programmertote

I've been reading most of his replies in this post. I think he's using AI to reply. :D

Came here to say this. I thought I liked them when I was given just one packet on the airplane. So I bought them at Costco when I saw them there. It's been like two months since I bought it and I barely finished a third of that because it's too sweet.

Oh man, that is so true! I just left a comment about that. :D

No, they don't. I have visited three different dentists in the past year and half and all three of them identified varying number of cavities for different teeth. I wonder if the definition of cavities is so vague or if these dentists are just making stuff up.

That said, I have been told by dental hygienists at two of these dental shops (after cleaning my teeth) that my teeth look great and are in very good condition (they had to do minimal cleaning). I brush my teeth twice a day (no fail). I floss twice a day. I also brush with electric toothbrush and use small hand-held (old school) toothbrush to clean hard-to-get-to places. So I always wonder why every time I go to a new dentist, they find new cavities. :D

Not sure how the extra supply for grapes affect retail prices of grapes for regular consumption. But at Costco in Southern CA, the price of grapes have been fairly stable (~$5.99 - $7.99) over the last year or a little more.

This outage is not just Codex, right? I am just using GTP-6 Astra for some administrative prompts and it has been returning, "Error in message stream", for several minutes now.

I used to live in a south Florida (Miami) suburb and the traffic lights there function like what you suggest too. So after moving back to southern CA, it's something I had to adjust (and the traffic light behavior difference became obvious to me).

One thing that I noticed about traffic lights in CA -- there will be like 4-5 cars who are driving on the major road and approaching the traffic light. Then a car arrived from the small road at the intersection. The traffic light will then turn red for cars on the major road, so all 4-5 cars will brake and stop at the light. The small car proceed to turn left into the major road. A few seconds later, the light for the major road turns green again and the 4-5 cars proceed.

I have seen this so often that I sometimes wonder if it'd be more fuel efficient to let the 4-5 cars on the major roadway proceed (the traffic lights have cameras anyway) while letting the one car from the small street wait slightly longer or wait for a fixed amount of time.

I wonder if there's any traffic engineer on HN from California and if so, I'd love to hear an explanation/rationale behind the current approach.

> Prose density is not the same thing as succinctness

Can't agree with you more. I review 2-3 PRs a day from my team of eight data engineers. Most of my team members use Claude to write SQL, dbt and Python code. Some of them use Claude a lot, some less so. I can easily tell when I review the code that is mostly Claude generated vs. the one that is not. In dbt models where we have a lot of biz logic in intermediate layers, that's where I really have a difficult time following Claude-generated comments. So much jargon copied over from other adjacent dbt models (yet inconsistently), and the prose is super choppy (for the lack of better word).

After reading a looooong sentence/comment line, I still can't figure out what it really means. Had to always re-read the line 2-3 times (sometimes, more) to sort of understand. Reading code, however, is so much easier and usually, I just skip to reading the code and then come back to the comments. :D

He will be pardoned by trump before the latter leaves the office. There will be LOTS of people pardoned by trump.

I immigrated from a very poor, military-ruled country to the US more than 20 years ago. It is very sad to see the democratic system and the rule of law eroding in the US. All the mistakes that I observed and lived through in my former country are being practiced in the US these days.

You are living my dream! When I retire, I want to teach for underserved areas; I also want to help out in some ways related to the homelessness problem. Plus, I want to learn how to play piano/guitar and learn how to swim properly (I can swim, but not too well). I also want to try improv. I have ever-growing books that I want to read. So many things I can do to enjoy life personally and do something nice (albeit it having just a teeny tiny impact) for the future generation and humanity.

> I have no desire to keep working for random "Mikes" and "Bobs" in upper management that only care about their bonuses and stocks. Not in Big Tech, not in random startups, not anywhere else. "Mike wants this", "Bob wants that"... Gosh, I couldn't care less about their "direction"!

Agreed! That's one of my motivation to retire early. :)

> Still, this rate merits carefully watching in coming months; a continued decline may signal a deeper change in the behavior of workers in this critical age group.

I know I'm speaking from a rather (somewhat) privileged position. I myself don't consider working beyond 50 years of age. I have lived frugally/minimally and am confident that (unless WW3 happens or some sort of unexpected global catastrophe arrives) I can FIRE (retire frugally with my savings) before I hit 50.

I also know it's somewhat of a bubble, but Reddit has a lot of subreddits (like r/HENRYfinance/; r/Fire/; and r/coastFIRE/) dedicated for folks retiring early.

Observing that FIRE trend and the fact that AI psychosis (don't get me wrong, I believe AI is useful, but not to a level that humans will be entirely replaced) at work place will surely drive some folks away (or at least discourage them) from staying in the work force, I am not surprised that this trend is showing up in the data. Plus, a lot of millennials are child free (by choice), so they can afford to retire early as well.

I have at least one coworker who literally copy-paste AI output to respond to code and doc reviews (and most of her communications like on Teams and Asana) despite me telling her multiple times to take it a notch down. Two days ago, she started answering my doc review questions with literally AI outputs (like "Good question. <insert a bunch of verbose response>" and "You're right. <insert a lot of fluff with little substance>").

That really bothered me that I finally announced AI "code of conduct" (more like AI usage expectation) and stressed that if one is not so kind as to have his/her coworker review AI output as it is, then I'll take formal measures to address that. We'll see what happens in the near future.

Really worrying that some people are totally comfortable with relying 100% on AI to do their work. Then what's human agency? What's the point of having them in the team (as opposed to just building an AI agent and work with that)?!

It really irks me for some reason that American Medical Association (one of the top spenders in lobbying) is doing the lobbying. I did a quick Gemini/Google search and these are the topics they lobby for.

``` Core Legislative PrioritiesMedicare Reform:

Fighting to fix stagnant physician payment formulas and account for inflation.

Prior Authorization: Pushing to reduce administrative roadblocks and delays enforced by insurance companies.

Scope of Practice: Opposing laws that expand independent clinical roles for non-physicians like nurse practitioners and pharmacists.

Burnout Reduction: Supporting federal and organizational relief to help doctors manage workplace stress and administrative tasks.

-- Public Health and Science

Public Health Crises: Supporting science-based policies on vaccinations, gun violence prevention, and chronic disease reduction.

Digital Health: Guiding regulations for artificial intelligence and telehealth integration in medical practices ```

Most of these are about keeping the gate (i.e., doctor's compensation high). The US doctors are the highest paid in the world (among developed countries like UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, etc.) by a long shot. Kind of mad if you think about it.

Disclaimer: My spouse is a specialist doctor. You can say I have selfish interest in keeping doctor's salaries high in the US. But I can't help highlighting that doctor's guilds (like AMA) are part of the reasons why the healthcare expenses are so high in the US.