Spyke

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Why do people insist on not answering ALL the questions in an email or text message?

Been doing email since it began. Same frustrations.

Solutions (workarounds):

  1. Email is structured with "executive summary" & "detail". That way I can write all the words I want but people can only read the first paragraph.
  2. Never ask questions. Tell them what I'm going to choose, & give them opportunity to disagree. That way if they don't respond usefully I can take their "non-response" as a response & proceed anyway.
  3. If I need to ask a question, use a phone call or go to their desk, or (shudder) make a meeting.

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Would AI Be Hated As Much If It Wasn't As Resource Intensive?

The main problem for me is that it's so confident in it's tone, like that idiot friend who just makes stuff up, but totally believes it. So there's no clue (like you would get with a normal person) that the thing has no clue if what it just wrote is true or not. I could bear it more if it said "I'm not sure, but..." But then if did that then none of the idiot CEOs would buy it, so here we are...

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AI ruined everything (asking for advice)

A very long time ago I was taught that the lifecycle of a program is 20% design, 10% coding and 70% maintenance. The LLM can do some of the design & coding for you (which is the stuff you need to learn) but it's going to (if it works) produce functional but impossible to maintain (for which read - change later for any reason) code. You're training your brain to know how to do this stuff, and that's important in and of itself.

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Do you ever use the Internet Archive for anything?

A long time ago I was repairing my dad's camera, I found an article describing the exact fault & a link to how to fix it, but the link was dead.

Used the wayback machine to find a text only copy of the fix (no pictures) which was enough.

Was immensely proud that someone had had the idea to invent the IA & have been recommending it ever since.

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I tried to rearrange my TV cabinet.

The nice thing about buying something like that is that you can modify it.

Computer doesn't fit because this bit is in the way? Chop it out.

Need some more holes in the back? Drill more holes!

This vertical strut is in the way of that other thing & it only fits here because that's where the mounting holes are? Make some new mounting holes.

The whole thing is 25 mm (1") too deep? Cut 25 mm (1") off the back.

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Men r so nonchalant

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Actually they might (in my experience) be interested enough to listen if you can dumb it down enough: e.g. I found this thing that wasn't very well written and I re-wrote it and now it runs 1,000 times faster. You probably need to ELI5 to manglement anyway, so why not for the family too? Hopefully they'll respond to your enthusiasm if nothing else.

Your dynamic is perhaps different, but you do have the empathy (or whatever) to know that it's different.

linux

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Being Forced to Say Goodbye

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Yeah. I retired a year ago, every now & then I say to myself "I'm sure I had a script for that..." bit then I can't find it of course, which makes me sad.

Oh & I used to sign in to GitHub with a username & password, then GitHub said I needed to change my password, and emailed me a link to my old work address, which I can no longer access.

So I'm going to have to fork my own stuff!

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No excuse

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"Also car has great visibility forward and fuck all backwards, rear view mirror is like double the size of the rear window (in the reflection, not side by side)."

Yeah - this is exactly why you should reverse park. When you come out again into potentially a stream of traffic, if you reverse park, you're coming out forwards, you can see them & they can see you. If you forward park you have literally no idea what you're backing out into.

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Assumptions

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That's often the case, or for a smaller garage they will do (if you ask for it) a pre-inspection/service & then take it somewhere else to be tested. AFAIK It's allowed to be driven on the road without a valid MOT if it's on the way to or from an appointment at a testing centre, and a retest is free.