I see you have met my last boss!

Totally agree, it’s a harder to debunk way of protecting your time. Grandpa story time!

I follow something I call the rule of thirds. Of any three unverifiable improvements in workflow, two remain secret and they and their saved effort are solely mine while the smallest goes to the company. If I bust out 12 in a row, the company gets the smallest four. Maybe three if I’m feeling catty. I occasionally dole out one of the retained 2/3 when I need to look good for a review or something.

I learned this from an employer a few years back. I maxed out the first year and made a ton of improvements, so my first review was stellar. My second year’s review, though, noted that I hadn’t kept up with the previous year, so it was just a “meets expectations”. I was outperforming most of my peers, but not previous year me, so they thought I was starting to slack off. That’s when I realized many managers are idiots so you have to game the system if you want to succeed.

2025: IBM lays off 16-20k tenured employees.
Early 2026: “IBM emerges as a global leader (in asshole-tier cost savings), championing early career development by tripling their number of hired entry-level employees.”

Fuck you, IBM.

Interesting. You’re saying you can tell the difference between 320 kbps and FLAC? How long ago was this?

Anecdotal, but… I’ve been a musician for 36 years and have fantastic hearing not just for my age but for any age. I know, I have to get it quantitatively tested twice a year!

I can’t tell the difference at all between FLAC and 320 kbps from the same source. I can tell a difference between FLAC and 128 kbps, but it’s not huge. It sounds a bit dull, but I have to be looking for the difference and comparing the two. If you just gave me one or the other with no reference, I might suspect the 128 if it was a simple recording of a single instrument or a song I’m intimately familiar with, and even then I wouldn’t be sure of it. It just sometimes “feels” weird.

So I converted over 4 terabytes of my music stash to 320 kbps and cut the total space into less than 2. Feels good.

I’ll give AI this much credit. I have a rare disease that took me nearly two decades to get diagnosed. I saw over 20 doctors during that time, most of which had no idea while the rest misdiagnosed me.

I had a little intro script I wrote that explained my symptoms to keep it consistent. My roommate is a big AI proponent while I’m AI critical. At his suggestion, I signed up for a free trial for his favorite and gave it my little intro script. It processed for a few seconds, then spit out the correct diagnosis and subtype, then started asking if I had symptoms for a related comorbidity, which I do. That would have saved me 22 years of pain and confusion. WTF.

I’ve had a related chronic injury for this entire time that even my condition-aware doctors have been baffled by. I explained it in detail and AI barfed out its best guess. I worked with it until I had a possible rehab program, which is actually working.

So now I’m AI ambivalent. I strongly believe humans are at best passable doctors, but that the breadth of information for even one discipline is already more than most humans can properly understand and utilize. That’s how you end up with orthopedists that just specialize in one joint or dermatologists who concentrate on just a few conditions - there’s just too much knowledge for one person to handle all of it and that knowledge continues to grow. As medical science becomes even more advanced, I think practitioners will have to lean on technology in some form as the practice of medicine further outstrips human capabilities.

Absolutely. I was raised as a male in the United States, so crying was strongly discouraged.

I recommend “The Tao of Fully Feeling” by Pete Walker. I read it a few times and can cry my eyes out on a regular basis now.

I couldn’t agree more. I got interest in higher-end audio equipment when I was younger, so I went to a local audio shop to test out some Grado headphones. They had a display of different headphones all hooked up to the “same” audio source.

60x vs 80x sounded identical. 60x to 125x, the latter had a bit more bass. 125x to 325x, the latter had a lot more bass and the clarity was a bit better. Then I plugged the 60x into the same connection they had the 325x in. Suddenly the 60x sounded damn similar. Not quite as good, but the 60x was 1/3 the cost and the 325x sure as hell didn’t sound 3x better. They just had the EQ set better for it.

I can’t help but see their comment as a joke. One can only hope

“Remain in your cube - The Freedom Force is en route to administer freedom reeducation. Please be sure to provide proof of medical insurance prior to forced compliance.”

You’re fine! I had to ask myself why I cared so much, and it’s because I love radishes but they also wreck my guts. I have no problem eating them cooked, though the spicy/snappy flavor goes away because that’s the sulforaphane/phene.

It’s yet another vegetable humans love because of the thing it makes to keep animals from eating it. We’re culinary masochists.

Sulforaphane is heat labile, so cooking breaks some of it down. Broccoli and cabbage are fairly low in it, while Brussels sprouts and radishes are quite high. Radishes also have high amounts of sulforaphene, a related compound with similar properties. So it might be cooked vs raw, quantity consumed, -phane vs -phane/-phene, or something else entirely.

Only the R-isomer is found in any appreciable amount in nature, so it’s probably not that unless you’re eating research radishes.

Fuck, you almost sold me on GeForce Now. Owning is still a better value proposition for me because I get my games at… steep discounts.

Act now! They’re going fast and digital copies are limited!

It’s likely the sulforaphane, the compound that doesn’t actually fight cancer at all. Similar to the sulfur containing compounds in onions, it’s an irritant created when radish tissue is damaged to repel pests. In mammals, it irritates the lining of the digestive tract and causes the lower esophageal sphincter, which normally keeps stomach acid from refluxing, to relax.

But wait! They can pay for remote computing time for a fraction of the cost! Each month. Forever.

I fully expect personal computers to be phased out in favor of a remote-access, subscription model. AI popping would leave these big data centers with massive computational power available for use, plus it’s the easiest way to track literally everything you do on your system.

I prefer working at home. I’ve got the home part currently, but not so much the working.

I had no idea! I worked IT in the early 2000s and I absolutely hated Dell computers. Nothing broke faster and more often than the Dell desktops.

Maybe we need a small, private company to come along and start making good consumer hardware.

I’ve always wanted to start a business like this. “Generic Brand” household goods. Not fancy, just solidly functional base models but with modular upgradability. Wish you bought the WiFi capable washer? Buy the module for $30. Everything would be fully user serviceable and upgradable (within reason), so parts sales ensure sustained income once market saturation is reached.

Same, I have a 55" OLED and I game in 1080p. 4K looks a bit crisper, but my video card doesn’t like me when we do that.