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.

Doesn't the Nissan Leaf get about 60 miles?

I was looking at a cheap used one that was down to 45 miles, I think.

30 miles gets me to town and back so it would only last a few years at that rate.

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.

This has been tired before, and ended no where ...

Anyone remember Openmoko and the hype around it in the Open Source community?

There were also Nokia's Maemo (before Nokia abandoned it and the underlying hand sets after that CEO took over) then the Linux Foundation's MeeGo.

I hope this effort succeeds though despite the odds.

They're talking about LineageOS. Think Graphene but it doesn't just run on Google hardware. Over a hundred devices and they just added mainline kernel and qemu support so it potentially runs on thousands of devices.

Sadly with less hardening. I wish Lineage would take some Graphene patches. The crazy thing is Lineage descended from Cyanogenmod which had many of these patches!

Here is a non-paywalled article that even has a summary at the top:

NY judge sanctions lawyer for fake AI citations.

The first computer I programmed on had 4K RAM - the TRS-80.
The first computer I used on a job had 256K RAM the PDP-11/44.
The first computer I paid for myself has 128K, and a 400K floppy - the OG Macintosh.

On the latter, you could fit the entire OS (less some fonts and desk accessories), MacWrite and MacPaint on one floppy.

We got lots of useful $#!+ done on those computers. It's not just errors, it's lazy.

If I want an app to draw over other apps (e.g. accessibility apps) I need to grant that permission (AOSP distro). How do they bypass that?

> I'd like to know how much blame each of these companies deserves

For paying a ransom?