Newer Fairfield Inns have been surprisingly good. I don't mind them at all!

thats not the kind of upgrades im thinking of. I usually end up getting bmws or other german luxury makes. The worst upgrade ive ever gotten was a buick encore.... still one can argue thats still better than a camry.

I just got a Mustang Mach-E again this week.

Truly a wretched vehicle. The lane keep assist keeps trying to kill me.

Suddenly swerved for the curb and the whole time the display showed perfectly good status: "all good boss, you're safe with us!!" Not even the courtesy to let me know I should take the wheel because I'm about to get seriously fucked. No: "we're confident that you are safe, leave it to us."

Also those damn power operated doors. I walk into the hotel to check in, and come back out to find the driver door just sitting open. What in the fuck

Not to mention a couple more times where I walk up to the car, press the open door button repeatedly and nothing happens. A long pause, and then suddenly pops open.

I did like the Apple Maps integration though: when I had CarPlay running, it showed me the EV battery charge remaining at the destination, using my own navigation.

Damn, I love my HomePod Mini speakers. I just purchased my 8th one. I used it to tell me time, weather (around the world), temperature and humidity in the rooms, baseball scores, even tells me jokes when prompted. Short stories are weird, but it's a hoot. Sound is amazing for its size. I finally installed two in my listening room and paired them. Shit, for the price, it produces good stereo separation, imaging, soundstage, you name it. All controlled by voice and iPhone app. I play my Sirius channels through it (70's on 7, baby!). If only it would play nice with my Bluesound streamer, it'd be the cat's meow.

I only get them when they go on sale. Used to get them using my Optimum points during Redeem points promo. That went downhill since their prices are like $30.00 more. I buy it when Staples have them on sale for $119.00 and use the $10.00 off tech deal they have once in a while. It's wired for power (you can get third party battery powered dock) and wireless for signal (WiFi) and Bluetooth 5.0. I don't have a use for it, but it has intercom capability. Also, the emergency sound recognition (fire, smoke, and CO2 alarm) is kind of useful, I guess. I can walk around the house and not miss a beat (pun intended) music or baseball games.

https://www.apple.com/ca/homepod-mini/


Check out the specs and features. Impressive. I just might cancel my Qoboz and go with Apple Music to take full advantage of that realm.

Am I a luddite or is this AI boom reminiscent of the dot-com boom and resulting crash?

80% of the AI companies will be out of business in a year or so but AI as a tool is here to stay, the benefits are just too great but there is a totally crazy land grab happening right now just like past booms which will result in a big crash.

I've been resisting forever, but I finally used AI for the first time to do something for me... it got me 80% of where I needed to go but it was completely fucking retarded for the last 20% no matter how many ways I tried to ask it for something. Felt like I was dealing with an autistic toddler.

The beginning part was quite effective though!

Your experience is pretty accurate. My experience had been to break things down as small as possible. It'll do quite a good job in small bite size chunks, but once you've added too much complex requirements it'll drop bits and make assumptions or expose cracks in your requirements because you haven't thought of something or worded something wrongly. Or all of the above.

Even if that's the case, I'll just do what I've always done and pre-download shows I wanna watch while on the plane. Also, you can buy cheap phone mounts that can hang on the headrest in front of you without disturbing that passenger. Pretty cheap! I often forget to bring it with me though lol. It's good for the gym too when you're on the treadmill.

Everything I've seen people generate with AI has been pretty shit. To make it decent you'd have to rework a bunch of it and at that point you're better off just searching for regular templates of things.

I find it pretty obnoxious how many things have it integrated now as well. MS Paint doesn't need AI ffs. How it's allowed in Adobes pdf viewer boggles my mind. I'm reading confidential information that I had to sign an NDA for but any idiot can click a button and let it be read by a third party database? Are they insane?

I hate it too, but I think AI and automation in general is going to be needed for us to progress. But that can only happen in a positive way if we fucken get ready for it and try not to let it get out of control (perhaps the way capitalism has). For it to be feasible whatsoever to not fall into a complete collapse (which we're already on the trajectory of), UBI is an absolute MUST. Right now we are on the worst timeline possible.

Ideally I'd keep it away from all creative platforms, but that's the easiest, most brainless, cheapest payoff use for it