This. I had a huge problem with static shocking my desk in the dry winter air, causing my monitor to blank out for a few seconds. A small, quiet ultrasonic humidifier completely eliminated the problem.
On a side note, distilled water is highly recommended with ultrasonic humidifiers. Heat-based devices evaporate solely the water and leave mineral deposits behind. Ultrasonics create tiny droplets _along with the dissolved minerals_. Hard tap water or mineralized drinking water will coat your work area in chalk-like dust.
Yep, there is always the human factor. Leave a USB drive in a parking lot, someone will insert it. You don't even need an obvious drive anymore, a malicious cable will suffice.
I'd forgotten about PageMaker. I was on my college newspaper staff and we used it for layout.
It was a small college in the rural midwest, so the local newspaper ran our copies. They didn't use digital tools, so we printed our content from PageMaker and laid it out by hand on a wax board. [1]
RIP and many thanks for making our jobs easier. At least to the point we waxed the master layout.
I experienced ChatGPT confidently giving incorrect answers about the Schwarzchild radius of the black hole at the center of our galaxy, Saggitarius A-star. Both when asked about "the Scharzchild radius of a black hole with 4 million solar masses" (a calculation) and "the Scharzchild radius of Saggitarius A-star" (a simple lookup).
Both answers were orders of magnitude wrong, and vastly different from each other.
JS code suggested for a simple database connection had glaring SQL injection vulnerabilities.
I think it's an ok tool for discovering new libraries and getting oriented quickly to languages and coding domains you're unfamiliar with. But it's more like a forum post from a novice who read a tutorial and otherwise has little experience.
> AI projects, like much of digital technology, need to be regulated far more heavily than they currently are. The ideology of “permissionless innovation” so cherished by tech leaders is antidemocratic to its core.
People like David Golumbia are dangerous. He speaks of things "antidemocratic" as if one needs permission to create what ultimately boils down to expression of thought and mathematics. This freedom doesn't require and should not be subject to regulation or democratic consent.
I agree. A live chat support option, appropriately staffed, is often the most expedient way to get help.
I work configuring contact center software. Chat agents are often more experienced, "tech savvy", and less overloaded than phone agents too. And Chat is harder to ignore than Email, which Agents can just give a token reply to punt it back to the pending queue.
This is the crux of the issue. If society places value on more future taxpayers, it needs to create the environment where more people want to create future taxpayers. We would have "probably" been fine having a couple kids, but in the US you're often one job loss and major illness or accident away from permanent debt and/or bankruptcy. So we opted out.
I read 4 months of severance, plus 2 weeks per year of service (likely up to a maximum?), 6 months of health insurance paid, plus job placement services from a 3rd-party vendor.
Funny... my roommates and I used "just" for comedic effect in college.
I was stuck writing an algorithm and asked my more-experienced roommate for help. He briefly scanned my code and said, "well, you kind of just... code it."
I looked at him quizzically and just blurted, "straight up?"
"Yep, just straight up code it."
Then we all laughed at the absurdity. He wasn't trying to trivialize the problem, to be clear, but didn't know exactly how to express what he was thinking. But that became our standard answer to any programming challenge. "Just straight up code it."
At my last company, we had 12 identical Facebook apps working as service-to-service messaging integrations. They chose to have 12 apps due to data sovereignty reasons, separating implementations in different regions. For each permission we needed, we'd record screencasts of all 12 apps and explain how to verify the system works, then submit for App Review.
Usually about 4 would get approved, and the other 8 would be rejected. All for different reasons. Usually it was something about Facebook Login - which we didn't use as an S2S integration. It was maddening.
We'd make token changes to the rejected reviews, resubmit, then keep resubmitting until they were all approved. On occasion an App would keep going to the same stubborn reviewer and we'd contact our Partner Manager. They're nearly powerless to do anything, since the Safety and Review team is firewalled off from the rest of Meta to prevent outside influence.
Funny nuance: when in development mode, Apps can't receive webhook events for wall posts. Only webhooks for Messenger (DMs) are active. We were adding support to reply to wall posts, but couldn't test or demonstrate the feature because public post webhooks weren't available. "How do we proceed?" "Well, you need to use the fetch API to get posts in batch for Approval, then you can use webhooks." Thing is, our platform wasn't interested in pulling posts in batch. Just routing public posts in real-time via webhooks.
So, we built a completely separate App to pull posts in batch and got it approved. Then used a proxy to slingshot webhooks through that App to our platform, bypassing the under-review Apps altogether. And we got them all approved.
It's a joke that Meta tries to enforce policy at the application level vs. API for enterprise S2S integrations. Workarounds "faking" the experience are always possible.
I advised simplifying things by having a single proxy service distributing messages to different cloud regions based on the customer. Or maybe 3 proxy Apps - dev, US, and Germany, as simple middleware shims. But not 12 Apps. It fell on deaf ears. Since I left, I hear with Instagram support and more granular permissions on Messenger, they're submitting 60+ App Review submissions every quarter. With the resubmissions and petitions it's nearly full-time position.
If I ever took another position working with Meta, it would have to be "retire in 3 years" kind of money.
I live near Carmel, Indiana, the roundabout capital of the US. Small ones, large ones, figure 8's, figure... double-peanut-looking things with elevated crossovers near interstate junctions. They work well and keep traffic moving.
But there is a learning curve. Every new roundabout causes a significant jump in crashes for a short time. Though, those crashes tend to be "glancing blows" that cause less serious injuries due to the angle of attack imposes by the roundabout.
Smaller cities and towns in Indiana are adopting more roundabouts near congested areas. It's important to introduce them gradually and give drivers time to acclimate.
Having an absolute shit-show for a healthcare and education system falls under "not perfect". I'll freely admit a good many Americans (even most) would be better off living in Europe. But there are many of us that just can't accept not being able to express whatever we like. "Human dignity" is an admirable goal, but the extent and reach of that is subject to whomever is in power.
On a side note, distilled water is highly recommended with ultrasonic humidifiers. Heat-based devices evaporate solely the water and leave mineral deposits behind. Ultrasonics create tiny droplets _along with the dissolved minerals_. Hard tap water or mineralized drinking water will coat your work area in chalk-like dust.