We did have a Waldenbooks in the mall that was 45 minutes away that we went to 4x/year, but the local library was tiny and I read everything worth reading there probably before I was 10.

The local grocery store had a small section of mass-market paperbacks, and it was my primary place to get books. I know it had lots of Stephen King novels, and I think my first copy of Dune may even have come from there.

(Hardcovers were something that libraries had, not anything normal people would buy, as far as I knew.)

It gets hot here, but Temecula gets a breeze from the ocean that makes it somewhat tolerable for growing grapes. The wines were tend to be the high-alcohol variety (think cabs and zins) because those are what grow better in the heat.

Most of the wines here aren't that good, but the wineries are more the attraction because they're beautiful and a short drive from LA, SD, or Palm Springs. Popular for weddings and bachelorette parties.

(There are some wineries here doing interesting things but if I'm buying wine to consume at home I'm usually looking for other regions than my backyard).

I couldn't agree more. You seem to have assumed that I'm some e/acc advocate. I'm not. I think AI as it is being developed is likely to make the world much worse.

Among the concerns I have:

  - bad actors using it to do bad things (hacking, bioweapons, etc).
  - the way AI enables mass surveillance. 
  - erosion of creative expression and human connection (i.e., your "brainless simps" comment)
  - concentration of wealth and power
  - an eval going sideways ("uh... we were testing to see if it would kill the simulated humans with simulated drones and it accidentally got into the real drones...")

We have new evidence that both OpenAI and Anthropic are doing a complete shit job of supervising their eval runs, and we need to be calling for accountability and oversight of what they're doing rather than cower in fear of what a hypothetical future god they are conjuring up might do.

It is one of those terms, like "instrumental convergence" and "orthogonality thesis" that makes an everyday concept appear technical and inaccessible in order to add the appearance of rigor to the doomer religion.

But for someone starting out, I do think having something to propel the water upwards helps a bit.

I use the 3D-printed one for travel (I'd gladly pay extra for hotels that have bidets) and outdoor use.

Using a bidet is such an easy life upgrade for anyone relying on TP.

Now, for most software careers (including my own), that knowledge isn't directly practical. BUT, the most important things for a successful, fulfilling career are curiosity and a willingness to dive into subjects _without_ necessarily knowing how (or even if) that knowledge will yield practical applications. That drive is what's going to lead to insights and breakthroughs over your career that wouldn't happen if you just let abstractions be abstractions.

(And failing that, there was a real risk for OpenAI to be the default for enterprises.)

To defeat that, you need to frontline employees the chance to experience better tooling and models which is where the subsidized subscriptions come in.

This seems to be the crux of the issue.

I'm guessing the most of the time, the answer is "because that's a mandatory gate to getting these changes into production". If the PR author doesn't see the value in review, it's going to be hard to convince them to write reviewable PRs.

If they're actually looking for human feedback, telling them how to submit PRs in a way that's amenable to human feedback is going to be a lot more successful.

As the article mentions, good fabrics (like merino wool) can go a long way.

(1) Reliability and flexibility being foremost. Not having to worry about lost luggage. Itinerary changes are much easier when all your stuff is with you and can fit on your lap or under your seat. Then comes the comfort and speed. Being able to take the stairs or not blinking an eye at walking an extra half mile go a long way towards making travel enjoyable.

Warehouses, though, are worse than data centers in that they bring a lot of traffic to the area. (I currently live in Riverside Country, CA which may be the warehouse capital of the country).

But if we're being honest, most people see warehouses as a way to get cheap stuff to them, which they like and data centers as a way to make them unemployable, which they don't like so much.

The most vibrant places in the world (again, IME) have a diversity of abilities, backgrounds, ages, and economic status.

There's another type of place - the sort of place I had in mind - that doesn't. That attracts people who are trying to get away from law and any sort of social contract. Some of those places look attractive on the surface. That's the sort of place I'm talking about. They're probably not as common as they seem to be to me.