> It is very interesting that since the AI climber is trained on actual climbers, it could, in principle, provide beta to climb consistent with your own style. If you train the bot exclusively on footage of yourself, it would return movement based on your style. If your style is finessy-all-backstep-all-the-time (aka The Edlinger), it can provide beta consistent with that. If your style is to square up and pull (otherwise known as The American), it can provide beta consistent with that instead.
I would think this is actually a Bad Thing. It's very easy to get stuck trying to make a sequence fit your style of climbing. The better approach (especially for long term skill acquisition) is a willingness to learn new styles. That's to say that every sequence is only solvable via one particular style, but I think long term development is hindered if you approach every crux with the one thing you are good at.
> So, in terms of solving complicated beta faster, I see real utility to this.
I can agree with this. But, to the point that others have made, I do wonder what this and the availability of beta videos for many, many routes and blocs does to climbing skill overall. Perhaps I'm just a grumpy old man, but, particularly when bouldering, sorting out the beta should be part of the journey toward eventually sending. Last fall, I visited Hueco Tanks after a six year absence. I suppose I was a bit disappointed to see so many people watching YouTube beta videos of nearly every problem they tried.
>I went through those stages too: when the Agile meetings at my last job got so absurd that we were being asked to estimate JIRA task time in T-shirt sizes
Oh, boy, I can relate. Every three months, I think our program increment planning meetings can't get more ridiculous and, yet, they do. Most recently, we were told that we should just treat story points as days of effort.
I dove pretty deeply into wood case pencils for a few years (then I got tired of carrying around a good sharpener). Musgrave [https://musgravepencil.com/collections/the-heritage-collecti...] makes some good pencils, though some folks don't like the pronounced hex shape. Mitsu-bishi and Tombow produce some very nice, affordable pencils, though they can be hard to find at times. Everyone knows about Blackwings, but they were never my cup of tea -- the pencil is longer than the average wood case, and the eraser, for as nifty as it is, isn't that great.
Though I use pencils less these days, my current favorites are the Tombow 2558 in 2B and the Musgrave Greenbelt.
Fully remote work has always benefited the employer more than the employee, at least financially. Before the pandemic closed my employer's local office space (we were all told just to work from home), part of the employer's budget for each employee included infrastructure costs (office space, furniture, internet access, maybe food, beverages, etc). My salary did not change when I became fully remote, so the company realized significant savings by telling one hundred to just work from home.
Now, if a company has always been fully remote, then, yes, this sort of thing is ultimately going to hurt the employee because the company needs to recuperate those unplanned costs.
Personally, as a fully remote employee, I don't how to feel about this. Sure, I'd love my employer to offset some of my utility costs, but I also don't want them to assume that means they can control their use (which is their right in the context of an office space).
>Weirdly, only left wing people read him. But he's actually quite libertarian compatible.
There are quite a few on the Right that read Illich as well. He was, essentially, a communitarian anarchist. Some of his thought is well-received on the Right, particularly his critique of institutionalized education and medicine.
I've read a handful, and agree that he truly understood the effects of technology and Modernity. It's worth reading the French sociologist/theologian Jacques Ellul, too (they were contemporaries).
There is too much paperwork involved with performance related firings and layoffs happen so fast and so wide it's usually done by lottery.
Can confirm this. My employer dropped about 10% of staff in order to back fill those positions with contractors from low-cost centers (India, Hungary, Costa Rica). Managers were not consulted in the decisions, and simply told they were losing employees $x, $y, and $z.
I can confirm this: I know several mechanical engineers that do mission critical-type systems (think "power plants"), and they routinely use Excel VBA for calculations.
potentially just a youth culture thing. I don't know what young people are up to these days, but _more_ phone use in inappropriate situations certainly doesn't sound surprising
In my experience, inappropriate device use is definitely NOT just a "youth" thing.
My workflow is similar. For one larger project, I am just more comfortable operating in VSCode, but if I need to work in a smaller project, I tend to just fire up NeoVim, and I've found the transition to Lazygit to be fairly smooth.
High (comparative) weight + low reps builds strength (and muscle recruitment) without (necessarily) building lots of new muscle fibers. Muscle hypertrophy happens most often with lower weights and higher repetitions, plus loads of calories. A program like "Starting Strength" is not about hypertrophy.
Any exercise is potentially "unhealthy," particularly if it requires specialized movements. You can learn proper form for "base" lifts like the squat and deadlift without any equipment at first.
My auto insurance provider (in the US) has never even offered such a tracking program to me (and I know my current rates are pretty reasonable/in line with other companies). Maybe it's because of my history with the provider (I'm 50 and they've been covering me since I was 16)?
My understanding that the yearly membership packages aren't the sum total of what they do. I suspect those packages are ways to support the business, rather than provide a free/cheap service. According to the article, customers pay for parts at cost, and then there is a scale, based on income, for paying labor charges.
Also, note that "Toyota Dealer Maintenance Packages" are generally offered to people who have purchased their vehicle at the dealer, new (or slightly used). That's not the target market here, and compared to having those services performed at an independent shop (or at a dealer without such a package), that monthly charge is quite affordable.
globally install a modern version of Python in a Docker container
You lost a bunch of people right there. There's a significant difference between "open a terminal" and "install Docker, create a container, configure the latest version of Python."
Recumbents are notoriously difficult to ride as the grades get steeper. Upright cyclists have the advantage using different body positions (i.e. standing), but 'bent cyclists can't do that. On the steepest grades, it can be a challenge to even keep a 'bent's front wheel on the ground.
> It is very interesting that since the AI climber is trained on actual climbers, it could, in principle, provide beta to climb consistent with your own style. If you train the bot exclusively on footage of yourself, it would return movement based on your style. If your style is finessy-all-backstep-all-the-time (aka The Edlinger), it can provide beta consistent with that. If your style is to square up and pull (otherwise known as The American), it can provide beta consistent with that instead.
I would think this is actually a Bad Thing. It's very easy to get stuck trying to make a sequence fit your style of climbing. The better approach (especially for long term skill acquisition) is a willingness to learn new styles. That's to say that every sequence is only solvable via one particular style, but I think long term development is hindered if you approach every crux with the one thing you are good at.
> So, in terms of solving complicated beta faster, I see real utility to this.
I can agree with this. But, to the point that others have made, I do wonder what this and the availability of beta videos for many, many routes and blocs does to climbing skill overall. Perhaps I'm just a grumpy old man, but, particularly when bouldering, sorting out the beta should be part of the journey toward eventually sending. Last fall, I visited Hueco Tanks after a six year absence. I suppose I was a bit disappointed to see so many people watching YouTube beta videos of nearly every problem they tried.