Aside from coding assistants, the other use case I’ve come across recently is sentiment analysis of large datasets from free text survey responses. Just started exploring it so not sure how well it works yet, but the ridiculous amount of bias I see introduced in manual reviews is just awful. A machine can potentially be less inclined to try fitting summaries to the VP’s presupposed opinion than some lackie interns or self serving consultancy.

Sincerely, thanks for being willing to provide a thoughtful response.

How dare you besmirch the good name of zip disks! There was a good 18 month period in the nineties where they filled a valid use case in the gap between floppy disks and the widespread instantiation of WAN solutions for moving and storing data.

You are my spirit animal.

Pretty obscure term. Don’t beat yourself up.

When I first read your comment about this scheme keeping money from artists I was skeptical. But, yup! It is right there on Spotify’s website:

We distribute the net revenue from Premium subscription fees and ads to rightsholders.

Now, granted a bunch of those “rightsholders” are likely big corporate record labels but your point stands. The little guy is getting screwed, too.

Though, adding to your final thought, I bet if it was only the little guy getting screwed and not the corpos I bet DOJ wouldn’t have cared.

Worked with a dude who once talked fondly of the spaghetti westerns of his youth among a group of colleagues. He beamed, “You know why they were called ‘spaghetti westerns’? Because they were sponsored by Ragu spaghetti sauce!”

One of the others in the group gently explained it was because they were made in Italy and that there were racist undertones in that name. All the color drained from his face and he got quiet for quite a while. I felt bad that we had witnessed the death of the joy he had in that memory. I hope he managed to recover eventually.

I’ve always wanted to contribute to an open source project but by the time I get done with the grind of the work day I don’t have the mental energy to effectively work a second job competently.

See: Rufus, Amazon’s chatbot. I’ve never seen a more useless application of electrons. If it isn’t already in the description then it can’t help you.

If it is already in the description I don’t need your shitty chatbot, Jeffrey.

My guess is you’re one of the 10% or so who didn’t give up in frustration. My % assumption might be off, but assuming any percentage of people gave up and walked away without costing Amazon a dime the system was working perfectly.

9787393

I wonder if this type of economic calculus would mean a supply of inexpensive, second-hand panels might be available in the next few years.

It is a DIY setup. Basically is a sink bowl with the logic of a sump pump with high/low floats (couple of relays and sensors), a fountain pump to drain to a nearby sink, and a valve to fill. The timer drains the water every hour and the fill part is essentially a cheap shower head aimed at an angle so when it is draining and filling at the same time the water is swirling, making it (mostly) self-cleaning. I wipe the inside and outside every week or so just to make sure it is working and isn’t growing anything.

Biggest worry since it is DIY is that something will fail and flood my house. I have a separate high level sensor that closes the valve, starts the pump, and sounds an alarm to help with that, and one of those cheap, warbling 9v water sensors nearby just in case.

I have a self-filling, self-cleaning water bowl for my dogs. With two Great Danes, keeping the water bowl clean and full is a chore.

Right now it uses a digital timer and does an empty/fill cycle 16 times per day using those capacitive water sensors for the level setting and overflow detection. In a future iteration I plan on incorporating MQTT via WiFi for alerts and manual control.