I’m completely on board with that, except for the “wish fulfillment”. I don’t know how it got twisted around that you could presume to tell God what to do or that he would - it seems so entirely inconsistent with anything else about religious beliefs

So we have this all powerful and all knowing supreme being , right? And he’s got a plan for the entire universe and all of time, right? But he’ll disrupt all of that to grant you a favor if you wish hard enough? Or you can blame him if something bad happens to you specifically, out of all the universe over all time? What hubris, what ego could make us think we’re in control and can use it for personal gain?

My mom still drinks tea

But then US interference most directly affects US jobs and customers. That’s a much better er situation.

Think of car manufacturers that have done this for decades. They may have a global supply chain, heading mostly back to their home country, but they also have worldwide plants near their customers. Thanks partly to similar incentives and tariffs, my Honda was assembled in, I think, Kentucky, and was as us-manufactured as any us brand, meaning us jobs, us manufacturing, partial us supply chain. The result has been almost entirely good.

We’ve spent the last few decades outsourcing key industries, where US no longer has as much manufacturing and we’re way too dependent on other countries. It took supply chain disruptions from COViD to realize how much of a bad idea that was.

We’re finally trying to recapture some of those key jobs, industries, supply chains, dependencies, starting with chips and renewable energy. THANKS, BIDEN! this is what will make America great again

And somehow when my ex asked for help, I’ve spent weekends at her house carrying heavy stuff, assembling furniture and fixing stuff. Crap, I need to set boundaries, don’t I?

I couldn’t find the oldest building overall, but the oldest surviving house was built in 1716. While my city was settled earlier, it was essentially a “boom town” of the early Industrial Revolution in the US

Man, I used to think I was so handy, doing household, appliance, and car repairs, etc ……

It’s been a while since I needed to do anything, and now I have this cursed ikea furniture. Somehow it took three weekends to put a bed together, and it’s not even done since I broke another part. I’ve never before broken ikea furniture on assembly and have never needed support or replacement parts, yet this effing bed has needed replacements twice.

I don’t know if my hands are cursed and I’ll never again be handy, or if it’s ikea

I thought it was just getting good.

I never actually had an account or much inclination to use it but it seemed like the first online service ubiquitous enough for local government and business notifications. In that sense, it was just starting to be a real benefit for an informed populace

However downvoting as that seemed more like a prerequisite to your posted opinion - I’ll agree that it’s fine for all the loonies to rant at each other there, but that makes the opinion “popular” …… crap, wrong community

I’d never justify that urge to spend ridiculous money updating every year to the latest and greatest, but people tend to under appreciate the massive improvements from accumulated incremental improvements.

OLED screen on my iPhone X was revolutionary (and I’m sure Android had it first), as just one example, and now most phones are. Personally I find ultrawideband and “find my” very innovative and well implemented. Or if that’s too small a change, how about the entire revolution of Apple designing their own SoC for every new model. There’s emergency satellite texting, fall/crash detection, even Apple mostly solving phone theft is innovative (even if you don’t like their approach)

When we see steady improvements, humans tend to under-appreciate how it adds up

Just like always, it depends on how you define or redefine ai. For example, what used to be called ai has been very successful in photo processing. The same thing is going to happen: some portion or incarnation of the current generative ai will be successful, but it will be dismissed similar to “it’s just machine learning, not ai”

I have a lot of hope for Apple’s approach, where they are incorporating it as tools into specific capabilities, and prioritizing privacy. While there’s no direct profit, it should help sell a lot more devices with ever higher tech specs. I also like their “private cloud” model that has a lot of potential beyond private ai

I understand you don’t appreciate where we’ve come from and how fast, can’t see the year to years changes, but the iPhone is just a little over ten years old. Do you really not see huge changes between an early iPhone and today’s?

No, but only because we subdivide what layman think of as IT into many specialties

As DevOps , I whisper to a room full of computers to do what you told them plus do what some others tell you to break what you did, then run a big hammer over it, and hand all the pieces back to you

Huh, I came to say pretty much the same thing. I’m DevOps, more or less, by I tell people I’m a programmer since that’s what I do

Given how expensive they’re getting, the fees, the ever painfully louder volume, any travel is too much.

However, when concerts weren’t as anti-fan ….

• longest trip: from Boston to Florida for a weekend
• second longest: from Boston to Buffalo
• most: 1-3 hr

It very much comes down to how you use them. Within my household, I don’t think I’ve ever had an Apple cable go bad. However I’ve had third party bad from purchase, and my teens go through cables every 6-12 months.

What kind of abuse do your cables go through?

• do you pull from the hard plastic or the cable?
• are they on the floor being stepped on or with chairs rolling over them?
• when carrying are they just stuffed in your backpack or neatly rolled up in a plastic pocket or in a baggie?
• when tangled, do you just pull harder or do you untangle?

That’s cool, I didn’t know that. I’m not totally on board with that type of care, but I’m neither a medical professional nor someone who would be involved. If the best medical opinion is that it’s necessary …. When we take away someone’s rights and send them to prison, that makes us responsible for their human rights, including medical treatment

I only watched the beginning, kind of hopeless that people might think he did well. I didn’t even know kept to watch: just lie after lie, told with complete confidence, and without following any theme or logic.

At least when he repeated the thing about Haitians eating your pets: surely no one but hard core racists can agree with that, right?

Pulled pork. Yesterday I smoked a 12 pound pork shoulder for 9 hours, and made tons of macaroni salad, so I’m set for meals this week!

I vaguely remember live tv of men walking on the moon. Not the first guy though, I’m not that old