My guess, the CFO showed that using AWS saves the company a few cents to a fraction of a cent per what ever unit they measure by. Those few cents to a fraction of a cent add up when multiplied by the millions or hundreds of millions of units and that savings makes the CEO look like they are more profitable and can give shareholders more profit.

When everything is about the quarterly results and the need to always show growth so the board and shareholders don’t fire you, you’ll cut corners and take the risk, as long as it has the potential to make you look good.

It was trading CD-R’s during my high school days… good times. Napster was just starting to take off by the time we had a CD-R trading network set up, Napster just increased the amount of CD’s that got passed around.

I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.

I remember that site, looked into it a few years ago when I was buying in bulk to resale stuff on eBay. Thanks for the tip, but I’m really just looking for one laptop.

Someone told me on my previous instance, before it shut down, that no one actually used Linux, that everyone even me was just lying about using Linux.

My mom’s laptop self “upgraded” to win 11 a while back and she hates it and has been having issues nonstop. And since she refuses to pay a monthly subscription for office I set her up with Libre office. She’s been resistant to Linux but as I slowly add more FOSS apps she’s coming around. She’s now willing to try a Linux Mint live USB.

I’m going to be on the lookout for one of these perfectly good laptops and throw Mint on it for her so she can keep her windows laptop until she’s ready to fully make the switch.

When I asit for data it’s generally data that would take hours to find, ready through, accept or reject, then take notes and summarize. When I tell an AI to do it, it takes a minute or two for all the data collection and summarization. Then all I have to do is click the link provided with each piece of data and verify it, which only takes a few minutes generally.

So yes, AI saves me hours of researching and summarizing even with checking the source data.

Exactly, I use AI to save time, and find data I most likely wouldn’t have found myself. It’s a tool, not a replacement.

I think the biggest problem is AI has been portrayed in film and TV as this all powerful computer that can do everything, and that’s what everyone thinks they have now. If we compare AI to the growth of the Internet, we’re still in the ARPANET phase, there’s still a looong way to go.

Yeah I use chatgpt and Gemini for targeted tasks, data collection and organizing for blog posts and work proposals (yes I verify the data, I know about A.I. hallucinations), and how to’s for tasks I don’t do often or have never done.

Just yesterday I told it “I just bought the PC (linked to product page) I want to install Linux Mint but first I want to disable secure boot, provide a step by step guide to accomplish this” and after about a minute it spit out and detailed guide referencing the manufacturer’s website, their forum, and a third party guide. It even pulled tips and tricks from the forum with things like “tip: users report if you see this screen do this to correct it (link to forum thread)”

I’m not giving these access to my email or calendar or anything like that, once I can have a locally hosted LLM that can access that stuff then sure, as long as I can control my data. Until then I just use commercial LLMs as tools that I don’t fully trust.