Yeah, signage used to be massively more important. Not just the intersection signs, but the mile markers, the signs that give you a general guide to a distant hospital or park, the signs on overhead bridges that tell you what that cross street is. You’d have to constantly note them.
The compass was a lot more important, to the point where people installed aftermarket compasses in their car if there wasn’t one already. Also there was a lot more math with address numbers, like noting which side of the street had odd numbers, then counting how much they were incrementing to estimate how close you were. Resetting your “trip odometer” could be important.
There was just a lot more “dead reckoning” type of shit. GPS made all of this stuff so much easier. I do miss the AAA Triptiks though. My Grandma had AAA and she would get them for me. There was something really satisfying about working your way through one on a long road trip.









The whole “AI is enough” marketing that the author mentions in the conclusion is total poison. A buddy of mine works at one of the companies involved in this circlejerk and they have the same mandate. Cost is not an issue. Use it for everything.
He said he has to roll the dice all day to get good output from the AI. Its more important they USE THE AI than it is that they PRODUCE GOOD CODE. In fact “good code” is not a thing, in the traditional sense. “Good code” means AI created. His actual title ostensibly has nothing to do with AI, they are producing a totally different thing. But since he works at a company that is benefiting massively from AI investment, his bosses are mandating a worse form of developing because they are now in the business of selling AI rather than what presumably is the product.
It’s like if you were a plumber and your plumbing company merged with a huge factory that makes 90 degree pipe elbows. So they mandated that all plumbing now had to be done by joining together nothing but 90 degree pipe elbows rather than any other fitting. And since its all going to be sealed up inside a wall, who cares? How dare you question this? Are you saying there AREN’T legitimate uses for 90 degree pipe elbows?