Readit NewsI can be through the whole process at CVS (with some random item like a birthday card) in about 30 seconds.
I no longer shop at CVS.
> Progress in AI has always been a step function.
There's decisively no evidence of that, since whatever measure you use to rate "progress in AI" is bound to be entirely subjective, especially with such a broad statement.
We don't expect steel to suddenly have new properties, and we don't expect bubble sort to suddenly run in O(n) time. You could ask -- well what is the evidence they won't, but it's a silly question -- the evidence is our knowledge of how things work.
Saying that improvement in AI is inevitable depends on the assumption of new discoveries and new algorithms beyond the current corpus of machine learning. They may happen, or they may not, but I think the burden of proof is higher on those spending money in a way that assumes it will happen.
I totally agree with you... though the other day, I did think the same thing about the 8bit era of video games.
There are plenty of counter-examples to the scaling of computers that occurred from the 1970s-2010s.
We thought that humans would be traveling the stars, or at least the solar system, after the space race of the 1960s, but we ended up stuck orbiting the earth.
Going back further, little has changed daily life more than technologies like indoor plumbing and electric lighting did in the late 19th century.
The ancient Romans came up with technologies like concrete that were then lost for hundreds of years.
"Progress" moves in fits and starts. It is the furthest thing from inevitable.
The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up behind me and very persistently told me that I hadn't scanned something. Annoyed, I pointed on the screen where it showed I had. His eyes went wide, and he spun around, and quickly hurried away, no apology.
If I had to guess, I'd say they didn't code that intervention/confrontation as their mess-up, and I wouldn't be surprised if I still got dinged as suspicious, to cover their butts.
We do seem to have a lot of shoplifting here in recent years. And I have even recently seen a street person in a chain pharmacy here, simply tossing boxes of product off the shelves, into a dingy black trash bag, in the middle of the day. Somehow none of the usual employees around. Yet there's often employees moving to stand behind me at that same store, when I use their self-checkout. (Maybe my N95 mask is triggering some association with masked bandits, yet bearded street person with big trash bag full of product makes them think of lovable Santa? But an N95 is a good idea in a pharmacy on a college campus, where the Covid factories that are college students will go when they have symptoms.)
IMO, if you want to have self-checkout, you need to accept a higher rate of loss. That's the tradeoff for replacing your employees with robots and forcing labor onto the consumer. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
The MCOs are not carving out different networks for specific employers. You buy a bronze PPO from United Health directly, or your employer does, it’s going to be all the same providers. If you get gold, then the deductibles/copay will be less.
The networks used to be different when HMOs were in vogue, but if your employer is only giving you an HMO option, you need to find a different employer. PPOs are the only sensible option (except maybe Kaiser on the west coast, but even they sell PPOs, just costs more to see a non Kaiser provider).
School should be provided, IMO, and nobody should be left with ruinous debt. This country can afford it, and money invested in education comes back in multiples in economic output, and yet we choose to keep education out of reach from many poor people and make it extra hard for those who can only just afford it. I’m sorry if you got stuck with a load of debt that’s difficult to manage. That sucks and it’s not fair.
And my comment is not about people thinking they'd be getting rich -- it's about people making a (or what should be) reasonable assumption that they'd make enough money to pay off their tuition without lifelong financial struggle.
Yes, state schools are the smart choice here.
My point is it's not all on the student, they are victims to a large extent. We should also place blame on these elite institutions for suckering in young adults with their prestige and then not delivering a product that is worth what they charge. And on the government for providing a blank check for this nonsense.
Anyway, I do think we're mostly in agreement. And btw, I'm fine, I'm just speaking from the experiences of many of my peers, which have left me pretty teed-off at a prestigious university in my city that I will refrain from calling out by name.
The fact that you can get easy loans into six digits to pay worthless schools for worthless degrees is a different problem. "Free money" never leads to wise purchases.
Worthless degrees, yes, but why are we not holding our most prestigious schools responsible for charging outlandish prices for worthless degrees? They are the ones with power misleading young adults who maybe should know better but guess what, they often don't, and that's a mistake but not one that should ruin you financially for the rest of your life.
But yes, you are right that this is not the majority of student loan borrowers.
A silver plan an employer subsidizes is similar to a silver plan from healthcare.gov (expect plan to pay 70% and insured to pay 30%).
They are better than nothing if you qualify for a subsidy, but if you don't and you live in a HCOL area (which the subsidies are not adjusted for) you are pretty much screwed.
You can tell your employer you don’t want to pay for the employer subsidized plan, but then you lose access to the employer subsidy and ability to pay premiums with pre tax income.
She went to the post office which is also a bank in Rome. She asked to closed her account. She was told that she needed to go to the branch where she opened her account in Florence.
We rented a car and drove to Florence.
When we arrived at the bank in Florence, the teller informed us that we would have to come back “domani” which is Italian for tomorrow because the only person who could help us was the banker who had originally opened the account for my wife when she was a student many moons ago.
We came back the next day and met the banker who immediately recognized my wife including recanting that she was an artist. He informed her that he could not close her account, she would have to speak to the Director of the bank.
We waited in line for the director of the bank but we were told it was too close to the end of the day and the bank was out of money so we’d have to come back… Domani.
Domani arrived and my wife again waited. The Director willfully ignored her for 2 hours and it wasn’t until my wife began to cry that the Director finally called her over and allowed her to close her account.
This for €2500. That was a balance that meant a lot to us at the time.
I will never forget banking in Italy.