This is a story that’s been rotating through the media since ChatGPT first released.

I have an unpopular opinion about this headline after seeing the media cycle repeatedly downplay/ignore what Alphabet has been doing in response to OpenAI: Google the search engine is not in direct competition with ChatGPT, but Gemini is, and Alphabet is smart to keep simpler/time-tested search functionality central to Google rather than react strongly and scrap the keyword-based search bar that users understand are comfortable using - especially older users, but I think most people are starting to discover they have a use for both search and LLM chats.

I think there are two product categories here, which first looked like they were going to converge in 2022-2024, but which are now slowly changing course as customers start to comprehend how both are necessary for different purposes.

When I make chats in ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude etc, I am starting to plan them longitudinally so that I can use them over and over for a specific project or query type.

When I turn to a search bar, it’s because I really want a proxy for a specific website or between me and whatever weird site has the answer to my specific question. It’s not that I want discussion and a chat about it, I just want Google’s card-like results with a website index I can read instead of that website’s stylized, animated web design on top or popups or malware.

Every time I get sucked into a chat with Bing CoPilot(ChatGPT) when I really only had a web search query, I regret wasting my time talking to the LLM. Almost as a reflex, I’ve started avoiding it for most things now.

Iran’s government sucks, but this story really shows how the Iranian people are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Regular Iranians have more in common with western social values than those of the Iranian government or Russia - it’s been that way before, during, and after the Iranian revolution.

Not sure what the answer is, but they keep trying to protest and resist their government every few years and they get violently forced back into submission.

Of all the countries with screwed up regimes, Iran is one where I think it’s more appropriate to encourage more fluid immigration into western countries - a lot of their working age population is relatively better educated than many other countries too.

I think the rail will only succeed if funding for it is conditioned on actual delivery of rail services to paying customers, instead of funding it up front like a foyer bathroom remodel with shady contractors and no accountability.

The central valley deserves train stops imo, definitely including Bakersfield. There are a lot of people living there and it’s an area of relative housing affordability, something which greater California could not enable enough.

I think they probably wake up thinking exclusively about how to increase their net worth, through politics and marketing, at the expense of low information voters.

FatTony Search engine is it down or just me

Walmart near me

Mark Zuckerberg now a backstreet boy

Pretty sure witchcraft was pretty much just women brewing beer, which was a thing mainly women did back in the day: https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/bubbling-brews-broomsticks-021539

They happened to wear pointy witch-like hats and employ children to do some of the labor too.