I have been using ChatGPT the last couple of weeks and find it quite amazing, as a tool for me. And I am sure that as time progresses I will find it ever more useful. It is an accelerator, not a replacement. One of the core issues with technological advancement is the speed with which software is developed. Moore's Law defines technological, hardware advancement in geometric or exponential terms, but software advancement has been largely arithmetic, linear. It is an expensive and time consuming process to create software. It also takes a good deal of time for a developer to get comfortable with different programming languages, and it takes time to comprehend all of the complexity. AI is going to help accelerate significantly the speed at which developers can produce useful code, and that is a good thing. AI code will get better, a lot better, and we will learn how to become better programmers as a result of that. AI is not some singular independent consciousness, it is a cross section of our collective recorded history on the internet. It is us, empowered. Grab on tight.

I understand your frustration, but it is just a business proposition that HP is using to try and make enough money to run their business. A few years ago they had a CEO that wanted to get of the PC business, or the laptop business, I forget exactly; why? because they were losing money at it. The printer business model is to give you a five hundred dollar printer for a hundred dollars and make the difference back on the ink. HP is not the only company that does that. By having a subscription I imagine that their reasoning is that for the low volume users such as yourself that you won't see it as a good value proposition and will go to another printer. That does not bother them because they were not making enough money from your ink buying pattern. Users who print more may find their subscription service quite acceptable. But it is possible that it will piss off all their users and they will have to adapt to stay in business. I remember how pissed off I got when NetFlix changed to streaming from shipped CD's. I didn't get it, dumb me. But now I can't imagine me stuffing a video CD into one of my old players.

Society is being rubber-necked by Elon's train wreck with mental illness; I can't help but wish him some intervention, seeing him implode does not fill me with joy.