ErrantX

DDG has a global remote workforce so this wouldn't seem to apply in their case.

- In the EU the main reason Rewards cards have declined is that the regulator capped interchange to a very small amount in 2015. The US will follow suit at some point (as noted debit cards have gone that way) but I guess not as low

- I think the simple answer to nkurz's point on why don't all cards charge the maximum in interchange is - it's just market forces. It's not worth enough money to long-term piss off the bigger merchants (i.e. Amazon). When you have a 30% APR card non-rewards card, the 3% interchange is small beans. Also the acquiring bank would probably want a bigger piece of the pie if it were more widespread

- Credit Card economics is radically different across different countries (for all sorts of reasons). So for example, a third of card users in the US explicitly seek the rewards and another third have it for the various protections/security vs. debit cards. In the UK only 12% seek rewards, with the two biggest use cases being to spread costs of big transactions or to improve their credit score. (so for that reason it's sort of hard to have a global view of this problem)

Tip on this though; get someone else to wear them at your preferred volume. I tend to find ~50% of folks who use bone conducting headphones have to have the volume up so loud it's basically audible to people next to you.

The Foundation have invested a lot over the last decade in reliability. Nowadays it is in a great place, but about 10 years ago it was up and down all the time.

I am genuinely intrigued as to why that's better?

Especially as in the second part of your comment you restrict shareability/usability significantly from what the author wants to achieve (IE I can't as a free user bash out a diagram and share it, then later do another and share with a different person).

In fact the solution is so elegant when you think on it; free account volume is incredibly scalable, zero storage cost, offer immediate value but also a really simple upsell to pro accounts (save to the DB so you don't have to save the URls).

I mean arguably we BS all the time; how many pub quizzes do people confidently assert an answer? So I don't think that's totally the issue.

It's slightly different to the point I was talking to; but the thing about ChatGPT I find "uncanny" right now is how formal and expert it sounds about everything. A person would vary in certainty/surety and would sometimes show their working out etc.

So again it's a demonstration of how AI currently works; a best fit to the form and words of the question rather than genuine determination.

(I am not at all an AI expert but my understanding is that essentially all of this is not an engineering problem but a compute scale problem to train a large enough corpus - but someone expert please correct me!)

Yeh so this and other examples for me demonstrate that ChatGPT has no logic per se. These examples demonstrate that it is not analysing your question and calculating the answer, instead it is approximating and answer based on a corpus of questions. So in essence it doesn't actually yet understand what you are asking it.

I'd be intrigued to see some kind of amalgamation of an AI tool like ChatGPT with a logic tool (say Wolfram Alpha-style). That would combat a lot of the ways folks have found to break this.

Side note; There is something particularly pleasing/calming about watching a binary counter.

They also had a strong ideological element too.

More important is what you want done with it all, or at least what it all means.

My wife knows my password already (this is sensible redundancy). But she doesn't know what I use or do, or who I might like her to tell etc.

So by all means leave your password, but also leave a digital "will".

I think that it's not true that govt are not a big influence on energy pricing.

For example; UK energy costs are currently higher than EU because the govt decommissioned most of our long term gas storage meaning our usage is tied to the current price (hence we've had price shock a lot quicker than the EU).

Also government's control the system of marginal pricing which generally was a good system for fair pricing - but with gas costs rocketing is skewing energy costs unduly.

I'm interested in your take on Director. It definitely has a legal definition taken on its own. But Director as a level is also really common too; sometimes it gets switched with Head of etc. (Fwiw we regularly hire IT Directors from SMB into team manager roles)

So I'd agree if he were in the US, but in the UK you couldn't fire someone for that (well you could but you'd lose the tribunal).

I've been in his shoes at a small company; they are taking his requests and ignoring them as is because right now they have a great deal! He needs to tip the balance more in his favor.

OP seems critical to the business; assuming that's true triggering an oh shit moment is how you get movement.

A) Sit your employer down and say "I am applying for Jobs in the 80-100K range because <list of reasons>. When I get an offer I will take it, you are welcome to make me an offer to stick around now"

B) Get on LinkedIn and scope out some recruiters, reach out to the ones you like the look of with a brief of the sort of role your looking for. Get on the phone with them and get their advice - they will get you interviews.

Don't stop B if A works. Ultimately you should leave your current employer - they are not going to "get it" overnight so it will happen again in some form.

With your skills I'd expect to see you earning at least 80-90K depending on location. Aim for more full stack or DevOps roles. Consider management or team lead tracks - you clearly have strong organisational skills.

I don't, however I am generally able to flex my days a lot due to working mostly from home and also being able to complete my work fairly quickly.

A lot of people at my employer do work different schedules though. Either 4 day weeks or compressed hours (9 longer days & one day off).

I think it's a cultural thing where the organisation recognises work is work and you also deserve a life on your terms.

All of us seem pretty happy with our setups...

Absolutely; Pratchett always described it as a direct "pisstake" of Ringworld (and Niven was a fan)

Yes I agree that is how it is being claimed.

Interestingly; the first HP book was published in 1997 but the print run was only 500. The book wasn't published in the US till late 1998 and by that point hadn't even sold half a million copies.

I believe it kind of blew up in sales through 1999 but the UK -> US lag meant most of the sales were in the 2000s.

I mean clearly HP craze has smashed Discworld in the end. But the first three HP books were released in the late 90s, whereas Pratchett wrote 16 novels through the decade (and something like 5-6 in the 80s). So he had volume on his side.

Vimes is my favourite character arc; I don't always rate Guards Guards but it is essential entry to Night Watch (IMO one of the best books).

Also a shout out for underrated options; Soul Music (great tag line, lovely observational comedy) and Carpe Jugulum (some fan favourite characters, but also one of my fav bit-part characters - Lacrimosa)

If you are a discworld fan it's worth reading Strata, one of his earliest works.

This is set in a disc shaped world as well and you can see the early shape of the discworld concept (the world but also the style of the books). It's like seeing him work out his voice.

I love discworld a lot. But Good Omens is, for me, the essence of the craft of dark humourist fantasy. So many observations on humanity.

I'd say the author is being generous to the agency and Isaac.

There is easily a version of this where the agency has landed on an excellent strategy for milking 7K for 6x their spend.

At best (generously assuming the agency's retro is all true) the CEO, Isaac has been greedy or naive in taking on work they clearly weren't set up to deliver.

Well in this exact case; the agency quite successfully structured things so that the billable hours were grown significantly beyond what was originally contracted...

Human nature; if you have a problem there is a linear scale of effort:

1. Do I just know the answer 2. Can I trivially find the answer in under 10s 3. Who will know the answer? 4. What research will it take to learn the answer

This is an important distinction I think.

I generally coach people who email regularly to explain the why behind a question or the value to them of me answering.

If your consistently failing an audit because I am ignoring you then you you can have an answer.

The most important productivity tool I have is ignoring people.

90% of messages/requests I don't need to explicitly action (probably 80% of slack messages are followed an hour later by "oh I figured out the answer").

The 10% will follow up.

Ultimately, I don't feel this is really about reproductive rights.

It's part of a long term disenfranchisement of groups of individuals in a way which secures GOP electoral college votes. As you say, the power of rural Republican votes is significant and depopulating those areas of democratic votes is a significant part of the GOP strategy.

Interesting point; but I think the US laws have similar effect in different ways.

For example; the overtime laws just create incentive to work more than 40 hours a week. On average US workers work much more than other OECD countries.

> Your argument that they do is based on the assumption that they are not applied to that group

I'd qualify it more as; I don't believe these ideas are easy to implement for that group vs. non-service roles.

Now, I am based in the UK so things may vary around the world but I disagree with your assertion about the wage & hours laws.

For example; here we have a maximum working week of 48 hours. This was supposed to help people in the service industry but actually it mostly helps office workers. We have leverage to kill off the crazy hours expected in creative roles. However, service workers have wage pressure to sign waivers to let them work more than the 48 hours (because minimum wage is not a living wage).

These things have to work in tandem to drive up lower-income wealth but they just don't - so I object to other initiatives which don't directly address the problem.

Anything that says "just hire more people" is an unsustainable plan which ignores the economics (most people work in service industry, and mostly in part time roles). The outcome of increasing demand on that industry OR forcing the full time workers to work less is that the part-time workers would need to work more.

> No, I don't.

Great! We all need this attitude.

But I assert the vast majority will still want their 10pm Starbucks, Friday restaurants and Sunday shopping trips (also, it's not a high-wage sacrifice - the majority are also service workers and they also want these things, it's a circular economy!).

Oddly we are probably largely in agreement; I just think we need to be more radical in how we fix this otherwise we will just have another cycle that depresses the lower-income workers opportunities.

Yes and it is interesting that the response to my comment is "oh we meant them too". Which I know is said in good faith but it fundamentally shows a disconnect from how a huge portion of our society lives.

How many of us would forgo a Starbucks on Friday in order to have that 4 day week?

Indeed. I have a top 1% salary but my pleasant life is provided largely by those earning under 30K GBP. This is probably true of the majority here...

It wears heavily on me daily.