Of the models I've tried lately, I get more value out of Gemini for personal stuff like researching products or learning how to do things than the others. It seems more factually correct in domains I know about and hallucinates minor stuff less than the others.
After wearing an analog watch for two years, I'll never buy another smart watch.
I do not need to be so connected to my phone that my wrist vibrates when someone texts me. The little reminders to stand up are ignored. The guilt at the end of a day when I didn't get enough steps in is gone. And I have a newfound appreciation for the pure craftsmanship that goes into making this tiny analog device on my wrist that is powered by tiny springs and gears and somehow crafted well enough to be accurate within seconds per day. It's also the one piece of jewelry that is socially acceptable for every single man to wear and can be a fun expression of self given the sheer variety of watches in the world.
100% agreed. I wore an apple watch daily for almost 10 years and have switched back to automatic watches. The notifications caused me to be way too connected to my phone, and the "tracking" aspects of it were kind of useless to me. I know intuitively if I got enough exercise in a given day (did I go to the gym? Did I go on a long walk?), I don't need a computer to tell me that. Same thing with sleep tracking: do I feel like shit in the morning? I probably didn't sleep well!
The one thing it's good for is run tracking, I'll still put it on for that activity.
I stopped caring about wellness trackers ever since the FIRST FitBit. Once you get an idea of what 10K steps feel like, it really becomes redundant at that point.
This personal optimization fad is exhausting. We already get enough "data-driven" at work - I don't need that in off-hours.
Listen to your body and stop converting every minute of your life into numbers. Maybe lift up your head and listen to the world for a second once in a while, instead of planting your face in another screen.
Agreed. It's motivational for some people, and that's great, but the "data driven" information it gives you fails to pass the "use your brain" baseline.
The notifications mostly suck unless they’re related to your heart or oxygen level, though you can choose to turn off what you don’t want. It’s the main reason why I wear an Apple Watch even though I’m a big fan of Pebble; loved my Pebble Steel. The fitness trackers tied to Apple Fitness are also another big feature for me. It’s what keeps me wearing it despite the really terrible battery life where I need to charge twice a day.
I'm surprised that the article even said "but you don’t always have the luxury of sitting down to set the time and get the watch ready for the day".
I wear an automatic all the time, in fact I collect them, and most automatic watches will happily keep ticking for 36-48 hours. If you take it off to sleep it won't need adjusting the next morning.
Even if you did need to fiddle with a watch in the morning (which I do, as I switch watches every few days) it takes seconds to whirl the hands to the correct time. Certainly not a significant timesink.
Well said. "Smart" watches seem to make the argument that somehow your phone was not accessible enough, not ever-present enough, and the best solution would be to build a phone relay and strap it to your body. Although the smart phone did flatten most people's impulse control to near zero, it seems the last little bit of progress in the area of impulse-control-destruction could be achieved by strapping a phone relay to your wrist. Too tough to pull your phone out of your pocket? Good news, now that stupid post / notification / chime / whatever is on your wrist and you can never get away from it.
After 3 attempts at an Apple Watch over the years, I finally had the experience that pushed me over the edge and I sold my Apple Watch 10 for a Coros APEX 4 - a device that has real battery life and a quality build, so no more worrying about my activity tracker dying during a half marathon, no more charging a device 2-3 times during an overnight backpacking trip and no more worrying about every bump and scrape. Apple has truly dropped the ball with their Watch line, with their only solution to the dismal battery life for *active* people being spend another $400 for a few extra hours of battery. No thanks.
I'm quite happy with my Coros upgrade. It's really shown me that Apple Watches are a general catch all with feature bloat that don't do anything super well for serious activity seekers, yet its main requirement is the user be tethered to a charger every damn day - sometimes multiple times. That being said though, once this Coros kicks the bucket, I will being giving a lot of thought into whether I will be purchasing another activity tracker. Even with this new device that lasts 2~ weeks on a charge, I find myself missing the simplicity of my Casio G-Shock - a device that simply works. My phone still functions as a great activity tracker for biking, running and brief hikes, but lacks the real battery life needed for backpacking - which is my only holdout.
- I don't want EVERY SINGLE notification from my phone to go to my watch
- I also don't want zero notifications b/c it's very useful to get notifications from my kids, important calendar reminders, my boss sends me a slack etc
Also, the watch allows me to still be "connected" for important events but not distracted by my phone.
(I should add that Apple watches give you a LOT of control over the notifications from your phone to your watch. Not sure if that's true with other watches)
I set expectations with my team that it's only an emergency if I call or page them. I don't have Slack notifications on in my personal time, I don't expect my team to either.
I miss async communication. People apparently think it’s rude if I slack them at 4 AM but it’s on them to turn off notifications. I don’t even have slack on my phone. Nevermind people complaining about out of hours emails.. just don’t read them!
The few times I had to Slack someone way out of office hours I simply set a delayed message to be sent in the beginning of the workday.
People have different notification management than we do, I disable any work-related app notification outside of 9-5, others don't so maybe it's better to cater to them and send delayed messages if you aren't expecting them to read right away.
When I had a Pebble Time (dead, waiting on PR2) I basically had notifications turned off. For that matter, I have very few notifications enabled phone too.
It's great as a watch that can tell you if it's going to rain, give you TOTP authenticator codes, and control music playback.
The tiny springs and gears are neat though, in a different sort of way from tiny transistors, can't argue with that one.
I'm with you. I get great joy knowing that the machine on my wrist started out as rocks (ore) and was refined and fashioned into something that keeps time with very little energy input. Just keep them away from some modern devices, like an Air Pods case, which will magnetize a watch making run poorly unless demagnetized!
I've been tempted to go that route: I used to have a transparent self-winding watch and I miss it.
The thing is, I really like seeing text messages on my watch out of the corner of my eye. I don't read them, but I know that so-and-so texted me, and if it's important I figure out how to read the text safely.
Otherwise, I turn off almost all watch notifications very aggressively.
---
I also really enjoy using my watch as an alarm clock and to track sleep, but I could just wear it at night if I wanted to wear a mechanical watch.
For most of my waking hours, my phone is sitting next to me on my desk, couch, or table. Carplay has my back when I'm driving. I honestly don't miss any of the notifications from my smart watches.
Cannot relate. I do not have notifications enabled on my Pebble.
I don't have any guilt over not having enough steps at the end of the day. But I am walking more thanks to my smartwatch.
I can start a timer in seconds when I am meditating, when I am cooking, when I am starting the watching machine. Also I have made a little app that shows me the weights and reps and sets I need to do for my powerlifting programme. I don't have to bring my phone to the gym. Lastly, I made a little app that shows me one thing I need to be doing for my morning routine or the next TODO on my todo list. A god send for someone suffering from ADHD.
While there are things like heart rate monitors that can't be replicated on a phone, I've never understood why people bring up step tracking or timers as traits of a smartwatch. My phone tracks my steps and can be used to set a timer just as easily (probably easier as it is has a much larger screen).
I couldn't imagine wasting so much time having to take my phone out of my pocket to see my important notifications (the unimportant ones don't go to my watch).
It is pretty damn useful to track your progress if you do any kinds of endurance sports like running or cycling, but yeah I turned those notifications off right away.
On the flip side, I've been using them for years with no issues. I jam pack them full of filthy dishes and they come out perfectly clean every time. I use high quality detergent, rinse aid, keep the filter clean, and regularly run dishwasher cleaner through it. I wouldn't have any other brand.
> My favorite interview question: If I gave you a swarm of autonomous drones, what would you do with them?
What signal are you looking for with that question? It feels much more like a thought experiment with friends while having a few pints than something reasonable for a job interview.
It was the initial culture / behavioral interview for a job developing AI for education of children. Considering how these drones are used in the article linked, the question is apropos.
You can let a local LLM run loops all night or all weekend and it costs nothing. It works offline. There's no rate limits. Privacy. You aren't tied to the whims of the US Government banning models. You can tie it in to HomeAssistant for home automation tasks very easily.
China is undergoing a 2008 style financial crisis due to real estate speculation and deflation due to very weak domestic spending.
They have drowned their municipalities in debt cumulatively equivalent to the US federal and state debt as a percentage of GDP. Localities aren’t allowed to tax but are responsible for local services and industry. Local governments borrowed heavily to hit GDP growth targets and compete with each other for investment and talent.
There is now a backwards migration of the working class back to rural towns from the cities because the incentives China gives is towards technologies that only benefit their already upper-middle class workers. About 500 million Chinese live in rural areas and over 20% of their workforce toils in the fields. That’s not changing anytime soon. Youth unemployment has been 15-20+ percent for some time.
Not at all what’s happening. China’s government privatized real estate and was the engine of the bubble by disallowing localities from taxing and only allowing revenues via land sales. See above how central planning in the CCP has forced massive debt upon localities.
State banks backed Evergrande’s with cheap credit and govt guarantees.
Local officials were promoted for hitting GDP growth targets - see above how they put localities deep in debt by speculating on real estate.
The CCP gave households social credit for moving to cities and buying real estate.
The CCP is not protecting consumers in the aftermath. They won’t let consumers out of mortgages for unfinished condos because they don’t want the crisis to worsen - effectively bailing out developers.
Not sure where you came up with the idea that China is acting in the interest of its citizens rather than the state. That’s not a fundamental characteristic of an autocratic socialist state.
The citizens with real estate were the speculators. They gambled on being able to squeeze even more out of the next guy and they lost. In the US, we would just have taxed the kids (again) to bail out the homeowners (again). I have a hard time calling that more responsible.
They bailed out the little people and jailed the CEO's.
What happened was these companies went into massive debt building buildings based on the belief that real estate prices would increase forever infinitely.
The Chinese govt popped the bubble.
These real estate companies went bankrupt, many of them took payments from retail for apartments that weren't built.
They arrested the CEO's and upper management, siezed and sold their assets.
But the people did get bailed out by the government, all the little folk who bought apartments were refunded or had the construction project finished by the government.
Nope they didn’t. They refuse to let citizens cancel the mortgages even though developers haven’t delivered condos for years and they haven’t bailed out the little folk.
Moreover China’s govt was the cause of this by setting gdp growth quotas to get promoted, see all my other comments regarding this.
You’re just repeating propaganda and interestingly the other commenter responding to me has said the exact opposite, but also has said that China’s response was “morally superior”
For Building projects that were canceled the little people got full refunds
For Building projects that were resumed with the govt footing the money for their completion. People who bought apartments did not have their mortages canceled, they were forced to pay their mortages and will be receiving their apartments when completed.
So yes the little people did get bailed out. The government is footing to continue the housing projects while maintaining the terms of the mortages.
In the US, we saw all the people who could no longer pay their mortages because of interest rates skyrocketing lose everything.
We saw Federal marshalls marching into homes, and throwing crying people out, we saw crying people who have paid hundreds of thousands being thrown out into the street. In the US real estate crash, if you took a ninja loan and the housing crash happened, the banks suddenly demanded higher interest rates and you couldn't pay your house was foreclosed and all equity wiped.
These are all confirmed facts
In the US many little people lost their equity and were thrown out of their homes, many lost hundreds of thousands of dollars as they defaulted on loans and had their property siezed.
In China none of the little people lost anything
The buildings that were canceled the little people got full refunds
The buildings that were continued thanks to cash infusions by the government the little people will get their homes when it is finished.
The only person spreading propaganda is you.
This statement for example is a complete disinformation because you did not acknowledge that the chinese govt gave cash infusions to these stalled projects, and mortage payers will get their apartments
>Nope they didn’t. They refuse to let citizens cancel the mortgages even though developers haven’t delivered condos for years and they haven’t bailed out the little folk.
Not is but the obvious one was COVID policy during 2020-2022. It triggered the closest thing to a domestic unrest you can get in China after 1989, a large exodus of middle class, and an almost 50% crash in their real estate market. The last one is very deadly and still ongoing because that is how China financed its growth for decades.
That would require making babies and not making mistakes. Humans are generally/historically better at the former, but these days both seem to be a challenge.
Energy cost can be theoretically lower than on earth IF launch costs and additional hardware costs are low enough. Because solar is about 5x better on space than on earth. That's basically it.
If we wanted to launch the Stratos Hyperscale AI Data Center, which will take 40,000 acres of land, to space, we're looking at roughly 3 million tons of equipment, or 3 billion kilograms. SpaceX charges $1520 per kilogram, so it would be about $4.5T to launch all of that into orbit. We'll just assume the space station already exists and labor is free to hook it up, given that we've already hit the annual budget for the US federal government in launch fees. And it'll take about 47,000 launches to get the equipment there, or roughly 300 years.
On the opposite side of the experience, after wavefront LASIK on my very very high prescription eyes, I've had dry eyes for the past 15 years and needed glasses again about 5 years post-surgery. It's now a very mild prescription and I'd definitely say my vision is better now than it was before LASIK, but it didn't last long. I opted not to get a touch up out of fear of my eyes getting even more dry. I use eye drops 5+ times per day. My dark night vision is worse than it was before, mostly a lack of contrast. It doesn't impact driving, but being in a very dim room feels like the gamma was slightly raised.
I've never had a cpu die in the decades I've been using them. I've bought 10-20 year old computers that still work just fine. I kept my last MacBook for 9 years before I upgraded out of want for more RAM.
Most computer equipment fails quickly, otherwise you'll get a long life out of whatever it is.
reply