I'm a lead programmer in the games industry, and I did not show up to meetings with low value. But that said, 50% of my time was spent on meetings and managerial duties.

Critically, I consider it my job to go to meetings so the other programmers on my team DON'T. We need to talk about the state of the game. We need to discuss mechanics and timelines and all sorts of things. But I don't want other programmers in more than a few hours of meetings a week, and most of those meeting hours should be just in our team giving and getting updates.

We were aggressive about cutting meetings that people felt had little or diminishing value. Sometimes meetings are useful for a time and then they're not. I never went to a meeting that I was invited to where I didn't feel like I needed to hear the information or present something useful. Guard your own time, no matter what level of worker you are.

But yeah, useless meetings feel terrible. I didn't feel bad about the meetings I went to because we often accomplished a lot.

Nah, the deals on used EVs are great right now; I think more people are going to start buying them up. They have low maintenance and running costs, and for around town, they're great.

There are so many goddamn F-150s on the road belonging to people that never tow a single thing or load the bed up. They're commuter cars for accountants with masculinity issues. Don't tell me that we shouldn't get these dipshits into normal cars or EVs both for the sake of the environment and road safety.

Autism is a much broader category than it used to be.

There's actually some evidence now that ADHD and Autism are on the SAME SPECTRUM, they're just different manifestations of slightly different brain wiring. For some people, it's more of an impediment, but fundamentally, the impediment is that we don't allow those people to be themselves. They might stim by flapping their hands a bit or moving around (I have ADHD, and I ALWAYS have to have something in my hands during meetings; I also 'pain stim', where I might press the tip of a paperclip against my finger. It doesn't HURT hurt and I don't break the skin, but the stimulation is something that I do basically unconciously).

Anyway, when we talk about neurodivergence, some people need little to no accommodation and some people need lots. I actually don't think having tight time limits on tests makes any sense. In my work, I get lots of time to research and figure out answers, and if I do it enough, the answers become easier to come up with. Are we trying to test whether people know things, or whether they deal with time pressure the way we think is necessary (again, for no good reason).

You gotta pay people to monitor the exams anyway, just let people have the time they need. If they get 100%, great, they know their stuff. What's the issue?

As in any subject, unless there is a mindless hype (such as "AI" currently) finding a job with a specific degree requires you to have done well. Too many just want the paper but not the qualification that should come with it and for-profit "education" makes it easy to do so. Then they are surprised they have problems finding a job ...

You betcha, it was developed by the new method of vibe engineering.

Obviously. But those that "can hack it" are still going into non-vacuous subjects, not into "AI". And "AI and Cybersecurity"? How utterly stupid are these people? AI helps attackers, not defenders. AI may make defense harder though, because AI generated code is riddled with vulnerabilities. (Yes, I am aware there is more AI than LLMs...)

With the other half being of negative worth? Color me non-surprised.

I will be interested when they have a working prototype that comes close to the claimed efficiency. I predict that will not happen.

Your second point is, of course, spot on and basically similar to what I'm saying, so no argument there.

As to the first, I don't know. The only clones that we've definitely seen are those of putin, if you believe the russian blogsphere, and they are more body doubles than clones, as they're all aging along with the short devil. So my take is, perhaps cloning is on the way, but it isn't yet at the point where you can clone or move the self along, so the billionaires are afraid to swap.

Otherwise we would not be hearing about organ trade scandals all the time.

Who are "they", though, the LLMs?

Perhaps they know all about them already and are just playing with the vibe coders.

They're still making DVD drives. They're just mostly USB now. Ripping is pushbutton easy these days. No messing around with getting a copy of DeCSS and such.

Because the last I checked chemistry majors like that had a rough time in the job market. If you could find a job the pay was good but the problem was they're just weren't enough of them.

It is just as likely that you're seeing more of this because people who would normally be forced to drop out because they lack basic accommodations are getting those accommodations and are able to finish the program now.

We are long since past the point where life needs to be a constant battle to see who gets to have food and shelter. But we keep that system going.

The movies that draw people into those experience are already high budget and even at smaller budgets 8K cameras and tech are widely accessible. Also as we talk here about Netflix obviously the business model of recouping a films budget at the box office isn't really true anymore. It's not the budget of the films thats at issue, its really just the business model of the theater chains.

Really in the last thread I talked about how we need a Paramount Decree for streaming, a separation between the production and distribution and ironically it's probably true that the opposite for actual theaters is true now. I think Disney now owns a few movie theaters and that's probably how they stay alive, instead of this money split between theaters and studios theaters will be a collaborative event function, the theater really has to make enough to keep itself profitable, not the entire chain of things and the studio isn't really looking at the box office as it's be all end all, it's more an event, the bread and butter is streaming but its a choice for the viewer.

As an example I think we've seen those replays of older films in the theater be popular so there is a demand there for the experience, people still like to go the movies but the value proposition is out of whack and the business model is outmoded.