Thanks, I’m guessing the benefit of subscribing is to create that persistent relationship. The free version from MS that I’m using times out after a while. I definitely get the problem of it making up experience for me when it encounters something in a job description that isn’t referenced anywhere in my info. Honestly, I’d probably get more interviews if I just let it make up stuff, but I’m guessing that might become a problem for me later. :)

I interviewed for a job recently and asked why the position was vacant. They said the previous person died. I didn’t have the courage to ask if the death was work-related though.

Can you share a bit about how you used it? I’ve used Copilot a bit to try the same thing, but it makes so many errors that I spend too much time editing and fixing them. Also, after running quite a few cover letters, I found that the text was repetitive and unnatural in a way that made it really obvious that it was an LLM writing the letter and not a person.

I’m definitely in agreement now, it just took me a bit longer to get over the shift in social norms.

Great points on the horrible quality of sound in these places. I was referring more to the selection of music, but playing it at low quality certainly makes it worse. My kids joke that the grocery store is where old pop songs go to die.

I used to judge people for going about their daily lives with headphones on (like shopping) as being antisocial. In the last few years, I’ve come to realize they were just quicker to realize how annoying our society is and I’m increasingly likely to join them.

Recently I went to a mall and visited all the department stores. One of them had a guy playing a piano live and my first thought was “how quaint”. Then, as I sat and waited for my wife to try things on it struck me that I wasn’t hearing horrible music played over speakers - the piano was really nice. Why can’t places go back to playing relaxing music like that (even recorded)?

Wish listed! Also bought Be a Rock, I look forward to being a rock later tonight, it sounds fantastic!

I have the opposite problem. I have a dead PS3 and a bunch of games that I can’t play anymore because Sony refuses to offer backwards compatibility. I would love to be able to play those games on my PS4 or PC, but so far I haven’t been able to get an emulator working for that.

How is Railroad Tycoon not included in the sale? Luckily, I already have Railroad Tycoon 2, so I’m good on that one. I might pick up Station to Station though.

But were there bread knives before bread? I’m not going to slice my bread with a butcher’s knife or a cleaver, that’s barbaric!

I’ve been curious about this too, but haven’t been able to find anything that puts a real price (including future profit margin) on GenAI. For example, having a chat conversation with a customer service agent in India might cost about $2-3. Is a GenAI bot truly cheaper than that once you factor in the energy & water costs, hardware, training, profits, etc.? It might be, but I’m skeptical.

This is probably a good thing. I packed on a ton of weight when I was in college because fast food was really cheap. Things like dollar menu sandwiches, 5 for $5 at Arbys, $0.29 hamburgers on Sundays at McD, etc. I remember strategically buying bags full of fast food and putting them in the freezer because I couldn’t make food that cheap. Reheated from the freezer tasted HORRIBLE, but it was cheap and I was broke. At these prices I would have made better decisions for my health.

I’ve been applying similar thinking to my job search. When I see AI listed in a job description, I immediately put the company into one of 3 categories:

1. It is an AI company that may go out of business suddenly within the next few years leaving me unemployed and possibly without any severance.
2. Management has drank the Kool-Aid and is hoping AI will drive their profit growth, which makes me question management competence. This also has a high likelihood of future job loss, but at least they might pay severance.
3. The buzzword was tossed in to make the company look good to investors, but it is not highly relevant to their business. These companies get a partial pass for me.

A company in the first two categories would need to pay a lot to entice me and I would not value their equity offering. The third category is understandable, especially if the success of AI would threaten their business.

The only use case I can see for Access is when you absolutely must have a database and your company will not provide you a real database solution. I have experience with both, but haven’t touched Access in years (and hope to never do so again). To be fair, I also regularly use Excel for things that I should probably be using Word for because it is easier to get formatting right in Excel.