As someone who does these things, I am curious to know how and why you would choose AI.
Working these from text seems to be the hardest way I could think to learn them. I've yet to encounter a written description as to what it feels like to solder, what a good/bad job actually looks like, etc. A well shot video is much better at showing you what you need to do (although finding one is getting more and more difficult)
I just process text information better. Videos are kind of overstimulating and often have unrelated content, and I hate having to rewind back to a part I need while I'm in the middle of something. With LLMs I can get a broad overview of what I'm doing, tell it what materials I already have on hand and get specific ideas for how to practice. Soldering is probably one of the harder ones to learn by text, but the description of the techniques to use were actually really understandable (use flux, be sure the tip is tinned, touch the pad with the tip to warm it up a little, touch again with the iron on one side of the pad and insert the solder in on the other side and it gets drawn in, pull away (timing was trial and error). And then I'd upload a picture of what I did for review and it would point out the ones that had issues and what likely went wrong to cause it (ex: solder sticking to the top of the iron and not the pad), and I would keep practicing and test that it worked and looked like what was described. It may not be the ideal technique or outcome, but it unblocked me relatively quick so I could continue my project.
Being able to ask it stupid questions and edge cases is also something I like with LLMs, like I would propose a design for something (ex: a usb battery pack w/ lifepo4 batts that could charge my phone and be charged by solar at the same time), it would say what it didn't like about my design, counter with its own, then I would try to change aspects of their design to see "what would happen if .." and it would explain why it chose a particular component or design choice and what my change would do and the trade-offs, risks, etc other paths to building it with that, etc. Those types of interactions are probably the best for me actually understanding things, helps me understand limitations and test my assumptions interactively.
This is an interesting point that I can agree with without having consciously realized.
It's easy to use lazily and for use cases that are annoying. But used in the right contexts with the limitations in mind it's personally quite useful indeed.
Heh, I feel this in me as well. When I like driving but hate the traffic.
Although, much of the slop problem is due to lack of consent. Same as how my youtube video to me is entertainment, and noise for the rest of the passengers.
PayPal also appears to suffer data leaks more than anyone else. I use multiple email addresses for every service I sign up for. But of all all the spam email I get, 99% has my PayPal email on it, and I even have other email addresses posted publicly.
It's worse than you think. I've closed PayPal accounts and opened new ones with a different email address and PayPal updates the merchants who've been spamming me with the new email address. There's no legitimate technical reason PayPal can't use a mail relay with transaction specific email addresses to control spam.
Happened to me with Moneybookers a few years ago. Started getting spam from various casinos at a unique email address. I contacted support and spent a few weeks explaining that, nobody could have gotten this email address unless they were hacked or willingly sold my address. After sending full dumps of the emails and a minor threat to go public with the information, suddenly the spam stopped.
Every distro except arch is full of preinstalled crapware. Some like OpenSuse even have preinstalled crapware bundles where stuff you uninstall comes back after update
Depends on the region. I live in one of the bad areas, with lots of trees. The power goes out every couple months for a couple hours.
But I was very surprised to learn that until 2021, most Texans had never had a power interruption in decades (which I suppose added to their panic).
Not all that useful to say "the US" here. California has it's wildfires and earthquakes. The west has extreme temperature swings. Southeast has hurricanes, and northeast has trees, ice, and wind. The entire south likes to run air conditioning. What does your country or its neighbors face? How about 10 countries over?
> What does your country or its neighbors face? How about 10 countries over?
Well my country sometimes has storms that do lead to power cuts for a few hours in the worst case, it's happened to me in 1999 and 2010 (but then there was also flooding that time). It's not happened since except for a couple of scheduled cuts that lasted a minute or so.
About five countries over, there is a special military operation that you might have heard of. About ten countries over there's another one. I'm pretty sure some neighbouring countries also have ice, forests, wind and wildfires.
> But I was very surprised to learn that until 2021, most Texans had never had a power interruption in decades
And now in 2025 you will find the highest density of generac installs in Texas. I'm in a neighborhood where at least 80% of the homes have a standby unit. The substation is less than a mile away but the lines have to go through Narnia to reach us. Outages are half a day at a minimum.
Working these from text seems to be the hardest way I could think to learn them. I've yet to encounter a written description as to what it feels like to solder, what a good/bad job actually looks like, etc. A well shot video is much better at showing you what you need to do (although finding one is getting more and more difficult)
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