Land Rovers up and down the land are chuckling condescendingly

Look, I get it, he's a brilliant man, and well on his way to becoming a historical figure as important as Jobs or Gates, but I'm sick and tired of hearing about the latest thing Sam Altman has said or done or is rumored to be planning to do. I would appreciate him just shutting up for a couple of weeks.

I'm surprised they don't mention Inflection's Pi. Isn't it supposed to be as good as GPT4?

> The more competent military leaders, like Lee... FYI, the podcast ["Behind the Bastards"](https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fbehind-the-bastards%2Fid1373812661) is currently doing a 4 part deep dive on "Robert E. Lee: A Lifetime of Failure." I'm only up to the middle of part 3 with him starting the war as commander of Viginian forces (the Confederacy is still being formed) but the general vibe so far is "he is definitely not the genius the Lost Cause makes him out to be, but he's smart enough to pull back Jackson from invading Maryland and provoking the Union because they have no army yet." Worth a listen.

Regarding the apocalyptic mindset, I'd like to propose that if anyone ever makes a public claim of such they are required to read the [Wikipedia list of predicted apocalyptic events](https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FList_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events%3Fwprov%3Dsfla1) and write a 5 page essay about why they're right but all the hundreds of other folks were wrong. I'm sure it wouldn't change a single mind, but it'd generate some hilarious content. Aside: If you have a few minutes, check out the list. It actually comforts me that this is an intrinsic facet of human stupidity and not something new.

It's good that there were no injuries in last night's incident out of Portland. I'm not sure if the timing makes Boeing's request look horrible or hilarious. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn.com%2Fen-us%2Fnews...

> Imagine that every time you pay for a beer you let the bartender rifle through your wallet and see everything you're involved with. We all have our kinks and if I like playing "You're a naughty consumer," that's my business.

I used to keep very detailed spiral notebooks for work and a lined notebook to plan and track personal stuff via a simplified version of Franklin Planning. I still use the hard copy notebook for planning but personal notes go into Evernote now. Since I'm stuck behind a firewall and some horrible IT policies at my work now I use MS OneNote for my job specific stuff (my only option) and explicitly send copies of generically useful technical stuff I want later ("How to do XYZ in Linux...") to Evernote via the email interface. A silver lining to this is that when I leave this job there will be no question about what are my personal notes and what is my employer's - everything goes through the email filter and I've already confirmed its non-proprietary.

I find OneNote to be like most MS products - a bucket of features that feel half done because once it got launched MS felt it gave a "good enough" alternative to stop bleeding to competition and thus back burnered it. I particularly miss Evernote's tags and the ability to easily clip web items in different formats (caveat: perhaps plug ins exist for Chrome/Firefox but our IT policies don't let us use any plug ins). I also like that you can capture/download all your notes into an XML file in case the company disappears (although I've been bad about doing this on a regular basis). I *don't* like the Android app for it as it is very slow and the clipping options are lame - they seem to think I *always* want to copy the HTML on a web page as opposed to just copying a URL. Those minor issues aside, I like Evernote enough to pay the annual fee for it - big praise form a cheap bastard like myself.

Will the city accept these local currencies to pay for a zoning fee or a business license? For the water, electric or trash bill from the municipally owned utility? If not, then it's the muni-gov equivalent of a LARP.

I'm not sure "bumbling incompetence" and "trillion-dollar valuation" fit in the same narrative.

It's people like him and places like this one that welcomed me when I first found my way onto the Internet. They taught me what to value, and how to behave. I will forever be grateful for that, even if I don't come around that often anymore. Cheers, and godspeed.

Your email isn't publicly available, nor is it accessible via your G+ link.
Mine is a gmail account, less the trailing 'ha' in my /. username.

Travel where?

And wow it's been a while since I posted here. I was quite rambunctious a decade and a half ago, wasn't I :-)

Why does Bill Gates have a "foundation" instead of just a foundation?

Uber classifies (and pays) its drivers as independent contractors. California disagrees, but Texas, so far, does not. And you can have any barrier you want -- pay for your uniform, pay for a car no older than X, whatever -- with an indie contractor.

Does your field (which sounds like app development) allow you to charge a premium rate so you can drive down the number of hours worked? Solo shops and microshops in other professional services (like PR/marketing) essentially plan on only 50% billable time, with the remainder going to biz-dev and a little admin.

But for that to work at a decent salary equivalence, your hourly rate (or equivalent if you do fixed-fee work) needs to be $100 an hour or more. Is that reasonable in your field?