It's choice exhaustion, a common dark pattern. You get worn down and that makes you more likely to spend more than you need

Yeah, but there's a risk that people won't come back because it's exhausting.

I ordered from the wrong location once, and it's fine, they don't work the order until you arrive, and they refund it at the end of the day, but they lost a sale because I was so frustrated that I just drove home without picking up food like I was expecting to.

And the way prices are now, you need to order in the app if you want a chance at value, so if I don't have time to poke at the app, I won't go.

Interesting.

As far as I can tell, they're at least supposed to use location services to start the order when you're nearby. When the store isn't super busy my order is typically ready when I arrive, and I've ordered 10-15 minutes before arrival a few times and my orders weren't cold.

Maybe this is what they're supposed to do, but the system and/or employees don't do it reliably.

Or perhaps it's because I typically do counter pick-up, and almost always have a small (1-3 item) order.

It makes sense that they wouldn't prep your order if you're just going to be waiting in a long drive thru line anyway, though this could obviously lead to further delays because they don't reliably have larger orders finished in the time it takes to get from the speaker to the pick up window.

Wait, seriously? They make you show up before they start and the orders can't travel between locations?

I've only used the app a couple times so I only knew the first half of that.

I mean... I could have asked, and they might have been able to transfer, but there's no user accessible way to make it happen, and you can't (or couldn't) make a new order while one was pending. But I was coming back from kid's hockey practice and tired and now mad at mcdonalds, so I wasn't going to wait in line to ask. I have ordered to the wrong Starbucks, where they do start your order when you place it, and they were able to see the order and remake it at the one I actually showed up at, but Starbucks is always super nice whenever anything goes wrong, even if when it's my fault, which it usually is.

Not being able to start a new order is also great when you had a successful order that the app didn't notice and then you have to clear app data days later when you want to order again... but I think McDonalds may have added a button to just order anyway in the past not too long.

Back a step. You presuppose the possibility of a point, but is there still such a possibility?

This seems like a weird, almost metaphysical question, but I've been coming back to it a lot lately.

Is the goal financial independence? If so, there are much more efficient, risk-off ways of getting that. (For example, a nursing degree, or a red seal in plumbing.) You are choosing to work in grindhouse conditions with no union or safety net, where ageism or just burnout will eventually make you unhireable. There is only so much 996 in a person, and the winners take all. Most of the easy wins are behind us.

Ok then, maybe it isn't for the money, then. So is it to usher in the future? Be the hand that twists the dial?

But in that case, what compels you to believe that you've identified a worthwhile future to blithely endorse? The laws of unexpected consequences are binding, and the judgments are severe.

Is it for the love of the activity, then? The making? Well, that part's been automated this past year or three, so at best you will be a restaurant critic, not a chef.

I'm not sure the magic is still vital.

From the we-accidentally-nuked-our-business-strategy department.

Bravo, Microsoft, for finally noticing the entailment of replacing workers with AI most critical for a company whose proven revenues come from selling "seats"

Too bad we can't run this bot in the nineties. There seems to be quite a bit happening these days.

The stopped clock is right twice a day, but it reads noon and we're at half past three

Oh I am so excited to see what happens to you next from this.

But you'll never connect the dots. It will be "just" a layoff, "just" higher prices for everything, "just" a mortgage of 10% and stagflation everywhere on Earth.

Buckle up, my insouciant friend; you will find the future both hard and surprising.

The farm's doing fine

Fertilizer will be a problem

Pipelines take years, even decades, at least here in Canada. You'd be surprised at how many billions of dollars and person-years of labour you need to get the thing turned on.

Five years at 2mil per ship will make Iran rich.

An understandable reaction, but, qua philosopher, it brings me no joy to inform you that most of the things we did with a computer in 2020 are 'anthropomorphized', which is to say, skeumorphic, where the 'skeu' is human affect. That's it; that's the whole thing; that's what we're building.

To the extent that AI is a successful interface, it will necessarily be addressable in language previously only suited to people. So it is responsible to begin thinking of it as such, even tendentiously, so we don't miss some leverage that our wetware could see if we thought about it in that way.

Think of it as sort of like modelling a univariate function on a 2D Cartesian plane -- there is nothing 'in' the u-func that makes it graphable, but, by enabling us to recruit specialized optic-chiasm subsystems, it makes some functions much, much easier to reason about.

Similarly, if you can recruit the millions (billions?) of evolution-years that were focused on detecting dangerous antisocial personalities and tendencies, you just might spot something important in an AI.

It's worth doing for the precautionary principle alone, if not for the possibility of insight.

Deceptive headline. Spillway worked as designed.

Your new profession will be attempting to find enough gig work to eat. You will also be competing with self-driving taxis, so there's that as well.

I need to start SaaS for getting people to start doing lunges and squats so they can carry others around on their back, I need a founding engineer, a founding marketer, and 100m hard currency.