It's always very surprising to me, that when companies insist their workers can be replaced with AI - it never seems to be senior management roles they replace. Why can't the CEO be replaced by a chat bot? After all, CEOs don't do much but churn out bland boilerplate corporate text, they never deviate from the mean or do anything particularly surprising, they just copy what every other silicon valley CEO is doing that month - the human role seems completely redundant when you could so easily ask a LLM to do the job.

The fun part of this, is this is written as if OpenAI's "400 million" numbers are in any way credible and believable. OpenAI are not very *open* about how they calculate that number, how they determine unique vs repeat uses, API calls verses an actual human directly using ChatGPT.

I hate to break it to them, but as someone who manages research assistants with PhDs, I can tell you research assistants with PhDs cost significantly less to hire than $20,000 a month.

Also, laughing at $4 billion in annual "revenue" rather than profits from OpenAI. They spent $9 billion to get that $4 billion in revenue. Absolutely setting fire to cash, which isn't surprising since they aren't going to get any customers who want to pay 4x the asking price for research assistants.

Is there a reason the utterances of scammers like Sam Altman deserve all this attention? The cycle is well established; OpenAI is bleeding money, their products are unprofitable and not meeting expectations, roll Sam out to make more bizarre, unfounded claims, media reports on it, rinse, repeat.

A professional is someone who works the damn hours they are *paid to work*. Someone who works for free outside those hours isn't a professional, they're a schmuck.

I feel this was probably a legitimate thing to worry about 10 years ago, but batteries and phones have improved across the board so much that it feels kind of pointless to care this much. I've always just...plugged my phones in whenever they were low, not worrying about if it's a fast charger, or if it's already at 90%, or anything else, and it's been fine! My current phone, a cheap Motorola that I've just plugged into fast charging and relied on the default settings to manage that, has been going strong for 2 years now and I haven't noticed any battery degradation worth worrying about, certainly nothing physical like swelling. The charging port is going to break or the screen crack before the battery causes me any problems. Life's too short to get paranoid about charging your phone above 85% and whether changing that to 80% is better or worse...

The average life expectancy for men is only a year or two less than for women. Many couples die within a year of each other, mainly because the second to die misses their spouse. The reason male expectancy is less is that men, especially young men, are more likely to die by accident, by homicide, or by war. Married men live about as long as married women.

Intuit sells tax preparation, bookkeeping, and accounting software to individuals, small businesses, and other organizations. I used Quicken to manage my checking account back in the day, and later used Quickbooks for bookkeeping when I was the head cook and bottle washer of my computer store. I'm now retired into a simpler life and find a spreadsheet to be adequate. Many churches, clubs, and charities use Quickbooks.

MailChimp is a mailing list handler used by a lot of churches, charities, clubs, etc, for newsletters and the like. Small businesses use it for advertising.

Intuit and MailChimp serve the same client base, and have similar needs with regards to customer support, advertising, legal services, etc. A merger makes a lot of sense.

No, it is entirely due to the death of the American Republican Party. The clear result of the release of all that hot air.

When a reporter once asked Ghandi what he thought about western civilization, he answered "I think it would be a good idea."

I claim a certain level of expertise in such matters. :-)

It is not that far from Pennsylvania to the Capitol and what with Covid-19, for some a bit of rioting would have seemed like a fun way to spend a day. Not that a lower level of commitment to the cause excuses any insurrectionist. Those who overtly break the law, and those whose physical presence supports the law breakers, are guilty of crimes. Some were insurrectionists; others were rioters. The courts can sort that out. Stupidity, especially documented stupid acts like bragging on line, is not an excuse.

The use of facial recognition software on the insurrectionists was NOT a case of mass surveillance. It was a properly targeted use. The mob at the Capitol was composed of self-selected individuals who were either committed to insurrection activities or were actively supporting the insurrection. They are all proper suspects in the crime. It is now up to the courts to separate the sheep from the goats and mete out appropriate justice.

Smooshing: It is probably perfectly cromulent, however as far as I know the slithy toves have yet to issue their opinion about that. We probably won't hear from them before brillig.

VW has already captured a huge mind-share with the electric microbus. It won't be on the market for a couple of years but it is already the new darling of middle class USA suburbia.

But the real deal that will propel VW to new heights has not yet been announced, but is clearly inevitable: the Lightning Bug.