Wonder if ‘just walk out’ not scaling up had anything to do with it:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/amazon-ends-ai-powered-store-checkout-which-needed-1000-video-reviewers/

It takes twice as much electrical energy to produce energy in the form of gasoline.

We lose money on every sale, but make it up on volume!

I had a roommate once who played this song every morning to wake us both up so we could get to work.

Not once did we get tired of it.

We got DESTROYED in pinewood derby one year when someone’s engineer dad carved the body into a smooth, irregularly shaped U, with contoured weights. He said he used CAD software, did wind-tunnel tests, and used a special CNC machine to shape it.

Most kids were happy the wheels stayed on.

My son’s science fair project was to measure how much water got used by taking showers vs baths, low-flow vs regular toilets, hand-washing vs dishwashers, etc. We had a pretty nasty drought in our state that year. He had plotted charts, calculated cost savings, learned how to use graphic software and printed color banners. Did it all himself.

The next aisle over, a couple of kids had counted the number of colors in a bag of jellybeans. They had hand-drawn a bar chart on a board with a sharpie. However, they also had a bowl full of jellybeans and you could take a handful if you stopped by. They made sure the bowl was kept full. There was a line out the door.

An important science lesson was learned that year.

I’ve been using these for constrained, boring development tasks since they first came out. “Pro” versions too. Like converting code from one language to another, or adding small features to existing code bases. Things I don’t really want to bother taking weeks to learn, when I know I’ll only be doing them once. They work fine if you take baby steps, make sure you do functional/integrated testing as you go (don’t trust their unit tests–they’re worthless), and review EVERYTHING generated. Also, make sure you have a good, working repo version you can always revert to.

Another good use is for starting boilerplate scaffolding (like, a web server with a login page, a basic web UI, or REST APIs). But the minute you go high-level, they just shit the bed.

The key point in that article is the “90%” one (in my experience it’s more like 75%). Taking a project from POC/tire-kicking/prototype to production is HARD. All the shortcuts you took to get to the end fast have to be re-done. Sometimes, you have to re-architect the whole thing to scale up to multiple users vs just a couple. There’s security, and realtime monitoring, and maybe compliance/regulatory things to worry about. That’s where these tools offer no help (or worse, hallucinate bad help).

Ultimately, there’s no substitute for battle-tested, scar-tissued, human experience.

Wait, they still have 14,000 people working in that division. How is that ‘shutting down?’

I’m not a VR fan or customer, but these headlines are a bit much.

🍿🍿🍿

https://lemmy.world/post/41640680

If you download and install untrusted code extensions, you’re screwed. Not like it’s rocket-science.

Spanglish much? Parlais Franglais? Denglisch sprechen?

“Say hello to my little friend!”

What if you end up with a child who likes maths AND crying?

Smart move. Now you know who to blame if Siri tells you to put glue on your pizza.

Got a couple of 50ft, high-speed Ethernet cables delivered today. Spent the whole afternoon moving boxes and furniture so I could hide them from view.

Subscription unlocks ability to also run in slow motion.