Years and years ago, a friend who is a (self taught) software engineer made a comment on all the Y-Combover-type things appearing more often, I'm paraphrasing here a bit: "This shit is just like the tasks/chores/whathaveyou's that Mom or Dad would do for these kids, instead of making them get off their own asses, because they were either too lazy, spoiled, sheltered or whatever." I remember how hard my eyes rolled when I started seeing little Isuzu NPR fuel trucks delivering gas/fueling up people's cars while they were parked at work.
I will say this about AI, specifically the art generation side of it. If you are patient and learn how to use the tools, you can create some epic level garbage or insane level weirdness. *Shameful plug: AI art generators were used heavily in the creation of artwork for these records I co-created (give a listen, will ya?) ---> https://luggyton.bandcamp.com/music
“ making them get off their own asses, because they were either too lazy, spoiled, sheltered or whatever” This is why i mow my own lawn and rake my own leaves even though i can more than afford someone to do it for me. And i still do It less than i should.
I do pay for a cleaning lady once a month because i have three kids 4 and under and the wife can only do so much. Never had one pre children. My house was also a mess…
If I have a single complaint on how I was raised, it was that I was rarely made to do more than help my dad with home repairs. I’ve basically had to learn it all since the age of 17; and my living habits and domestic ineptitude still enrages girlfriends, to the point of a blowout fight this week that ended with my A4 having a slightly crunched fender.
I wish I had learned more from dad with regards to home repairs and such. He was a helluva framer and finish carpenter but the detail work wasn't his forte. I learned enough to get by but nothing I'd be proud to point out to anyone. But I learned about fixing cars from him at the tender age of six being screamed at because I wasn't shining the flashlight in the correct spot as the 250 powered Buick Apollo got a tuneup.
I hope the blowout wasn't with the girlfriend that came from crazy but was going to church and wanted kids...
To be fair, it was about 98% my fault, so I won’t excessively blame her. She just came from nothing and is used to treating her things like prized possessions; I’m not exactly a Rockefeller, but my family has some money and I suppose I don’t take care of stuff as well as I should.
You ever notice how there are never any first-generation car guys?
According to all car magazines and websites EVER, everybody who's into cars grew up helping dad or grandpa fix his daily driver or work on his projects. No one was ever the first person in their family to like cars. Nobody was ever the dad or grandpa who got the ball rolling. Nobody was ever the first generation who learned how to do brakes or rebuild an engine.
I too am a first generation vehicle guy. My dad had zero interest in cars beyond transportation. I say "vehicle" because I started with motorcycles. Completely self taught via reading (pre internet) and doing. Club roadracing and desert racing two strokes dictated learning how to do top end jobs periodically. Culminated in building a Factory Five cobra kit car. The internet age and youtube have made it much easier to learn things.
I know next to nothing about working on cars. About the only thing I’ve ever done was help my father replace an X3 headlight probably 7 years ago. Wish I had some instruction there. Luckily I can do basic plumbing and home repairs, something at which my father is incredibly adept. That said, things might be different if he were a gear head: countless hours fixing our old house made me sour on the idea of owning anything more than a basic condo: would be a shame if a childhood spent working on his BMWs made me into a Prius owner or something.
Sometimes that's a blessing too. Even though I hated dad's methods of teaching (screaming, yelling, sometimes throwing things), I've caught myself repeating them at times almost reflexively. It takes conscious thought to bypass those habits.
Spending some time benchrest shooting with my 81 year old father reminded me that he's a terrible teacher and probably why I have little to no skill in home repairs.
My grandfather didn't know a Phillips from a flathead, so I grew up helping my dad try to learn home improvement from library books and loaner tools.
We still tackle projects together that we have no business attempting. So far the only times we started a job on our own and have thrown in the towel and passed it professionals was anytime we tried anything more complex than brakes on my old Allroad.
We are not as ambitious as we used to be, but I am very grateful we still get to do weekend projects together well into his 70s.
I got all my mechanical, design and artistic abilities from my mom. Dad gave me his command of the language, political & cultural philosophy and pursuit of scholarly interests.
Mom's the one who can fix the sink, rewire the garage and tell you to go deal with that punk at school who won't leave you alone. Dad can verbally flow-chart you through why maybe the 20th century wouldn't have been an abattoir if Washington had lost the American Revolution.
You're not supposed to be having ANY fights this early, and you shouldn't be having property damaging blowouts, ever. I learned both the hard way.
Keeping a tidy home and maintaining the living habits of a grown-ass man isn't that hard, especially once you get used to it. I'm pretty lazy about cleaning, but my place always looks like a model home. You'll avoid the fights and attract a better class of girlfriend that has more to offer than being a live-in maid.
Counterpoint. I had a hole in my ceiling and no bed frame when I met the wife. And yeah, someone is going to learn the hard way they always arrest the guy in DV disputes no matter who does the hitting.
Your wife presumably wasn't looking for you to be her savior to keep her in a certain lifestyle, though. You both brought other things to the table.
If you're going to live with holes in the ceiling and no furniture, you need to 0) demonstrate you have the means and skills to eventually fix those problems and/or 1) demonstrate that you're willing to kick them to the curb for complaining about those problems.
But Bryce is running lifestyle/provider game, whether he realizes it or not. If you're going to do that, at least keep a consistent image and clean the damn house up. Also, don't do it with damaged women who are going to get anxious about any holes in the facade.
My father was a veterinarian. His vet hospital had three kennel rooms, the rearmost was half taken up with his woodshop. He taught me how to use a radial arm saw when I still had to stand on a box to reach the saw. I still use some of his tools. My older brother taught me about working on small engines and electronics. If it doesn't get done, I'm either being too lazy to do it myself or too cheap to pay an expert.
My dad, o'b'm', would be amazed at my 3D printers and laser cutter/engraver.
My lovely wife is very enthusiastic about keeping our house super clean and lives in fear of anyone coming in and witnessing anything other than an immaculate home. She complains endlessly about the work that entails and has been asking for years to bring in a cleaner. My response always is; “no fucking way. You’re just going to clean the house before the cleaner arrives anyway, so what’re we achieving here?”.
When I was a kid, several of my friends' moms had to have the vacuum tracks showing on the living room carpet. They were also the ones who insisted everyone take their shoes off when they came in. That wasn't how we rolled in my house, and it was quite inconvenient as I wore army boots at the time.
My parents also hired one of those maid services that'd come in and vacuum, but since they insisted we clean the place up first, why bother hiring a maid at all?
It’s therapeutic. All those nice neat lines and the added benefit of hoovering up all the crap that blows onto the property. I find it very satisfying.
I HATED raking leaves when I was 12, mainly because my dad refused to buy a leaf blower. Once we convinced him to do so, and mulch said leaves with the mower instead of bagging them, cleaning up the yard in the fall suddenly became a stress-free endeavor. I actually enjoyed it at that point.
I got lucky with a Blue-collar father. The guy knew how to do pretty much anything, and would rope me into it despite the fact I was too young or too disinterested. Ended up learning an awful lot about everything. Still learning.
One thing I found amusing was how my mother would pester him to simply hire someone to do a job, and after he'd give in and hire someone, he'd find the job wasn't done to his standards and he'd redo it himself.
MotoGP is going into the last round this weekend at Valencia (pronounced valenthia by all the Spaniards) with the championship still undecided.
In Qatar the sprint race had a poor showing from Bagnaia on the front row and Jorge Martin from the second making big points gains to cut the gap to 7 points. The track surface was green and gave a number of riders trouble but Martin looked great.
The race, however, saw a disastrous launch for Martin who must have smoked his rear immediately and never recovered. A tenth place finish for him and second for Bagnaia means a 21 point gap. Difficult but not impossible to overcome.
DiGiantonnio, who Marc Marquez is replacing in Gresini Racing, won the race in fine form and is hopeful a team picks him up as a rider next year. There aren't many available seats, though, and a team like VR46 is interested in getting young talent promoted to factory teams.
It's hard to tell what's going on in MotoGP right now. People are claiming Michelin has bad quality control which results in examples of tires that are "bad". This has been used to explain both Pecco's performance in the sprint and Martin's performance in the feature this past weekend. There's a fine line where volatility in a championsihp can be exciting and where it just becomes hard to understand as a spectator. MotoGP is starting to trend to just being confusing. 2020 was also like this where we almost had a rider's champion who never won a race.
Case in point - Digi is an enigma. He spends almost the entire two seasons getting dunked on by Alex Marquez, who generally is a midpack at best rider. Then seemingly at random wakes up and fights for wins.
Finally - Aleix needs to get the fucking boot. He throws tantrums like my 3 year old son, and needs to be treated like the child he is.
I find a lot of the riders have been uh making their displeasure obvious during practice and quals.
As for bad tires - I would think it's more likely something went wrong on the 1 of 4 Ducati with special sensors, programming, and electronics (recall practice starts were also bad) and that the violent wheel spin set the tire up from premature drop in performance.
As I said to my Portuguese mate, 'I've always found the Spaniards and their language effeminate and gay asf, now your language - that's a man's language' 🤙
I can see the "pedant of the week" award winging my way, but my recollection (from working for a Spanish business) is they pronounce Valencia as "balenthia." Always sounds weird to my ears but it's not a bad language, just not as musical and flowing as Italian.
The (unexpectedly) distasteful, dismissive, and supercilious treatment of fans courtesy of John, Greg, Stefano, Renee, etc. after the Thursday night debacle was downright awful.
Fortunately, there were no more snakes in the grass for Formula 1 after the stubbed toe out of the gate. While I wouldn’t say it was one of the best races in a long time - and I believe that Singapore was the best race of the year - there were five (I believe) legitimate passes for the lead, and there was genuine jeopardy over the outcome. George Russell’s collision with Max caused the safety car that reset the race that resulted in Max hunting down Charles for the ultimate victory. Without that collision, Charles likely would have won.
I get your excitement about F1 racing, but ever since they went the "greenwash" route, it has left me completely cold. And I used to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to watch races live on SpeedVision.
As I was reading the article, I couldn't help but think that, unlike in the past, F1 is a tech dead-end, just as much as the "AI" from the article. The only difference is, some people will enjoy the F1 "show."
The OEMs wouldn’t be there without the (tenuous) opportunity to promote hybridization and efficiency. Keep your fingers crossed for “sustainable” (i.e., “synthetic) fuels and a return to high RPM NA screamers in the future.
I am prepared to stick my neck out a bit and proclaim that F1 has never been “better” than it has been lately, under Liberty, during the time that I’ve been an ardent fan. I watched some of the ‘96 and ‘97 seasons before becoming a committed fan in 1998.
I miss screaming V10s, tobacco money (and liveries), and air horns.
F1 in the late 90s was a black box for me, apart from what happened on screen when I got to watch a race that someone had taped for me (no Speedvision where I grew up), or what I could glean from F1 Racing Magazine or Road & Track.
Now … you could spend every waking hour watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, reading articles on various news sites, arguing with people on Twitter / Reddit, watching drivers’ and teams’ social media accounts, etc.
What, huddling naked in a cave around a campfire wondering whether you're going to die of starvation, a broken leg, a snakebite or being eaten by a bear?
I can’t see the current day fans liking the 20,000 rpm NA engines. I was at Laguna Seca in 2004 when Ferrari tried to set the lap record with a F2002. Trackside at turn 6, it was physically painful. I can’t believe the beautiful people would be crazy about that.
I have heard Ferrari run old F1 cars during their F1 Clienti / Corse Clienti / XX Clienti / Ferrari Challenge days at Road Atlanta.
To be perfectly honest … they were not that loud. They may be detuned a bit (slightly lowered redline for the sake of rebuild interval), but they are the real deal F1 engines, not a Judd (or similar) stand-in. A lot of IMSA cars are at least as loud, and the new Cadillac and recently deceased 911 RSR significantly louder.
Speaking of which. John Doonan should have moved heaven and earth to have a 100 minute IMSA street race in Vegas as the undercard for F1. Forget Petit Le Mans as the season finale. The opportunity to race cars that look like road cars and sound so much better than F1 cars in front of a group of captive rich people should not have been missed. Unfortunately, John Doonan is a simpleton with low ambitions who has managed to run IMSA into the ground despite the “golden age” of sports cars that is now upon us… I honest to god once saw him spill chocolate milk on himself. In public.
It’s all fine and dandy to be a nice guy or to have people like you as a person … but his job ain’t about warm fuzzies. It’s about getting people and businesses to care more about IMSA than they did yesterday, because if this “golden age” can’t do it, they will be up shit creek once they OEMs leave again.
The Laguna car was turned up to quali and driven by Bertolini. It was super cool how loud it was in the Salinas hills. The Clienti stuff is driven by posers. Speaking of which, I was at turn 6 at Laguna Seca when Kroymans knocked the glued on front of his Clienti ex-Schumacher car. It was quickly swept under the rug and it never was revealed why it failed like it did.
They stood on the throttle on the straights at Road Atlanta. At least when the cars worked.
I wouldn’t say they’re poseurs … where else are people driving vintage Ferrari F1 cars on tracks with any degree of regularity? They’re successful people who get to live a piece of the dream all while instantly becoming Ferrari VVVVVIPs who are friendly with all of the other Ferrari VVVVVIPs.
My favorite forms of racing are done in vehicles or situations I can relate to. Probably why I’ve never really cared to follow F1 or NASCAR etc. Loved to follow rally. Watched tons of SCCA runoff coverage and 90s IMSA was GOD to me in my younger days.
Though as a child I was hyper focused on the Indy500 with its constant roster of mostly American drivers. Now I’ve no idea who any of those people are.
Friends and I considered Vegas when it was first announced but it priced out even my wealthiest colleges who found zero value at spending such an absurd amount. Still, it’s an intriguing event with being a night race and all the colors in the background. I didn’t even watch it.
After an IMSA enduro race in person, I find that I lay in bed at night and hear phantom engine sounds for a night or two. Probably best to reduce exposure!
There are all sorts of earplugs that allow enough sound in for enjoyment if you don't want to be that deaf old git in 30 years time. I was very pleased to have my Loop Experience earplugs in at a recent gig in London.
I dunno, the Tyrrell 6-wheeler was a tech dead-end once the Lotus 78/79 made ground effects in the turns a better solution to quick lap times than the reduced frontal area of the small front wheels and resultant top speed advantage of the former. I take your point though.
The P34 wasn't dead-end technology, anymore than the smartphone was. It just wasn't given a chance.
What killed it was Goodyear not further developing its specialist front tires and F1 changing the rules to negate its aerodynamic & weight advantages. Had those two things not happened, there'd probably be other 6-wheelers racing today.
Absolutely true. Outside forces intervened. IIRC, Goodyear was responding to the rules changes, not the other way around. The result was the same, culminating in Mario's championship year.
Of course, true communism wasn't given a chance either because outside forces (like human nature) intervened.
Yeah, but unlike communism, the P34 ACTUALLY DID WORK.
There's a certain "realness" to the simpler cars and engineering of the pre-computer era of racing that modern vehicles just don't match. A certain greater "believability" as well.
I love seeing photos of '70s F1 cars sitting in the dirt outside a trailer with mechanics in grimy overalls using identifiable tools to fix them. That's really the era I witnessed the most F1 in person, plus Montreal in 1980 and 1996-1998.
There's something about riveted sheetmetal and carburetors and manual transmissions that connects with you in ways that carbon fiber and CFD and hybrid drivetrains JUST DON'T.
All the billions spent on AI, and it doesn’t have the ability to see what happens when a ball crosses the street, it can’t see the kid behind the parked cars running after it.
This is really about synapses and neurons firing off, something that happens much quicker than a mainframe thinking about what usually follows a ball. Chat GTP can be programmed to have biases, so just like google, you can’t trust it to give an unbiased answer to any query.
If real AI ever becomes a thing, asking ai if 13 does 50 will be answered by the communist Americans as “sorry i cant answer that hal” and the non communist russia (hilarious isnt it) will crush us.
It wouldn’t be the first time that culture and entertainment predicted accurately twenty or thirty years in advance things that we are seeing today, comedy and serious fiction have both proved this.
I swear this is true. Back in the '70s, Massachusetts annual safety inspection stickers had this warning on them: "Watch for the rolling ball. A child is sure to follow."
Stripe - genuinely made it easier (note I did not say cheaper) to take credit cards. Also Patrick is a brilliant weirdo.
AirBnB - Jury is still really really out but it's hard to say it's been a genuine net good for many cities
Instacart, Doordash - Essentially labor arb after the Great Recession when many people realized they were ZMP workers. Sprinkle in ZIRP venture funding, and people's propensity to not go out.
Cruise - Imploding as we speak.
Twitch - What Jack said.
Coinbase - Probably the least fraud-y of all the crypto companies?
Pagerduty - Legit
Brex - Decent but crowded field.
Deel - Useful for foreign company labor arb.
Rippling - Oh come on this was Parker Conrad's startup after getting run out of Zenefits. He would have gotten funding with our without YC
Reddit - The most useful place on the internet now that google's gone to shit
Gusto - Another one in the "What if we took HRIS and upbundled it." Eh
Flexport - seems to be imploding in front of our eyes? I think there's more to this story.
Dropbox - I'm still bitter that the company I worked for rejected my pitch to build this in 2005.
Scale - Generative AI Ctrl-C Ctrl-V
GitLab - How is version control not a solved problem yet?
Fivetran - Scott Locklin would say that the fact that a company like this exists shows how broken computing is.
Rappi - We're kind of scraping the bottom of "top companies" here
Checkr - Automating something that shouldn't need doing but the government insists.
Zapier - Again a solution to all the cruft that midwits at companies buy. Hey dogg, I hear you like web apps so I built a web app on your web apps so you can web app while you use web apps.
Whatnot - oh god no I just can't
Podium - one of about a billion "lead generator" salescritter tools
Zepto - Because the world needs more delivery companies
Segment - All I know is that I paid a fortune for Segment and my product + marketing teams still couldn't tell me shit about what was going on
Ironclad - Could be decent?
Faire, Razorpay, Benchling, Groww - Idk what these are but they're certainly not lighting the world on fire.
A fintech start-up for which I interviewed just after their Series B two years ago recently announced that they are essentially shutting down. I went through seven (yes, 7) rounds of interviews only for them not to hire anyone for the role (I think they were already getting concerned about runway and the eventual Series C, which never happened).
You’re a better man than I Gunga Din. More than 3 interviews and it is time for me to withdraw my interest and stop interviewing. Unable to make a decision with the information provided then there is no leadership or vision. Just a company of processes and decision by default.
That’s ~$250K / yr pretax to re-arrange deck chairs on the Titanic while dealing with the stress of realizing your equity will be worthless (or already is).
Fresh out of college, I landed an interview for a design position at a manufacturing company. It went well - I was in there for two hours. They said they needed two weeks. Fair enough.
Two weeks. Just like in "The Money Pit." Foreshadowing, folks.
When they didn't call me two weeks on, I got back to them. Oh sorry, they said - the Design Director was on vacation and he has to sign off on new hires. We'll call you back in two weeks.
Um, okay.
Long story short, this happened for THREE MONTHS. Every two weeks I'd call them back and every time, they'd feed me some line about how they didn't or couldn't make a decision. Finally, I told them point-blank I wanted an answer and that I'd take anything other than an enthusiastic "YES!" as a "NO."
Guess who didn't get the job.
What I can't figure out is WHY they did this. If they didn't want to hire me, how hard is a "NO?" My most-optimistic theory is that they DID want to hire me, but they'd blown through their recruiting budget for the year - by July? Seriously? - and didn't want me going to another company.
Wow, that worked great!
Realistically, somebody there wanted me, but couldn't make the case to the Big Deals.
I use Gusto to do my payroll because it's cheap and easy. Yeah, one day I'll probably be forced to switch, but only time will tell.
I have to use dropbox on occasion because others send me stuff via it, rather than just sending it to me instead (WHY?).
Reddit is where stupid people go to be even stupider. I hate going there, but am at times forced to.
How is version control still a problem? Why do we keep ending up with new programming languages when we haven't had a need for one in 20+ years? It's because programming is still a 'science' (which means it's not serious) instead of being 'engineering' (which is)
Do you use Gusto for scheduling and time cards apps as well? We are switching from square to a QuickBooks integration.
I didn't do much research beyond my accountant suggesting it would be a little easier.
I still make the schedule on a excel sheet I made so it is simple and visual to see if I have enough coverage and overlap, and then try to recreate it in the dedicated software. It is not an efficient process.
I have to do payroll, because I'm an LLC and so I need to do that and all of the associated paperwork. Because I have to pay myself a wage for taxed purposes.
My spouse works for me, they're paid a percentage of the gross (which is just easier than dealing with hours as well).
So I have zero experience with the time card thing, sorry.
I'm taxed as an S-corp. I have a CPA, I've had them for 30+ years now I guess? The problem is, I'm an author and we do get taxed differently than everyone else (they tried to get that changed a couple of years ago, I don't recall if that worked out like everyone had hoped it would). I do need to pay myself a salary and I've been trying to offload a lot of the non-writing work (when you're self publishing there is a LOT of things you have to deal with), hence why my other half is starting to work for me - they're very much a techie and deal with a lot of that stuff already for me.
I used Gusto for a company I was supporting a few years ago, including timecards (but not scheduling). It's fine, although we had employees do their own timecards (we were a software company with a few 1099s).
I only recognize 3 of the YC companies, reddit and Airbnb suck.
Stripe? Seems fine. We integrated it into our summer software because it was a better choice for the lower volumes we do vs winter where Auth.net price model is better.
I’ll give a nod to DropBox as useful. That’s about it from that grid. For the record, I reflexively reject and abhor anything that ends in “r” instead of “er.”
My first job was at a contract design firm, so we had to do timesheets to bill the clients. I asked my boss why our timesheet software was so bad. He said, "You're a talented software engineer, do you want to work on fucking timesheet software?" Point taken.
I have a whole rant about how all these companies have put all this cutesy UX everywhere to make their products nonthreatening and appeal to a certain - ahem - buyer. Like your point above about company names, everything now utterly condescending and Not Serious
See the interesting thing about writing and drawing your own furry porn is that it's a legitimately creative endeavor that can profit from - handsomely if you're good at it.
also fuck toto for being a prick for absolutely no reason
I would express it as "look where you want to go." You have already looked where you are going, the focus needs to be further down the road than new riders usually manage. And leave a big gap in front of you; it gives you time to think and a 1975 CB360 will surely not stop like a modern car with ABS!
As for all the morons that call themselves Prompt Engineers, they're like those people that think implementing LEAN is adding extra steps and more paperwork to a process.
Personally, I've long thought that Albert Einstein serves as a secular replacement for Jesus Christ, for people who fancy themselves too intelligent for religious faith.
"Max nonetheless drove through the field and won the race regardless. It was likely because he is simply better at the black art of traction sensing than the other drivers."
It'd be interesting to see him in a pre ground effects F1 car or one of those skinny tired '50s cars like Moss and Fangio drove.
Martin Brundle told a very funny story about traction sensing on Chris Harris' podcast once. Senna overtook him on the outside so a lap later Brundle thought he would try the same trick but ended up in the barriers. After the race, Senna came up to him and asked what the heck Brundle thought he was doing to which Brundle replied "the same as you"! Senna's reply: "but there was grip there when I did it!"😄
Briggs Cunningham was an actual engineer, honed his Packard in Yale’s labs as a student. Revs Institute has the car and it’s cooler than the other side of the pillow.
**edited: Packard not Duesenberg. Cunningham bought and rebodied a Jesse Vincent prototype built to sell Packard on speed. Then he um let the Sheffield School of Engineering use it— his daily driver— as a chassis dyno lab rat.
at nassau speedweeks in '63 my 24-year-old friend caused our small crowd to have a sharp intake of breath. teddy mayer had just said something like "ultimate chassis tuning is a black art. you have to have people who have tons of experience to come up with the best shock tuning, antirollbar stiffness, camber, caster, to have a winning car." bryan said "that's just because you haven't employed things to measure the car's performance with variations in those parameters. intuition or 'black art' has nothing to do with it!" correcting teddy mayer! the very idea! i could tell many more stories about the late bryan...
That kind.of thinking persisted in lots of industries for an astoundingly long time.
In the early 2000s I had the stupid idea to start my own ski company. Back then there was a huge divide between North American employees and the demigods in European product development. A very experienced old hand explained I to me that there was no way I could ever figure out to make a decent ski, it was practically alchemy and accident. Even the race dept didn't know why some skis were fast and some were shit, and people way smarter than me couldn't figure it out.
Later I was taking a tour of a factory and I could barely contain myself. I built better process controls in my garage. Their wet layup techniques would have made Bayliner chuckle.
Things are different now, better, but it took moving a lot of production to eastern Europe. New production facilities and moving on from old hands.
I'd need a day in the car just to pick up the oddities of how they used to work, but yeah. They didn't even understand the slipstream-to-brake that accounts for 80% of the passes now in club racing.
That presumes that no one is sharing information with them, or that they are incapable of learning. I don't see why that would be the case in this counterfactual.
It wouldn't be. Six months after I appeared from the future, they'd be driving line theory in SCCA races, let alone pro events. So I'd have to press the advantage while I had it!
I use it for the most part online. You never know what mods and other people think. Also, some words are banned by our AI masters. In the meat world, yeah, I never use "poo".
I agree that none of these names have the romance of "a billionth part tincture of toad-spittle infused with a lock of mermaids hair" but generally pharmaceutical products are quite effective. My father was in the artillery stationed on Gibraltar for a year or two in WW2 and the only premature death was caused by an ear infection from swimming. No antibiotics then.
As silly as it sounds, a significant reason for the dumb names is just based on what domain names are available. Checker.com was bought up long before checkr even started thinking about being a company.
Agreed, but most companies have a company name and have the first bit of a product built before they can get VC funding.
That doesn’t make the naming any less stupid. Just bringing up one of the more prevalent reasons why it occurs.
I’m in the sort of odd position of having started a company that gets approached by VC’s to fund us, but that has no interest in taking funny money from someone who’s main goal is to get a house as close to University Ave in Palo Alto as possible.
I think he's out of that business entirely! As to whether JD is still jacking people for their Nissan trucks in the drive-thru, the situation is less clear.
What if it turns out that there's no physical structure within the human brain that produces consciousness?
What if consciousness is to the human being what paint is to a car: A separate component, fashioned using an entirely different process from the metal & plastic of the vehicle and applied during manufacture, with the intent of remaining part of the car for its whole life? AND, just as there's no system within the car that generates the paint, there's no mechanism in the human body that produces consciouness?
I've become quite taken with my pet theory that what we call consciousness is in fact nothing less than the human soul. Only God Himself is capable of making one, and it represents the absolute minimum system required to generate & host consciousness. And consciousness is what you'd need for true AI, in effect an artificial person.
To think that we human beings, apex creations of the Lord though we may be, are capable of producing a device that can mimic consciousness - using FUCKING MATH - when we don't have the slightest idea of what consciousness even IS, is the height of atheist geek arrogance.
A computer is not a primitive artificial brain, though the internet might qualify, after a fashion. MIGHT, but it lacks a guiding intelligence to direct it.
One of the most interesting things about the emergence of Jordan Peterson as a societal force, is that he has brought an intellectual view and rigour to the discussion of religion. In particular, Christianity. The elites long ago gave up any pretence of taking religion seriously. It was one of those silly beliefs left only to distract hoi polloi, like NASCAR and patriotism.
For centuries, scientific inquiry into the natural world was the province of devout Catholics, men who sought to understand the mechanisms of the universe as God had created it. The Church openly sponsored these activities, seeking to glorify God and His works.
There are those that believe man was created a three part being-body, soul (consciousness), and spirit (connection to God). When man fell the spirit was lost and can only be regained through a conscious decision to receive salvation. Then the two part being once again becomes the three part being.
My own pet theory is that the Biblical number of the Beast, 666, actually refers to 2/3.
Great race. I got a big kick out of all the media outrage regarding the manhole cover. First time to a new street circuit I would have been shocked had that not happened.
interesting that in that completely evil world, God said, in effect, "We have to break humanity up because as of now they can do anything"! think about that
I've become quite taken with my pet theory that what we call consciousness is in fact nothing less than the human soul
I read the first two paragraphs and thought. “It’s a soul” I am not a gifted programmer by any means but i know the basics and watching a child grow is like watching an “if, then, else” three sentence function write itself.
Seems to require assuming more complexity than necessary to explain observed reality. I'd buy it if our brains had the physical complexity of, say, a potato. But, as Jack noted above, it would take a lot to simulate a human brain. Until there is evidence to the contrary, I suspect the level of complexity in the human brain is sufficient to generate consciousness. I'm not surprised, though, that we haven't a clue how it works and people should not pretend that they do.
I don't think it's the complexity of the brain that produces consciousness. I think that complexity is necessary for consciousness - like an engine has to have sufficient metal, gaskets of sufficient strength, adequate cooling, etc. in order to accommodate the combustion reactions - but it's a matter of the container must be made for the contents, which are added later.
Years and years ago, a friend who is a (self taught) software engineer made a comment on all the Y-Combover-type things appearing more often, I'm paraphrasing here a bit: "This shit is just like the tasks/chores/whathaveyou's that Mom or Dad would do for these kids, instead of making them get off their own asses, because they were either too lazy, spoiled, sheltered or whatever." I remember how hard my eyes rolled when I started seeing little Isuzu NPR fuel trucks delivering gas/fueling up people's cars while they were parked at work.
I will say this about AI, specifically the art generation side of it. If you are patient and learn how to use the tools, you can create some epic level garbage or insane level weirdness. *Shameful plug: AI art generators were used heavily in the creation of artwork for these records I co-created (give a listen, will ya?) ---> https://luggyton.bandcamp.com/music
AI art has been making some great memes. By far it’s best use.
“ making them get off their own asses, because they were either too lazy, spoiled, sheltered or whatever” This is why i mow my own lawn and rake my own leaves even though i can more than afford someone to do it for me. And i still do It less than i should.
Yeah my father would never hear of having a maid or a cleaning person. It was his version of noblesse oblige.
I do pay for a cleaning lady once a month because i have three kids 4 and under and the wife can only do so much. Never had one pre children. My house was also a mess…
House is gonna be a mess for another 20 years, I'm afraid.
Haven't been Dad - been one of the kids, though.
If I have a single complaint on how I was raised, it was that I was rarely made to do more than help my dad with home repairs. I’ve basically had to learn it all since the age of 17; and my living habits and domestic ineptitude still enrages girlfriends, to the point of a blowout fight this week that ended with my A4 having a slightly crunched fender.
I wish I had learned more from dad with regards to home repairs and such. He was a helluva framer and finish carpenter but the detail work wasn't his forte. I learned enough to get by but nothing I'd be proud to point out to anyone. But I learned about fixing cars from him at the tender age of six being screamed at because I wasn't shining the flashlight in the correct spot as the 250 powered Buick Apollo got a tuneup.
I hope the blowout wasn't with the girlfriend that came from crazy but was going to church and wanted kids...
To be fair, it was about 98% my fault, so I won’t excessively blame her. She just came from nothing and is used to treating her things like prized possessions; I’m not exactly a Rockefeller, but my family has some money and I suppose I don’t take care of stuff as well as I should.
You ever notice how there are never any first-generation car guys?
According to all car magazines and websites EVER, everybody who's into cars grew up helping dad or grandpa fix his daily driver or work on his projects. No one was ever the first person in their family to like cars. Nobody was ever the dad or grandpa who got the ball rolling. Nobody was ever the first generation who learned how to do brakes or rebuild an engine.
I am a first generation car guy, I learned through TNN/Spike TV shows, internet forums, and shop class in high school.
I too am a first generation vehicle guy. My dad had zero interest in cars beyond transportation. I say "vehicle" because I started with motorcycles. Completely self taught via reading (pre internet) and doing. Club roadracing and desert racing two strokes dictated learning how to do top end jobs periodically. Culminated in building a Factory Five cobra kit car. The internet age and youtube have made it much easier to learn things.
Same. My dad just did all the stuff, but never really passed the baton on. I find that odd, considering how mechanically inclined I was.
So I’ve had to learn it myself. I’ve gotten pretty good at fixing stuff in my house or on my cars, but it was an uphill battle.
I'm trying to show my son a few things without making it tiresome. Not much of a mechanic myself, of course.
I know next to nothing about working on cars. About the only thing I’ve ever done was help my father replace an X3 headlight probably 7 years ago. Wish I had some instruction there. Luckily I can do basic plumbing and home repairs, something at which my father is incredibly adept. That said, things might be different if he were a gear head: countless hours fixing our old house made me sour on the idea of owning anything more than a basic condo: would be a shame if a childhood spent working on his BMWs made me into a Prius owner or something.
Sometimes that's a blessing too. Even though I hated dad's methods of teaching (screaming, yelling, sometimes throwing things), I've caught myself repeating them at times almost reflexively. It takes conscious thought to bypass those habits.
Spending some time benchrest shooting with my 81 year old father reminded me that he's a terrible teacher and probably why I have little to no skill in home repairs.
Look at you following in my degenerate footsteps!
My grandfather didn't know a Phillips from a flathead, so I grew up helping my dad try to learn home improvement from library books and loaner tools.
We still tackle projects together that we have no business attempting. So far the only times we started a job on our own and have thrown in the towel and passed it professionals was anytime we tried anything more complex than brakes on my old Allroad.
We are not as ambitious as we used to be, but I am very grateful we still get to do weekend projects together well into his 70s.
I got all my mechanical, design and artistic abilities from my mom. Dad gave me his command of the language, political & cultural philosophy and pursuit of scholarly interests.
Mom's the one who can fix the sink, rewire the garage and tell you to go deal with that punk at school who won't leave you alone. Dad can verbally flow-chart you through why maybe the 20th century wouldn't have been an abattoir if Washington had lost the American Revolution.
My mom always carried a pair of pliers and a Screwdriver in her purse.
So have we seen the last of the latest stripper?
You're not supposed to be having ANY fights this early, and you shouldn't be having property damaging blowouts, ever. I learned both the hard way.
Keeping a tidy home and maintaining the living habits of a grown-ass man isn't that hard, especially once you get used to it. I'm pretty lazy about cleaning, but my place always looks like a model home. You'll avoid the fights and attract a better class of girlfriend that has more to offer than being a live-in maid.
Counterpoint. I had a hole in my ceiling and no bed frame when I met the wife. And yeah, someone is going to learn the hard way they always arrest the guy in DV disputes no matter who does the hitting.
Your wife presumably wasn't looking for you to be her savior to keep her in a certain lifestyle, though. You both brought other things to the table.
If you're going to live with holes in the ceiling and no furniture, you need to 0) demonstrate you have the means and skills to eventually fix those problems and/or 1) demonstrate that you're willing to kick them to the curb for complaining about those problems.
But Bryce is running lifestyle/provider game, whether he realizes it or not. If you're going to do that, at least keep a consistent image and clean the damn house up. Also, don't do it with damaged women who are going to get anxious about any holes in the facade.
My father was a veterinarian. His vet hospital had three kennel rooms, the rearmost was half taken up with his woodshop. He taught me how to use a radial arm saw when I still had to stand on a box to reach the saw. I still use some of his tools. My older brother taught me about working on small engines and electronics. If it doesn't get done, I'm either being too lazy to do it myself or too cheap to pay an expert.
My dad, o'b'm', would be amazed at my 3D printers and laser cutter/engraver.
"Maid? Since when does the Mafia make women?"
My lovely wife is very enthusiastic about keeping our house super clean and lives in fear of anyone coming in and witnessing anything other than an immaculate home. She complains endlessly about the work that entails and has been asking for years to bring in a cleaner. My response always is; “no fucking way. You’re just going to clean the house before the cleaner arrives anyway, so what’re we achieving here?”.
When I was a kid, several of my friends' moms had to have the vacuum tracks showing on the living room carpet. They were also the ones who insisted everyone take their shoes off when they came in. That wasn't how we rolled in my house, and it was quite inconvenient as I wore army boots at the time.
My parents also hired one of those maid services that'd come in and vacuum, but since they insisted we clean the place up first, why bother hiring a maid at all?
I love mowing my lawn. I'm less enthusiastic about raking leaves, though I still did it.
The noise keeps people from bugging me.
It’s therapeutic. All those nice neat lines and the added benefit of hoovering up all the crap that blows onto the property. I find it very satisfying.
I HATED raking leaves when I was 12, mainly because my dad refused to buy a leaf blower. Once we convinced him to do so, and mulch said leaves with the mower instead of bagging them, cleaning up the yard in the fall suddenly became a stress-free endeavor. I actually enjoyed it at that point.
I got lucky with a Blue-collar father. The guy knew how to do pretty much anything, and would rope me into it despite the fact I was too young or too disinterested. Ended up learning an awful lot about everything. Still learning.
One thing I found amusing was how my mother would pester him to simply hire someone to do a job, and after he'd give in and hire someone, he'd find the job wasn't done to his standards and he'd redo it himself.
It would come out better.
I HATE THAT.
You didn't want to hire the guy in the first place and he goes & does a shit job.
MotoGP is going into the last round this weekend at Valencia (pronounced valenthia by all the Spaniards) with the championship still undecided.
In Qatar the sprint race had a poor showing from Bagnaia on the front row and Jorge Martin from the second making big points gains to cut the gap to 7 points. The track surface was green and gave a number of riders trouble but Martin looked great.
The race, however, saw a disastrous launch for Martin who must have smoked his rear immediately and never recovered. A tenth place finish for him and second for Bagnaia means a 21 point gap. Difficult but not impossible to overcome.
DiGiantonnio, who Marc Marquez is replacing in Gresini Racing, won the race in fine form and is hopeful a team picks him up as a rider next year. There aren't many available seats, though, and a team like VR46 is interested in getting young talent promoted to factory teams.
It's hard to tell what's going on in MotoGP right now. People are claiming Michelin has bad quality control which results in examples of tires that are "bad". This has been used to explain both Pecco's performance in the sprint and Martin's performance in the feature this past weekend. There's a fine line where volatility in a championsihp can be exciting and where it just becomes hard to understand as a spectator. MotoGP is starting to trend to just being confusing. 2020 was also like this where we almost had a rider's champion who never won a race.
Case in point - Digi is an enigma. He spends almost the entire two seasons getting dunked on by Alex Marquez, who generally is a midpack at best rider. Then seemingly at random wakes up and fights for wins.
Finally - Aleix needs to get the fucking boot. He throws tantrums like my 3 year old son, and needs to be treated like the child he is.
I find a lot of the riders have been uh making their displeasure obvious during practice and quals.
As for bad tires - I would think it's more likely something went wrong on the 1 of 4 Ducati with special sensors, programming, and electronics (recall practice starts were also bad) and that the violent wheel spin set the tire up from premature drop in performance.
the schoolteacher whose name i can never remember won an indycar championship for penske without, i think, ever winning a race. penske then fired him
Tom Sneva.
Bingo! You beat me to it, only because I’m just reading the comments now. What am I going to do with all this automotive arcana?
I remember seeing Tom Sneva in person as a kid and being starstruck.
"I'll take obscure knowledge that has no bearing on my life for $500, Alex".
Ha! Wouldn't mind if I could do it on command but it's pretty random.
He won 77 and 78! Back to back. And I’m ready for another book Toly!
I've never been a fan of the Spanish language - it's an association thing with me - but I absolutely cannot abide that Castillian lisp.
As I said to my Portuguese mate, 'I've always found the Spaniards and their language effeminate and gay asf, now your language - that's a man's language' 🤙
Portuguese sounds like Spanish spoken with a head cold.
The Portuguese accent in English sounds exactly Russian, though.
Da, tovarishch.
I think the lisp is Catalonian, not Castilian. We visited that region and their pronunciation "Barthelona" was good for a laugh
Just like with Murcielago, they can pronounce "CI" as "TH" until the cows come home, but THIS IS AMERICA.
It's "MUR-See-Ah-Lah-Goe," not "MOO-Thee-Ah-Lah-Goe."
It's a nice car, but it's not fabulous.
mercy ellago
Yes - that too.
mercha lago
Lamborghini Murci / Yo chick, she so thirsty
I can see the "pedant of the week" award winging my way, but my recollection (from working for a Spanish business) is they pronounce Valencia as "balenthia." Always sounds weird to my ears but it's not a bad language, just not as musical and flowing as Italian.
I'm sure you're right: my ears hung up on the thia part. Guess I'll find out when I start watching
The (unexpectedly) distasteful, dismissive, and supercilious treatment of fans courtesy of John, Greg, Stefano, Renee, etc. after the Thursday night debacle was downright awful.
Fortunately, there were no more snakes in the grass for Formula 1 after the stubbed toe out of the gate. While I wouldn’t say it was one of the best races in a long time - and I believe that Singapore was the best race of the year - there were five (I believe) legitimate passes for the lead, and there was genuine jeopardy over the outcome. George Russell’s collision with Max caused the safety car that reset the race that resulted in Max hunting down Charles for the ultimate victory. Without that collision, Charles likely would have won.
What was unexpected about said treatment?
That is a Freudian typographical slip that I will preserve for posterity, rather than edit away! It was NOT UNexpected.
You referred to the Monegasque Leclerc as a Spaniard, so we’ll call that one even!
Sheesh you're right.
And who is Scott Lockin?
Alright, that’s enough of me pointing out specks of wood in your eyes!
A breakdancer?
Not if he isn't dressed like LL Cool J circa 1987 he isn't.
I think I read 7 passes for the lead.
Man, that last sentence is one of the most bleak and brutal things I have read all week.
Even Ayn Rand didn’t imagine a more thorough waste of genius, and she spent ten years writing a novel just about that.
I get your excitement about F1 racing, but ever since they went the "greenwash" route, it has left me completely cold. And I used to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to watch races live on SpeedVision.
As I was reading the article, I couldn't help but think that, unlike in the past, F1 is a tech dead-end, just as much as the "AI" from the article. The only difference is, some people will enjoy the F1 "show."
How does F1 strike you as greenwashed?
The OEMs wouldn’t be there without the (tenuous) opportunity to promote hybridization and efficiency. Keep your fingers crossed for “sustainable” (i.e., “synthetic) fuels and a return to high RPM NA screamers in the future.
Earthdreams.
Isn't that a registered Honda trademark?
And the worst livery in F1 history. It is my go to greenwash overreach.
Pink BWT?
The fact that Honda put the EarthDreams logo on the rip snortin J35Y3 tells you all you need to know about their true intentions at the time.
That’s long gone, as of ~15 years ago!
I am prepared to stick my neck out a bit and proclaim that F1 has never been “better” than it has been lately, under Liberty, during the time that I’ve been an ardent fan. I watched some of the ‘96 and ‘97 seasons before becoming a committed fan in 1998.
We started watching at the same time, and I agree with you.
I do miss qualifying engines, spare cars, and some of the chaos associated with that.
I miss screaming V10s, tobacco money (and liveries), and air horns.
F1 in the late 90s was a black box for me, apart from what happened on screen when I got to watch a race that someone had taped for me (no Speedvision where I grew up), or what I could glean from F1 Racing Magazine or Road & Track.
Now … you could spend every waking hour watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, reading articles on various news sites, arguing with people on Twitter / Reddit, watching drivers’ and teams’ social media accounts, etc.
I loved the look of the BAR Lucky Strike cars.
I would trade all the podcasts and videos for the in season testing photos and reports. They were real news.
Earthdreams?
What, huddling naked in a cave around a campfire wondering whether you're going to die of starvation, a broken leg, a snakebite or being eaten by a bear?
I can’t see the current day fans liking the 20,000 rpm NA engines. I was at Laguna Seca in 2004 when Ferrari tried to set the lap record with a F2002. Trackside at turn 6, it was physically painful. I can’t believe the beautiful people would be crazy about that.
I have heard Ferrari run old F1 cars during their F1 Clienti / Corse Clienti / XX Clienti / Ferrari Challenge days at Road Atlanta.
To be perfectly honest … they were not that loud. They may be detuned a bit (slightly lowered redline for the sake of rebuild interval), but they are the real deal F1 engines, not a Judd (or similar) stand-in. A lot of IMSA cars are at least as loud, and the new Cadillac and recently deceased 911 RSR significantly louder.
Speaking of which. John Doonan should have moved heaven and earth to have a 100 minute IMSA street race in Vegas as the undercard for F1. Forget Petit Le Mans as the season finale. The opportunity to race cars that look like road cars and sound so much better than F1 cars in front of a group of captive rich people should not have been missed. Unfortunately, John Doonan is a simpleton with low ambitions who has managed to run IMSA into the ground despite the “golden age” of sports cars that is now upon us… I honest to god once saw him spill chocolate milk on himself. In public.
God damn, tell us how you really feel! I like him as a person but don't know if he is doing a great job.
I used to attend every IMSA race in person, on my own dime.
Now I go to one - Petit Le Mans - with friends.
That’s the John Doonan effect!
And one more comment:
It’s all fine and dandy to be a nice guy or to have people like you as a person … but his job ain’t about warm fuzzies. It’s about getting people and businesses to care more about IMSA than they did yesterday, because if this “golden age” can’t do it, they will be up shit creek once they OEMs leave again.
The Laguna car was turned up to quali and driven by Bertolini. It was super cool how loud it was in the Salinas hills. The Clienti stuff is driven by posers. Speaking of which, I was at turn 6 at Laguna Seca when Kroymans knocked the glued on front of his Clienti ex-Schumacher car. It was quickly swept under the rug and it never was revealed why it failed like it did.
They stood on the throttle on the straights at Road Atlanta. At least when the cars worked.
I wouldn’t say they’re poseurs … where else are people driving vintage Ferrari F1 cars on tracks with any degree of regularity? They’re successful people who get to live a piece of the dream all while instantly becoming Ferrari VVVVVIPs who are friendly with all of the other Ferrari VVVVVIPs.
My favorite forms of racing are done in vehicles or situations I can relate to. Probably why I’ve never really cared to follow F1 or NASCAR etc. Loved to follow rally. Watched tons of SCCA runoff coverage and 90s IMSA was GOD to me in my younger days.
Though as a child I was hyper focused on the Indy500 with its constant roster of mostly American drivers. Now I’ve no idea who any of those people are.
Friends and I considered Vegas when it was first announced but it priced out even my wealthiest colleges who found zero value at spending such an absurd amount. Still, it’s an intriguing event with being a night race and all the colors in the background. I didn’t even watch it.
I’m with you on that. Although I loved the scream of the v10s and v12s on tv, it was pretty hard to take a weekend of that trackside.
IMO the current power plants broadcast at the perfect volume and I don’t fly home with my ears bleeding....
After an IMSA enduro race in person, I find that I lay in bed at night and hear phantom engine sounds for a night or two. Probably best to reduce exposure!
There are all sorts of earplugs that allow enough sound in for enjoyment if you don't want to be that deaf old git in 30 years time. I was very pleased to have my Loop Experience earplugs in at a recent gig in London.
What’s done is done, and I doubt I’ll be doing nearly as much of it in the future.
Aramco with a green logo all around the circuits.
I like to think someone has a sense of humor…
I dunno, the Tyrrell 6-wheeler was a tech dead-end once the Lotus 78/79 made ground effects in the turns a better solution to quick lap times than the reduced frontal area of the small front wheels and resultant top speed advantage of the former. I take your point though.
Doesn’t the tyrrell do really well in vintage now that they can get sticky little front tires?
The P34 wasn't dead-end technology, anymore than the smartphone was. It just wasn't given a chance.
What killed it was Goodyear not further developing its specialist front tires and F1 changing the rules to negate its aerodynamic & weight advantages. Had those two things not happened, there'd probably be other 6-wheelers racing today.
Absolutely true. Outside forces intervened. IIRC, Goodyear was responding to the rules changes, not the other way around. The result was the same, culminating in Mario's championship year.
Of course, true communism wasn't given a chance either because outside forces (like human nature) intervened.
Scroll down to see my buddies and me inspecting the P34 and other cars at the Watkins Glen Kendall Tech Center in 1976: https://bimmerfan739.substack.com/p/bbp?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Yeah, but unlike communism, the P34 ACTUALLY DID WORK.
There's a certain "realness" to the simpler cars and engineering of the pre-computer era of racing that modern vehicles just don't match. A certain greater "believability" as well.
Absolutely!
I love seeing photos of '70s F1 cars sitting in the dirt outside a trailer with mechanics in grimy overalls using identifiable tools to fix them. That's really the era I witnessed the most F1 in person, plus Montreal in 1980 and 1996-1998.
Times have certainly changed!
There's something about riveted sheetmetal and carburetors and manual transmissions that connects with you in ways that carbon fiber and CFD and hybrid drivetrains JUST DON'T.
Went to the 81 races. Gilles V and the front nose and wing blocking his view by pointing straight up was amazing. Then it fell off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SmrV-FFC1w&ab_channel=bestvideosonyt
He finished 3rd.
All the billions spent on AI, and it doesn’t have the ability to see what happens when a ball crosses the street, it can’t see the kid behind the parked cars running after it.
This is really about synapses and neurons firing off, something that happens much quicker than a mainframe thinking about what usually follows a ball. Chat GTP can be programmed to have biases, so just like google, you can’t trust it to give an unbiased answer to any query.
Moravec's Paradox, man.
Very interesting stuff!
I think so.
If real AI ever becomes a thing, asking ai if 13 does 50 will be answered by the communist Americans as “sorry i cant answer that hal” and the non communist russia (hilarious isnt it) will crush us.
It wouldn’t be the first time that culture and entertainment predicted accurately twenty or thirty years in advance things that we are seeing today, comedy and serious fiction have both proved this.
I swear this is true. Back in the '70s, Massachusetts annual safety inspection stickers had this warning on them: "Watch for the rolling ball. A child is sure to follow."
Stripe - genuinely made it easier (note I did not say cheaper) to take credit cards. Also Patrick is a brilliant weirdo.
AirBnB - Jury is still really really out but it's hard to say it's been a genuine net good for many cities
Instacart, Doordash - Essentially labor arb after the Great Recession when many people realized they were ZMP workers. Sprinkle in ZIRP venture funding, and people's propensity to not go out.
Cruise - Imploding as we speak.
Twitch - What Jack said.
Coinbase - Probably the least fraud-y of all the crypto companies?
Pagerduty - Legit
Brex - Decent but crowded field.
Deel - Useful for foreign company labor arb.
Rippling - Oh come on this was Parker Conrad's startup after getting run out of Zenefits. He would have gotten funding with our without YC
Reddit - The most useful place on the internet now that google's gone to shit
Gusto - Another one in the "What if we took HRIS and upbundled it." Eh
Flexport - seems to be imploding in front of our eyes? I think there's more to this story.
Dropbox - I'm still bitter that the company I worked for rejected my pitch to build this in 2005.
Scale - Generative AI Ctrl-C Ctrl-V
GitLab - How is version control not a solved problem yet?
Fivetran - Scott Locklin would say that the fact that a company like this exists shows how broken computing is.
Rappi - We're kind of scraping the bottom of "top companies" here
Checkr - Automating something that shouldn't need doing but the government insists.
Zapier - Again a solution to all the cruft that midwits at companies buy. Hey dogg, I hear you like web apps so I built a web app on your web apps so you can web app while you use web apps.
Whatnot - oh god no I just can't
Podium - one of about a billion "lead generator" salescritter tools
Zepto - Because the world needs more delivery companies
Segment - All I know is that I paid a fortune for Segment and my product + marketing teams still couldn't tell me shit about what was going on
Ironclad - Could be decent?
Faire, Razorpay, Benchling, Groww - Idk what these are but they're certainly not lighting the world on fire.
A lot of this is (was) ZIRP-driven.
A fintech start-up for which I interviewed just after their Series B two years ago recently announced that they are essentially shutting down. I went through seven (yes, 7) rounds of interviews only for them not to hire anyone for the role (I think they were already getting concerned about runway and the eventual Series C, which never happened).
Pleased about all of that in retrospect!
SEVEN interviews. That's utter horseshit.
Quoth Elwood Blues, "FUCK THIS NOISE, MAN!"
I love that if I type "Fuck this noise, man!" into YouTube that's literally the first hit.
heard it first in '55 at colorado college spoken by a guy from queens
You’re a better man than I Gunga Din. More than 3 interviews and it is time for me to withdraw my interest and stop interviewing. Unable to make a decision with the information provided then there is no leadership or vision. Just a company of processes and decision by default.
You dodged a bullet.
I would have learned a lot, but I would’ve made only ~$500K over two years and have a pile of Monopoly money in equity.
The CFO quit shortly after they didn’t hire me / another person for the role; I have kept in touch with her.
Only…
That’s ~$250K / yr pretax to re-arrange deck chairs on the Titanic while dealing with the stress of realizing your equity will be worthless (or already is).
Well it sounds like you made a contact (the important part) and missed the stress. Looks like you made out ok.
Sometimes you can make money selling deck chairs but usually not worth the hassle. Not to mention the time waste.
"Bullshit Job" as opposed to "Shit Job."
Fresh out of college, I landed an interview for a design position at a manufacturing company. It went well - I was in there for two hours. They said they needed two weeks. Fair enough.
Two weeks. Just like in "The Money Pit." Foreshadowing, folks.
When they didn't call me two weeks on, I got back to them. Oh sorry, they said - the Design Director was on vacation and he has to sign off on new hires. We'll call you back in two weeks.
Um, okay.
Long story short, this happened for THREE MONTHS. Every two weeks I'd call them back and every time, they'd feed me some line about how they didn't or couldn't make a decision. Finally, I told them point-blank I wanted an answer and that I'd take anything other than an enthusiastic "YES!" as a "NO."
Guess who didn't get the job.
What I can't figure out is WHY they did this. If they didn't want to hire me, how hard is a "NO?" My most-optimistic theory is that they DID want to hire me, but they'd blown through their recruiting budget for the year - by July? Seriously? - and didn't want me going to another company.
Wow, that worked great!
Realistically, somebody there wanted me, but couldn't make the case to the Big Deals.
Or they were leveraging external interest against someone internal who wanted a better deal.
Or that.
Like Neo on the rooftop...
I use Gusto to do my payroll because it's cheap and easy. Yeah, one day I'll probably be forced to switch, but only time will tell.
I have to use dropbox on occasion because others send me stuff via it, rather than just sending it to me instead (WHY?).
Reddit is where stupid people go to be even stupider. I hate going there, but am at times forced to.
How is version control still a problem? Why do we keep ending up with new programming languages when we haven't had a need for one in 20+ years? It's because programming is still a 'science' (which means it's not serious) instead of being 'engineering' (which is)
Computers may be science, but software is a humanity.
Computers aren't a science. That's the thing. They're all engineered now.
Not even sure about that. I liked what the Russian dude I worked for at Large PNW Software Company called the engineers: code diddlers.
But were they really engineers? Or just comp sci programmers who they called that to make them feel special? I've seen a LOT of that.
"You need math". No, not really. If anything, this is probably a good aptitude test.
https://www.kohls.com/product/prd-3256348/learning-resources-gears-gears-gears-machines-in-motion.jsp?skuid=61070399&ci_mcc=ci&utm_campaign=TOYS&utm_medium=CSE&utm_source=bing&CID=shopping20&utm_campaignid=432289944&utm_adgroupid=1241348899548463&gclid=450c784c6b3619d0e6241d13fbabdcf0&gclsrc=3p.ds&msclkid=450c784c6b3619d0e6241d13fbabdcf0
If I do this, then that will do that, and then that will,.......resulting in this.
Do you use Gusto for scheduling and time cards apps as well? We are switching from square to a QuickBooks integration.
I didn't do much research beyond my accountant suggesting it would be a little easier.
I still make the schedule on a excel sheet I made so it is simple and visual to see if I have enough coverage and overlap, and then try to recreate it in the dedicated software. It is not an efficient process.
I have to do payroll, because I'm an LLC and so I need to do that and all of the associated paperwork. Because I have to pay myself a wage for taxed purposes.
My spouse works for me, they're paid a percentage of the gross (which is just easier than dealing with hours as well).
So I have zero experience with the time card thing, sorry.
One of these days, you really should Give me a call. If it’s just you and the wife and you are not an llc taxed as an s-corp, you don’t need payroll.
I'm taxed as an S-corp. I have a CPA, I've had them for 30+ years now I guess? The problem is, I'm an author and we do get taxed differently than everyone else (they tried to get that changed a couple of years ago, I don't recall if that worked out like everyone had hoped it would). I do need to pay myself a salary and I've been trying to offload a lot of the non-writing work (when you're self publishing there is a LOT of things you have to deal with), hence why my other half is starting to work for me - they're very much a techie and deal with a lot of that stuff already for me.
I used Gusto for a company I was supporting a few years ago, including timecards (but not scheduling). It's fine, although we had employees do their own timecards (we were a software company with a few 1099s).
Reddit is shit
Every time I do something particularly stupid, I read r/talesfromtechsupport and I magically feel better about myself!
Hadn't realized Benchling was one of their success stories. Now I hate it even more.
Best summation and vivisection of AI I’ve yet to read anywhere. Bravo.
I only recognize 3 of the YC companies, reddit and Airbnb suck.
Stripe? Seems fine. We integrated it into our summer software because it was a better choice for the lower volumes we do vs winter where Auth.net price model is better.
Reddit. Airbnb.
"Dick and Jane At The Seashore" language skills.
just my speed
I’ll give a nod to DropBox as useful. That’s about it from that grid. For the record, I reflexively reject and abhor anything that ends in “r” instead of “er.”
Gusto isnt awful
I hate the little walking pig.
All payroll is shit. All of it. We don’t even want to do it because it’s not a money maker
All the payroll provider product dev people I’ve encountered were mid wits at best.
My first job was at a contract design firm, so we had to do timesheets to bill the clients. I asked my boss why our timesheet software was so bad. He said, "You're a talented software engineer, do you want to work on fucking timesheet software?" Point taken.
I have a whole rant about how all these companies have put all this cutesy UX everywhere to make their products nonthreatening and appeal to a certain - ahem - buyer. Like your point above about company names, everything now utterly condescending and Not Serious
See the interesting thing about writing and drawing your own furry porn is that it's a legitimately creative endeavor that can profit from - handsomely if you're good at it.
also fuck toto for being a prick for absolutely no reason
Toto reminds me of my absolute worst qualities but it’s his entire personality. Or he’s really good at faking it on netflix
Open thread update: I got the bike. Doesn’t run. Excited to spend my winter fixing it. And then learn to ride a bike next spring.
Hell yes x2. Send a picture when you do
https://www.vintagehondatwins.com/forums/index.php?threads/newbie-revamp-of-a-cb360t.9643/
Or @ChrisCB360 on the gram because I’m a teenage girl.
Awesome!
Which bike?
1975 CB360t
At some point, I'm gonna go for a CB750 with a sidecar
Please renew your subscription BEFORE you go riding a sidecar in modern traffic.
"No no, don't call your girlfriend and apologize!"
"But I really should."
"No, I mean it's long-distance."
Sorry m8, you're just going to have to do without that last dog gear for your Radical haha 🤙
Its simple. You go where you look. Dont look at the concrete barrier.
I would express it as "look where you want to go." You have already looked where you are going, the focus needs to be further down the road than new riders usually manage. And leave a big gap in front of you; it gives you time to think and a 1975 CB360 will surely not stop like a modern car with ABS!
Nice - I am engaged in a constant battle against buying a hitch and trailer and hauling "doesn't run" or "doesn't run off choke" bikes home.
"Restored" - Recently evicted from the spot under that tree out back where it spent the last 20 years and put somewhere else. Hence, "Re-stored."
Your military analogy reminds me of Isaac Asimov's 'The Machine That Won The War'.
https://xpressenglish.com/machine-that-won-the-war/
As for all the morons that call themselves Prompt Engineers, they're like those people that think implementing LEAN is adding extra steps and more paperwork to a process.
Also, is quantum physics just how athiests explain God?
Personally, I've long thought that Albert Einstein serves as a secular replacement for Jesus Christ, for people who fancy themselves too intelligent for religious faith.
Excellently put!😄
Oh, thank you!
Seconded.
"Engineers" design bridges and airplanes and skyscrapers.
Socially-awkward bridge trolls who type code all day and look down their noses at NOOBS and FILTHY CASUALS are not engineers.
I drink lean, I don't implement it.
I lean to the right. Does that count?
"Max nonetheless drove through the field and won the race regardless. It was likely because he is simply better at the black art of traction sensing than the other drivers."
It'd be interesting to see him in a pre ground effects F1 car or one of those skinny tired '50s cars like Moss and Fangio drove.
Martin Brundle told a very funny story about traction sensing on Chris Harris' podcast once. Senna overtook him on the outside so a lap later Brundle thought he would try the same trick but ended up in the barriers. After the race, Senna came up to him and asked what the heck Brundle thought he was doing to which Brundle replied "the same as you"! Senna's reply: "but there was grip there when I did it!"😄
Your humble author could have put the wood to Moss and Fangio back in the day. Nobody understood vehicle dynamics.
When did that come in, when actual engineers like Mark Donohue (Brown '59) and Jim Hall (CalTech '57) started racing?
Wouldn't be surprised. What passed for aero back then was pretty stupid in hindsight.
Two hundred years from now:
"What passed for computers back then was pretty stupid in hindsight."
Yeah, because by then the computers will be Cybermen. Or Daleks.
Later than that. Seventies. Maybe Eighties.
Briggs Cunningham was an actual engineer, honed his Packard in Yale’s labs as a student. Revs Institute has the car and it’s cooler than the other side of the pillow.
**edited: Packard not Duesenberg. Cunningham bought and rebodied a Jesse Vincent prototype built to sell Packard on speed. Then he um let the Sheffield School of Engineering use it— his daily driver— as a chassis dyno lab rat.
I would say early '70s. Bill Milliken was one of the leaders in racing vehicle dynamics and a lot of his work was in the '60s and '70s.
at nassau speedweeks in '63 my 24-year-old friend caused our small crowd to have a sharp intake of breath. teddy mayer had just said something like "ultimate chassis tuning is a black art. you have to have people who have tons of experience to come up with the best shock tuning, antirollbar stiffness, camber, caster, to have a winning car." bryan said "that's just because you haven't employed things to measure the car's performance with variations in those parameters. intuition or 'black art' has nothing to do with it!" correcting teddy mayer! the very idea! i could tell many more stories about the late bryan...
Your friend sounds cool as hell.
That kind.of thinking persisted in lots of industries for an astoundingly long time.
In the early 2000s I had the stupid idea to start my own ski company. Back then there was a huge divide between North American employees and the demigods in European product development. A very experienced old hand explained I to me that there was no way I could ever figure out to make a decent ski, it was practically alchemy and accident. Even the race dept didn't know why some skis were fast and some were shit, and people way smarter than me couldn't figure it out.
Later I was taking a tour of a factory and I could barely contain myself. I built better process controls in my garage. Their wet layup techniques would have made Bayliner chuckle.
Things are different now, better, but it took moving a lot of production to eastern Europe. New production facilities and moving on from old hands.
"Their wet layup techniques would have made Bayliner chuckle."
I see you woke up and chose violence.
It is Thanksgiving.
https://www.zazzle.com/violence_is_the_answer_shirt-235753264305689655
You think you could've beat them back in the day in an equivalent/similar car to what they were running?
I'd need a day in the car just to pick up the oddities of how they used to work, but yeah. They didn't even understand the slipstream-to-brake that accounts for 80% of the passes now in club racing.
That presumes that no one is sharing information with them, or that they are incapable of learning. I don't see why that would be the case in this counterfactual.
It wouldn't be. Six months after I appeared from the future, they'd be driving line theory in SCCA races, let alone pro events. So I'd have to press the advantage while I had it!
That's because they didn't really have brakes. And it would be a mighty bold claim to think you might beat Moss over the Mille Miglia!
Oh I couldn't do that and wouldn't try. By modern standards thats a rally.
True. And a tough one - minimum ten hours straight...
At first blush I thought the "Top YC companies" pic was an AI generated picture from typing 'stupid sounding fake companies.'
Which I guess is partially true...
Why DO modern companies use intentionally-misspelled words, camel case and all the other grammar abominations?
Are the conspiracy theorists right? Are they trying to treat us all like idiot children?
It's like an unintentional sequel to Idiocracy.
Yeah...
The one that really frosts me is grown men using the term "poo" instead of shit, feces, turds, etc.
What are you, FOUR?!
"Double turds!"
"SPAULDING!"
YOU'LL GET NOTHING AND LIKE IT!
I use it for the most part online. You never know what mods and other people think. Also, some words are banned by our AI masters. In the meat world, yeah, I never use "poo".
🤣
I love that this site introduces me to new words all the time. Camel case! Obvious, but I have never seen it before.
'cause it's kute!
Says you.
🤣
Channeling their inner "e e cummings"?
Trademark, likely.
Same for all the made-up drug names. They're literally randomly generated nonsense purely so the company can have the trademark on the name.
COMIRNATY
I agree that none of these names have the romance of "a billionth part tincture of toad-spittle infused with a lock of mermaids hair" but generally pharmaceutical products are quite effective. My father was in the artillery stationed on Gibraltar for a year or two in WW2 and the only premature death was caused by an ear infection from swimming. No antibiotics then.
All I know is that in rare cases death may occur.
My favorite is one of the Jardiance side effects.
A taint infection.
Not just any taint infection, a potentially fatal taint infection.
https://www.theonion.com/world-death-rate-holding-steady-at-100-percent-1819564171
All the drugs they advertise on TV sound like planets on "Star Trek."
"Captain's Log, stardate 55839.2. We've been dispatched to planet Rinvoq III to assist with an infrastructure reconstruction."
"Captain's Log, stardate 48923.5. The Enterprise is en route to Dupixent VI to conduct archaeological research into the extinct Amenities culture."
The best possible reason is that it has to do with copyright. The worst is that they are degrading the language.
It's all those things and more!
"Are they trying to treat us all like idiot children?"
They're not trying. They're doing.
Oh yeah...
Well, not THIS idiot child!
First product name I’m aware of that was computer generated? Camaro.
No shit?
As silly as it sounds, a significant reason for the dumb names is just based on what domain names are available. Checker.com was bought up long before checkr even started thinking about being a company.
Sure but when you have access to VC money it's easy to buy a real name.
Agreed, but most companies have a company name and have the first bit of a product built before they can get VC funding.
That doesn’t make the naming any less stupid. Just bringing up one of the more prevalent reasons why it occurs.
I’m in the sort of odd position of having started a company that gets approached by VC’s to fund us, but that has no interest in taking funny money from someone who’s main goal is to get a house as close to University Ave in Palo Alto as possible.
Question: Where does the VC money COME FROM?
Rich people, endowments, insurance companies (yes, really), etc.
Okay.
Long but worthwhile:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/30/how-venture-capitalists-are-deforming-capitalism
I will happily sell you AK47isthetool assuming I can gank it before Ice Cube.
I think he's out of that business entirely! As to whether JD is still jacking people for their Nissan trucks in the drive-thru, the situation is less clear.
What if it turns out that there's no physical structure within the human brain that produces consciousness?
What if consciousness is to the human being what paint is to a car: A separate component, fashioned using an entirely different process from the metal & plastic of the vehicle and applied during manufacture, with the intent of remaining part of the car for its whole life? AND, just as there's no system within the car that generates the paint, there's no mechanism in the human body that produces consciouness?
I've become quite taken with my pet theory that what we call consciousness is in fact nothing less than the human soul. Only God Himself is capable of making one, and it represents the absolute minimum system required to generate & host consciousness. And consciousness is what you'd need for true AI, in effect an artificial person.
To think that we human beings, apex creations of the Lord though we may be, are capable of producing a device that can mimic consciousness - using FUCKING MATH - when we don't have the slightest idea of what consciousness even IS, is the height of atheist geek arrogance.
A computer is not a primitive artificial brain, though the internet might qualify, after a fashion. MIGHT, but it lacks a guiding intelligence to direct it.
Interesting concept.
Makes more sense than using math to simulate intelligence.
One of the most interesting things about the emergence of Jordan Peterson as a societal force, is that he has brought an intellectual view and rigour to the discussion of religion. In particular, Christianity. The elites long ago gave up any pretence of taking religion seriously. It was one of those silly beliefs left only to distract hoi polloi, like NASCAR and patriotism.
For centuries, scientific inquiry into the natural world was the province of devout Catholics, men who sought to understand the mechanisms of the universe as God had created it. The Church openly sponsored these activities, seeking to glorify God and His works.
Sounds like the work of the patriarchy.
And yes, very true and very much forgotten. Portraying the church as anti science far better fits the narrative.
I truly can't fathom how any astronomer or geneticist can NOT believe in a divine Creator.
I'm an admirer of Teilhard de Chardin.
There are those that believe man was created a three part being-body, soul (consciousness), and spirit (connection to God). When man fell the spirit was lost and can only be regained through a conscious decision to receive salvation. Then the two part being once again becomes the three part being.
My own pet theory is that the Biblical number of the Beast, 666, actually refers to 2/3.
Great race. I got a big kick out of all the media outrage regarding the manhole cover. First time to a new street circuit I would have been shocked had that not happened.
I can buy that.
If God created man in His image, and His image is that of a triune Being, why not?
Exactly right Sir.
The currently popular theory of quantum entanglement also works very well with this, while also explaining consciousness.
Which is what Toto said, but in a pithier way.
Tower of Babel, but it's a computer tower.
interesting that in that completely evil world, God said, in effect, "We have to break humanity up because as of now they can do anything"! think about that
Yes, I've often mused on that subject.
I call this force that occupies our lives and prevents humans from accomplishing big things Responsibilities. It's always in the way.
As a kid i figured God might be an alien and the Tower of Babel might have been a launch gantry.
I've become quite taken with my pet theory that what we call consciousness is in fact nothing less than the human soul
I read the first two paragraphs and thought. “It’s a soul” I am not a gifted programmer by any means but i know the basics and watching a child grow is like watching an “if, then, else” three sentence function write itself.
Seems to require assuming more complexity than necessary to explain observed reality. I'd buy it if our brains had the physical complexity of, say, a potato. But, as Jack noted above, it would take a lot to simulate a human brain. Until there is evidence to the contrary, I suspect the level of complexity in the human brain is sufficient to generate consciousness. I'm not surprised, though, that we haven't a clue how it works and people should not pretend that they do.
I don't think it's the complexity of the brain that produces consciousness. I think that complexity is necessary for consciousness - like an engine has to have sufficient metal, gaskets of sufficient strength, adequate cooling, etc. in order to accommodate the combustion reactions - but it's a matter of the container must be made for the contents, which are added later.