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“The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,”

"The company told employees in March that it was cutting thousands of jobs as it faced investor pressure over raising huge amounts of debt for its AI infrastructure buildout."

Is this a dual threat for employees working in companies that have some goal to build out AI infrastructure? The first threat being the obvious "AI is doing your job now" and the second threat being the company needs more money to build out their infrastructure?

Thanks for the comment and ideas. I was thinking through the different types of things that could be sidelines. You hit on many of them. There are some cultural festivals that occur in the downtown that can bring opportunities for some local craftspeople to share retail space before and after the festivals. Also, some branded items that go well with books like totes and bookmarks.

This is a timely comment for me. I have been doing research on opening a small indie (new/used) bookstore in a small old downtown I walk through almost every day. It has restaurants, specialty shops, coffee shops and a small local grocery store. I've always thought it was missing a bookstore.

Any tips/warnings that might not be immediately obvious to a hopeful bookstore owner? Do you think there is a sweet spot in terms of square footage of retail space? Margins are low so do you supplement with sidelines/events/memberships?

One of my next steps is to join the ABA as a provisional member to get access to their new bookseller guides.

Inconceivable!

The original story, “A Can Ride I’ll Never Forget”, has been posted here a couple times in the past. However, it’s one of the stories that is worth revisiting ever so often. The author also seems to have added a forward with his thoughts about the story and how it was popularize across the internet.

I support this. I’ve been on small parts of the trail and look forward to the whole thing being connected.

Let’s not forget the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. No protest or civil disobedience needed, just need to look a certain way.

Sitting in a coffee shop alone with a pen and journal is restorative time for me. No laptop, no headphones, no phone.

Another thing to try is to go to a diner alone. Same deal.

Are they actually trying to stop them first?

I’m still working on my iPhone X with iOS 16. Works great except for one banking app which apparently needs the latest version. Apple continues to update with security updates.

If you do decide to recycle, make sure to wipe the phone’s data. E-waste can be a dark/shady business with a lot of the electronics shipped to China.

On my last trip to Tokyo, I went to one of the Ramen restaurants that had a vending machine to order food. The machine, unfortunately, did not give us any change. I felt bad trying to explain to one of the employees because we both couldn't really understand each other. He eventually understood and gave us the exact change we did expect. After that experience, I wouldn't blame them for wanting to make the change and limiting tourists.

Thanks! My wife and I have been discussing the deliberate effort needed to raise our child. I think your comment highlights the things we do want to do.

We just learned that several couples on our block will be having kids around the same time, so we are trying to initiate an annual block party during National Night Out to hopefully kick start the habit of building relationships with others in our neighborhood.

Thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts. I had a chat with a friend with a 2 year old and he also underscores the importance of consistency. We already stay off the tv most of the time so hopefully that helps. Any recommendations for what to watch in the early years if not on YouTube? Thanks again.

Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts. Internet safety is something I need to remember to instill as we progress through all the tech that they will be interacting with.

We will be having our first child soon so these are the type of things that interest me. I want to limit phones and screens. I assume it’s easy at first but as they grow older there will be more friction as they interact more with other kids and the outside world. I know at some point they will need to know how to use them but when is the right time? Curious if anyone has any tips?

The last time I bought the newest iPhone was iPhone 5. In the past, I’ve been getting hand me downs since most people change their phone between 12-18 months. I’m still using an iPhone X. I can’t upgrade the iOS at the moment so looking forward to getting an iPhone 13 in the next year or so.

I agree with you. Hand me downs aren’t coming as fast as they used to.

I've traveled to Hawaii (specifically the Big Island) several times and drove H19 countless times between Kailua-Kona and Waikoloa. For about 30 minutes you are driving through old lava fields with a view of the ocean, some goats and the other cars on the road. I've never realized the lack of billboards and I thank those responsible for that. I can imagine that drive inundated with billboards if it was allowed. Trying to sell sunset cruises, sunscreen and your next time share.

I'm in the US. I was actually thinking more along the lines of state, regional or county parks.

Park Ranger. Getting outdoors more and getting paid for it sounds good.

Ha. Fair enough. I'll report back once I read it. I don't have a Goodreads account so I'm making up for it here I guess.

I was just gifted the first book of the series. I’m looking forward to reading it after seeing some of the praise it received recently.

Agreed. This book helped me really understand the people in a country are not all defined by the ruling party or the ruler. In this case, not all Germans were Nazis and some had much honor in how they conducted warfare. Maybe this was obvious to many people but it wasn’t obvious to me until this book.

It might be due to the school consolidations and schools being moved to cheaper areas.

The article does have a chart that shows distance from their school. I'm curious if there are closer schools that parents chose not to let their child attend. I have known a couple people that drive miles away to drop their kid off to private schools when they have a public school a mile away.

I grew up in a suburban area so I am out of touch with the rural experience.

Because the article is comparing the past with the present, I am curious what parents were doing in the 90s in your area? And, what are parents doing nowadays?

I'm assuming, either car or bus. And I can't imagine that would have changed since the 90s unless there used to be a school much closer.

Yea. I get it. Schools are getting farther away. I was lucky to be 2-3 miles away which I think is a reasonable distance. But it really depends on what people are comfortable with which is what this whole article comes down to.

I wonder if this also takes into account families choosing to send their kids to schools farther away. In particular, sending them to private or charter schools that are farther away.

My mom walked me to school until I was in 4th grade. She was a single mom and needed to work, so she decided to let me walk to and from school from then on. I made friends on that walk. 30+ years later, I am still friends with many of them even though we live hours away from each other.

I'm not a parent, so I don't know what I don't know; but, I've observed so many kids being shuffled between school, events, "play dates" where it is harder to build deep relationships outside of the parent's sight. Everything is being curated to "ensure" the kids are safe or on the "right" path.

I understand that we live in a different world, but I really do feel that its to the detriment of the kids.

LunchMoney is cool. When Mint shut down I tried several apps (LunchMoney, Copilot, and Monarch). Unfortunately, I couldn’t get LunchMoney to work with one of my credit unions. I reached out to them but they couldn’t really do anything about it. I wanted to support the solo dev but I ultimately chose Monarch because it just worked with all my accounts out of the box.

I agree there should be less billboards in this world.

Mr. Cooper said in its regulatory filing that the cyberattack will cost the company at least $25 million, up from an estimated $5 to 10 million, largely due to paying for identity protection to its current and former customers for two years.

For a company that makes ~$2.9 billion revenue, $25 million is a drop in the bucket. Why aren't there more repercussions for companies that can't protect their customers' data?

There have been so many breaches that result in "free identity protection services". Maybe these "identity protection service" companies are paying the hackers?

Hello. I am QA that writes tests for engineering. Technically, my title is a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET). Not only do I write "test plans", I work on the test framework, infrastructure and the automation of those test plans.

Every company is different on how they implement the QA function. Whether it be left to customer, developers, customer support, manual only QA, or SDET. It really comes down to how much leadership values quality or how leadership perceives QA.

If a company has a QA team, I think the most success comes when QA get involved early in the process. If it is a good QA team, they should be finding bugs before any code is written. The later they are involved, the later you find bugs (whether the bugs are just "noise" or not) and then the tighter they get squeezed between "code complete" and release. I think that the QA team should have automation skills so more time is spent on new test cases instead of re-executing manual test cases.

Anyways, from my vantage point, the article really hits hard. QA are sometimes treated as second class citizens and left out of many discussions that can give them the context to actually do their job well. And it gets worse as the good ones leave for development or product management. So the downward spiral is real.