> AirPods became popular because they were fashionable and now they’re unfashionable.
You don't think a significant number of people use Airpods because they are good value and convenient? I know that's why I got them. The noise cancelling alone is worth it
Airpods didn't invent noise cancelling, Bose has been selling them since 2000. Price/quality has been always on the side of the wired devices. Unless you need wireless, get something wired. Airpod, and similar, are almost always less than 1 meter away from the phone.
>I didn't say they did but the Airpods are essentially best in class for this
Best in class are the Bose QuietComfort Ultra, (wireless is optional for the overears, as is should be in such a product). Sennheiser Momentum 4 (wire also optional for the overears) are also a very good alternative, maybe not as blocking as the Airpods, but the sound is probably better, more "natural", but that is a personal taste after all. Comparing only the ear buds, Airpods are the less forgiving with the ear fit of the three models, they clearly prioritized aestetics before ergonomics.
The point is that there were excellent NC options before the Airpods, and almost nobody gave a fuck about the technology. Suddenly Apple "invented" the tech for the masses, and now nobody can't live without it, to the point that you are a cavemen if you are not using them. They never were the best, they are just another ones. Kudos to Apple for good marketing and brand positioning.
Incidentally, I can't use regular ear buds for long without them moving around and losing a lot of sound quality. I have in-ear monitors custom made, and they still move and pop out sometimes. I tested the Airpods my sister has (the ones without silicone tip), and they simply don't do the work because they don't seal enough unless you push them with your fingers.
I'm not talking about "liking" it, if you like being around people - there are many ways to do it, unless you live in a mountain cave or something. In any city there are dozens of volunteering groups that would be very happy if you came over and helped them and you will be around people as well.
But in our internal state of being, in our thoughts, in our emotions and the very experience of life we are always alone. Yes we can try to express them to others some extent, but it can never be complete. In that sense we are fundamentally alone, and realising that makes the problem disappear.
Because if I'm always alone internally and nature made it so, why worry about that? The need for desperate attempts to fix it disappears and you are just fine both ways, when there are people around or when there is no one around.
it's not just conditioning, there is likely some biological drive because we evolved as a social species, but he's right, there is also conditioning and it can be dealt with. there is plenty of people that live in solitude and plenitude because they chose or learned to do so.
we're told that we need connection, but what we seek in others is really ourselves: our meaning, our purpose, we need to matter. what we actually find in others is only the illusion of that. it works (usually) and it feels good but not necessarily for everyone and there are ways to do that all by yourself. just be nice to yourself and enjoy existence. some will contemplate you as a weirdo, but that's their conditioning kicking in. it may not be for everyone, but there's really nothing wrong with that.
i was raised in a crowded family. i had dates and got married and got kids. i have a few friends left, some family left, aquaintances, sport comrades, sporadic contact and interaction with all of them ... but i spend most of my time alone and doing my thing, and rarely get bored, days fly. sometimes i might feel empty, lonely, depressed ... well then i reach out, or just soldier on, or distract myself, i know it will pass. and i think everyone has such moments, i had them all my life, being permanently crowded just distracts you from that. all in all, looking back, i'm having the blast of my lifetime and this is how i want to live the rest of it.
> I don't really think LLMs have done that much to change the actual situation around ability/outcomes
from my own experiences and many others I have seen on this site and elsewhere, I'm not sure how anyone could conclude this.
> it doesn't seem to me like it's actually leveling up mediocre programmers to "very good" ones
Oh well then if this is your metric then maybe your take is correct, but not relevant? From the top level comment I thought we were talking about the bar being lowered for building something thanks to AI and you don't need to become any better at being a programmer to do so.
I once had a vexing problem with my old Intel MacBook — macOS failed to boot, but Windows seemed totally normal. Can't possibly be a hardware failure, right? The symptoms disappeared after replacing the SATA cable!
This reminds of the infamous GPU issues of the unibody models (the last non-retina ones). I have one such 2012 15" MBP which has a dedicated GPU which, as I understand it, has developed soldering issues.
Non-Mac OSs don't know how to turn this GPU on out of the box, so it just sits there without bothering anybody. But, for some reason, MacOS turns it on and it craps the bed, rendering the machine unusable.
I had the 2010 version of this model, with the same symptoms starting in mid 2011. I would get 5-8 crashes a day from the GPU being on the fritz.
Apple ended up replacing the mainboard in a free out-of-AppleCare repair. I never had the problem again and I used the machine regularly until about 2018.
In my case, it lasted one or two more years, and I only learned about the repair after they stopped offering it. By that time, the machine had already been replaced for other, unrelated reasons.
No! Maybe I wasn't entirely clear in what I wanted to say.
The point is ChatGPT gets various info about you and it won't disclose to you that it has them.
There's the memory feature, but various reports (and my own experience) indicate that even if you disable it, some stuff you've said before (or the LLM inferred) is still fed into its sytem prompt.
We also know that AI can sometimes make up stuff. I think it might have "guessed" the user has ADHD, this got added into the system prompt and it won't be revealed to the user considering how this works. It wasn't done on purpose and wasn't malicious.
Better job prospects for more people, lower inflation, cheaper healthcare, cheaper housing (actually affordable housing), less obesity, better school programs, more distributed, less controled, and less corporate internet and web, higher fertility rates, less clouds of war and civil tension, more political legitimacy and better political climate, better nutricion (official stats show obesity at an all time high and rising - despite all the health influencer slop), less impacted rural areas and small towns, and many other stats besides. And a more stable global order too.
Most of those apply both here in Europe and the US.
And that's without even getting into more subjective QoL stuff, from cultural production to the widespread depression and the loneliness epidemic.
Oh wow it's so simple! why has nobody thought of this before??