If you don’t mind sharing, I would love to hear your memories of that.

It was the boombox outside her window that got her, wasn’t it? /s

The ones that really get me are the way they show execs at companies. The “look, this character is so bad ass at being an exec!”. They always come off as so unrealistic and cringy.

I’ve swam in that ocean, and that’s not how that shit works. Engineering too. In reality, it’s always a team of engineers that get something done… It is NEVER some rich smart guy inventing stuff on his or her own in their super fancy workshop.

I feel like you don’t actually remember what web 1.0 was like. Or even bbs’s. They… kind of sucked. I mean they were great for the time, but compared to the internet of today, pathetic.

Shit, I’m sorry to hear that. Homeless at 18 is pretty brutal. I hope you find your people or a partner that makes everything worthwhile. Life can be good and amazing, but IMHO it’s not something to do alone.

If you say so. I can’t say I’ve ever run across one accidentally though.

That’s another way to say metric. Fuck the English system. Especially when cooking.

Wow… Maybe for you, but it was everything and more for me. Fuck childhood. Give me freedom, independence, and not having to follow the rules of my parents.

No curfew, no bedtime… You can figure out what you want and do it. Living with a girlfriend. Making and spending money. Driving your own car. I get that maybe adulthood may not be for everyone, but I’ll take it any day over childhood!

I would make the written English language 100% phonetic.

I would make SI mandatory in the US.

I would make one night a week a “have dinner with the neighbors” day.

Edit: I would make bidet toilets mandatory. Dry toilets would be phased out like cars without back-up cameras or asbestos insulation.

This is the first comment in the thread that I 100% agree with. (I can’t believe how many of the other ones I don’t.)

About 15 years ago I was giving a presentation at a technical conference. This was me giving a presentation in front of a room full of about 50 other engineers. At this point in my career this was still pretty new to me, so I was nervous. It was getting time for my presentation and I needed to do a last minute nervous pee before I did my presentation.

I went to the bathroom, peed in a urinal, and then went to wash my hands. I pushed down the bathroom faucet and it exploded sending up a geyser of water about air a foot or two into the air. Now had I really been on a TV show, my pants would have been soaked in the crotch area, but luckily in real life I stepped back and didn’t get wet. However, this was the perfect setup for a young nervous engineer giving a technical presentation to be thoroughly embarrassed. Luckily I’m either not on a TV show, or I’m not the main character.

The script doesn’t go away when you replace a helpdesk operator with ChatGPT. You just get a script-reading interface without empathy and a severally hindered ability to process novel issues outside it’s protocol.

The humans you speak to could do exactly what you’re asking for, if the business did not handcuff them to a script.

But they do handcuff them to a script… at least 1st and 2nd level tech support. That’s the point. It’s so fucking awful. It’s a barrier to keep you from the more highly paid tech support people who may actually be able to answer your questions. First you have to wait on hold to make sure you think it’s worth wasting their time on your annoying problem, THEN it’s a maze you have to navigate, and then whoops you just got hung up on… so sorry, start all over! LLMs are (can be) so much better at this!

I understand their limitations, but you’re overselling the negative. They’re fucking awesome for what they can do, but they have drawbacks that you must be aware of. Just as it’s lame to be an AI fanboi, it’s equally lame to be an AI luddite.

That’s 99% of what I’m looking for. If I’m figuring something out by myself, I’m not looking it up on the internet.

I’m an engineer and I’ve found LLMs great for helping me understand an issue. When you read something online, you have to translate from what the author is saying into your thinking and I’ve found LLMs are much better at re-framing information to match my inner dialog. I often find them much more useful than google searches in trying to find information.

I already use LLMs to problem solve issues that I’m having and they’re typically better than me punching questions into Google. I admit that I’ve once had an llm hallucinate while it was trying to solve a problem for me, but the vast majority of the time it has been quite helpful. That’s been my experience at least. YMMV.

If you think LLMs suck, I’m guessing you haven’t actually used telephone tech support in the past 10 years. That’s a version of hell I wish on very few people.

Spent $800k on a house remodel. We gutted it and rebuilt it.

I did all the plans myself, I got them approved by the city, I made all the interior design decisions (my wife had veto power but left 90% of it all to me). In theory, in my area, the house has gone up in value by equal to or more than what we spent… but realistically I overspent. The amount I pay for loans is enough to make my very hefty salary seem low, but I don’t regret spending the money (It didn’t help that interest rates went up right before we pulled a $500k loan!). The house is awesome and it’s MY/OUR house since I did the design myself and I worked with the contractors throughout the entire process. I know every trade off we made and I can tell you why we made every decision. Doing this was a bucket-list item… but yeah… I overspent.

I am totally looking forward to AI customer support. The current model of a person reading a scripted response is painful and fucking awful and only rarely leads to a good resolution. I would LOVE an AI support where I could just describe the problem and it gives me answers and it only asks relevant follow up questions. I can’t wait.

The opposite is also true. Just relax and like who you like. Sexuality is a spectrum. Just don’t worry about it and didn’t stress about who you’re attracted to.

The person might have thought chocolate was the color not the food.

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