Yeah, it’s a problem with the employment and organizational structure, in a way.
Software doesn’t need continual redesign and redevelopment at constant scale, nor is there unlimited need for new software tools in any one company’s wheelhouse, but the expectation is that software companies hire people and keep them onboard as long as they’re performing well, not that they’ll scale up for a periodic launch and then scale down again. And a company that did that — outside of the video game industry — would be shunned by developers (at least in a good labor market).
They do need more attention per person. Doing anything with a group of eight is just more complicated, and you’re more likely to have a person in the group who slows things down for whatever reason plus people trying to help them which can slow things down more.
They’ll take longer per person to order because they’ll be coordinating appetizers and who’s sharing what, etc.
They’re more likely to be celebrating a special occasion which means people less familiar with the restaurant or even people who don’t eat out much at all.
And the group is big enough that people will be having side conversations while one side of the table talks to the server, which also slows things down.
From the worker’s point of view, it’s adding a gambling element to every transaction, complete with the usual gambler’s folk wisdom about which ones are going to pay out and how to maximize your luck, which I think is part of what makes it popular.
Everyone who’s ever worked for tips has stories of unexpected “wins” and the biggest jackpots are reported on like big lottery wins.
Yeah, I can’t actually think of any contracts besides media licenses that are fixed payment for access to a resource for an indeterminate length of time. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it.
Yes. I recently tried ordering a standard cardboard tube box of oats from Amazon, and it arrived crushed and leaking in its presumably nonsterile paper envelope. They gave me a refund and told me to throw it out.
I think this would have been much less likely to happen without the envelope, since whoever packed the truck would intuitively pack the tube vertically.
Exactly — they should have just offered a lease until the end of the licensing agreement: “Pay $X today and watch this movie as many times as you want through June 2026!”
Interestingly Greene’s Dictionary of Slang cites more than a century of US use of “jab” for injection. Seems like it must have died out in the US and revived a bit lately.
In the UK, I believe jab has long been equivalent to shot in the US (complete with nonviolent connotation despite the word meaning something violent in other contexts).
Another one is that you can tell “professional” from “personal” email addresses or that every address even cleanly fits into just one category.
A lot of small business owners use gmail or a longstanding ISP account. A lot of people have personal email addresses you can’t easily distinguish from professional ones, between college alumni addresses, personal domains, and obscure ISP and email providers that aren’t in your database.
Images are also a huge part of messaging. For memes obviously, but also other communication (here’s the flyer for the event, look what the teacher wrote on my exam, should I get this gift for mom, look what my significant other sent me — what do you think I should say?), etc.
What confuses me is that the education system, especially the college track, was designed for men and boys. Lots of colleges didn’t even admit women, and they were largely excluded from learned professions like medicine, law, the ministry, engineering, etc.
I haven’t really seen a good argument for what changed. I guess it’s possible that the school system was originally designed to teach young men skills, like quiet study and deference to authority, that women either learn more naturally or get reinforced in other contexts, and the schools no longer effectively teach those skills but still reward them.
> As Scott mentioned on his blog, what if someone stumbled upon the agent’s post? What if they believed it was real? It could have serious consequences for Scott’s personal or professional life. A recruiter could deny him a job, and a potential contributor to Matplotlib could step away from the project. The consequences could reach beyond this case.
What would it mean for it to be “real?” It’s a rant about him discriminating against AI.
If you believe that’s a problem, judge him accordingly, I guess. If you think it’s silly, as most people will, laugh about it.
Fact-checking and editing a mediocre piece of writing be way harder than writing from scratch. Proving that something isn’t true or can’t be substantiated is hard work, and so is arguing that a word choice is subtly inappropriate.
And making a ton of corrections to a document everyone was hoping was ready to go is never fun politically.
The ADHD patients aren’t necessarily the ones doing weekly talk therapy. They’re meeting occasionally for a quick chat with a psychiatrist.
I agree, if you’re just doing talk therapy it seems overkill. But they may have concerns about emergencies, where a patient is in crisis and you realize you don’t actually know who they are.
And insurance fraud: Alice has health insurance, her friend Betty does not but needs therapy, so she signs up under Alice’s name (“oh, I actually go by Betty.”)
In general, I don’t think it’s that outlandish that the company wants to know definitively who its patients are and be able to demonstrate it does, but hopefully they can come up with more options for verification.
I definitely know people who prefer online therapy because they have a busy schedule or live far from a therapist who meets their needs (e.g., people in rural areas).
Some people also prefer online visits for other care, usually things they can self-diagnose: a recurring sinus infection, erectile dysfunction, hair loss, etc.
I was trying to think what the least intrusive option here would be. You need to verify that the patient has ID matching their name and face, which could be done offline by a notary or other trusted party if a patient prefers.
But you also need to confirm the person showing up for the online sessions is actually the verified patient, and I'm not sure how you do that to maximize privacy. I guess you could take a photo at the in-person verification, have the medical provider sign off that it's the same person as their patient, and then destroy the photo?
The risk is that a drug dealer or addict pays people to use their identities and possibly insurance info, pretends to be them and to have ADHD in telehealth sessions, and stockpiles Adderall.
I see these kinds of stories here a lot, and I'm curious whether they reflect a steady stream of need for AI coding, or whether a lot of companies have a burst of AI-appropriate coding work now that the technology is available and then will have a smaller need going forward.
Is it like the stereotypical dad who rents a power washer, powerwashes every exposed surface on his property, and then doesn't need to do any powerwashing for a few years; his neighbor who gets an Instant Pot and uses it for every meal for a month, then sees it gathering dust when the family gets tired of pressure-cooked stews; or like their neighbor who gets a microwave oven and uses it multiple times a day for decades?
Well, travel booking is one of those things every company wants to get involved with because it's just straight referral fees. I get advertisements to book travel through my phone company (T-Mobile US) and a slew of financial services companies.
If it's easy enough to add to the app and sticks around for a while, it may well be profitable even if only a small percentage of customers use it or even realize it's available.
Software doesn’t need continual redesign and redevelopment at constant scale, nor is there unlimited need for new software tools in any one company’s wheelhouse, but the expectation is that software companies hire people and keep them onboard as long as they’re performing well, not that they’ll scale up for a periodic launch and then scale down again. And a company that did that — outside of the video game industry — would be shunned by developers (at least in a good labor market).