Recommendations would probably depend a lot on what kind of books you like.

One I read recently and loved is “Extremely loud and incredibly close” by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I can’t really go anywhere as I need to save as much money as I can to cover for missed time at work.

By far the most American thing I’ve read in a while.

Answering the question: How about reading some books?

Get well soon, OP!

Of course material science is technology lol

I was talking to a colleague in the office hallway who was holding an empty coffee mug. He fumbled with it a bit until it slipped out of his hands. He tried to catch it, got it, it slipped again, and again, and again. He juggled with that thing for what felt like an eternity until he finally caught it safely. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Then make it easier for her to retrieve a password. A vault is not a good place. Give her a little notebook she can put in a shelf or drawer.

This, and it should be passwords she chooses and can remember (at least the ones she uses the most). Not some random mix of letters and numbers.

Also let her save them in her browser.

I don’t mean to be rude, but maybe stop forcing her to use a tool that you like but she doesn’t. I’m tech savvy but I also think that password managers are a pain in the ass to use. Just let her choose a password of her choice for every service, give her a little paper notebook and let her note down all the passwords. Tell her to make them long and secure and different for every service. Tell her to store the notebook in a safe place. Done.

The movie “Stay” got some really bad reviews. I was absolutely blown away by it and it is one of my favourite movies of all time.

I’m German. One day my house was being renovated and they were working with jackhammers to remove parts of the facade. It was incredibly loud and I couldn’t bear it. I lived close to university and had recently stopped working in one of the institutes. I knew though that my former colleagues had couches in some of their offices so I thought I’d give them a visit. I walked over to the institute and greeted my Australian former coworker. I explained about the noise in my house and said I was “looking for asylum”. Knowing the word “asylum” only from written language, I had no idea it was not actually pronounced “ay suh lum”. He asked “you’re looking for what?” as he obviously hadn’t understood. I repeated “ay suh lum” confidently and he politely said “ah”. Not long after, I learned the correct pronunciation of asylum and that memory has haunted me ever since. It’s been almost 10 years but I still cringe about it.

I think those are the best ones.

Honestly, if that is your impression, I think you’re using it wrong and expecting the wrong results from it.

I use it for little Python projects where it’s really really useful.

I’ve used it for linux problems where it gave me the solution to problems that I had not been able to solve with a Google search alone.

I use it as a kickstarter for writing texts by telling it roughly what my text needs to be, then tweaking the result it gives me. Sometimes I just use the first sentence but it’s enough to give me a starting point to make life easer.

I use it when I need to understand texts about a topic I’m not familiar with. It can usually give me an idea of what the terminology means and how things are connected which helps a lot for further research on the topic and ultimately undestanding the text.

I use it for everyday problems like when I needed a new tube for my bike but wasn’t sure what size it was so I told it what was written on the tyre and showed it a picture of the tube packaging while I was in the shop and asked it if it was the right one. It could tell my that it is the correct one and why. The explanation was easy to fact-check.

I use Photoshop AI a lot to remove unwanted parts in photos I took or to expand photos where I’m not happy with the crop.

Honestly, I absolutely love the new AI tools and I think people here are way too negative about it in general.

My Ampler E-Bike I bought 2 years ago. More than 5000 km later I still love it to bits.

Not sure if that counts as technology, but simple LED lights over my kitchen counter (mounted under the upper cabinets) were a pretty inexpensive purchase that made my life significantly better. I don’t understand now how I was ever able to cook with just the ceiling lights on, it’s absolutely terrible.

I have a foldable phone that also has a very slightly curved front screen (Honor Magic V2). It’s perfect. You can barely see the curve, no weird reflections, it just feels very good in the hand, there are no sharp edges at all. Feels very smooth and nice to hold and use.

based on weighted averages of ‘what people are saying’ with a little randomization to spice things up

That is massively oversimplified and not really how neural networks work. Training a neural network is not just calculating averages. It adjusts a very complex network of nodes in such a way that certain input generates certain output. It is entirely possible that during that training process, abstract mechanisms like logic get trained into the system as well, because a good NN can produce meaningful output even on input that is unlike anything it has ever seen before. Arguably that is the case with ChatGPT as well. It has been proven to be able to solve maths/calculating tasks it has never seen before in its training data. Give it a poem that you wrote yourself and have it write an analysis and interpretation - it will do it and it will probably be very good. I really don’t subscribe to this “statistical parrot” narrative that many people seem to believe. Just because it’s not good at the same tasks that humans are good at doesn’t mean it’s not intelligent. Of course it is different from a human brain, so differences in capabilities are to be expected. It has no idea of the physical world, it is not trained to tell truth from lies. Of course it’s not good at these things. That doesn’t mean it’s crap or “not intelligent”. You don’t call a person “not intelligent” just because they’re bad at specific tasks or don’t know some facts. There’s certainly room for improvement with these LLMs, but they’ve only been around in a really usable state for like 2 years or so. Have some patience and in the meantime use it for all the wonderful stuff it’s capable of.

I disagree, at least as someone who knows some Python but isn’t a pro programmer, ChatGPT saves me tons of time when writing little scripts. I used it to write a little tool with a GUI that I now use all the time in like 3 hours which would have taken me days without ChatGPT.

I keep telling myself I need to start using a password manager but I’m worried I won’t be able to log into things on my phone or other devices like my work computer when I need to because I don’t know the password. Is that a legitimate worry or is there a solution for this? How do you sync passwords between computer and phone?

Not sure but this might be genius.

Interesting. Loved that book!