On average, I've actually been very happy with the use of AI chatbots for phone support.

The reason for this is that, for lower tier support (as well as a fair chunk of things I need done that can be handled by lower support), the support agents are largely working off of scripts that they are not allowed to deviate from, nor do they have the expertise to understand what they are doing.

While the AI is not necessarily as intelligent or capable as a human *CAN* be, in practice it is often more capable than the first-tier support agent that it has replaced, due to the breadth of its training data. If I need something that requires cognitive tasks that exceed the AI's context window, I can request escalation.

This is in stark contrast to the bad old days where I waste time talking to the bottom tier support where I usually need to spend a long time explaining what I want done, wind up requesting to be escalated anyway, or try to battle with a dumb non-AI menu-based agent bot to even get to speak to a human (and usually that human is still bottom-tier support who I have the same problems with).

Funny how everything is "just 10 years away".

Sorry, I assumed you were making a density argument, when I guess you were making a population argument. So you're saying that Los Angeles County can't do it because it has twice the population? Can only counties with Norway's population or lower do it?

The only reason you got away breaching Seven of Nine so far was because she's no longer part of the collective. But she's captain of the Enterprise now so you are probably in trouble.

I see these arguments a lot and they're kind of contradictory:

1. It won't work in the US because there's too many people in the US! Norway is a sparsely-populated country!

2. It won't work in the US because there's too few people in the US! The US is a sparsely populated country!

It's a dumb comparison because you can just take any given US state in isolation the same way you can take European countries in isolation. Norway is about the same size with the same population density as Utah, and like Utah has most of its population concentrated around one major city, and has about the same median income as Utah. (Norway is much richer in GDP per capita but the average joe actually buying a car makes about the same).

If Norway can do it then surely Utah can do it.

Gas was cheap and cars were cheap. Your car is a consumable commodity that you have to factor in to the cost of the drive too. Insurance companies are also moving toward mileage-based fee structures so if that's your situation it figures in to the cost as well. Furthermore you have to figure in the cost of your labor in operating the vehicle and if you value that more or less than sitting back and watching a movie or playing a game on your portable console/phone/laptop.

It doesn't have to be that way. In many places public transit works more like a Star Trek transporter. You go somewhere, go down some stairs, and come up another set of stairs in a distant place. It's not as fast but it's reasonably quick. The only problem is this kind of transit is alien to most parts of the US, and the few cities that do have it also don't manage their extremely mentally ill and/or criminal population.

The kind of transit you're thinking of is the only transit much of the US has built -- commuter transit. That kind of transit sucks and most people don't use it.

The problem with your scenario here is that in a lot of cases the farmer can't get the right part at all, and if they don't get that field taken care of by their really expensive machine within the next 3 days they lose the harvest.

Magnuson-Moss exists for a reason, and one of its functions protects manufacturers as they can deny claims if they can establish that duct tape and crazy glue broke the machine.

Deere's actions are to circumvent individuals rights to repair so they can control the repair chain to further pad their profits, nothing more.

No, the problem is Deere is engaging in activities to lock out people's ability to repair their own stuff, then not having the capacity to do it themselves. Circumventing Right to Repair is scummy on its own, but their unwillingness or inability to handle the service load they created has knock-on effects that are incredibly disruptive to food supply. And that's the kind of thing that drives farms out of business and can/does lead to food scarcity issues.

Not a business.

It's not *very* organic though, since the coal ash is what's left over after you've burned most of the carbon.

Then the games should be free. No more of this "fee-to-pay" nonsense.

(That we got called out)

Congrats on your mandatory "What was "The Southern Strategy"?" response.

Seriously, you look absolutely ridiculous making a comment like this that shows absolutely no awareness of the aims of political parties before the 60's and a concerted effort by Republicans starting in the 60's to gain and consolidate power by courting racist whites in the south.

Everyone's favorite incompetent grifters have been flooding Facebook with ads for the "new method", because this allows them to cut yet another step out of their bogus revenue stream, and probably because the last grift is hopefully finally dried up.

They're advocating using LLMs to "write" the books too, so you don't have to pay anyone at "all" (except them to "teach" you how to run this garbage scam) and to more effectively just absolutely flood the zone with shit.