Be kind to your call center friends
I’m going to subvert the system and try to connect with humans I talk to in call centers as humans … at least until they are all replaced by AI.
I’m going to subvert the system and try to connect with humans I talk to in call centers as humans … at least until they are all replaced by AI.
We’ve got to do better than this … https://haveibeenpwned.com/
Not sure what the answer(s) is(are). Decentralization? Required 2FA? Returning to the offline world?
This is a story about the similarity between finding good information to identify vulnerable devices on the Internet and finding the info one needs to sign up for US health care.
Hint: in one of these domains it’s possible to find facts. In the other there is a shifting maze of marketing, laws, partisan media coverage, and bureaucracies who’s goal is to profit from making it impossible to find facts and make decisions on your own.
Warning. First-world baby-boomer problem described here:
So, I'm stitting here on the group-W bench, I'm just sitting here...
OK. Really. Not trying to get out of the Viet Nam draft, just having another surreal interaction with the US Federal government 50 years later along the lines of:
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Ah, they really help themselves
But when the tax man comes to the door
Lord, the house look a rummage sale, oh yeah
John Fogerty/Credence Clearwater Revival
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/catpower/fortunateson.html
GoodRX may save my son $3,500 or more on his prescription meds. This is a large fraction of the income he’s earning on his first job.
Congress exempted “Big Phrama” from kickback rules in the 90s, the result seems to be that prices signals are allowed to work in the market to the benefit of people who would otherwise be made poor buying medicine they need at artificially high prices.
It is somehow fitting that the day I retire, the state of Ohio chose to unveil an historical marker outside the former headquarters of my first employer, CompuServe. I guess I’m history :-)
I started in June of 1985, and, looking back, what was going on there was world changing: the first commercial email, the first online banking, the first online shopping, the first electronic news wire feed, the first song released exclusively online (Arrowsmith 1994), online chat (CB), OS and compiler development, VPNs (X.25 !), data over cable in ‘82 …
In the course of my career, it turns out that many of the things that mattered wound up coming out of individual side projects, not grand corporate visions.
Ode to emacsconf 2023With apologies to William Shakespeare and actual odes.All the world’s a text, And all the men and women merely editors; They have their reads and their writes, And Emacs in its time plays many parts…
The chart below is a mental framework I’ve used to evaluate my work situation over the span of may career. The goal is to move as far up the pyramid as you can. Being at the top (interesting )is really a first or zeroth world problem. Insert discussion of human flourishing/εὐδαιμονία here. If you’re failing at a lower level, the upper layers really don’t matter. Figure 1: Maslow’s Heirarchy of Jobs © 2023 George M.
On my Mastadon feed this week, the question was asked
“Why have #podcasts become so popular in the last few years? What’s changed?”
I think there are a lot of answers…
In your “Presidents Log Book Entry” article in the monthly newsletter, you talked about the need for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) to build its “brand identity” to reach our target “consumers”. About that…