They are useful. My teams are seeing modest productivity gains by self reporting, but I’m going to give it another six months to see if it shows up in actual metrics.

I’m enthusiastic about AI but I remain skeptical. I don’t mean to always be contrarian but I’m dead in the middle and everyone who says they are great or terrible I tend to offer my experiences in the other direction.

They are not to be trusted to handle customers directly, but they can assist experts when they have to step out of their expertise. For example I can’t write Python, but I’ve been coding for 30 years. I can certainly write some good directions on what needs to be done and I can review code and correct it. So AI has let me write a bunch of complex Python scripts to automate minor parts of my job to let me focus on the hard parts.

For example I can execute GDPR delete requests in a few moments where doing it by hand with Hoppscotch or Postman probably takes me 5-10 minutes. We have a multiple systems and sometimes I have to delete multiple profiles for a given request.

It’s great at rubber ducking as long as you think critically about its proposed solutions. It’s fine at code review before sending it to an actual person for review. It flags non-issues but it also flags a few actionable fixes.

The important thing though is to never trust it when it comes to anything you don’t know about. It’s right a fair amount of the time, depending on what you ask, but it’s wrong enough that you should never, ever rely on it being right about something. The moment you put your life in its hands, it’ll kill you with nothing to say to the survivors but, “Your right about that. Sorry, that was my mistake.” And it isn’t even sincere. Because it can’t be. Because it doesn’t think or feel anything.

Check this guy out who doesn’t get it. Someone let him know because I sure can’t won’t.

When I was contracted by the military we weren’t allowed to use hosted foss fonts because they were considered a vector for attack if the font server were compromised. A font you host yourself is safe in that respect. One might suppose a commercial entity would be safer, but I wouldn’t say that is necessarily so.

I probably get 6-7 on average. Up to 10 or so on weekends. Rarely as little as 3-4.

I’m tech lead for two off-shore teams who work 3-11AM my time, plus lots of daytime meetings and planning. So when I wake up in the middle of the night as I often do, I check to see if there are any issues that need my attention. And then I go back to sleep or sometimes I can’t. Today I probably fell asleep around 10. Woke up at 4 and had to send a message and await a response. Got on here while I wait. Got the issue resolved. But now I’m up because in a few hours I fly to vacation.

Exactly.

Claude:

Hey, you didn’t have to make it personal…

I 100% agree with this take, but I think we need to be realistic about the impact of the reduction in status and lifestyle for Americans. I think when there is a rapid decline, people are going to become angry and reactionary and looking for someone to blame.

I think we will be more vulnerable to right wing take over, especially if it coincides with a Democrat administration. The situation might limit the global impact with US powers reduced, but internally it could become a real hellhole.

The friends we made was also Claude, though.

Wouldn’t that imply that political differences from the president are criminal? Some folks really are all in on king Trump.

I used to have a lot of exposure to different lifestyles due to being into BDSM and heavily involved in a trans-friendly group. One of my best friends fully transitioned with I think gave me a lot of insight.

I want to say first that I fully support the rights of all people to live their truth as they see it. I respect and value people regardless of what they have in their pants or who they choose to share that with.

I’m attracted to femme features and were I to date someone they would have to pass pretty well. I’m not viscerally disgusted by a penis, and I guess I’d be willing to experiment, but in the abstract I’m not attracted to them, I don’t get pleasure from anal play, and I don’t really like putting my dick in butts. Not totally opposed but it’s rare I’m in the mood for that — I have to be feeling very “top-y.”

So just don’t know that there is a lot of dating potential there. However I could use more friends and if someone wanted to hang out and talk nerdy shit over drinks in a romantic setting and call it a date, I’m in.

I will add that I’m married and while we are essentially monogamous, we aren’t strictly so and hypothetically if the right person came along that fit as a play partner or throuple, I wouldn’t care about gender or gender expression at all. As long as there is someone involved in an encounter who makes my junk tingle, it’s all good.

I’m genX and have owned a home almost continuously since I was 23 or 24. In most cases I don’t know whether friends own or rent their homes but afaik they almost all own. My sister doesn’t, but she is disabled.

My oldest (~30) kids both own homes. One with her husband and she was a restaurant general manager when she bought and switched to bank manager to have a kid for better hours and benefits. My son is just a single guy who has been a nurse for a handful of years, and he just bought about a year or so ago.

This is in Midwest USA. When I lived near D.C. I think renting was more common.

It will 100% happen if we have fair elections, but that’s the rub. Trump has terrible numbers. The economy is garbage. Everything is garbage. We elected a dictator, and he might be too big of a buffoon to strangle our democracy, but there’s a chance that it’s already too late and we failed to stop him when it was possible without violence.

I’m curious to see where things go with the cop. He has a complicated relationship with his son, and with the Empire. Both of those are going to lead to conflicts for him. Sometimes I find the ordinary folks in Star Wars to be some of the most interesting. I have a feeling Rylee are Devon are going to meet at some point, as they both have issues with their father figures.

That is, unfortunately incorrect. They write it up and their pet legislators introduce it. Yes it has to get voted on and there is more to it, but the actual verbiage? That is all too often written by lobbyists.

As a former soldier, “warfighter” is the stupidest fucking word I’ve heard in my life. It makes me think the speaker is a profound idiot every time I hear it. This might be the first time I’ve read the word — and it is just as stupid as ever.

Richard Ayoade has a very distinct voice for Two Boots, and it’s slightly distracting but I don’t hate it, I just expect him to be doing IT support. Dennis Haysbert is recognizable as well, but he’s well suited to playing a Master Jedi. Sam Witwer continues to be great as Maul.

For a character that was originally conceived as so one-dimensional, Maul really has become one of the more intriguing dark Jedi. He clearly embraces being a bad guy, but he seems to have a rather nuanced take on morality.

So far, it seems pretty interesting. A simple tale of revenge seems to be just the backdrop of a richer story, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there is more to it. I’m looking forward to seeing his relationship with Devon.

Last thing I saw was either Wicked or Hamilton. I’m not sure which. But if you want to count it, I saw Harry Potter Prisoner of Azkaban with a live orchestra instead of the soundtrack. It was… magical.

I didn’t know it was out. I’ll have to come back after I watch it tonight. This is so I don’t forget.

Why change affiliation? They would probably hold more power as Democrats, I would think. But yes winning the primary of a major party is how third parties get elected.

It looks slow, but certainly not dead. A handful of posts a week isn’t bad.