I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone remotely fitting that description wearing a pair of these…

Oakley Radar EV path in ‘retina burn’ colorway.

You’d think that would be eye opening and somewhat concerning to folks. But I’ve found what tends to happen is ‘record fatigue’.

We’ve had ‘record high’ temperatures here in the Netherlands frequently the past few years. Meaning, the news will report ‘it’s the hottest july 1st since the start of the measurements’ and that ‘the previously hottest july 1st was in 2017’

Basically, it’s telling you two things:

• it’s a record high temperature
• the time between these records is decreasing.

Which obviously means things are getting worse. But most people just shrug and go ‘Gee, another record high temperature, how boring, those happen so often’.

Same thing with other types of problematic weather. At least stuff like record rainfall or flooding is hard to ignore.

Well not everyone, obviously. But that’s why it’s voluntary.

I’ve certainly done stuff that’s outside of the scope of my personal job. Our company owner actually scrubs the toilets in our building and that guy owns an actual yacht 🤷‍♂️

Well if it’s voluntary and the staff gets paid their usual wage - one would assume a higher one than the warehouse folks get - I don’t really see the problem. It doesn’t make sense to try and hire folks for just a few days of peak workload. Not if you can manage it by shifting some folks around. Heck, I’m sure some will appreciate the change of scenery.

It’s pretty ball-sweatingly hot here in the Netherlands as well. Expecting 35c tomorrow and 36-38 on Wednesday.

Problem is, few houses and buildings are equipped to deal with heat like that. Everything’s well insulated, but built more for cold winters rather than hot summers. Every year, more people get air conditioning. Because you need to. It’s that or be miserable for two weeks straight. Anything above 20 makes me want to hit people.

For this comment, I want to be absolutely clear that I do not give a shit about AI, and that it in no way factored into my decision to buy this iPhone 16 Pro Max.

With that disclaimer out of the way:

I very much look forward to a class action lawsuit. Apple advertised specific features as coming ‘very soon’ and gave short timeframes when asked directly. And they basically did not deliver on those advertising promises. Basically, I think there’s a good case to be made here that Apple knowingly engaged in false advertising in order to sell a phone that otherwise would not have sold as well. Those promised AI features WERE a deciding factor for a lot of people to upgrade to an iPhone 16.

So, I’ll be looking forward to some form of compensation. It’s the principle of it.

We’ll also welcome our Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica brethren, obviously :D

Only a fool or a 12 year old would think otherwise. Back in the late ‘90’s, the web had a great sense of community. On forums, IRC, places like Cybertown, etc. You had smaller communities where you could reasonably know most users. They had a human scale; like a friendly neighbourhood.

Modern social media is definitely terrible. It happened because we were too welcoming. Back in those days, the web was a nerd domain. We all shared the same sort of interests and optimism for the future of the web. You had to BE a nerd to get online. To WANT to be online.

But now that it’s too easy for everyone to get on, the idiots have taken over. We really should kick everyone off the web who can’t name at least three characters from either Star Wars or Star Trek.

I’ve seen interviews with him where he mentioned: ‘I was reading a synopsis of a story that sounded really interesting’ only to discover that it was about a book that he had written. And apparently he has no memory of writing Cujo.

There’s ‘doing coke’ and ‘doing coke so much I forgot I wrote a fucking best selling novel’.

I’ll check out Brave, it’s been mentioned a few times.

I don’t mind companies making a dime, but now it’s really devolved in bad results that are profit-driven.

What’s the best alternative, in your opinion? I’ve tried Bing and DuckDuckGo, but both showed me worse results for my particular searches.

I just want classic Google Search back, before everything got turned to shit. But I fear that doesn’t really exist since there’s such an economic incentive behind how search engines rank and show results.

That fucking AI thing absolutely sucks for anything factual. I’m a journalist and noticed that it gleefully listed all sorts of factual errors in that AI summary. Stuff that you can see correctly on the original pages, but it somehow manages to misinterpret everything and shows incorrect information.

And knowing how lazy people are these days, most will happily accept Google’s incorrect information as fact. It’s making me very, very nervous for the future.

And one funny addendum to that story is that someone COULD reasonably think that Pepsi had an actual Harrier to give away. After all, Pepsi once owned an actual navy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PepsiCo

In 1989, amidst declining vodka sales, PepsiCo bartered for 2 new Soviet oil tankers, 17 decommissioned submarines (for $150,000 each), a frigate, a cruiser and a destroyer, which they could in turn sell for non-Soviet currency. The oil tankers were leased out through a Norwegian company, while the other ships were immediately sold for scrap.

The Harrier commercial aired in 1996. The Harrier jet was introduced in 1978. It wasn’t too unreasonable to think that an 18 year old jet aircraft would be decommissioned and sold, especially after Soviet tensions eased. And if ‘they’ let Pepsi own actual submarines and a destroyer, doesn’t that seem more far fetched than owning a single old jet aircraft?

Guy should’ve gotten his Harrier.

Ugh, I’m sure to hate that.

Google recently put Gemini in gmail, which lets you one-click summarise an e-mail.

Most e-mails I get and send aren’t nearly long enough for them to need a summary. And if I send a long e-mail, it’s for a good fucking reason: it contains essential information.

I should probably build in some check - like a really random sentence to confuse an LLM - to make sure the recipient actually reads it.

Yeah, we’ve noticed. Not that Europe is far behind I fear.

Literacy is definitely declining; people just don’t have the attention spans they used to. Between Twitter, TikTok and other brain rot, reading a book or simply a longer text just isn’t something a lot of people do.

If you don’t hate AI, you’re not informed enough.

It has the potential to disrupt pretty much everything in a negative way. Especially when regulations always lag behind. AI will be abused by corporations in the worst way possible, while also being bad for the planet.

And the people who are most excited about it, tend to be the biggest shitheads. Basically, no informed person should want AI anywhere near them unless they directly control it.

Yup. I’m very opposed to whaling - they’re magnificent creatures - but I’m not giving up my hamburger any time soon.

Honestly, that’s one of the dumbest sayings ever. It’s simply not true.

Money buys every item you need on your hierarchy of needs: food, shelter, safety, it increases your chances at a relationship, helps you realise your goals, etc. etc. And the more money you have, the better your needs will be met. Nicer house, better neighbourhood, healthier foods, more leisure time…

And that’s not even talking about the actual fun things it buys: LEGO sets, jet skis, a Ferrari, a gold Rolex. They might be material, but I’ve never seen someone depressed on a jet ski.

God I miss the pre-9/11 US, when the worst thing happening was bad jokes on SNL about Bill Clinton and cigars.

Uh, do the kids these days really not know about the post-9/11 Patriot Act?