Part of the issue will be convincing the decision makers. They may not want to document a process for deviation x because it’s easier to pretend it doesn’t occur, and you don’t need to record specific metrics if it’s a generic “manual fix by CS” issue. It’s easier for them to give a support team employee (or manager) override on everything just in case.

To your point, in theory it should be much easier to dump that ad-hoc solution into an AI knowledge base than draw up requirements and budget to fix the application. Maybe the real thing I should be concerned with is suits using that as a solution rather than ever fixing their broken products.

I think there’s good potential where the caller needs information.

But I am skeptical for problem-solving, especially where it requires process deviations. Like last week, I had an issue where a service I signed up for inexplicably set the start date incorrectly. It seems the application does not allow the user to change start dates themselves within a certain window. So, I went to support, and wasted my time with the AI bot until it would pass me off to a human. The human solved the problem in five seconds because they’re allowed to manually change it on their end and just did that.

Clearly the people who designed the software and the process did not foresee this issue, but someone understood their own limitations enough to give support personnel access to perform manual updates. I worry companies will not want to give AI agents the same capabilities, fearing users can talk their AI agent into giving them free service or something.

Viruses and prions fall under the umbrella of germs/pathogens. They did not disprove germ theory. They still align with the idea that pathogens cause diseases. That’s still true.

What is interesting is how non-vocal many of these “concerned citizens” are when the criminal justice system does the same thing to normal people. It is why I have a difficult time believing the concern is really about justice and due process in many cases.

He is from the Cincinnati area, which borders Kentucky, and he spent some of his youth in Kentucky. Not a proper southerner, but from the gradient where North becomes South.

I saw a local restaurant with its branding on it the the other day. Well, there’s one restaurant I never need to try.

Yep. He wasn’t really reviewing the nuts and bolts, just the drive experience. I didn’t get the impression he got a ton of time with it and only spent an afternoon puttering around. It felt below his standard honestly for thoroughness.

The fragmenting of teams needs more attention. My group uses a follow the sun model that has our team split up across at least seven countries, plus a decent chunk are always contracted through a vendor. Add in remote workers, and it’s very difficult to see an effective way to organize.

It’s definitely become more of a thing in the past 10-15 years. When I was a kid, outside of ice cream there was just Del’s. The hot wiener trucks did not come our way I guess… or they didn’t want to compete with the brick and mortar ny systems.

I’m thrilled with the food culture we have now though. We punch way above our weight when it comes to food.

If you showed me this headline 10 years ago, I’d have guessed it was a mad lib. This timeline is crazy in a bad way.

“Malakas” should work.

Developing standards, best practices, conventions, etc. One of the most valuable people on my team wrote some incredible quality automations a few years ago, and the only coding he does at this point is updates to them when necessary. By volume, he’s easily bottom 5% this year, but we’d be much worse off without his expertise/advise and the fact he advocates for the team.

This is classic shit management metrics. It would take some time for the rot to set in after using a cudgel approach to a team, and by the time it did, the assholes responsible would have fucked off elsewhere with their huge bonuses.

Also look. If many Americans saw a tomato slice on their burger that was not perfectly round but instead very irregular with lots of divots and varying shades of red, orange, and yellow, they’d bring it to the counter and say they got a rotten tomato.

A local supermarket some years ago put heirloom tomatoes right next to regular tomatoes for basically the same price one summer. They stopped selling heirloom tomatoes after that year because hardly anyone bought them. I did. They were incredible.

It’s crazy. He was already tied for sixth most SC justices appointed (with seven other presidents). If Alito and Thomas retire and he replaces them, he’ll only be behind Washington, FDR, and Taft. His numbers for other judicial appointments were already very high as well.

People really do not appreciate how long we’ll be feeling the consequences of this if we survive this term and move on to someone sane.

The solutions here don’t seem to really be solutions in my opinion, especially the third one. It’s like if the problem a patent solves was “being able to individually package sandwiches on a conveyor belt” and the solution was “have a machine that recognizes where one sandwich ends and another begins so it can stop and start packaging appropriately.” Like, no kidding, but how?

Indeed. I think it’s why cults of personality are so dangerous. You don’t need to convince that many people if you can get a large enough, dedicated number to consistently do what the leader says and push others around.

I’m not sure that love is the word for Bernie, but I was certainly much more enthusiastic about him. Some people did get weird about it which made me uncomfortable, though. The policy should always come before the politician.

I think the problem is that plenty of people might like Harris, but not so much that turnout for her matched Biden. The people who like Trump love him, and they turned out in the same numbers as 2020 basically. He didn’t need to meaningfully grow his base if people weren’t motivated to show up for his opponent.

It’s definitely a demonstration that having the most palatable candidate doesn’t matter. It might if voting were compulsory, but it isn’t.

The red mirage/blue shift will probably be much smaller than prior elections, since it seems Trump supporters are using early or mail in voting more than before. The splits by party for these methods are smaller so far this year.

It takes a lot of the magic out of it. I’m sure a bit of this is rose-colored glasses, but it was a really neat experience as a kid. The entire neighborhood was out in the streets, people got to know their neighbors, and you felt like you were part of something. These days​, it feels spooky due to how empty it is besides cars.

Yeah, in my area trunk or treat is the main reason for no trick or treaters these days. It’s a very urban area, so getting a lot of candy on foot would be easy, but walking around a parking lot is way quicker. It seems to be what most parents prefer also, so I think it’s here to stay.