OK, say you're a bank. The SEC does not care what you do and is actively working to make sure nobody else does either. You never get fines and all the traders are whatsapping about deals and it's awesome. But what if the FEC decides to care in the future? Just mark all your messages as self-deleting. But what if you want to be able to read them in the future?
And then the Smarsh (owners of Telemessage) salesman calls you, and says "your users can keep using the apps they love - WhatsApp, Signal - but we archive the self-deleting messages somewhere you can hide from the SEC if they happen to change their mind". And everyone loves it (you already fired all the Security or Legal teams).
My son has had been sick 10 days, our fridge has been emptied because it's been so hard to fit groceries into balancing work and childcare, my wife had the car on a playdate with my daughter, and for $25 someone brought a hot burrito to my door. It was worth every penny.
A great compromise would be forcing myself to schedule a grocery delivery before I place a DoorDash. The extra $5-10 my local grocery store charges would be worth it if things are that desperate. Thank you for that idea.
Wolt and Glovo is how grocery store delivery works where I live. One supermarket chain offers their own delivery, but it's next day delivery at the soonest (sometimes the day after that).
There are a lot of things I do not think are good uses of AI, but dropping into circles you are not apart of and getting your bearings is one of my favorite use cases.
The other day my friends were talking about a "nemesis mechanic" in a game that was good but patented and never used? I asked GPT about it because I just wanted a short summary of what it was and why it was cool.
It looks like it would have worked here too:
What is localthunk? What is "Balatro"?
1. LocalThunk: LocalThunk is a pseudonymous game developer known for creating the poker-themed roguelike deck-building game Balatro. The developer operates under this pseudonym, which is derived from a method of declaring variables in the game development framework they use, Löve .
2. Balatro: This is a game developed by LocalThunk, released in 2024. Balatro is a poker-themed roguelike deck-building game that involves playing poker hands to score points and defeat various challenges. It gained significant acclaim, winning multiple awards for its innovative gameplay and design .
For more details, you can refer to the Wikipedia page on Balatro. No specific standalone information on LocalThunk was retrieved beyond the association with Balatro.
I had an issue for 2 months with Verizon where they messed up my new phone deliveries by sending me the wrong ones and they didn't ship other merchandise I purchased at the same time. Their customer support was terribly unhelpful, even after repeated escalations. It was enough I nearly went to AT&T[0].
They first wanted to charge me re-stocking fees on an order they very clearly messed up (for the wrong phones delivered). Then they wanted me to pay for shipping on the correct devices, and they incorrectly billed me as well, and it took several escalations to get them to understand I didn't receive my other merchandise either, which they then told me I had to make another support request for. It was a whole mess.
I sent a tweet (and mind you, I'm a nobody) and within 24 hours it was resolved correctly, and they even next day shipped everything to me, which I did not expect.
It will be the last time I ever buy from Verizon instead of Apple directly, but at least it got resolved in the end.
[0]: Still might. I need the coverage of the big 2, unfortunately I can't jump to say, T-Mobile, as a result.
I had to go out of the country, so I overpaid my AT&T internet bill so it would cover 2 months and rounded up by ~10 cents to the nearest dollar amount.
First month bill, no problem. Second month bill, no problem.
Third month bill should be $amount -credit, nope. They took my credit, listed it as an underpayment and applied a fee.
So I go to the store; they can't help with account issues, you have to call.
I call, sit through the waiting music, get a rep who get a rep is quite obviously doesn't care. No "Sorry for our obvious billing mistake" or anything. They correct the account and ask if I will pay right now, I decide that I will since I don't trust their system to update in a timely manner.
The rep then has the audacity to talk about how AT&T charges a convenience fee to pay via phone but they are going to waive it this time.
AT&T fiber and Xfinity cable are the only options in my area....
I still can not understand how they made that error in the first place. It's not like accounting, credits and balances are a new thing. The bill even showed the credit transaction correctly, showing it coming out of the bill balance owed.
I do set up auto payment when I am sure the bill will be stable, this was while I was still in the introduction rate and I wanted to be aware of when the price change hit.
Now the question is, since they messed up what should be a simple accounting transaction, do I trust their billing system to have unfettered access to take funds from my bank :)
I'll let that marinate for a few years first before I decide to trust it entirely.
Though its not rural areas that are the only issue. There's saturation issues with other carriers in some of my travels. Only Verizon and AT&T doesn't fall apart comparatively.
It's still the fastest/only way to receive customer support for a lot of place. It's very sad but it's the truth.
The last time an airline screwed up and refused to fix their mistake the employee at the booth lowered her voice and said "Do you have twitter? You might try complaining there, they don't like it when people complain on twitter" which was just the most depressing thing to hear.
I can much quicker get an answer from Bank Of America--and get a Tier 3 Customer Service person to call me--on X than I can by calling their main number.
The old piece of advice if you were getting stonewalled was to write a personal letter to "$CEO_NAME, $HQ_ADDRESS". I wonder whether that still works today.
It often does. The other thing that has worked for me is contacting the legal department. Probably the same address, c/o legal.
Just don’t say something stupid like, “I’m going to sue you”. If you escalate too far they’ll wait for the summons.
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I worked in a department called “hot site support” back in the 90’s for Iomega (maker of the Zip drive). That meant I delt with two things, customers who spent over $100k on hardware, and customers that wiggled their way up to the CEO’s admin. I had carte blanche to resolve the issues and I was just 20 years old and early into my career.
Only if their software thinks you have enough followers, and the software thinks they aren't fake followers.
If you don't have enough potential impact, the humans may never even see your post.
If anyone thinks that insert company here cares about your tweet about your issue because they replies to insert even slightly famous person here, you're deluding yourself.
I know it's been a long time, but alongside the horsemen of atheism and reading the actual bible, The Teaching Company is where I got so much of my education.
I run a forum (for many, many years) and a Discord (for a few years).
The Discord works perfectly and always has. It's completely free and easy to use.
The forum is expensive, complicated, and usually broken. or hacked. or full of spam. It's going to cost even more money to fix. Nobody wants to work on forums, much less me.
We live near an amazing restaurant with a huge sand pit. The only downside is the toys are always broken. So my aunt just goes to the dollar store and buys a bag of similar beach toys and leaves them there. They cost practically nothing!
And then the Smarsh (owners of Telemessage) salesman calls you, and says "your users can keep using the apps they love - WhatsApp, Signal - but we archive the self-deleting messages somewhere you can hide from the SEC if they happen to change their mind". And everyone loves it (you already fired all the Security or Legal teams).
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