sometimes_all

It's usually down about at least once a day for me anyway. Previously it used to be down during beginning and end of US work times. Now that they've geographically spread out their servers, it's down at random times instead.

TBH I'm not so irritated by this. It keeps me grounded, and saves me from being unconsciously outsourcing all the hard work of thought process to AI.

> The US is able to mention its past mistakes.

The entire point of being able to mention past mistakes is for future generations to be able to learn from them and avoid making the same mistakes. It seems, in recent times, that while this liberty is "afforded" to US/Europe, they're not able to use it effectively, if at all. Meanwhile, even though the Chinese might not be able to talk about their mistakes publicly, it seems evident from their progress and events that they have not forgotten them, and that it is in their minds, at the very least.

Edit: Not to mention, looking at how your current president is going after Canada just because of an ad, don't keep your hopes up on US citizens being able to "mention" things either.

In my opinion, we might have avoided some of the mistakes, but that is still costing us.

The best usually leave the country after getting the prime education India can provide, and support the retirement plans of other countries' aging populations more than their own - the Indian government actively seems to encourage this, looking at how our PM tries to negotiate for more visas during every first-world trip. Even with the demographic dividend, we do not have enough jobs, so the elderly are not supported neither fiscally, nor infrastructure-wise, since old people cannot walk on bad roads or take advantage of non-existent programs anyway. For the younger people, the insane competition makes both work and personal life hell.

Whenever I see videos of China and their cities, and then look out of my window, it makes me both depressed and angry. I still don't understand how India can even be compared to China any more.

> Would it really be similarly offensive if a headline referred to something happening in "South America" when actually it happened in Guyana?

Yes. It's like saying that the art and culture in Georgetown is very similar to the art and culture in Santiago. Especially when you claim to be an arts-and-culture website. Would a Texan like being stereotyped by a tourist who thinks all of America is just like New York City?

> Or, a headline about something happening in "Europe" when actually it happened in Andorra?

What many people here are trying to point out is that the chances of seeing such a line about a European country (even a relatively unknown one) is waaaay less than the chances of seeing such a line about African/South American countries.

I am fairly certain that most people in the non-English speaking world will also be able to place Canada on the map - I'd assume the French know exactly where Canada is. But I digress; it's not about placing a country on a map. It's more about we know that Canada is a separate country, and it has an identity distinct from other countries in its continent.

This goes beyond mere politeness; that you used this word is a bit suggestive. Refusing to acknowledge an identity is far more than just a lack of politeness.

And Canada's population is 1/20th that of Europe, yet we all know where that is.

No need to cherry-pick some random metric and try and justify a point that's not worth justifying.

That's not an excuse.

A sample from the website's About page:

> this site is my attempt at creating something that’s dedicated to discovering the hidden gems of the online realm (whether they be in the form of academic discourse, cutting-edge technology, cultural commentary, or artistic expression) and sharing them with care and consideration.

How is treating a country in the second largest continent in the world - which contains more than 50 countries, most of which have very distinct cultures - as representative of that continent showing care and consideration? Ghana is not an unfamiliar country, and most people, at the very least, know it's in Africa. If I confused Mexico with Canada, or Germany with Albania, I'd be treated as a dimwit, but somehow it's totally fine if I don't know the difference between Ghana and Kenya.

I agree with the parent comment; this "unfamiliar country" business needs to stop.

In India, Amazon has been quite good IFF you have Prime. Deliveries are quite quick, returns and refund rules are clear, and always get processed if eligible. If you're a frequent user, it's well worth the subscription cost.

If you don't have Prime though, it's a different place altogether. But you don't have much of a choice - Flipkart (the other alternative) is worse in every way.

There are many justifications of Veblen goods, some sensible, many not so much. It's psychological; you need to have a justification to spend non-trivial amounts of money.

Some reasons I've been told why people buy luxury watches, outside of the status symbol ones:

1. As discussed, good watches tend to hold / increase their price as time goes on. This leads to the second point: people who can afford to buy a fancy watch likely have a lot of money in mutual funds/other financial instruments anyway, so a Rolex becomes "diversification" for less-rich people and a curio for the more-rich

2. People want an heirloom to give to pass on to the next generations. I've seen watches three-four generations old. In some circles, the older the watch, the more prized it is; a favorite grandchild might get your best watch. It represents the family's continued success

3. "If you are attacked on the street, you want to be able to give something to the robber so he can leave you unharmed" (never mind the fact that you probably got robbed _because_ you wore the Rolex)

Personally speaking I find many of the justifications hilarious, but this kind of thinking regarding luxury has been going on for centuries, so what do I know.

No, you are partly correct. But given that brands are status symbols, the cost is only one part of the status game. There are some other things which societies consider: Do you know which models are the "best" (high resale value / rarity / age / anything else) - sometimes the price isn't the only indicator. Also, do you know where to get the biggest bang for the buck? Do you know which places/markets/etc can have better models for lower cost? Do you know the right people so that you can get new information the quickest? Getting a rare model for a relatively lower price sometimes be a bigger social win than getting it for the standard price.

Where I live, you are a chump if you pay the sticker price - getting a valuable thing for much less than that is one of the indicators of how people judge your status. The fact that brands try to control pricing only makes the "game" more interesting.

I agree with this suggestion. Neither of the three listed will improve leadership or decision making skills; at best they'll inform you of what is currently going on, or might suggest some good books by referencing them.

A very similar approach to what parent suggests is in the book "How to Read a Book". It starts with explaining regular kinds of reading, and ends with synoptical reading - where you have to actually go and make a lot of effort to analyze, compare and contrast the current book with other stuff you have read.

Anyway, nothing grows soft and hard skills more than actually doing the legwork - just passivereading will not do much; active reading might help, but mixing reading with going out and actually doing stuff will help the most.

We once went to Florida and saw some open orange farms. We wanted to buy some, but there was nobody in sight - we got very confused until we saw a box which said "$X a bag"; there was a sack of bags nearby. My mind was blown.

I believe that Google has figured out (correctly, IMO) that accuracy doesn't matter to most people 99% of the time, and people will likely do a deeper search for the 1% of the time they do want it.

If people really wanted the truth and facts, we would not have misinformation spread this widely via social media and other places.

From where I'm from, there's a saying (badly paraphrased): "only the shopkeeper who talks well can get his stuff sold". Most of which the OP talks about is marketing, and marketing is a given, else the business will have a hard time existing.

If businesses need to make an effort towards marketing, it follows that counterparties will need to make an effort to block out that marketing if they do not want it. And the more aggressive marketing I get, the more aggressive I become about blocking it:

- giving more or all my business to companies who do leave me alone

- throwaway / hide-my emails

- unsubscribing, or even better, marking as spam

- not downloading unnecessary apps, and turning notifications off for most of them

- complaints to telecom operator for spam calls and messages (government has actually started taking strict action against these recently)

- complaints for bad behavior, in very public platforms

- actively making sure to delete accounts when no longer needed

Companies spend real money to reach me. So I return the favor and spend some time to ensure that I throw them off my lawn.

What happens if I do everything the author did, but somehow failed at it? Now I'm overweight, have no idea what a good diet is (the guy "outsourced" grocery shopping), am probably penniless and with no friends or a clue how to enjoy myself.

The author assumes success will come if they just work hard. There is no guarantee of success. The author also assumes that they'll figure out how to enjoy a life in their thirties, when the twenties are likely the best time to get to know yourself. The author, from reading the text, has also made a few bad lifestyle choices which will take a lot of time and effort to reverse.

There is no doubt you need to work hard - not just in the twenties, but throughout life - but if one do not take out the time to take care of themselves or to touch grass, it will pass them by while they're too busy hustling.

> But I worry that this trend is related to the decline of in-person socializing in general

In my eyes, it is worrying that drinking and socializing are treated adjacent to each other, and that there is a notion that people cannot socialize without drinks involved.

This correlation tie-up makes it really difficult for people to quit drinking even if they want to, and for people to reluctantly take up drinking in an (IMO misguided) effort to find company.

I have a 13 mini for about 3 years now - still holding up for most of the working day (about 15 hours). The trick is to reduce the number of apps you have on the phone, reduce the number of apps which like running on the background, and not watch a lot of videos.

I figured it out that treating it as a communication device + payments device + maps + very occasional content viewer, ie mostly as a utility will make the phone last much longer.

Bloomberg's ads are slightly separate from their regular ads; the "other content" is still news most of the time - Bloomberg is at its heart a data and news feed company (the video news is mostly an add-on for them), so they are doing what they do best anyway. "Idiocracy" is an interesting example; while the style is similar, the side content on BTV, while a pale shadow of the actual terminal, is actually quite information-rich (especially on BTV+); the actual terminal is entirely populated by feed/data/whatever function you're using.

> I log in and see constant posting that I can only describe as toxic mediocrity. A seemingly endless stream of posts that are over fluffed, over produced and ultimately say nothing.

It took me approximately 5 minutes to install uBlock Origin and create a filter that removes the feed. No more toxic mediocrity to see because there are no posts to see. It makes Linkedin a lot more bearable for me.

This is not new; NYT has been doing this for quite a long time, and it got exacerbated when Trump started running for office in 2015-2016. It is very difficult for me to take NYT (or most news websites) seriously now - one can take advantage of a lot of platforms just stripping out most fluff and giving you only the objective details.

Just take a cursory look at the front page, and see how much of it is hard, actual news. Even in the Business section, you'll find words like "cult-like" and "drowning in debt". It's very difficult to believe that this is a newspaper of record.

Gave it a try; works better than expected. Has the custom filter tool (similar to element picker in main Origin), so I can block out the Linkedin Feed and other pestilence that Wipr couldn't tackle.

Thanks a million to gorhill!

This is not unique to Anthropic: most LLM providers (including OpenAI and Perplexity) do this, and it is explicitly mentioned before you buy the credits that they will expire within a year.

Hi, just FYI your form is giving a 400 error (field data constraint violation). Unsure why that is, since I have filled all form elements. Also doesn't let me know which field is problematic.

Absolutely no issues, I figured it out anyway. No stress on this, big boy job way more important :)

I keep getting this error on both Safari and Firefox:

Uncaught (in promise) Error: Fish model not loaded verifyFishDoodle https://drawafish.com/src/js/app.js:514 <anonymous> https://drawafish.com/src/js/app.js:170 EventListener.handleEvent* https://drawafish.com/src/js/app.js:168

Edit: Never mind, I had to wait till the model loaded. Took some time though. Fun project nevertheless!

> everyone on the consumer level is more than happy with current Intel/AMD offerings

They shouldn't be. Apple's chips changed the game so much that it was a no-brainer for me to choose them when I bought a new laptop - PCs just couldn't compete with that compute and battery life. Anyone with a decent enough budget is not even considering Windows.

I don't think any power user will be happy with Intel/AMD any more.

The branches are worse. Staff rotates _constantly_. Most of the new ones don't know anything, including most straightforward things people go to branches for. Almost everyone from the tellers to the branch manager is mandated to upsell/cross-sell something or the other, and in the most non-transparent way possible (so that the right people get the commission). Need a bank locker? Jack up your savings account balance. Need a credit card? Get a unit-linked insurance plan, else don't waste our time. A couple of tellers will start calling random people to sell things (in direct violation of central bank rules).

There was some brouhaha a few weeks ago when someone posted a screenshot on reddit about an Indian public sector bank's app refusing to run because a user had installed Firefox, and according to that bank, was a "malicious app that could steal user data".

Indian banks and many of the government websites are some of the most user-hostile things out there. Once upon a time, I used to think this was primarily to deter malicious actors from preying on tech-illiterate users, but given that the banks don't want to use all the tools/frameworks out there which help websites be both secure and user-friendly, I've changed my opinion.

Interesting. Yes, I guess the upload speed definitely matters, which cable/DSL don't provide.

I myself have fiber, and speeds are much less than 500 Mbps, but symmetric (with likely maximum two people using video calling at a time), so haven't faced that issue.

I understand the need for independent fiber ISPs. But are gigabit speeds really necessary? For me, a 300 Mbps connection is way more than enough for a four-person family.