Zink

I need you to understand that I've tried AI for ONE task recently, just a few weeks ago to see how it did, and your comment so perfectly encapsulates my experience.

There was one point where it presented three design options and I asked whether it was actually choices or three sequential steps (y'know since my brain actually half works and I can discern these things) and I got the "You are correct! 😄" response almost to the letter.

So many comments about the power settings thing, but this isn't about working effectively and efficiently.

You can take AI out of this article and it would be just as sad, but it wouldn't get the clicks.

This article is either helping push, or documenting the push, that if YOU are a higher tier of worker bee that wants to prove your superior worth to your bound legal entity, AND you want to virtue signal having your head on straight to all the lazy selfish people around you actually being present in the moment, then YOU need ShinyTechBroProduct!

Ohhh all the cool parents are into ShinyTechBroProduct! All the other lame asses who PaId AtTeNtiOn To tHeiR KiDs aren't going to be the next Elon Jobs now are they!

intergenerational prosperity

If I know my rich sociopath talk, this means "generations of MY descendants being old money rich and saluting the giant portrait of ME over their comically large fireplaces."

I have a pretty old lifetime Plex pass that I got on sale.

I'm still 100% a Jellyfin convert. Keeping my Plex server while trying out Jellyfin myself lasted even less time than my Windows partition after I had linux installed.

Some of those are wild to see.

That shit would be forcibly taken from them so fast here in the US, thanks to eminent domain and the worship of corporations exploiting resources to the fullest. I think they'd get paid, just not y'know, have freedom and property rights and shit.

Better use the self-checkout while you still can!

https://www.gs1us.org/industries-and-insights/by-topic/sunrise-2027

Pfft. I'm in my 40s with an established engineering career and a small home that I've owned for 18 years now.

I am also not paying for any streaming services I can avoid, not buying many games, sailing the high seas, and our cars are like 13/14 years old.

Because shit is crazy, especially being in the US. I am keeping my world small and focusing on my family and my community.

Alarming, but not surprising.

The setup that works for me is LibreWolf as primary browser and Firefox ESR if a site doesn't work.

I don't do web development or anything, but I haven't run into anything that hasn't worked recently. Librewolf works for almost everything, but if some stupid login page doesn't like some privacy thing that librewolf is doing, I'll try one more time with some more loose permissions, then it's over to normal firefox.

Oh it was a long time ago, but not so long ago that it's suspicious.

I'm imagining Microsoft taking it all the way and when you buy a Win13 license key, it basically installs a custom theme in KDE Plasma or maybe Cinnamon.

It might be worse for their profits long term than sticking with their locked down bullshit, but it's kind of funny to think that they would first make billions of dollars of sales on their linux distro.

AI will replace workers. AI will replace people who make art and music, and write things.

This part made me think how I've commented recently that AI does the thing it was designed to do, but that the thing it was designed to do is generate something you could believe somebody wrote on the internet.

That doesn't mean the answer is correct, of course. It's often confidently wrong, just like real people online!

But when it comes to artistic expression, there is no clear right or wrong. Music, art, and the written word are some of the most human things we have, but you are absolutely right that they will be replaced. If a marketing director can pay Google a few dollars to generate a hundred concept drawings so they can do "I'll know it when I see it" design, that's a human artist job they won't budget for.

Yep. My disdain for the combination of fascist government where everything is surveillance, and sociopathic corporations and billionaires where everything is a cynical cash grab, overcame me excitement for tech "products" a long time ago. I'm in the US so it's especially bad.

I still have a smart phone that's 4-5 years old, and I do of course use it every day, but I consciously avoid using it every hour. I love when I misplace it in my own house, to then not look for it for hours. The only person who is going to message me anything urgent is my wife and she knows where to find me.

Constant phone addiction is one of those situations where when you remove yourself from it you can more easily see it in others. It's like there's a new form of body language where when you see that slight forward tilt of the head you know they are in the Phone Zone without even seeing the rest of their body.