telchior

He said he worked mobile sales, so I read that as he sold all models of phones to a wide variety of customers.

I think a lot of people would nod along with the idea that Android phones eventually have more issues. Certainly, between myself (iPhone user) and my wife (Android) it's her that has to change her phone every 2-3 years with escalating issues toward the end, and me that keeps using the same one for 5-6 with no issue.

Actually I'd say the same thing used to apply to Mac vs PC, especially laptops -- the Mac would be the one that keeps ticking basically forever while Windows laptops would encounter some kind of issue. But right now I'm on a 5 year old Windows laptop that works just fine (minus a few minor maintenance issues over the years), and I think that's not terribly uncommon. So it's not like Apple has some unattainable super-power, it's just the current situation in phone land.

I do remember meeting the Siri team before Apple bought them (I was writing for a tech blog at the time) and having them show me a bunch of really cool queries. I was pretty impressed. Shortly after, Apple bought them, and significantly after that, actually launched it as a product. I was not at all impressed by what launched.

Keeping in mind that the pre-sale demo I got was in pretty controlled conditions (i.e. I could have been duped):

After Apple's launch of Siri, someone else who had been working with Siri told me that he was really unhappy with what Apple had done; according to him, they gutted a bunch of capabilities, mainly because A) they couldn't be launched to all customers or B) just didn't fit with Apple's product vision. To give a specific example, the pre-Apple Siri could make reservations at a hotel in SF / NYC / Austin for you but not in Dubuque or Tokyo, so that had to go.

Of course, that original Siri was very different from ChatGPT: it was based on structured queries and the "cool stuff" it could do was basically a ton of API linkages to outside services. At that point, there'd already been a wave of "natural language" companies like Powerset and Semantic Web that had promised the world and then flamed out, so everyone was aware that unstructured queries were basically impossible. Funny how fast things change.

> The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame

Shame is admittedly a very powerful tool for social conformity. During the few centuries that you seem to view as the good old days, it was used to great effect for blocking many different behaviors. Among those: not dressing in quite the right way; having dark skin; insufficient patriotism; insufficient aggression in men; the desire for autonomy in women; homosexuality, or for that matter basically any acknowledgement that humans are an innately sexual species.

And then society broke, gosh darn it!

The problem with bringing back those good old days of shame, but of course just in the way that's nice and beneficial, is that a huge number of people believe that all of the above listed shameful behaviors of yesteryear should still be shameful. Shame is the mechanism that various conservatives are using, at this very instant, in trying to brand all gay people as groomers, or all people who get abortions as murderers and/or worthless sluts.

So, in my humble opinion, it ain't happening; how are you going to get any kind of agreement about what behaviors are good to shame? Pandora's box has been opened for half of humanity, who all generally agree that non-harmful behaviors should not be shamed, while things like flagrant violations of election law or finance law should be; while the other half continues to vociferously insist that non-harmful social behaviors are the only real priority and the golden days would come back if only we could all hate the deviants again.

I despise Google Maps for this. I can know that a restaurant exists, zoom in on its block, search 'restaurants' -- nothing. It'll zoom out the map and show other stuff. Worse, I can max my zoom and hunt for it on the map and it will outright show a blank space. Only searching for the restaurant's actual name will bring it up.

But there's not really any alternative. Apple Maps can't show me things because it's missing the entries entirely. Yelp became useless years ago. I feel like we're going back in time because the best way to find local restaurants has become walking / driving around the neighborhood to see what's there, or getting word of mouth recommendations.

It's especially a case of one thing not being like the others since all the examples are qualified by the phrase "the surplus is handed to shareholders". But every other example is a public company, with a vast array of public shareholders. Valve is private and, as far as I know, has >50% ownership from one person.

I feel like the argument as a whole for enshittification would be more interesting if it actually allowed for nuance rather than the rabble-rousing "all platforms are evil!" cry that it's becoming.

But wearing an eye mask is nigh impossible for restless sleepers; it slips off constantly. My best solution after trying many masks is an old t-shirt draped across my eyes, which inevitably slips off but at least doesn't drag elastic bands over my face.

Anyone know of research showing the effectiveness of varying levels of darkness in a room, from complete blackout to fairly dim?

In the game industry, even most of the dinosaurs now recognize that only allowing designers to contribute ideas isn't a good idea. Perhaps the companies she worked for were particularly awful.

... aren't jeans and backpacks the most typical pants/container? What the heck else would you wear and carry things in while scooting around?

Not that I disbelieve you, it just seems odd. My idea of Colorado is a bunch of people in jeans and hiking boots.

I recently needed a 3d model of a crab and found that some similarly obsessive user over at Sketchfab had created dozens (possibly hundreds?) of extremely detailed crab models -- at 500k - 1.5 million tris, so basically unusable for most typical animation needs, but they're beautifully detailed and free for download.

My first thought was that it might be the same person, since they had a Japanese username! But I don't think it actually is; the Sketchfab person has all kinds of natural models. Here's the account in case anyone is interested: https://sketchfab.com/ffishAsia-and-floraZia/models

There's so much lost that was in MUDs, including a huge amount of good, descriptive writing of vast areas. I wonder if a later iteration of the Dall-E / Midjourney / Stable generators might be able to create visuals based off of rooms descriptions.

Yep. I didn't mention it but with magnesium testing, blood tests may not catch an issue; you can be deficient in a particular organ (e.g. brain) and fine in others.

But realistically, very little of the $100 billion+ supplement industry is built on anything medically necessary. Yes, I have a waste basket diagnosis with an unclear cause that's helped by a specific supplement, but there are quite literally dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of other supplements that the snake oil merchants swear up and down are essential for the same condition, and they'd happily claim that whatever deficiency exists is undetectable. That's why I "don't believe" in supplements in general.

Sure, but the supplement industry is 99% woo and most of what is sold has no proven benefit. In general people most people taking supplements don't have any known deficiency (including me, blood tests show my mag levels are fine).

A recent opinion I saw from a doctor that made sense to me was: the reason they tell people to absolutely not do a lot of things is because there is a certain percentage of people who aren't competent to do anything on their own. The example given was Q-tips: we all know the advice that you shouldn't put them in your ears... even though that's literally what they're designed for. The doctor's explanation was that something like 10% of people actually will burst their own eardrums with a Q-tip, so you advise 100% not to use it to avert the harm to that minority. (If anyone knows where I saw this feel free to say; I can't recall.)

In general, if someone's reason for tackling their own health is because doctors (including specialists) have failed to help, I don't see why or how you'd argue against that. Even if you're bursting your own eardrums with cotton swabs, at some point you've got to do something.

I take magnesium for migraine and vertigo. Very much not a believer in supplements -- before this, I went through years of specialists prescribing various pharmaceuticals with various side effects. These days the problem is under control without any meds; I just take magnesium (specifically, a mix of l-threonate, glycinate and taurate), telling myself every day that it's probably unrelated to my feeling better. Like you said, it couldn't possibly be working as well as it seems to. But if I stop, my condition mysteriously gets worse. If it's a placebo.. eh, who cares?

> the amount of detailed information that can be included on a couple sheets of paper

The Iliad / Odyssey was a purely oral story for a long time. Oral traditions definitely included techniques that would allow any person to memorize vastly more than just a couple sheets worth. For that matter, we still have Hafiz around -- people who memorize the entire Koran and can recite it word for word. Or in non-verbal data, London cabbies with The Knowledge.

Not really quibbling with the point that literacy and writing is important, but the human brain is mutable enough that statements about what the average person "can't" do are suspect.

I've actually wondered if a job may exist in the future that's effectively just AI documentation. That's already what you have with power users on, say, Stack Overflow providing a ton of content that ChatGPT basically reprints; they don't even get paid for it.

The cool and interesting thing about that theoretical job is that the writers of it wouldn't have to write well; they could just slop out a ton of information and ChatGPT could clean it up and make it consumable.

I'm really not being facetious here -- you may be helped along by one of the definitions of "myth".

> A popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or occurrence

The institution here is wolf packs; the popular belief or story is, well, exactly that. A story, which sprung out of a research study that the actual researcher has admitted was fallacious.

The popular belief is also fairly odd; it has nothing to do with wolves, but rather, with the need for humans (specifically men) to sort themselves into imaginary groups. Nobody besides scientists and naturalists ever really cared about wolf packs.

Yes, I'm sure it'll take some subtlety to do this well. My struggle with Readlang was always that it just doesn't provide the whole meaning -- for instance, a correctly translated phrase doesn't necessarily tell me what the individual words mean. IIRC I got to where I'd use both monitors: one with original language+Readlang, and one with Google Translate applied to see individual words, and yet another tab on that window to look up words as needed.

My dream Readlang would have been one where I could quickly context-switch or change to see all of that, but it would probably require some significant client-side data and programming to achieve.

Hey, that's great! I was a Readlang subscriber for a few months last year and often had the thought "why isn't this better?". It even has a place on my (long, cluttered) list of potential ideas to work on. So I'm happy it will be revived and improved!

Also, here's the note from my list on what I wished Readlang would do: "check out how News in Slow Spanish (newsinslowspanish.com/) turns each word into a hyperlink. Hovering over it gives you an instant popup. This is a way better experience than Readlang, which requires you to click each word to get its translation."

At my house we routinely scorch parchment paper (the edges away from food) and use it for all sorts of purposes. It should be perfectly safe because the coating is just silicone. However, white parchment paper has some amount of dioxin in it (I'm not sure how much), which is bad stuff; possibly also fluorine. I've also heard that some parchment may add plastics for extra non-stick, exposing you to PFAs and the like.

Probably a good idea to stick with the hippie-looking brands / made in Western countries like If You Care, which use unbleached paper and silicone and presumably don't douse the paper in other chemicals.

If you're looking for a file, or a bunch of files, but you only remember the name of a different file in the directory... then absolutely, yes.

I'd summarize that as: civilization has always featured the few powerful having control over the many, but those few still had to satisfy at least some people. AI that can closely mimic humans and does not have a concept of self-benefit could vastly increase the power that individuals are able to wield, even beyond the kings and dictators of the past.

Contrary to your assertion that it isn't a "runaway" scenario, it very well could be one; it's just not the AI that's leading the charge. Fairly similar idea to Vernor Vinge's concept of how the rise of a powerful surveillance state could be a civilization-ending event, by conferring unprecedented power into the hands of a few.

As someone gearing up to market a PC game in a couple months, I have a few thoughts. The site looks nice so far but I wouldn't proactively submit a game to it; here's why:

I already need to consider my marketing (and presentation) on Steam, Discord, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, online festivals, and minor platforms such as itch.io (for devlogs or betas) or Twitter (for networking). I'm actually quite interested in some sort of showcase site, so this isn't a "this idea sucks" feedback, but rather... how would this tiny new platform support my overall goals of getting millions of views on all those major platforms?

I imagine it fitting on a Linktree somewhere, but for what purpose? I can't tell so far. If it's going to be a pure showcase it needs to be somehow better than Steam, which is already quite competent (and is where I need people to end up, since it has the Wishlist; I would absolutely never send someone to a site that has similar functionality to Steam rather than Steam itself).

I do like that there's a "Comment" section at the bottom and I can see that being a direction: asynchronous interaction with true fans, who aren't gibbering nonsense like YouTube or TikTok comments. That's something I can't reliably get on Steam (discussions are available pre-launch, but a bit hidden). But then again, Discord can also accomplish that.

One more random idea comes to mind: all the content I'll be posting to those various social sites is largely one-shot. A YouTube video won't work on TikTok, for instance. It would be nice if I had somewhere to repost all that various content (perhaps for the purpose of showing it off?).

Chocolate is in a similar flavor profile so it does mask something from the coffee. But a small amount of dairy really doesn't mask much, except perhaps in highly acidic brews. Sugar does nothing to cover the flavor of coffee unless it's in quite large amounts (which, yeah, Starbucks does that).

I understand that this idea of "adding anything destroys the flavor" is popular and widespread, but it's a really odd thing to think. That's not how cooking or taste buds work, so why would it apply especially to coffee?

Paypal vs wire fees is often the choice, unfortunately. I earn residuals from a company that only allows those two options. But when the money lands in Paypal, I immediately transfer it out, and I've considered going with wires just out of pure paranoia. Amazing that Paypal chugs along even with its hideous reputation.

I switched from a Macbook to PC laptop a few years ago. I'd say there are two rules to making that switch comfortably.

Rule #1: do a ton of research and comparison shopping to be certain you're making a good PC buy. These huge brands like Lenovo, Dell, Acer, etc churn out so many laptops, and the build quality varies wildly between them. For my process, I completely factored out most brands: absolutely no shopping for Acer, MSI, Dell, Toshiba, etc. They're just too much of a roulette, unless you know a specific model that fits your needs (like the Thinkpad!). At the time I was shopping I was only looking at Asus, Alienware and Gigabyte (not sure if they're all still good brands in 2023).

Rule #2: be able to do basic small maintenance. I ended up buying a Gigabyte laptop that's still running perfectly 5 years later, and it IS a gaming laptop with all the heat / cooling issues that implies. I've had to replace the SSD, the battery (heat degradation), didn't replace but had to oil and reseat the fans, repasted CPU / GPU, and make various software tweaks. A computer shop could do the same, just like the Genius bar, but it just makes things so much less stressful when you can do the kind of quick maintenance that Apple so strongly discourages.

Criticisms aside, not having an author byline is an intentional thing the Economist has done since its founding. The article tag that you're correctly pointing out is haughty is also standard for them; they're haughty about everything, not just foreign countries.

I don't think this is a bad thing. Even an "obvious" message will have a large percent of viewers who don't get it. And that doesn't necessarily mean they're idiots, as other comments imply: they might be ESL speakers, not from the same culture as the message, children, distracted, neurodivergent, or just... didn't get it. A top explainer comment is also very helpful for people who don't want to commit to watching / reading yet.

I'm all about being elitist but shaming "signposting of basic meaning" doesn't make sense to me. Signposts are great.

> They’re using oil being converted to electric energy

Classic conservative talking point. The next bit after this is "let's do nothing, gas burning cars are the future!". Anyone who actually wants to think for real about what the energy usage of an electric vehicle in their area is can refer to the EPA's Power Profiler: https://www.epa.gov/egrid/power-profiler#/

If you're in California, about half is gas. The other half is primarily nuclear, solar, wind and hydro. Transmission losses from power plant to home, and home to charged battery, are 10-20%; but then, electric drivetrains lose much less to efficiency than gas drivetrains. At the end of the day, emissions from driving an electric are better pretty much anywhere in the world; and in most places, massively better.

I think saying that electric "has the potential to become renewable" is quite reasonable. It'll certainly take a lot of time and isn't a certainty, but the generation mix is probably, all in all, an easier problem than the emissions from manufacturing batteries.