity generally dwarfs natural gas, even if the heat pump is running at 250-300% efficiency.

I've got a 1930s semi-detached house (UK, north of England) - heated solely by a ASHP for both heating and hot water.

Our Seasonal Coefficient of Performance is currently 3.47 (347% efficient) - even if limit that to just last month (coldest month of the winter so far in the UK) our COP was 3.25 (325% efficiency).

Roughly speaking if you can achieve a COP over 3.2x in the UK it should be roughly on a par with gas, assuming you go 'gas free' (i.e. you can make the saving on the gas standing charge).

Personally we're running at ~£200 annual saving vs. my estimate of what costs would be for equivalent gas boiler - that's thanks in part to being able to do all our hot-water heating at night rates.

House wise - we don't have cavity wall insulation, have 15+ year old double-glazing and probably should have more insulation in the loft (it fills the rafters but I think these days that's considered not enough).

Also with changes to ECO (energy company obligations) and RO (renewables obligations) the differential between gas and electric will reduce further

Anyhoo - added my example to show that ASHP can work perfectly fine in old, poorly insulated homes in (moderately) cold climates.

ECO/RO link - https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2025/11/energy-bill-c...

> Some chargers are configured to start charging exactly when a cheaper tariff kicks in, which causes big transient issues for the grid. I think modern chargers have a random delay to help with that.

Here in the UK some electricity providers offer 'smart' charging (e.g. Octopus Intelligent Go).

In that situation the energy provider controls when to charge the car - e.g. you say "I want the car at 80% by 7am tomorrow" and the energy provider controls the timing of charges.

That's how my EV charges - I plug it in, and Octopus control it.

Benefit for me is that whenever the car is charging my entire home's use gets the overnight rate (even if part of the schedule is charged during the day).

Benefit for Octopus is they can use my car to balance grid demand / schedule the charge when it is most financially effective for them.

I can - at any time - override that logic if I just want it to charge at a specific time for whatever reason.

(I presume this sort of arrangement is becoming more common in other countries too)