Venezuela?

My bad, I think I didn’t respond to the correct comment. It had to do with time remaining and wanting notifications.

Agreed. It should but chances of that happening is pretty low without eventually getting enshittefied. That and wanting better control of lights and energy savings ultimately pushed me over the line to integrate HA into the home. I started small, and gradually added components as I found a need or benefit, factoring in time and effort as well.

This is one of the reasons why I set up Home Assistant. I have my own sensors that I flashed and tells me all I need to know via push notifications. Both units are modern machines so the time displayed is a moving estimate based on sensors. Saves time not having to make unnecessary trips to find the machine still running.

There are two types.

Greeters are typically someone staged at the door. They typically tend to be elderly, and often during Christmas season and sometimes longer. It serves two functions, being welcoming to customers and being a presence to thwart petty shoplifting. It obviously doesn’t stop someone committed but enough to make some think twice or choose a different exit.

The second type is just your average floor employee. This has become less common over the years with modern systems cutting back hours and shifts during the day. Back in the 90’s in my previous experience, we were expected to great EVERY CUSTOMER with a smile and a few words. Even offer to guide them to what they’re looking for. There were secret shoppers testing or observing and you’re get reprimanded for not doing it. Most customers appreciated the gesture but every once in a while you would experience a power tripping Karen/Ken being awful.

Now we need a device that detects Meta Glasses and makes us invisible to them. I know this is a losing battle and it’s just inevitable over time but I don’t like having information provided to someone about me without my consent. With enough adoption, at some point we would all just need to have our own glasses to even the field.

I was watching a random short with a guy what I’m assuming is one of these. I didn’t hear much of what he said, because I was distracted by the lenses the whole time. It was impossible to ignore as the light catches the lenses as he moves his head around.

Not diagnosed, diagnosed, or self reported as mentally ill? Seems low.

They may be gun nuts but they aren’t the only ones with interest in firearms. Plenty of non-right leaning folk are well trained in my experience.

Last week: freedom of speech gone. This week: freedom of the press gone.

As neat as it sounds, the logistics would be a nightmare. Remember, Republicans don’t follow the rules, so encouraging Democrats to leave the south is easier than having Republicans leave the west coast for example. They want things to affect us, not them.

This only works with the same select few people who speak up or share things in every call. They’re typically very outspoken, willing to go to after work, work related gatherings and such. That’s fine.

No thank you. I value work life balance very much and this violates it. I keep my personal life separate, unless I want to share. I’m very good at what I do and value my ability to do so. The people I need to get along with, I already do. These kind of details get shared organically and should not be forced.

I also do not come from a healthy family background to put it softly. When these positive sounding ideas to share come up, I come up blank, because I do not have them to share.

So go on and talk about your happy vacation to Disneyworld for the nth time, or your trip to Istanbul, or your huge extended family and their third grandchild. Talk about your hobbies and your farm animals. Don’t force me to enroll into playing games over Teams meetings. It’s fine for you to share or participate as long as you want to. I’m happy for you. Just don’t make me have to make shit up on the spot. I’m not creative that way.

If you want to know more about me, then show me that you are a good worker that I’ll get along with. Become someone I might speak positively about. Then I may offer a part of me that’s outside work. These forced team building techniques don’t work. They never have other than build resentment.

This makes me sound quite bitter but I’m just a chill guy that values privacy.

OK South Park, you know what to do!

I keep hearing how things need to stop, yada yada yada, and the dangerous liberals… what?

It’s not just code, but day to day shit too. Lately corporate communications and even training modules feel heavily AI generated. Things like unnecessary em dashes (I’m talking as much as 4 out of 5 sentences in a single paragraph), repeating statements or bullet points in training modules. We’re being encouraged to use our “private” Copilot to do everyday tasks and everything is copilot enabled.

I don’t mind if people use it, but it’s dangerous and stupid to think that it produces near perfect results every time. It’s been good enough to work as an early rough draft or something similar, but it REQUIRES scrutiny and refinement by hand. It’s like it can get you from nothing to 60-80% there, but never higher. The quality of output can vary significantly from prompt to prompt in my limited experience.

I really like the Kensington Expert mouse for this reason. Expert Mouse Wired Trackball

I use my index and middle fingers to manipulate the ball (together or alternating scissor-walk like fashion), and ring finger to turn the wheel. Thumb for left click (bottom left button), and ring finger to right click (top right button). The hand doesn’t move at all, with movement all in the fingers.

It freaks out visitors when they try to use it, but it’s a life saver for click intensive workflows. So much so that I would have a second as a backup. My only complaint for it if I had one is that the scroll wheel can get a little loud with aggressive scrolling in a single direction, like trying to get to the bottom of a page.

Your tax dollars at work.

Not a youngster, but I would say because it’s a simple choice. Don’t have to think which brand sporting Android is better and definitely don’t have to worry about what custom ROM to install. Troubleshooting between different models can be a pain. People just want something that works out of the box without having to be an expert.

1 choice (mainly) vs (too) many choices.

Looks amazing but a bit too sweet for my taste.

You mean eye liner wearing, DiD you EvEn SaY tHaNk YoU - couch fucker, James Donald Bowman “ VancyPants, our potential next in line President?