Which Bell Labs? Are you still in the area? I’m minutes away from Murray Hill and a lot of what you’re saying resonates with me (~10 years into my career and starting to lean into what I previously thought was weird).

I’m quite late here, but if you want a diagram you can ask the LLM to output Mermaid syntax and then paste that into Excalidraw or something else that can render based on Mermaid.

Memories of YTMND come flooding back

ML is used extensively in business and I don’t see any indication that it’s fading. I don’t think I saw any real effort to put VR into business processes. Hype around AR has popped up and fizzled quickly a few times, but still no real push.

>ML is used extensively in business

For useless things that were tacked on during the hype because everything "needed to have" VR

>and I don’t see any indication that it’s fading

The hype cycle and huge ML valuations and "this is the new huge industry" and job demand had faded since years

“Baling” wire. Used to bind bales of hay.

Baling wire is also not as thick. 12 gauge, 10 gauge at the very most. Baling wire can be cut with those snippers you keep in your toolbox. Fence wire? Eh, better get bigger wire cutters.

#8 on (British) SWG scale is about the size of a #11 wire (never seen this size in real life) on the AWG scale.

> Coca-Cola Zero (US translation: diet coke)

Diet Coke and Zero are distinct products, both of which are sold in the US

> If the FBI is going to police crypto, we need to tax it.

Crypto is taxed like any other income or capital gains in the US.

Those states won’t themselves prosecute you for consuming cat (or cannabis), but that doesn’t mean the act of consumption is legal.

Probably typed “caries” and got autocorrected

I agree. They show up, cop to it, and collect a memento mori that will hopefully help motivate improvement in the future. They have a lot of work to do to repair their reputation, and I don’t think they’re foolish enough to think that this is anything more than a small step on a long path.