The callous part of me thinks that was the intention from the start: wash out the capable engineers who were competently producing and hire ethnic cohorts who played the game.

It's Amazon. Anything that gets them the metric that they can put in their promo doc is a good thing.

6-12 months later, when they've been promoted, they can nix it and add it to their next promodoc as company savings in efficiency.

Are you honestly summarizing the current state of advancement in LLM capabilities as "somewhat better search"?

It's apparent from that statement that you've not even been paying a slight bit of attention to state of the art. It isn't 2023; we're a far sight further than you conceptualize, and you'd be well suited to start familiarizing.

Apple was right that suckers would pay for a laptop and then pay again for a tablet with the same kernel but a different UI.

I find it's usually when I'm standing over the computer, like using it in passing. It's handy when cooking. Otherwise it's not very useful as you say. Though sometimes I would rather just touch the screen than use the trackpad, which I'm not used to. My work laptop has touch and I use it now and then.

Darn vague memory but - Yes. Keypunch machinesâ"such as the IBM 026, IBM 029, and IBM 129â"allowed operators to duplicate an existing card up to a specific column to correct errors or edit data without re-entering the entire 80-column sequence.

We could put a mylar mirror at L1. They did it to increase insolation of Mars in KSR's trilogy, but you could use the same idea to reduce it. It's theoretically possible to do it with modern tech, though we certainly won't as it would require cooperation

I've transported a lot of that type of stuff in a minivan, using a tarp to keep it clean. Also you can put the Xmas tree on the roof rack. Those micro bed pickups can do basically one potentially relevant thing that a van can't, which is carry a fridge upright. Usually though you can get free delivery for something that expensive. I guess if you buy a lot of used refrigerators they might be handy?

It's where almost everything on Amazon comes from. (Albeit often in quantity from their other site Alibaba.)

My first boss in tech used a Kinesis keyboard. He blamed his severe carpal on emacs.

"They also have to certify these app stores, they aren't just going to let anyone set one up and start distributing malware or pirate streaming apps."

Yeah, you have to put those apps on their app store so they can benefit.

I joke slightly, though they have distributed malware before.

Conspiracies are the norm and not the exception. The wealthy meet in private clubs and offices and discuss how we will live our lives for their benefit. Are you new?

True. Many are much bigger assholes.

It's not illegal to make and sell a similar product with a similar name. Retail stores are filled with them. This doesn't make the App Store good, it isn't, it's crap. But it also means that they don't have any duty to prevent those apps from existing. They may chase them off the store if enough people complain, but only because people are complaining and it's cheaper than some other approach.

Ford didn't even make the version of the F-150 Lightning which should have existed. The tradesman version didn't offer the big battery as an option! You could only get the fully loaded model with it. This is presumably because they couldn't get enough batteries to sell all the models which should exist, so they reserved the big packs for the most expensive models, since nobody would buy those models without the big battery.