I read quite a bit, though it’s notched down a bit since my wife and adult son got me back into playing WoW in the evenings (we used to be away into it, then stepped away for some years). Like others have said, my book reading is 100% for pleasure, and I don’t feel bad if I don’t read, except that I feel reading is healthier downtime than WoW or TV.

A key for me is having some consistent times that I read. Most important for me is that I read in bed for about half an hour before going to sleep, and I find that that routine helps me go to sleep (I have trouble shutting my brain off). I take the dogs for a jog/walk on weekend mornings, and also consistently read for a while after I get back.

I read almost exclusively science fiction with a dash of fantasy. I’m an older guy, nearing retirement, and the only factor there is that our kids are grown and I can afford a gardener, so I have more free time than when I was younger.

That seems high, though I guess if they’re doing it in a state with high renewable energy, that’s what they’re using. It uses a crazy high amount of energy though.

I wonder what fraction of Bitcoin mining energy comes from renewable sources. I bet it’s teeny tiny.

It’s not something anyone can just do. America’s borders are more open than a lot of countries’. You have to apply, and it can be a multi-year process even if you do get accepted. It can cost money too.

When I started on Lemmy after the Reddit exodus, I started by browsing by All, subscribing to communities that looked interesting, and blocking communities that I didn’t want to see. I figured I’d eventually move to browsing by Subscribed, but more than a year later and I still browse by All. Removing the communities I didn’t want to see, especially the overly prolific meme communities, and blocking the posting bots has made browsing New just fine.

So I guess I see duplicate communities assuming there are posts and I haven’t blocked them.

I’m a manager at a large aerospace and defense company. We had a hybrid arrangement where most people (who didn’t have to touch hardware) could work from home a couple days a week. Most people seemed to think it was pretty reasonable. There really are benefits to in person collaboration, so some on site days seemed to make sense.

We recently moved to fully RTO, and I find it frustrating. It’s not a big deal personally - I live close and I’m older - but it pisses off a lot of the employees, who see no good reason for it. I don’t see any notable productivity increase moving from three to five days on site, it just makes my management job harder.

Yeah, I’m far from anti-AI, but we’re just not anywhere close to where people think we are with it. And I’m pretty sick of corporate leadership saying “We need to make more use of AI” without knowing the difference between an LLM and a machine learning application, or having any idea *how" their company could make use of one of the technologies.

It really feels like one of those hammer in search of a nail things.

What people mean by AI has been changing for as long as the term has been used. When I was studying CS in the 80s, people said the holy grail was giving a computer printed English text and having it read it aloud. It wasn’t much later that OCR and text to speech software was commonplace.

Generally, when people say AI, they mean a computer doing something that normally takes a human, and that bar goes up all the time.

LLMs don’t “understand” anything, and it’s unfortunate that we’ve taken to using language related to human thinking to talk about software. It’s all data processing and models.

It seems like the problem goes away if you add a “the.” I had too much of the refried beans.

I had an assembly class in college. I didn’t love of at all. Got my first job after graduating and it was writing space shuttle engine control software, which was in assembly. I was kind of surprised at how fast it became natural after dealing with it full time. Still, it felt luxurious when we upgraded the controller and could do the software in C.

“Important to be” is the wrong language, but it’s absolutely fine if someone doesn’t find someone else attractive because of their height, color, or anything else. Attraction is subjective.

Attraction is subjective. There are norms, but everyone has their own preferences. Never listen to anyone who claims to speak for any giant group of people (gender, race, culture, whatever). Most women aren’t going to tell you that, but there are assholes in every group. If they’re speaking for themselves, that’s fine though: no one is obligated to disregard any of your attributes.

When I went bald, there were women who said bald guys aren’t attractive. But then there were some who said they were especially attractive, and most just didn’t care.

The article makes a mention of the early part of the movie Her, where he’s writing a heartfelt, personal card that turns out to be his job, writing from one stranger to another. That reference was exactly on target: I think most of us thought outsourcing such a thing was a completely bizarre idea, and it is. It’s maybe even worse if you’re not even outsourcing to someone with emotions but to an AI.

Yep, I looked them up just to see but, like you said, the fact that it exists doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t find anything (good or bad) associated with that phone number - could be spoofed.

Really? I wonder why. Though I’ve always assumed the one on my phone was from Verizon, not the app or the OS.

For sure don’t in any way respond, just report spam and block the number. Lots of these things are phishing attempts, trying to get you to give personal information (or even money), and aren’t connected to the things they mention.

When I was late teens and early twenties, I kept getting propositioned by gay guys. It started to bother me - I’ve never been in any way homophobic, but I’ve also never been attracted to men - and I started to worry that there was some vibe I gave off that made people think I was gay.

Then I mentioned it to a gay guy who I knew, and he said that the vibe I give off is of someone who isn’t judgemental and who wouldn’t react badly to being asked. Maybe there’s something similar or analogous to your situation.

Edit: propositioned, not preposition

What are you taking about, he didn’t bait anyone. You aren’t obligated to honor a quote from someone who isn’t in your company. If I said my son is a mechanic and he can put a new engine in your car for $50, you absolutely should not expect a $50 engine.

I didn’t say any of these guys were gems of humanity - what does any of what you’re saying have to do with the fact that they were all workaholics?