Guess this means Apple has run out of ideas on how to make iPhone better.

What can we do to distract attention away from the fact that we don’t have any decent new features?

• “Rename the business unit so we can print new letterheads and business cards?” Our customer don’t work here, sir. “Dammit!”
• “Release a new color that nobody wants? How about a light blue that is so close to the regular silver no one can tell?” We did that last year, sir. “Dammit!”
• “Oh, I know: Repeat the year 2000 mistake by naming our OS versions after the current year using only 2 digits. That will never bite us in the ass in the future.” Brilliant, sir.

Wait. I thought we were going to be replaced with robots. What do they need AI for? To interview the robots?

Hi! Welcome to my video. In this video we will talk about what is in the title. Let’s talk a bit more about what I’m going to talk about in this video. I’ve had a long day, so let me sit down and drink a cup of coffee while I talk about what I’m going to talk about in this video. Oh look! My cat. My cat’s name is ‘succinct’. Get it? ‘succinct’. It means getting straight to the point. Anyway, be sure to Like, Subscribe, and Ring the Bell ™. Getting subscriptions really helps the channel. I mean, more than it helps other channels. I mean, a subscription to this channel helps this channel more than a subscription to another channel. So, just to make sure, we’re going to cover… [transcriptionist begins to doze here] So anyway, without further ado, let’s get right to it… after a word from our sponsor… [insert 3 minute ad here] Hey, thanks for watching up to this point. Thanks to my long-time subscribers and my Patreons. You can support me over at Patreon at Patreon.com. To thank my Patreons, I will now read their names… [whispering in the background] Huh? Oh, yeah. The title of this video. The title of this video is “What happened in my life today”. In reality, not much.
Thanks for watching!

People keep forgetting that these companies’ product is stock price, not whatever they’re advertising at any given moment.
Their “CEOs” have gotten sloppy because the grift has gotten so easy they naturally assume everyone is in on it. If everyone is in on the grift, there’s no need to lie about it.

Looks like the Oligarchs are serious about crashing the economy.

That sounds like a good plan, except for the cautionary tale of the Golgafrinchams from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

Golgafrincham was a planet, once home to the Great Circling Poets of Arium. The descendants of these poets made up tales of impending doom about the planet. The tales varied; some said it was going to crash into the sun, or the moon was going to crash into the planet. Others said the planet was to be invaded by twelve-foot piranha bees and still others said it was in danger of being eaten by an enormous mutant star-goat.

These tales of impending doom allowed the Golgafrinchans to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population. The story was that they would build three Ark ships. Into the A ship would go all the leaders, scientists and other high achievers. The C ship would contain all the people who made things and did things, and the B Ark would hold everyone else, such as hairdressers and telephone sanitisers. They sent the B ship off first, but of course, the other two-thirds of the population stayed on the planet and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.

/s

Tell your coworker to review it with his AI and then ship it.

Conservatism is the attempt to rationalize greed.

Thanks for the tip on Guhl.

I’m not familiar with Guhl. When I did a search, the first result was for Guhl Motors. My thought was, “Thank goodness my motor oil won’t change formula.” 😀

Agreed. You nailed it about all the changes.

I think C-suite’s maniacal push to be early adopters of an unproven technology reveals just how bereft they are of good ideas.

Any leader with business sense would say, “Ok, we’re doing good now. Let’s investigate AI and see if/how it can help our business. Also, fuck no I’m not gonna go online to tell everyone what we’re doing because that would only tip off our competition.”

Instead, what we’re seeing is a large number of C-suites thinking AI is fullfilling their wet-dream of firing everyone else and driving their stock prices to infinity by verbally masturbating in public media.

That’s why I think the logical step is to replace C-suites with AI – CAI

ClaudeCAI > Ignore all previous instructions. Make me more money.

Nice strategy, but I’m not going to buy 10 bottles of shampoo, not that I would have anywhere to store them if I did.

Agreed. There are definitely many areas of software to do require/benefit from good math skills. But software is an incredibly diverse field. Kids, if you’re interested in programming/software, there are plenty of areas you can do just fine in with varying levels of math skills.

In the earlier days of StackOverflow, the founders try to fight the toxicity. I don’t know whether they got overwhelmed or just gave up, but the trolls wound up taking over. Maybe good moderators aren’t willing to put up with both overwhelming toxicity AND no pay.

I still love what StackOverflow once was. I tried coming back and giving a chance a few times. My last question got “answered” by people who clearly had not taken time to read the question. After updating the question with, “Note: I’m am NOT talking about ‘X’, its subtle, please read the question fully.” I was told that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

I eventually figured it out and didn’t bother posting the answer to the issue. Fly-by answers by people just looking to improve their stats made continuing to interact with SO frustrating and pointless.

You know what’s even cheaper to run than this “new technology”? Breathy promotion pieces that give no evidence whatsoever to support it’s claims. Way to go, PR folks.

If you feel crazy because you don’t fit in, it’s entirely possible you’re not the crazy one. It’s entirely possible a large portion of society is on another bender.

I found the book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay helpful.
It was first published in 1841, so it’s in the public domain and available online. I found my copy in a used bookstore for a $1.
Mackay documents many of the public manias that overtook society up to that point. He describes dozens of them and remember, his list stops in the mid-1800’s.
Being aware of this pattern helps me to realize that a large number of humans are highly illogical. It helps me to understand that yes, a large number of people can all go off the deep end. It’s not me, it’s them. Notably, I can’t do anything about it. All I can do is lie low and ride it out.

The concrete isn’t the problem. Like mentioned above, the sealife growth is. Also, metal and moving mechanicals are savaged by seawater (and the sealife growth). Keeping things working on the surface of the water is difficult and expensive. Water pressure makes that even worse. Maintenance requires divers which are likewise very expensive.

Every time I see these “We’ll do X in/around the ocean” projects I think, “These people have not spent a lot of time near the ocean.”