I mean yeah, most of the people that hang out here didn't want him to be the candidate to begin with. But that has little to do with who you'd vote for given these options.

Yeah I agree I hate this kind of obstructive customer service

I work as a software engineer on automated customer service systems like these, and boy let me tell you, obstruction is the name of the game. For example: don't make the phone number too easy to find on the website because it will lead to too many calls. We nudge people toward the FAQ and such first so they can hopefully find their answer there. Then, we have chatbots like this which contain exactly the same information as the FAQ again. And only then might we offer you contact with a human.

The essential problem is that support is a cost center, so cost savings is the name of the game. We optimize for metrics like:

• "deflection" (number of calls averted because we pushed the user into automated tools instead)
• "first call resolution" (percentage of issues resolved in one contact. How do we know if your issue is resolved? Simple, if you don't contact us again we assume the issue is fixed)
• "Average contact time" (pretty obvious, get the customer off the phone ASAP)

If you manage to get on text chat with a human, typically they are handling two other conversations at the same time, that's why they seem so absent all the time (and why companies love chat. Much cheaper than calling).

I'm not saying we're all diabolical here. There is a general agreement among everyone in the industry that we should help the customer as well as we possibly can. Indeed every CS manager will tell you how important we are to our brand image and NPS, how we strive to be the most customer-friendly company etc. etc.

But the numbers don't lie. If you look at the metrics that everyone actually optimizes for, it's cost cost cost.

So weird that only 15% of Steam sessions are using controllers. I thought everyone had a controller. Most games are just better with a gamepad.

Even if that was true, not all games have the same number of players. Counterstrike and dota 2 regularly top the most played list on steam, and are terrible with a controller. It shouldn't be surprising that most sessions have a kb/m if that's what people are mostly playing.

I consider this perfectly safe for work. It's just a newspaper article. The topic of discussion being sexuality doesn't make it nsfw. The line is crossed when the purpose of the material is to titillate.

The price includes a starter, dessert, bread/butter, and one drink.

Where I live in Europe you'll pay €19 for a burger and fries, so this seems like incredible value.

It's not shown in the picture but you get a starter, this, and dessert, plus bread/butter and half a bottle of wine for that price.

I found the restaurant, it's a tourist trap type place catering to British tourists in Málaga, Spain.

Looking at some of the [pictures] (https://goo.gl/maps/my4vMrR5hoFrAb4r8?g_st=ac) you basically get a starter, main course and dessert, plus bread and butter and a half bottle of wine for that price which is actually quite incredible value. The food looks pretty shit, but gammon steak with pineapple, egg and fries is like a British pub staple so it's expected to look shit.

I could not find the 47 grams figure on the page you linked, where is that stated exactly?

I commend your optimism, but personally I'm not sure automation is actually going to carry us through this in the time frames that we need. This population problem is going to hit really hard in the next twenty to thirty years. I don't think we're going to fully automate the world economy in that time.

The problems listed in the article are real. we've built a system:

1. Where a lot of economic growth stems from an increasing supply of (cheap) labour
2. That relies on people of working age being able to financially support a retiree class.

Both of these are going to fall apart if the population stops growing. The smaller group of working age people won't be enough to support the amount of retirees, and without population growth there's no economic growth.

It's sad that economists correctly see all this coming but then conclude that the only solution is "make more babies." It's short term thinking almost by definition, because in the limit it's rather obvious that at some point we will not have the resources to support any more people. And the closer we get to that limit the less each individual person will have (even worse when wealth is not equally distributed).

Unfortunately I don't see any economist putting forth a plan that accepts population decline and alters the system to account for it. It wouldn't be easy but it seems no one is even trying.

VW is good at making cars, but bad at software. They've had to delay the introduction of new models (Golf, ID.3) because of software issues. Rivian has sort of the opposite problem: their production lines sit still often because of problems in the supply chain.

Volkswagen has the expertise to solve Rivian's production and supplier problems, and the cash they will need to survive and develop some cheaper models (the EV market is stagnating right now for a lack of budget options, and Rivian only sells trucks and SUVs). And they're hoping Rivian software engineers can help them fix their software woes.

Pretty much the perfect form factor in my opinion. Put the back seat down when you need to transport cargo, up for people. Really practical. If you want to do camping trips or road trips where you need to move four people with cargo, you can get one with a towing hook.

The one thing it's not great at in my experience is transporting babies around. There's just not quite enough space for the car seat, stroller, two parents and assorted diapers and stuff. We can make it work, but it's quite uncomfortable.

It's quite possible they simply make their sushi smaller, depending where you live. Americans tend to make things a size or two bigger than a lot of the rest of the world.

The essence of capitalism in one sentence.

Generally, if you want to pass food to someone, put it on a plate so they can pick it up themselves.

The only reason to use the back of the chopsticks, is if there is a shared plate of food in the center without a separate set of serving chopsticks. Taking from the shared plate with chopsticks that have been in your mouth could be considered unhygienic. You can use the back of the chopsticks to move the food to your own plate, then eat it.

However this is more like advanced etiquette and not a crucial rule, in my opinion. The only really bad things to avoid are sticking your chopsticks upright into rice and passing food between chopsticks.

The only one I really would avoid is passing things between or touching chopsticks together. This is reminiscent of Japanese funeral rituals and thus considered rude to do at the table.

The others are more about common sense and trying to help you enjoy the sushi as the chef intended:

• They are bite-sized pieces, designed as a flavour combination, so don't break them up in any way
• If you don't want rice, sashimi is a good way to get that
• Putting too much soy sauce on the rice can make it fall apart
• (real) Wasabi is delicate and mixing it with soy sauce will certainly destroy its subtle flavour. In any case in a high-end place the sushi chef will have added everything that's intended as part of the flavour combination before serving the sushi, so adding stuff is not necessary

But again, these are suggestions. Enjoy the sushi how you like, you're not hurting anyone.

That's not usually the case in a high-end sushi place. The chef will prepare your orders one by one and serve them out as soon as each is completed, so you will get one piece at a time.

When I was in Japan, you could indicate when ordering whether you wanted wasabi and the chef would place a dab between the rice and the fish. My understanding is that real wasabi loses flavour very fast after being grated. Placing it so it doesn't contact air helps to preserve flavour.

I would not say real wasabi tastes nothing like the horseradish fake. You can tell the plant is still part of the horseradish/mustard family. It's definitely a more "clean" flavour though. It's pretty easy to tell when you get the real thing. The fake stuff looks like a quite intensely green uniform mushy paste. The real stuff looks a bit like grated ginger, but with a pale green colour, often with some variation in colouration.

There is a saying in business: Under-Promise, Over-Perform, or Over-Deliver.

SpaceX does the opposite of this.

It literally doesn't matter though: everyone and their mother are buying falcon 9 or heavy launches. SpaceX accounts for almost 90% of the world's launched upmass. They are simply the cheapest most reliable option out there and it is not close. The only reason not to fly on a SpaceX rocket is national security or wanting to keep your own domestic launch industry alive.

I guess I can pick another number x to be closest to but it has the same problem unless I can guarantee it's in the set. And successfully picking a number in the set is the problem to begin with! Foiled again!