It may be my autism, but as a kid, I was always fascinated by infrastructure, particularly power lines. My dad once drove me down an Edison Road up to the top of a mountain just to see where the power line went. We had to stop at the top. I could see my neighborhood from a view that I had never seen before. Today I would consider it beautiful. Back then it was weird!
I had a fascination with how different the poles looked and how the equipment was mounted. It seemed like no two pylons were alike.
Based on this map, it looks like all of our power comes from hydroelectric.
I love this site. I just wish it was more complete. There are some major water and natural gas pipelines that aren't recorded. Maybe in time.
My dad and I spent so many days in that place. The Burbank one wasn’t my favorite. My favorite was the Alice in Wonderland theme in Woodland Hills. Also liked the tropical theme in Manhattan Beach. Our local Fry’s, one of the last ones to open, was sad. Some kind of California nostalgia theme. Palo Alto, cowboy/Wild West… that one was so cramped. I remember the Santa Clara one had a lot of hardware that others didn’t have like large plotters etc.
Definitely miss it. Even the low quality of the items and the rude or useless sales staff lol.
I currently work at Google (though my time will be ending soon due to this shit show) and everything you said couldn’t be farther from the truth at least for me. I want to make sure everyone has both sides here instead of the rosey picture that so many want to paint.
Google is, by far, the worst place I’ve ever worked with the most useless work and uninspiring management and coworkers. I haven’t learned a damn thing in my time there. FB had its problems but I was at least learning there.
In some sense, it's PR, but not in the typical gimmicky way. Alphabet has had DeepMind for a while, and at this point with all of the competition in AI, it doesn't make sense to keep DeepMind at arm's length. I personally think it's a good move and gives me more confidence, but it doesn't affect me directly. I do worry what redundancies this causes with Brain and Research though.
I am in my late 30s. I feel like after the pandemic I started visually aging. Part of the problem was that I lost a lot of weight at the same time, so I do actually look a bit different. People tell me I am crazy. I feel like my hair is receding though nobody notices it and in photos it really looks the same for the past 10 years. I feel like there is me at my age, there is some illusion of me at my age, and me at the age I feel.
I feel young. On average, I feel about 25 mentally and maybe 30 physically, but sometimes I feel like I am stuck as a precocious 15 year old. I have a silly sense of humor. I feel like as my numerical age increases, the more I am expected to be boring and not be myself anymore. Quite frankly, it's led me into a depression.
Nah, it's still like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. You have people turning into blueberries with unknown fate, kids getting stuck in pipes with no way out and now 12,000 going down the garbage chute.
The Oompa Loompas are the sycophants that are still drinking the Kool-Aid.
>> it's much harder to cram ads into a chat conversation.
Oh, I don't see that being a problem at all.
"Tell me about the features of modern digital cameras."
Chat bot: "Here's a bunch of information. And by the way, the Nikon Pipboy3000 has all of these features and they are offering 25% off right now. Do you want more information?"
That's very easy.
If done on an Assistant-like device though, that might be a bit different.
The amount of overhead there is, on top of teaching and preparing materials is exorbitant. Managing TAs can be difficult as they are students and are still developing their technical skills. Cheating and grade grubbing are par for the course, but it seems to increase quadratically in the number of students rather than linearly. I think part of this has to do with misconceptions about curving.
Revising materials is more of a milestone. As technology advances, we should be teaching more up-to-date stuff, so we typically revise what we teach and then share that with other instructors. Sometimes that takes considerable work. In some positions, the program strictly restricts what is allowed to be taught. I typically stick to the core content for about 65% of the course, and then add in my own topics for the other 35%.
I am also a Unit 18 lecturer in a computer science program. What Fox writes is true. The Unit 18 arrangement is weird. I do it because I am technically temporary and only teach once or twice a year. My full time job is elsewhere.
At my UC, there is a separate ladder called Lecturer Full-Time PSOE/SOE. It's not clear why she wasn't on that ladder. Perhaps Cal doesn't have one.
At Google, not only are many still worried about COVID, but we just finished the complete shitshow known as Perf, there is war in Ukraine, so they thought this was a brilliant time to announce this as if it's supposed to "cheer us up" or something.
I am really starting to question if my values align with Google's anymore.
Great equipment? I had to wait several months to get a modern computer since my previous 3 year old computer broke. I was stuck on a Chromebook that couldn't even process email. So, no, equipment ain't "great." And I am so sick of hearing "but the food!" Food doesn't mean squat to me over flexibility.
Top down entirely. It's based entirely on propaganda that Google has the best perks and that serendipitous hallway conversations lead to innovation. Zero evidence that that is the case. And other companies have the same, if not better, perks.