I bought the first one for $20. For the second I’ll play on Game Pass, if it is available, or again wait for $20. Maybe even less if I forget about it, which I might.

Someday, that’s what we’ll be sold as “The Singularity”. Some company like Apple or Google will offer us ascendance into the cloud, but we’ll actually just become digital slave labor.

I streamed it on Game Pass for about 30 min and was bored and quit after the first level. I’m not really the target audience, but I still expected more.

I use it to help me come up with better wording for things. A few examples:

• Writing annual goals for my team. I had an outline of what I wanted my goals to be, but wanted to get well written detail about what it looks like to meet or exceed expectations on each goal and to create some variations based on a couple of different job types.

• Brainstorming interview questions. I can use the job description and other information to come up with a starting list of questions and then challenge the LLM to describe how the question is useful. I rarely use the results as-is, but it helps me to think through my interview plan better than just using a list of generic questions.

• Converting a stream of thought bullet list into a well written communication.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some exploits that have already been discovered that people have been sitting on in anticipation of support ending soon.

I just saw yesterday that one of my favorite bands is playing nearby this summer with a 3PM start time!

Then I saw there are 6 bands in the lineup and they don’t even tell me what order they are playing in. I don’t want to watch 6 bands in a row, 2 or 3 is plenty, then let me go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Another vote for Freetaxusa. TurboTax might be marginally easier to use, but it is far more expensive and Intuit is a horrible company. If you hate filing taxes (because of the complexity), that is because Intuit and H&R Block lobby congress to keep things complicated so they can sell you their products.

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/how-to-survive-midlife-blues

Depending on how old you are, you might just be hitting the normal midlife low point. It hit me hard in my late 30s and I spent a lot of time reading about it once I found out it was typical. I think a lot of it has to do with the rate at which you’re experiencing milestones and life changes. It feels like you are constantly progressing in your life up to your 20s or 30s and then the time scale suddenly shifts. Things take much longer to advance - saving enough for a house or retirement, that next promotion (assuming you even want one), major family changes, etc.

Understanding that helped me recover somewhat, though it still took a couple of years. I’m still in that lull, trying to figure out what I really even want to do next, but I don’t feel sad about it anymore. I don’t know if this applies to your situation, but I found it really helpful to learn about it.

If your main concern is the US currency or just wanting your money to be out of US-based assets, I believe Interactive Brokers provides a lot of flexibility to move your money between assets and currencies. You’re still going to pay taxes and be subject to all US laws.

If your concern is US involvement in your personal financial affairs…good luck. The US has tremendous influence over the global financial system and no legitimate foreign organization is going to work with you unless you have substantial assets. The few countries that do not respect US influence are not particularly trustworthy and trying to do business with them will put you at significant legal risk.

You could also try converting to physical gold, but the US has confiscated gold before, so that’s not a sure bet.

I tried to sign up for an Apple TV free trial without an Apple device. It let me create the account, but then I had to “activate” the account, and I couldn’t do it on any of my devices (android, windows, the TV that gave me the free trial). I talked to tier 1 and tier 2 support, they couldn’t get it working either.

Then it gets even more ridiculous. The tier 2 agent asks me to upload screenshots of the errors I was getting for the tier 3 (?) engineers to review. Oh, I need an active Apple account to upload anything. I emailed the images and their email system stripped the attachments from the email. Tier 3 closed the ticket and banned my account. I talked to Tier 2 again and all they could do was put in a ticket to request I be unbanned…it was denied.

Finally, I gave up and asked them to delete my account. They said my account can only be deleted if I log in and use the delete account function. I pointed out how that was not possible and they said there was no other option. The whole situation reinforced my plan to never buy an Apple product.

It’s common in the U.S., especially in apartments, to have rooms with no light fixtures. Instead, there will be one outlet that is wired to a switch by the door. That outlet is sometimes upside down to distinguish it from the other outlets. That gives you the option to connect a lamp to the switch to get the same result as having a light fixture. I would generally prefer that every room has a light fixture on the ceiling, but this is marginally better than having to walk across a dark room to turn on a lamp.

“Funny” story - at my prior employer, my department would outsource a bit more labor overseas each year to reduce costs. Year after year we were able to deliver 5-10% cost reductions, mostly through outsourcing. When I started with the company, we were about 40% outsourced, when I left we were over 80%, but it took many years to get there.

Over the years, we could have returned vastly more money to shareholders if we had outsourced more quickly, but our department leadership understood that they have to show improvement every year, so its bad business to save all the money at once (even though the savings would increase profitability permanently).

In the last 2 years, many of those leaders have moved on to other roles, in part because they understood we were nearing the end of the road for that strategy. I would be very curious to see how the next 2-3 years goes for the new leaders, but I also had a good opportunity to leave before things get ugly.

I loved this book, so I will definitely check out John Dies at the End. Thanks for the recommendation!

I agree with the others, I would go for a full rack over a half rack to provide better safety for squats and bench. Technically, you could shrug off a failed squat, but I wouldn’t want to do that in my house unless I set up a very solid platform under my rack (a very good plywood + stall mat build and if you’re doing this in your house, new stall mats reek for a long, long time). Similarly, if you don’t use collars, you can dump the plates on a failed bench, but I’d rather not do that to my floors without solid protection.

Used is definitely the way to save money, but you could get a similar setup from Titan Fitness or maybe Rep Fitness for about $1k new. Skip the 15lb plates, but get some 5lb, 2.5lb and change plates. I like microgainz.com for change plates, but I’m in the US and don’t know how shipping to Canada compares.

Oh, that sounds like a sweet deal. I should have been aspired to be a corporation instead of a normal person.

Stock “news” is stupid, the Switch 2 announcement has been expected for a year. The only news is that the company confirmed it will launch this year, which was already expected. Real news is when we start hearing what games will be available at launch (or soon after).

I don’t really understand how Walgreens is still in business. I only go there when I need something that the grocery store pharmacy section doesn’t carry and I’m not willing to wait 1-2 days to have it shipped from Amazon. Every time I go, its a ghost town with more employees than customers.

I don’t like the Witcher because I want to be faithful to Triss, but as soon as Yennefer shows up, all my player choices are disregarded. 5/10, will not play again.

Mine is off at the moment.

I think in 1995 my dad had pay by the minute internet access and I wasn’t allowed to use it (and didn’t really know what it was anyway). Somewhere around 1996/7 he got a dedicated ISDN line with unlimited internet and I stayed up all night talking to strangers in chat rooms or playing video games. Good times!