Lets hope enough outside people move to TX and FL to turn them blue.

I use a wired connection. Check!

Actually, I'm retired. So checkmate, you MSFT fucking losers...

No, that results in lessening of bias.

Good to know. It has helped me reschedule my next visit to the USA to a billion days after never.

Just when you think you have seen the ultimate depths of human stupidity... something comes along proving you wrong.

Gee, pay $199 to $399/year for the privilege of accessing temperature controls. Or buy a $79 non-Internet-connected electric blanket. Hmm... tough choice...

Part of 'learning AI' is understanding what it is and isn't good at, and the kinds of prompts that are likely to get you useful answers.

OK. But that doesn't directly help you get your answer, and so doesn't directly help your productivity. And in my experience, figuring out the kinds of prompts likely to get you useful answers is trial-and-error and a bit of a black art, so I'm not convinced that AI will ever meaningfully improve people's productivity. Instead of being stuck trying to think of an answer, they'll be stuck trying to prod a recalcitrant AI into giving them a useful response.

I don't think cultural collapse is the issue. The issue is what usually ruins things: greed. And now of course AI garbage, which is really just greed multiplied by a factor of 10.

As more and more people tried to "monetize" the Internet, they realized there are only two business models that work: Advertising or social-media-style attention-whoring (as you called it.) And both of those things suck.

I've played around with AI. I was unimpressed. I don't really know what it means to "learn" AI. As far as I can tell, you just hector it and keep rewording what you ask it until the turds it spews out are minimally smelly and maximally acceptable.

There's no science to this. Given that an integral part of every LLM is a random number generator, I don't see how there can possibly be any science to it.

I do not use AI. And I don't feel like I'm being "left behind".

FOMO is not a good reason to do something.

I retired in April, 2023. Right before all this AI BS exploded and turned software development into a hellhole. As long as AI doesn't destroy humanity or tank the stock markets, I consider myself extremely lucky to have escaped the AI hype.

The AI snake-oil peddlers are pushing hard. But there's yet to be a single company making profit from AI, save Nvidia which profits by selling hardware to the suckers. Not to mention that the gen-AI industry is theft of intellectual property on an industrial scale; a rapacious environment-destroying energy consumption beast; a supremely confident liar; and an exploiter of underpaid workers whose jobs are to make sure the training doesn't go off the rails and filter out the most disgusting or misleading data from the giant training set.

Thanks, I'll try it. Yes, anything that can rehabilitate Starbucks' noxious brew is worth looking into!

I think you're right; I became acclimatized to instant. However, sometimes I go to local coffee shops that make espresso or cappucinos and I prefer those to my instant. Maybe it's just the home espresso machines I dislike.

I honestly prefer instant coffee to most other kinds of coffee. I bought a Nespresso machine with high hopes, and it's terrible. Way too bitter for me.

But you have to use the right instant coffee. This stuff is head and shoulders above any other instant coffee and better than most other types of coffee.

I'm not a musician, but I did a few comedy tracks on an ensemble album. My tracks are available on Spotify, and have also been played on Sirius XM.

I've received north of $1000 in royalties from Sirius XM.

I've yet to break the $5 minimum withdrawal amount from streaming services (including Spotify) for more plays than I've had on Sirius XM.

So yes, Spotify and the other streaming services are rapaciously exploitative and deserve to be boycotted. Go on, boycott them... not gonna cost me very much!

Yes, of course. We all know that AI BS is snake-oil and there's no plausible profitable business model for generative AI... so of course they have to fall back on the shitty-but-proven advertising model.