I was notified about 3 or 4 breaches just last year, some from companies I’d never even heard of but had my info.

Sorry for the slow reply; just remembered to ask her. For bookkeeping you don’t need anything. It could be valuable to get a certification in QuickBooks, but not required. It just seems to be the most common software.

If you’re okay with writing a little HTML and just don’t want to deal with writing/designing the CSS, I recently found out about HTML5 UP, which has a bunch of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0-licensed templates. It’s fairly straightforward to modify the content if you understand the HTML, and then you can host it for free as a static page at any number of places like GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages.

If you don’t want to have the CC-By attribution on the webpage, the designer also offers a service called Pixelarity with the same templates and more for a $19/quarter non-renewing subscription. You can continue using the templates even after the subscription expires and can keep making new sites with any template you already downloaded, you just don’t get any updates or tech support when the subscription expires. Upload to one of those free static hosts and it’s dramatically cheaper than Ghost or WordPress, and probably less work than a static site generator for something that’s not changing often.

The buy-now-pay-later company had previously shredded its marketing contracts in 2023, followed by its customer service team in 2024, which it proudly began replacing with AI agents.

A few months after freezing new hires, Klarna bragged that it saved $10 million on marketing costs by outsourcing tasks like translation, art production, and data analysis to generative AI. It likewise claimed that its automated customer service agents could do the work of “700 full-time agents.”

As Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, “cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality.”

Also, just want to recognize this gem:

Though executives in every industry, from news media to fast food, seem to think AI is ready for the hot seat — an attitude that’s more grounded in investor relations than an honest assessment of the tech — there are growing signs that robot chickens are coming home to roost.

Have you considered accounting/bookkeeping? My wife has done it before and it’s not necessarily the most exciting work but typically pays pretty decent. She says it can be interesting trying to track down what is preventing the books from balancing.

Mapquest was revolutionary for offering free driving directions where previously that cost money and was usually only worth paying for on major road trips. Google took that and supercharged it by offering free directions on your phone, joining a growing list of products where they took something that used to cost money and offering it for “free” in exchange for all your information.

I had a very similar experience, except I wasn’t hungover and at the time still lived with my parents/siblings, so I was stopped when I got downstairs and saw them getting ready for dinner. It was a time of year when the light was pretty similar at 6 AM or PM, which made it more confusing.

Maybe the kind of people/organizations who do karma farming on Reddit haven’t figured out that’s meaningless here

If I hear an “AI” voiceover I have the same reaction. Definitely won’t be buying anything from Dr. Squatch.

It’s not just Facebook, I’ve seen it a lot in ads on mobile games and a lot of them look like they’re made for social, Tik Tok and similar. A lot of them claim to be going out of business, and the one that really makes me laugh is the one that’s obviously an AI-generated old man talking about having to shut down his decades-old business making hand-crafted leather goods. If the leather goods they sell are hand-crafted I’m sure it’s coming from a sweatshop in China or somewhere even cheaper, not an artisanal workshop from a single craftsman.

They don’t truly fry like a deep fryer, but in my subjective experience it does produce a similar result, much closer to the deep fryer than an ordinary convection oven, so I’m okay with the branding. I don’t think we’ve used our deep fryer in years at this point.

Really impressed, especially with the 40 minute

I don’t see Explosions in the Sky mentioned yet but they’re definitely worth a listen.

Used to love mod and MIDI files. I should see if there are communities for either

Ah, thank you

Wow, that’s even worse than when I went with my wife to a Bon Jovi concert!

I don’t know about the name, but they are staying on-brand

Early 40s male, a lot of the time I feel like a kid who’s tricked people into believing I’m an adult. Then I spend time with my kid and their friends, all finishing high school and looking at universities or about to start, and I realize I’m definitely not a kid anymore. That makes me feel a little old. I have more random aches, pains, and creaking noises, but I wouldn’t say I’m old yet. I’m older than I was and a little wiser, but not old or wise.

I don’t like how much gray is in my beard, though.

I did see something a few months ago about a company making large color e-Ink displays for applications like that and outdoor advertising at bus stops and the like

It’s ice cream with chocolate chip cookie dough mixed in as the flavoring