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Comment Efficiency is great but... (Score 1) 209

This is a great idea but there are areas like where I am in southern California that electricity is simply too expensive to make this viable. In the summer when it's extremely hot our combined utility bill runs over $800, and this is for a small house with pretty decent insulation. We get a break in winter when we can heat with gas which is cheap here. If heat pumps are mandated, then there needs to be massive amounts of work done to make electricity cheaper at the same time. Otherwise it's simply not economically viable in some areas.

Comment Re: Clearly this person lives in a different unive (Score 2, Insightful) 60

So if you ask it to turn off the lights in another room, or adjust the thermostat that you're not directly looking at, or lock the front door when you're in bed, you can see that it did what you asked?

Also I realize your comment about not being disabled is a dig about being lazy, but it also comes off as extremely ableist. I have several friends with different degrees of physical disability who use IoT lights and such in their house and for them it's an absolute godsend.

Comment Clearly this person lives in a different universe (Score 3, Insightful) 60

...where every computer understands your voice command perfectly every time, there are never network problems, and nothing ever requires confirmation.

Sorry but the rest of us don't live in that universe. There are very good reasons computers give confirmations when we ask them to do something, and even more so when it's not in the same room as us. If their Google speaker is yelling at them at night, maybe they should just learn to turn it the fuck down? Or make the volume setting part of the night routine? ðY

Comment Re:SwiftKey still exists?? (Score 2) 18

For me it just kept getting buggier and buggier, and the word suggestions and private dictionary would keep being reset every time I changed phones. I got tired of it sucking and moved. And bonus that GBoard actually has most medical and technical words in it, though some of those may not show up in swipe typing by default until you use them once.

Comment SwiftKey still exists?? (Score 2) 18

I remember when they bought SwiftKey, but shortly after that it just languished and seemed to be abandoned. It became more and more buggy and felt like abandonware that MS had acquired just to occupy the market space and then left to die. I ended up switching to GBoard and have had a MUCH better experience since then, and it's frequently updated as well. But of course now that there's an opportunity to occupy a market segment again with *New Shiny* (tm) they can dust it off and tack on some glorified autocomplete garbage so they can ride the publicity wave. :rolleyes:

Comment One factor that's missing: Epic (Score 1) 238

As much as I want to shill for my home city of Madison (which is legit an awesome and super cool place to live), from a local perspective what's going on here becomes instantly obvious: Epic Systems. They're the 800lb gorilla of modern electronic medical records vendors, and they're located just outside of Madison in Verona. Epic is well known for hiring *TONS* of people from overseas on H1B visas. Now that visas have been extremely restricted and immigration is essentially a no-go, they've been looking to hire and move native US talent instead. And Epic is also known to have a *HUGE* amount of worker churn due to the extreme pace they push people to. Between that and the fact that they're large enough that by themselves they can make a significant impact on the city's tech worker numbers all on their own.

Comment Re:Never even bothered (Score 1) 208

Same. I had a degenerative cornea disorder and had to have cornea transplants in both eyes. As a result of that, I don't have functional depth perception, or at least not the kind that will work for 3D movies. I'm fine with the 2D ones until they come out with those 3D holograms you were talking about.

Comment OMG they took down GrummelNet!? (Score 1) 45

Now where am I going to get my hyperdestructive upgradeable weaponry!? There are no Gadgetron offices in this galaxy and I really don't want to be stuck using MegaCorp's crap for self defense and taking down supervillains. Their household products are more dangerous than their pathetic weaponry! What am I supposed to protect myself with, a used B20 Crotchitizer?

Comment Re:I probably shouldn't have voted. (Score 1) 374

I work in IT, have for a long time. Employers don't intentionally set out to burn people out, but because IT is a cost center rather than a profit center you get more and more squeezed to do more with less and constantly whittled away at that that's the end result.

Also, most people are terrified to quit not because they fear being fired due to looking around but they are fearful that they won't be able to find other work.

That was the point I was trying to make, but my lovely upper midwestern linguistic style causes me to sometimes only imply conclusions rather than stating them directly. Also your point is very confusing - I THINK you meant "terrified to look for a new job" rather than "terrified to quit" else you would be implying that quitting to find a new job and getting fired and having to find a new job are somehow inequal in real-world terms.

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