bwooceli

I argue that a more effective measure would be to use the onboard data services in modern cars to calculate the $ cost of speeding! Sure, you CAN drive 85 MPH, but if you drove 70 you are saving $/hour driving.

After working wireless retail in the early '00s, I will always choose a phone with a high IP rating. Other scenarios I've seen - Phone pushed into sink without realizing while doing dishes and walking away for an hour long phone call, parked convertible with phone in the cupholder, boob sweat, working in a greenhouse going in and out of air conditioning, leaving on a picnic table overnight while camping, water bottle leaking in purse, etc. Also there's utility in feeling confident the phone can survive if you need to wash syrup, baby food, sticky bar residue, etc off it.

Default human is a "Young Adult" woman, and the default "add something" was "woman with tatoos". I changed ONE filter (from young to Senior). It spun for about 20 seconds and then gave me the same woman's face but older. She is also topless. I'm impressed (?)

The HN crowd would do well to take a step back and look at this from a little different perspective. We are able to see "AI" and machine learning as the very young and imperfect technologies that they are. That said, ChatGPT is the first time a technology like this has been even REMOTELY available to the vast majority of the public, and democratizing this capability even in the small box of a chat window is wildly disruptive. Even after explaining that it probably isn't a great idea to use it for generating 100% factually reliable content, everyone I've shown it to has come up with ways they would use it to make small-but-meaningful improvements in some area of their lives. Consider an immigrant owner of a landscaping company who isn't super confident in their English but needed to respond to a customer to clarify exactly what they need to do on a job site. Did they close the deal solely because of ChatGPT? Hard to say for sure, but it saved an hour of productive time and likely made it easier for the customer to be a reference/word-of-mouth fan.

And the communication is a nightmare. My mom learned that her flight was cancelled Monday via text message, but there is NOTHING on the website indicating the cancellation. I spent 3 hours on hold to get to a rep who rebooked her for a Thursday flight which was also cancelled today. It says to go to a specific southwest.com page, which just takes you to the standard reservation page which, again, has nothing about the cancellation (looks all green). And unless you go to a "travel hardships" page and enter your reservation number AGAIN, you're funneled into their standard cancellation for flight credit (vs. a refund on the original form of payment). It's a total cluster.

One Excel spreadsheet, four bank accounts (only one of which is "actively managed"):

Protected Checking, Protected Savings, Discretionary Checking, Discretionary Savings

All income and all "regular bills" are aimed at Protected Checking. Every Friday, a fixed (but mutable) amount of weekly "discretionary" money transfers to Discretionary Checking, and a fixed amount goes to Protected Savings.

Discretionary Checking is ALL food, groceries, gas, dining out, random crap. If the I swipe my card, it is discretionary. Protected Checking is ALL bills, utilities, mortgage, etc.

To manage Protected Savings, I use a spreadsheet with 7 columns:

Date, Payee / Source, Category, Sub Category, Amount (all income is positive, all outflow is negative), Balance (=one cell up + amount on this row), Cleared (blank if in the future, "X" for when I reconcile)

I took a few hours about 7 years ago and added ALL expected paychecks (excluding bonus), bills/expenses, and transfers to Discretionary and Protected Savings for the next 5 years to it. So I only spend time reconciling the Protected Checking account - once a month or so I copy the ledger from my bank website and go down the list, checking them off and updating the amounts as needed.

Other than a quick glance for anything unexpected, I don't reconcile/audit the discretionary account.

I call this the Pentatonix Problem at Christmas. When left in "auto-play" mode, streaming services absolutely default to the lowest payout possible. The fastest way to discover if there was a Pentatonix version of a song is to ask "Hey Google, play <christmas standard>" ... "OK, playing <christmas standard> by Pentatonix"

So yeah, they pay a bunch of basement recording artists to throw together a million generic sounding low-effort Ableton jams and voila, lower play counts and lower royalties for the normal working artists.

Some genres are easier to game than others. Classical music is really rough right now. Unless you already know EXACTLY what version of the piano concerto you want, you're going to get some crappy midi playthrough that was likely just the "performer" dropping the sheet music straight into the midi roll.

Best turkey ever this year, new trick was buttering between the skin and breast.

16lb bird, brined. Followed the "in the fridge for 1 day per 4 pounds" rule of thumb. Loosened (carefully, without puncturing) the skin between the breast and smeared in-between with 2 sticks of herb butter. Stuffed it with 2 quartered lemons, 2 quartered onions, and a tied-up bundle of savory herbs (sage, thyme, rosemary) Put a couple pats of butter on the top as well, and started it off with 30 minutes at 400. Then reduced the heat to 325 for the remaining 3-3.5 hours. Tucked the wings under the bird on the roasting rack, tied the legs. Baste on the hour, when it's the right color, cover with foil.

... and Michaelson clung to the luminiferous aether until he died.

The volume of affected businesses and the wide scope of who's impacted is kind of stunning. May not be limited to bandwidth.com solely. If you're trying to call a customer care number today, be ready for a bad experience.

He who cracks the code of the call center assisted lead gen in the online world will win the day. This is why "influencer" marketing is such a draw. There is NO more attributable conversion statistic than "I talked to THIS person, and had them talk to YOU in order to make a purchase". I've run agent-assisted call center lead gen for education industry and over the past 10 years, nothing has been more profitable or effective. The call center conversion rates subsidized the HUGE losses on pure digital and other ads.