Yea the cult of personality (crumbled now but was more a thing 5-10 years back) resulted in a lot of people falling for marking FUD which sucks.
I've been in software dev way too long to buy that nonsense. As far as my expectations have been it's actually ahead of schedule. That kind of pessimism keeps me constantly happy with the rate of improvement. Lovely psychological trick I've played on myself.
My experience wasn't too different until v12. Until then the main value add was long trips on highways; it did a good job of keeping me from drifting lanes due to attention lapses and was good at dynamically adapting to highway traffic. As soon as conditions were sub-optimal though it was... bad. I live in a rural area which is obviously not it's happy path. It didn't know what to do with roads without a center lane marking. It didn't know how to handle a roundabout. It didn't know what to do with market areas where streets broaden (kept trying to lunge into a perceived non-existent right lane.
The last couple months have been much better. It's STILL not perfect (and it's pretty much imperative to simply ignore anything that Musk optimistically tosses out regarding capability) but it's a remarkable improvement.
It'll drive me from my home to my co-working space with the only intervention by me being to click a parking spot. The automated parallel parking actually works well now too.
My guess is we are 5-10 years out from it being a truly automatic experience in every way, but it's pretty good now. It's also nice that my car keeps improving (quicker lately) rather than being stuck with whatever nonsense it was deployed with.
I think that's true in the general sense but a lot of that hasn't been really tested simply because of the power of tradition. Part of what [may] be dangerous about Trump is that he is perceived as willing to run roughshod through political convention. Declarations of martial law (in particular if the military can be convinced to go along with it) or other more extraordinary actions would have a powerful effect on the country.
During his presidency Trump showed that a president CAN have profound effects on the economic system. He ordered changes to trading policy with China that had effects that were obvious and felt (regardless of the merit of the actions).
A lot of times presidents are simply unwilling to risk rocking the boat, preferring stability and the status quo. There is a lot of risk of ruining ones re-election chances and damaging the electability of congresspersons of ones party and thus the party itself losing political power (and thus the sweet teet of special interest lobbying money and such that comes along with wielding enough power to represent those interests).
Trump--and I agree with this sentiment myself--is more willing to do something radical. That doesn't mean anything radical he does will be intrinsically bad or have bad effects, it's possible that he could affect positive radical change too.
So, while it's true our president doesn't normally affect too much, it isn't purely because the office lacks the power to affect the economy.
Silliness aside, I actually had almost the same thought when I was reading the post lol. Great minds think for themselves so I guess maybe we're only really good minds then. Ahh well....
- Annual conferences or conferences that occur every-other year
- Planning family reunions because you need that kind of cat-herding lead time when you have 9 uncles/aunts on just ONE side of the family
- Periods where I have some spare cash I'd like to lock in a getaway with before I spend it or something unexpected like the invasion of the Ukraine drives up fuel costs and overall prices... or a global pandemic hits - would be sweet if I could have rebooked some of my trips for for 1-2 years out when the pandemic hit
- Travel for future medical stuff; at one point for 2-3 years I was taking my mom to the Cleveland Clinic every 4 months for periodic checks and it would have been super nice to be able to just book that stuff way in advance and have it all taken care of
Etc
etc
etc
I'd bet quite a few people would appreciate that ability
The fact that something can do something better than me doesn't make much difference. The problem there is the comparison. I like doing things for their own sake; I like knowing things and the process of attaining said knowledge. Making something is satisfying in a way that buying it isn't. Why do people make their own furniture? Why do people restore old cars? Why do people do pretty much anything? Most of what we (on average) do for work is kind of meaningless in some sense - it's an ends to a means. And yet, sans that, people still DO things.
Because we want to. Because we desire to.
I'd rather have MORE time to spend doing the pointless things I LIKE AND ENJOY doing than MORE time doing somewhat pointless things for companies.
That part is one of the things that makes all of it extra funny. By everyones content from each platform ending up on all the other platforms, they get subjected to a different set of ranking algorithms. The ones that spread beyond one platform have managed a weirdly difficult bit of Darwinism.
I've been in software dev way too long to buy that nonsense. As far as my expectations have been it's actually ahead of schedule. That kind of pessimism keeps me constantly happy with the rate of improvement. Lovely psychological trick I've played on myself.