They’re saying the company may be selling the device for less than the cost to produce it expecting the low price to draw in consumers while their predatory ads rake in much more money, so buying it and never connecting it means they took a loss. I’m skeptical that companies would do that these days. More likely they overcharge for the physical hardware AND have predatory ad software, you know to maximize shareholder value.

Also notably not a lizard ;)

I mean they kind of are in the sense that they lack all empathy, compassion, and guilt.

Because puritanical religious nutjobs get off on controlling people’s sex lives.

I have a mounting suspicion that a civil war is what they really want. Anyone know if that’s in Project 2025?

Not this time. And this time he won’t escape.

Stupid jokes are the best jokes.

Really it was a time issue. Even if you assume the hobbits of the Shire had both the technological capacity to create a functional guided rocket and the industrial capacity to manufacture it ready to go, it takes around about a decade to bring a rocket development program from conception through to completion, even optimistically. Factor in the fact that there’s a single unique and irreplaceable payload and if you fail to hit the target you’ve basically delivered the ring to Sauron, given it’s apparent indestructibility, the reliability requirements would push the development time back a lot. It might take 20 or 30 years for the rocket to truly be ready for that mission. They were only able to confirm that what they’ve found actually is the one ring less than a couple years from when Sauron would have invaded everyone, so even with the most optimistic possible appraisal of the military industrial complex of the free peoples of Middle Earth there simply wasn’t time. It’s one of those projects where throwing more bodies at it just slows things down.

I wish they didn’t feel the need to fake it with upscaling. In my experience upscaling looks like shit every time, whether it’s a video or game. Most of the time a good 1080p video with good bit rate will look way better than a 4k upscale.

Your math is wrong. If you want the creator to still get $5 with apple stealing 30% you would need to pay ~43% extra.

$5/0.7 = $7.14

1/0.7 = 1.42857

It’s incredible we don’t already have laws governing companies attempting to offload accountability to computers and software. In this sense an LLM isn’t really special at all, it’s just another form of software, but because techbros have called it AI there’s this implicit assumption it can be responsible… A human is always responsible in the end, whether it’s the simplest chatbot or the most overbuilt wasteful chatbot ever conceived or a phone charger or whatever.

Can they run 24 hours too? I can’t tell you how fucking annoying it is doing something fun with friends that goes late and have to leave at god damn 11pm or some shit so I can catch the last fucking train for the night or have to sleep over. Also cars specifically for people who need to move large objects or all their worldly possessions or something.

I’ve thought about this a lot over the years. I come from a conservative religious family, but I grew up to be pretty far left. I think part of it is lead poisoning, which has been sadly downplayed consistently for decades, but we now know has serious and long lasting negative effects on critical thinking, impulse control, and empathy, that the effects are cumulative, and that they can worsen later in life as cognitive abilities decline with age. We’re partly seeing the long term fallout of leaded gasoline in older adults. Another piece is wealth disparity, which results in the most harm to people who have the least, but also seems to have negative psychological effects on the wealthy. It may be that obscene wealth selects for people with low empathy and compassion because it required the exploitation of others, but it also seems as though becoming that wealthy causes a decline in empathy and compassion to some extent. The lack of empathy has been strongly associated with conservatism, and as you mentioned internet echo chambers tend to amplify conservative beliefs in people, pretty much by design. So the conclusion I come to is that older adults NOW tend to be more conservative and hateful because 1) past lead exposure causing cognitive impairments including reducing empathy, 2) age and decades of holding political power have allowed older people to hoard disproportionate wealth, further damaging their empathy for people they see as lesser for being poor, 3) the rise of algorithmic social media creating echo chambers that polarize and amplify political beliefs, and 4) social media companies being owned and run by older, ultra wealthy conservatives who use their platforms to promote their own conservative political beliefs. Ultimately all of these problems stem fundamentally from capitalism. Capitalists downplayed the dangers of lead so we put it in paint and gas. Capitalists wanted more and more so they lobbied and bribed and manipulated our society to make it easier. Capitalists wanted to hold on to their wealth so they enacted decades long propaganda campaigns through tv, print, and finally the internet and social media, to push capitalist ideals and trick normal people into supporting them against their own self interest. So why did this fascist cunt become a fascist cunt? Because rich people wanted to be richer.

Let’s be honest, the couch does most of the work.

This is kind of a bad faith black and white argument. No one is arguing for a draconian regulation of car designs. There’s already a system of regulations and review in place for certifying new car designs are safe and compliant with regulations, and the danger this design introduces in the event of an emergency should have prevented it from being certified safe for use. Any idiot can see with 30 seconds of thought that a car door you need power to open is inherently unsafe and will get people killed in situations where a manual door wouldn’t. It’s like arguing car manufacturers should be allowed to install a gun in the middle of every airbag that shoots the passenger in the event of a crash just because there’s no regulation specifically banning them from doing it. That’s not how the law works and it’s not how safety regulations work.

Why don’t we compromise and put them in arm first?

I had to stop reading when I got to the part where they had a dog rape someone. I’m afraid this is coming to the US. I’m afraid this is going to happen to me.

I wonder if it’s really the swearing. It would be interesting to compare to nonverbal grunting or groaning around the same intensity. Something similarly emotive and forceful but without the underlying language meaning.

You’re not going to believe this. I already have both. What do I get? Super audhd?