(London perspective), I've intervened from tourists getting scammed before from these guys, and they get violent very quickly. Especially fun because they have their gang all around.
Unlicensed, unmaintained, motorized vehicles on pedestrian paths, a miracle no one has been killed yet.
It's kind of insane, and is a microcosm of the UK's inability to do anything.
- Everyone hates them, from residents, to businesses, to the tourists that get harassed by them.
- There are multiple laws, that if the police wanted to, they could enforce at any time.
- Nothing gets done.
It is an impressive level of apathy from an already toothless government.
Yes, much like how they've regulated delivery drivers. The person listed on the app is definitely the one that delivers, very effective.
I detest the concept that we need yet another "law" before we can actual enforce anything. There are plenty of laws being broken already, we should go and prosecute them before we start making up new ones to ignore.
It's not that easy. He had those little chains strung across the side exits and wouldn't remove them until I paid. I told him they don't let you out of Canada with that kind of cash but he didn't believe me and laid siege to my day while eating a slice of pizza like a taco. The worst thing was that this was my second mishap with non-combustion locomotion that day. ...I still swear that was not the real Secretariat and that Central Park isn't in New Jersey.
Hm. Ok, well, I guess we would have handled that differently.
I had something similar happen in Germany, on the way from the (international) airport to a hotel the driver started some kind of spiel that suddenly his banking machine had broken and he couldn't take card payments. My friend/colleague Jaap who was with me said we'd pay cash and I said no way, and after fiddling for a bit with his phone (mine wasn't a smartphone) gave the driver a different address. When we ended up in front of the police station the driver became a lot more friendly, drove us to the hotel instead and suddenly found that his banking machine had miraculously started working again...
I find that by giving in to such fraud I'm helping to perpetrate it so I've vowed not to let it happen, at the same time there is always a chance that such an interaction would turn violent. After all, they've already decided they want to steal from you. My weighing of this is that they have more to lose than me because I'm a transient and they are not.
If they don't let you out of a vehicle, that's kidnapping and / or extortion and a call to the police should resolve it quickly. In a functioning society, anyway.
Easy to say from the comfort of my terminal, but some urban advice:
Remove the chains and get out; most important is your freedom and safety. They aren't going to risk prison for assault and battery. If they give you trouble, call the police immediately. Take a photo of them and text it to a friend. Don't act intimidated no matter what; it just makes them think they are getting somewhere with you.
Then offer a reasonable fare. If they don't accept, offer to call the police and let law enforcement sort it out. They'll take the fare.
The problem with these is that they are often ran by actual gangs - if you try that, you will find yourself very quickly surrounded by multiple angry looking men who will not let you leave unless you pay.
One of my most delightful discoveries of the early 2000s was that iPod Minis used Microdrives that were pin-compatible with CompactFlash cards. I had a little cottage industry in the back of my office upgrading my coworkers’ old iPods to use bigger, solid state disks. I still have my 256GB iPod Mini. Aside from battery life, it still runs fine, and it is by far my favorite music player form factor.
> ... "and it is by far my favorite music player form factor."
I really liked the old original iPod Nano myself. Had one for years that I was triple-booting RockBox (for extended media formats support and fancier interface), iPodLinux (for playing Doom and other toys), and the original iPod OS (just in case). Still haven't yet owned another device in that size / form factor that can do as much as that little thing did. Apple really did make some sweet devices back in the day... :)
That’s a good question, and I can’t speak for the parent, but for me, I like reading about a person’s journey of discovery. There were many insights this person did not have because he turned the task over to a power tool. People can use whatever tools they want. I also can spend my attention however I like. Reading about someone using AI is just boring to me.
Less guardrails, more like highway lane dividers. The only thing stopping you from crossing a yellow divided line is that someone once told you not to.
It's hard to say whether it's Windows related since the two x86_64 machines don't just run different OSes, they also have different processors, from different manufacturers. I don't know whether an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X versus Intel i5-8400 have dramatically different features, but unlike a generic static binary for x86_64, a JIT could in principle exploit features specific to a given manufacturer.
Yeah I’ve been scratching my head about this too. Like, if my boss said this, I would basically start looking for a new job right then and there. Seems like a good way to drive off your own talent.
There’s a difference between a collapse and a slowdown. We don’t need a collapse for hiring to slow down [1,2]. I think we’re finally just seeing the maturation of software development. Software is increasingly a commodity, so maybe the era of crazy growth and hiring is over. I don’t think that we need AI to explain this either, although possibly AI will simply commodify more kinds of software.
You are mistaken. ChatGPT Health [1] is a model specifically designed for health applications and was co-developed with a benchmark suite, HealthBench [2], for testing against health conditions. This study suggests that the people working on HealthBench have some concerning external validity problems.
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