I'm pretty sure my washing machine is the thing that saves me most time. Washing by hand is fucking hard work and very time consuming. I would neither have the time nor the physical endurance to keep all my clothes and household items in a state acceptable to society.
Then again, if washing machines did not exist, society would have to adjust it's expectations. It's also kind of wasteful to wash clothes too often.
Then again, if washing machines did not exist, society would have to adjust it’s expectations.
Wouldn't it simple revert to the class based system of cleanliness we had before?
Wouldn’t it simple revert to the ~~class~~ wealth based system of cleanliness we had before?
The problems you mention here comes from wealth inequality. We still have those problems when wealth inequality exists - people just find other things to differentiate themselves from the poor. I.e. instead of cleanliness, it is wearing the right (read: expensive) brand of clothing. Or owning an expensive car, or an expensive phone or an expensive anything.
Cleanliness used to be an expensive thing so the wealthy used that to show off their wealth. Nowadays, it is other things.
The solution to this problem is not to make things cheaper (again, there will just be other ways to show off status/wealth), but to reduce wealth inequality.
Basically the only point that needs to be made at the moment.
I think that counts as a kind of societal expectation adjustment
Makes me a bit glum to think about how this concept applies to other areas
My dryer was down for a bit so I had to hang clothes to dry. Slight inconvenience that really made me appreciate having a washing machine that still worked.
Massive respect to people (most often women) around the world who have washed clothes by hand. The cleaning of the clothes is bad enough but there's also the fetching of (or travelling to) a lot of water.
mechanized laundry is second only to modern medicine, imo
followed closely by indoor plumbing and dishwashers
Having just returned from a long carry-on trip, I concur.
I spent half April washing my socks and underwear in the shower. Even without washing my outer layers, it got really irksome. Thankfully, we had an apartment (with a washer) for the second half. That first load of laundry was magical.
My refrigerator/freezer. Lets me buy food at ideal times (sales etc) and keep it fresh until it is conveneient for me, sometimes months later in the case of the freezer.
Water infrastructure.
Be it indoor plumbing or a flushable toilet or a water treatment plant, without water infrastructure modern civilization would be impossible.
Password manager (saves time typing passwords) and adblocker (saves time wasted on ads and of course malicious content).
I hate to admit it, but it’s true to an extent: ChatGPT. I use it at work a lot more than I thought I would.
While it often makes mistakes and often misunderstands me, when I get it to work, it’s a great tool for starting a Powershell or Python script or a SQL or KQL query. I use them as a foundation and build off of them and they’ve helped me learn a lot about writing new scripts and queries of my own by following along with what I got as an input when I verify that it’s safe to run and is going to do what I wanted it to do.
It’s not the most important tool, but it’s been growing on me and I’m getting the hang of using it. I especially like that it responds to errors and tries to fix them or modify for my environment when we’ve disabled something or I’m using a different version.
I’ve also used it in my personal life to write letters and it is another good foundation to start off of. Not ever perfect, but good enough to get me going in the right direction with a few tweaks.
Why do you hate to admit that? GPT and LLM’s are tools
Because I originally viewed them as gimmicks than actual tools that would be useful.
They’re growing on me as I see their value more and more and they’re not just another fake promise of AI that I’ve grown accustomed to seeing in announcements for new technology.
And partly because I’m still a bit scared of where this can take us as a species. Maybe the current iterations are harmless especially with how frequent their mistakes and misunderstandings are, but this growth and their future potential worries me and I don’t like being apart of their success in that sense.
Yeah I wouldn’t feel guilty in the least my friend, highly competent people are using LLM’s to improve their efficiency. People have an unfounded fear (for now) that AI is going to replace them and their job, but the reality is that someone who is efficiently using AI is going to take their job if they’re not
My fear is less about job security and more with the militarized use of it, to be truthful. It’s inevitable and maybe we won’t hit Skynet levels of AI, but somewhere near there. And just the unknown of new technology and what capabilities we may not even realize as we implement these into more and more existing technology as time moves on, military or not. The fear of what can be possible that we may not even realize until it’s too late. Maybe not ChatGPT, but an iteration or fork later down the road.
It’s probably mostly paranoia on my part. As I write this, I imagine I sound like some people of the past who felt the same about the computer and other tech of past generations too. Though, to their credit, we can see some of the evils of those technologies like the good and bad of the internet in today’s world. Things you couldn’t even begin to describe to someone just 20 years ago that is happening now.
Air fryer. Honestly, this thing just makes cooking easier. I don't need to stand in front of the oven or grill to make something. Just bung stuff in and come back in 15 mins.
Autohotkey
Limitless custom hot keys on my computer. Each one saves me a few seconds, adding up to hours and hours saved, especially having stuff automated so I can save the headspace
Google Maps. On the day before a long weekend, my drive home can turn into a two-hour slog. I keep Google Maps open and there's nothing better than hearing that "Ping! We've found you a faster route."
My urine bottles. Standing up to go to the toilet is too hard for me.
Edit: Also my phone is great because it enables me to call my wife (or my caretaker if he is approved) to give me food or new urine bottles.
Waze. It really is exceptional at avoiding traffic. I know it's dependent on higher user volume, but, in my area it is very popular with a lot of input.
I also love the user warnings. I've dodged many things I'd rather not run over in my car. From dead skunks to a ladder in middle of the highway.
I don’t know if it saves time or not, but all the ad-busting plug-ins and PiHole I have installed. I set up a VPN that I can connect to with my phone that sends the connection through the PiHole so I get to enjoy less ads on the mobile, too.
I really despise the “open” unfiltered internet. It’s become a cesspool of ads. Mobile sites that leave you with an inch to view the site as the top and bottom become cluttered with banners, autoplay ads, cookie demands, all with super tiny “x” that are designed to not register or deliberately mis-tap to open the ad. Desktop sites with full-screen ads, autoplay, etc.
Yeah. I don’t know about “can’t live without”, but ad-scrubbing and blocking is a huge necessity just to get things done and not have to deal with all the garbage being inserted between you and what you need to do.
Yes it saves time. More than you know.
And while you could live with out it, you shouldn't - ad block has become the one of the first layers of internet security. You can't download more ram if you don't see the link.
My bash scripts. They are saving me lots of time at work, performing screen scraping, filling reports and monitoring old servers.
At home they are making backups and automating repetitive tasks.
I just love shell scripting in general. I should probably own a shirt that says "go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script".
My kindle changes the books I read into OpenDyslexic font, which allows me to read much faster and with less fatigue.
I mean, "tech wise" is incredibly generic. Electricity itself is pretty much essential and something I'd have a hard time living without.
As for more recent tech, the internet. I can "live without", but a lot of stuff I do for entertainment and self education needs it. There's also the discovery, finding out about new stuff that interests me, that'd be much harder without the internet.
Even if you removed several sites, if the 'net was something like it was back in 1994, there'd still be enough content and people around to get good amounts of information back and forth, plus file sharing.
As for time saved, just think about trying to discover, not even acquire or read, just know about, some 2 or 3 books in an "obscure" subject, something that your circle of contacts is unlikely to know anything about, that local book stores probably won't have. Same applies for games or media that said circle of contacts are unlikely to know about. Basically, you have to take the dive and explore and, depending on what you were looking for, you'd come empty handed, or have to contend with a "better than nothing" alternative.
What I can learn in 10 minutes courtesy of the internet is staggering.
Even if I was at a library, standing in front of the card catalog, it would take longer to even find a book/periodical to even start a search on a subject.
Add my pocket computer (yea, we call them smart phones) with note-taking apps, and what I can study/learn and keep in a searchable personal DB of sorts is just amazing. It's something that was talked about before personal computers were even ubiquitous, and it arrived incredibly quickly since then.
Electricity itself is pretty much essential and something I'd have a hard time living without.
Let me agree with you 100% here!
The taming of electromagnetism should be right up there with the taming of fire, agriculture, the alphabet and the printing press, as one of the most significant milestones in human history. And it is still an ongoing process.
This is stupid but I was just using it so it is on my mind: a calculator. Saves so much time and paper.
Smartphone with internet connection.
I don't know if it saves me time but my white noise machine. I literally cannot sleep without it.
My youngest had been falling asleep to "the sound of rain" that Google Assistant plays on request, I fear for the day when it goes away.
If that particular rain sound is your sons favorite, just record it. Don't let the whims of google take away things you like!
(Because its google, Chances are somebody already did and its on YouTube.)
Any and all fixtures in my bathroom
Rice cooker. Easily my favorite appliance.
A battery voltage tester was pretty cheap and I was surprised by how often I use it.
A gas cooker. Same prob goes for electric. I cooked on solid fuels for an extended period of time and it is a very tough gig.
Most other technologies just seem to beget more time use. Even a simple light bulb requires the installation and maintenance of an electricity system, which is non-trivial and only results in you being able to stay awake longer, finding pointless things to do when you should be asleep or having sex.
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