The day he retired was the day he absolutely positively suddenly wanted nothing to do with real estate anymore. He loved the career but it was interesting watching him just suddenly be done with it.

He found other hobbies and interests pretty quickly once he took an inventory of how he wanted to spend his time.

“Yes! You can use an ACME shovel to bury a dead body!”

I’m sure brands will love the screenshots this will produce.

I totally understand why a university wouldn’t want to bake their own learning portals but just feels like such a single point of risk to use third party solutions for something like this.

Back in my day… all we had was a school email via on-premise services. I guess we registered for classes in a web portal but that’s about it. The idea of online class was entirely foreign at the time. Ain’t nobody hacking a blue book.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47510007

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490355

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

It’s so fun watching them talk to their buddies from school, planning play dates, just chitchatting etc. My favorite thing is when they prank call one another, cracks me up.

Maybe the novelty wears off soon but for at least the last month or so they’ve used it every day. It feels like it gives them a bit of autonomy they’re seeking right now at their ages, but in a relatively safe way.

Highly recommend it.

I honestly bet 75% of the time I hear “We are currently experiencing high call volumes” someone answered within a minute or two.

In some sense that has the befit of a “surprise and delight” moment too because the consumer might be prepared to wait longer and then “whoa nice, that wasn’t so long!”

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448360

Points: 14

# Comments: 1

I am so glad this product is failing/failed, and I find myself truly and existentially rooting for the glasses with the cameras to die a similar fate.

I have so many questions about the overarching product vision of Meta and can't help but think they're going to continue to struggle with everything that isn't "serve more relevant ads on Instagram."

Anecdote: my most vivid memory of their "VR vision" is virtual versions of Mark and another exec high-fiving in front of a flooded Puerto Rico. Classy.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47303487

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

This product cannot be allowed to exist in the type of world I want to live in.

The power structure wants these to succeed in the market for so many horrific reasons and it will require some serious societal muscle to reject them.

Doctor warned me up front that the odds the images find something that looks weird is high but not to panic because of how many false positives there are when looking inside someone’s body.

While I am happy to report they didn’t find anything serious, I do take slight offense to the following at the top of my results:

Last name, First name: Unremarkable

(Kidding of course but still got a chuckle out of me)

Never tried Tree of Life or any of his more recent stuff.

Got any recommendations in the first 2-3 of his you’d suggest?

It was anybody’s guess if they really didn’t understand the topic or if they were reading the room, but it was always appreciated.

First, I just don’t see a world where therapy can be replaced by LLMs, at least in the realistic future. I think humans have been social creatures since the dawn of our species and in these most intimate conversations are going to want to be having them with an actual human. One of my mentors has talked about how after years of virtual sessions dominating, the demand for in-person sessions is spiking back up. The power of being in the same physical room with someone who is offering a nonjudgmental space to exist isn’t going to be replaced.

That being said, given the shortage of licensed mental health counselors, and the prohibitive cost especially for many who need a therapist most, I truly hope LLMs develop to offer an accessible and cheap alternative that can at least offer some relief. It does have the potential to save lives and I fully support ethically-focused progress toward developing that sort of option.

As someone who used to think I was generally “immune” to advertising, I have come to realize the influence goes so much deeper than “see ad on TV, go buy product” and is instead a much, much darker sense of “the only way to get rid of this anxiety is to Buy More Stuff.”

His more recent Can’t Get You Out of My Head is also fantastic about how we got from There to Here from WWII to present day.