You can easily tell them apart by cutting them with a knife: The false brown cap will show a stronger blue discoloration under ultraviolet light if the soil contains manganese at >20% bioavailable water content, and the temperature didn’t drop below 12 degrees Celsius in the past month.
I am so over hearing about AI. It’s getting to the point that I can assume anyone dropping the term at work is an idiot that hasn’t actually used or utilised it.
It’s this LLM phase. It’s super cool and a big jump in AI, but it’s honestly not that good. It’s a handy tool and one you need to heavily scrutinise beyond basic tasks. Businesses that jumped on it are now seeing the negative effects of thinking it was magic from the future that does everything. The truth is, it’s stupid and people need to learn about it, understand it, and be trained in how to use it before it can be effective. It is a tool, not a solution—at least for now anyways.
I equate an AI to an intern. It’s useful for some stuff but if I’m going to attach my name to it I’m going to review it and probably change a lot about it.
Massive energy consumption. Huge datacenters and not enough green energy. Now they want to build small nuclear plants. Without talking about the waste problem.
Ah yeah, just choose a different energy souce. Simples.
Have you seen the growth in % of renewable (incl, nuc biofuel and waste) electricity generation over the past 30 years. (36% i in 1990 , dropped to about 33% in late 2000s up to 38% recently) this is global, IEA figures.
There have been two years since 1990 when renewable electricity output has grown faster than total electricity demand. 2008/9 recession and 2020 covid. The only way renewables will come close to meeting current electricity consumption is actually to start reducing those demands.
If we start transerffing gas( domestic heating), and petrol( low-capacity road transportation) onto the electricitry grid then the scale and speed of renewables needs to ramp up inconcievably quickly - it has grown fast over the past decade, but it hasn’t been cheap nor has it been fast enough to keep up with current demands.
TBH I don’t know where AI lines up next to EVs in scale of potential extra demand, probably lower but still an added demand (unless it can substitute for other stuff and improve efficiency somehow).
Electricity source is not really a choice, it is resource and tech constrained many sources are needed; the cheapest fuels will continue to be in the mix used so long as demand keeps increasing so fast.
Maybe, If you ran all AI in peooles houses in cold countries in winter, it’d substitute for heating - that’d be one way it could reduce its impact. Or maybe it can get its act together and spark widespread, frequent, deep, long lasting recessions in economic activity.
Maybe renewables is not the solution to our energy needs if it can’t scale up like we thought it could. Conservation of energy is not the answer. We as a society must find new, cleaner, sources of energy. Maybe AI can help us do it.
Perpetual motion machines are one of the mothers of all snake oil. Maybe AI can turn base metals into gold too. Do these AIs even really have a demonstrable understanding of thermodynamics yet? It needs to prove itself with a usable output for a clear observabe application on a small scale scale before anyone should start chucking vast amounts of energy at it in hope of what it can “maybe” do. I’d much rather chuck all that energy into trials of tokamaks or something like that.
Tbf the energy issues are getting better, or at least there are some more efficient models being created. Back in April there was a version of Llama that only needed 8gb to almost match GPT4
Their waste is less destructive than coal plant though. Perhaps this could be a silver lining to finally get nuclear back in action and get closer to dropping coal once and for all.
I think more like discovering making fire or something. 90% of all the energy burnt is people worshipping it as it blazes away, never actually fulfilling any practical use except being marvelous to be around.
But once the forest is all chopped down, people are forced to understand fire and realise a couple small logs in a contained place was all they needed to have it be incredibly effective.
Oh, but that’s too hard. It’s magic right now. All hail the AI bonfire!
There’s one good use case for me: produce a bigload of trialcontent in no time for load testing new stuff. “Make 2000 yada yada with column x and z …”. Keeps testing fun and varied while lots of testdata and that it’s all nonsense doesn’t matter.
I’ve found that testing code or formulas with LLM is a 50/50 now. Very often replying “use function blabla() and such snd so” very detailed instructions while this suggested function just doesn’t exist at all in certain language asked for… it’s still something I’ld try if I’m very stuck tho, never know.
Very often replying “use function blabla() and such snd so” very detailed instructions while this suggested function just doesn’t exist at all in certain language asked fo
I’ve noticed this a lot too—especially for M. But even though it makes up a function, it sometimes inspires a more optimised idea/method that can be more flexible for future datasets.
But most times it starts to massacre things and disregard prompted parameters or even producing an identical suggestion immediately after being told not to, why not to, and reconfirming original parameters of the query.
Some times punching in the same prompts five times for five iterations produces completely different results, but one may be on the right track and I can code the rest. It helps to set it’s personality first, so it’s sharing ideas it’s seen out there, rather than trying to please.
At the least, it’s a big time saver. Gone are the days where I get a few days spare to work on solving a complex problem through trial and discovery, so it’s an excellent tool for reducing testing time and speeding up the route to an optimised method.
Blockchain also has some useful applications. Most (but not all) of them are also possible with technology and such that existed when bitcoin was first created, at far lower cost for a minor tradeoff in accuracy. On top of that, almost none of them are related to speculative markets.
It’s a way to do distributed transaction logs in a non-refutable and independantly verifiable way. That’s useful and important, but it was a solution in search of a problem. Even for the highest security, most at risk transactions, the existing international fincancial systems are “good enough” to ensure reliability of transaction logs.
In the end, blockchain and now AI are just falling victim to con men trying to milk as much money as they can from things before people build a working understanding of them. They’ll just keep moving onto the next big thing as it comes.
I just wish people had long enough memories to see the cycle for terms like these. Some new word catches vogue, companies fall over themselves trying to find ways to implement them for shareholders and consumers who have no idea what they actually represent. As that fades, a new term arises… it’s sad.
And virtual reality gets a free revival every other technology, while we’re at it.
I’m predicting VR coming back into the limelight, try again, shortly after everyone loses interest in AI.
Also, I’m still pissed that flying cars aren’t in the limelight more. I was promised daily updates, and I’m not seeing them. That’s the biggest proof that the media is completely disconnected.
Blockchain also has problems its solving I recon the whole not bullshit was a psyop by thr us government cos finances that they couldn’t have absolute control over would allow the people to bs free. I recon monero is the best as of present especially since its actually anonymous payments.
notice how all of those crypto features were quietly removed from platforms after people realised they were paying millions for some numbers, i think that will happen with Ai
It’s even better than that. A lot of companies are taking NVIDIA’s pre-built workflows, running their data through them and selling the results as their own AI. “We build proprietary RAG AI!”
My research was literally on AI back in college. Most AI solutions are just basic algorithms and don’t use real AI solutions. There’s a huge difference.
I just got a notification on my phone telling me that I can chat with my PDF documents. Why the fuck would I want to do that? Do these companies realize that literally no one is asking for this shit? I also saw an ad for a computer mouse that had AI inside it. Whatever that means.
Oddly enough, that’s one of the few functions I’ve found the LLMs useful for. Looking through big pdfs for specific information, lots of times “ctrl+f” doesn’t do the trick because the exact term I’m looking for doesn’t appear. Worse sometimes it’s a phrase that could be in there under many synonyms. Using the LLM to find the actual info is pretty nice, it just isn’t “AI”.
Don’t knock it too quickly. I thought like you but one evening I was a little tipsy and started chatting with a PDF document. Let’s just say things got a heated and now we’re engaged.
Watched a bit of a video of a guy that went to Computex and asked any vendor with AI plastered somewhere what they were doing with it. Most spouted some meaningless word salad and a few literally shrugged.
Not only they are bad ideas, but the incentives are horrible.
I could see the point of prisons if there was “warranty”. If a person guess back to jail, the first sentence was useless and the prison should be financially punished. You’ll see then how quickly therapy and quality job trainings are implemented.
Massive whitespace. So many websites just feel like a PowerPoint presentation with their large-sized fonts and large amounts of space I have to scroll through.
It can be so hard to identify where you need to click or what is viewable only. You have to study the whole page of which may, God help me, I have to scroll down.
I’ll tell you why we’ve made it here. For as long as I’ve been a designer, the website has served as the face of companies and therefore subject to direct criticism from the higher ups. Too many times would my team create something wonderful that would meet all our needs and test well only to have the President chime in and say he wants ticker tape in the hero… for no particular reason. And also can we add this and add that and blah blah blah ok now it’s a pile of garbage that’s crammed full of stuff you don’t need and is confusing to use. Skip ahead to today where graphic designers have taken over the world and made everyone forcefully subject to extreme minimalism. Who’s laughing now!?! Maniacally laughs
Don’t know whether you’re kidding or not, but the defining trait of a conspiracy is that more than one person must be in on it. Lemmy being told about it doesn’t count.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. Sure, conspiracies usually involve more than one person, but aren’t there crimes along the lines of “conspiracy to commit x” whereby a person acting alone can be charged for planning to commit a specific crime? I’m thinking if a person is found with tonnes of fertiliser, the blueprints to a building, a makeshift detonator and a manifesto they could be charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder, even though no one else was involved in the planning.
It won’t be off though. Every bottle is accounted for. I sold 10 bottles for $40 but they are added to the till as 10 bottles for $30 at the special price.
If you never mess up, they’ll probably never catch you. But you are committing a felony and if you do get caught, there are consequences. I wish you the best, truly. But you are taking a risk.
Yeah, the $2 for X deal is a gimmic to increase sales. It’s the company saying “I am willing to sell these cheaper if it gives me an extra sale.” But by applying that sale price to customers it didn’t apply to, essentially you just stole a dollar from your employer every time you sold an energy drink.
I’m personally pretty forgiving of something this petty when done by someone making an unlivable wage, but it’s still theft.
Those deals are usually at the manufacturer-level, so the employer would likely be getting the same amount of money. The manufacturer would still be selling the same amount of the product, but would get less than if the items were rang up correctly.
So, for me at least, I give even less of a shit. Oh no, OP cost Nestle or whomever literally nothing but non-existent “opportunity cost”… how will they ever recover?
Personally I don’t care and I don’t really think it’s THAT unethical, but it is definitely theft. So be aware if you pull little tricks like that in the future. If you get caught, you’ll DEFINITELY get fired and your employer MIGHT press charges (and they would win).
It might be more obvious if you increase the volume.
Immagine that your employer has instructed you to sell 1 bottle for $3, but you can sell a whole pallet containing 500 bottles for $1000 (coming out at $2 per bottle). So you ring up the whole pallet and pay it off over the next few days by adding $2 to the cash register and keep $1 for each sale. Over those days, you have made one single sale of a pallet, while pocketing $500.
The work hours which was meant for you to generate sales of $3 bottles has been reduced to effectively selling $2 bottles, while the remaining expected value ended in your pocket.
As others have said, I don’t really care about big corporations losing out on some money, but you are 100% stealing when you reduce the expected sales value and pocket the difference during your work hours.
This popular POS employee theft scam occurs when an employee charges a customer full price but takes a little cash out of the total for themselves. This may result in telltale cash register imbalances, or, it can be more complex, like using coupon codes on a customer’s purchase while still charging them full price and then pocketing the difference.
Your implementation sounds pretty close to the coupon version.
Are your bosses ever going to notice? Unlikely. And if they did they’d probably fire you at worst, rather than press charges.
Now, that said, if your manager or employee handbook or any other source of authority at your job says it’s okay, then it is (excepting, of course, if they explicitly tell you it isn’t) - but that’s because it’s a benefit your employer has given you rather than one you’ve taken.
I guarantee some busybody middle manager would care, especially if they wanted to fire someone and were trying to find a reason.
@PeachMan wasn’t saying this because they have some ethical problem with what OP is doing, they are saying this because this is technically what OP is doing, and could be held liable for if it was ever brought to the wrong persons attention.
Google and similar data hungry companies (while not a financial scam but moreso a privacy scam, companies like Google and Meta profiteering on our personal data without our knowledge or awareness)
Technically insurance only works if everybody pays in. Wouldn’t work as a concept if every tom dick and harry could pay them $100 then a week later need $100,000. They’d basically be out of business right quick with nothing to provide for anyone. Maybe as some believe it should just be provided through taxes, but it’s certainly not a scam.
This. I got a detailed bill for a minor surgery, every single value was under the value of their own detailed coverage, and they still didn’t pay back around 12% of the value and never justified what the difference was about. They did it because they know I won’t fight them on it and they do it to everyone. That objectively and legally makes their detailed coverage a scam.
It’s true insurance companies need to take in adequate premiums in order to have the money the money to pay claims. And when done in balance, insurance is a great thing. Not all insurance in a scam, no doubting that.
But the current state of insurance, especially health insurance in the US, shows that these companies are making massive profits. How does this happen? Literally one way: They take in more premiums than they pay out in coverage. How? By either knowingly overcharging people or skirting out of paying covered claims through other means (such as baseless rejections).
That’s the problem with the entire insurance industry and why it must be properly regulated in any industry: It is a race to the bottom. The worse the insurer treats the people that buy insurance from them, the better the company does financially (charge a lot, pay out a little). Mix in the fact that (1) you cannot shop around at the time you need a claim and (2) the contracts are so intensive only a sophisticated legal team can interpret them, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
So you’re right that all insurance isn’t necessarily a scam. But if you can’t see that the US health insurance industry raking in profits shows serious dysfunction that could be considered a scam, it’s worth taking a second look.
Did someone say people should work for free? No where am I saying that. Massive profits are not necessary to cover overhead - expenses like overheard and salaries are paid for by revenue - what’s leftover is profit.
This thread is about whether the current US healthcare insurance industry is a scam or not. Scam means “a dishonest scheme” and insurance saying it’s going to provide healthcare coverage but actually just takes your money, doesn’t provide coverage, and only pays investors/executives could be considered a dishonest scheme by many.
Insurance companies have a natural tendency to become worse and worse over time. This is called the race to the bottom and is an incredibly well-known phenomena in insurance. Like monopolies, insurance is one of the rare situations where experts are in damn-near universal agreement that heavy regulation is necessary.
Right now, insurance companies are objectively very bad to the people they provide coverage for. This isn’t an opinion, this is a fact that’s easily verified and well understood. They are not being effectively regulated and as such, are racing to the bottom by providing absolutely terrible coverage while taking in massive premiums. This is not good for anyone and is not fixed by a free market in any way. You cannot effectively shop for insurance and their behavior is not rectified, unless prohibited by law (regulation).
I only posted what I did because your post read like you expected insurance to run by paying out 100% of what they get in. The thread started with general insurance but many zeroed in on health insurance. Yes there are problems, obviously, but certain things like denying claims comes about from many people trying to scam payments and the insurers tightening security too much without enough oversight.
Everybody seems to think there’s huge payments going to investors and C level executives but that comes from market confidence. So the stock price rises and those bonuses of stock options appreciate without the company paying a dime.
United Healthcare pulled in $20 BILLION dollars in PROFIT in 2022. The ceo was given $24 million in compensation for that year. Denying claims because of scams? They can afford it.
How was that compensation structured? Was it cash or stock? And how much money would they spend if they didn’t act paranoid about false claims? Would that dissolve the 80 billion because it’s possible.
Aside from that, did you notice this is a 2 month old post?
About $4 million was non-equity pay. Around $19 million was vested shares. He had a 331 : 1 ratio to the average employee. They can afford to pay people’s urgent medical bills without denying claims. If we are required to have insurance to be able to get BASIC needs met, that insurance better meet those basic needs. It’s especially rough for people with less money and less opportunity. Some people live paycheck to paycheck and their claim being denied means that hospital bill now forces them to choose between rent or food.
I do realize this is a 2 month old thread. There’s like 15 posts in my feed. Normally, I tend to lurk and not comment. Lemmy has a bit of a content drought, and I figured people would be happy with more comments or discussion, even on slightly older threads. If your opinion has changed I’d be happy to discuss that as well.
The point of my stance wasn’t to say the world is perfect and nothing should change. Only to try and point out the potential reasons for how things are beyond “they’re evil”.
And I get that. And I think businesses should be able to make profit. And I think CEOs should make a decent salary. But I don’t think insurance should be handled by companies not affiliated with the government.
The fact is that insurance companies are publicly traded companies. Publicly traded companies have an obligation to shareholders to maximize profit. Maximizing profit isn’t something we want for something as necessary as our health. An individuals health is not a commodity. I’m not saying they are evil personally, but I do think the system is designed to benefit the companies and not the people. Which is not how democracy should work.
But the problem is that medical costs are only as high as they are because of insurance. Hospitals started making up fake, artificially high prices because insurance companies wanted a discount for referring patients to their hospital.
I’ve heard many a tale of contacting the billing department and telling them you don’t have insurance and either they can get what money they actually need or none of it. They end up getting a much smaller bill.
I’m not in the US, but one of the issues I have with medical insurance is that, say you need medication, the doctor will provide you with a prescription, requiring a specific brand due to the efficacy compared to other brands. The insurance providers would reject claims for the prescribed brand, and suggest an inferior brand that doctors warned to avoid.
This happened to my older folks, and is baffling why insurances feel the need to override a doctor’s recommendations.
Not necessarily. I’m on a daily medication that has a generic but is available in both extended release and immediate release forms. The extended release provides a more consistent dosage and has historically prevented me from getting sick. The immediate release causes inconsistent spikes and I have a history of getting sick on it. Insurance refused to pay for the extended release type for about 2 years before it made it onto their “formulary.” In the meantime I was using GoodRx and paying $100/mo instead of my paid health insurance pharmacy plan to make sure I wouldn’t get sick. The person I spoke to at the pharmacy management wing of the insurance company literally told me “you can get an app on your phone which will tell you when to take the immediate release medication.”
Luckily, we don’t have that with medical insurance in Switzerland, but car mechanics sure are that way.
Need a fix on insurance? Ooh, that’ll take us 2 weeks of full time work - minimum 5000 bucks. Call them and tell them it’s not insured? Ah, that’ll be 500 bucks.
Hold up don’t forget that in the US, healthcare providers base their pricing on what they will receive after insurance discounts. This creates a massively overinflated market where most of the value is made up and a large portion of actual payments goes to insurance and corporations
America is a country with over 300 million people and it’s bigger than Western Europe. There’s going to be a lot of variance. Someone growing up wealthy in San Fransisco is going to live in a different America than someone growing up with a single waitress mother in Louisiana.
The average homicide rate in the US is 5 per 100,000. The town of Boca Raton, FL has a homicide rate of 1 (less than half of the European average of 2.5) and Baltimore / St Louis / New Orleans can sometimes reach 30+ on bad years (worse than some Brazilian and Mexican cities).
When you ask about the shitty laws, we have to remember that the US is almost like 50 different countries in one. Every single state you will have a different experience as well. In Illinois school districts kids in elementary school may take home school laptops free of charge. In Panhandle Florida the kids aren’t getting that.
In Florida you can go to a one of the many kava bars or smoke shops and purchase a kilogram of kratom. If you drive through Louisiana with that kratom you can get charged with a felony comparable to being caught with heroin.
Do you get what I’m saying? There are many different Americas - even in the same geographical area. In SE Florida there are a wild mix of different ethnicities and cultures. There are Haitians, Jews, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Brazilians, Vietnamese, Jamaicans…
You can live in the same city but have a totally different experience. The Brazilians may hang out with mainly other Brazilians and go to the Brazilian restaraunts / clubs / grocery stores and not ever go to the Jewish deli that all the Jews love as a staple of the town. It’s like you walk around the same area and depending on the cultural lens you put on, you experience a different reality.
HAVING SAID ALL THAT
I think America is a good country to live in. Why? Because it’s better than the vast majority of the world. You earn more money. You are safer. You have more opportunities and there’s better infrastructure, healthcare, etc than in vast majority of the world.
Yes, there are serious problems. Wealth inequality is splitting the country in two. Healthcare is expensive. There’s an opioid epidemic. We have high rates of gun violence. Etc etc
But having come from a relatively well-off third world country, I’ve seen the difference in QOL first hand and it’s massive. America is a good place to live.
This, y'all. One of the things I think a lot of younger travelers fail to realize is that the US is not a meme. It's huge and full of people with thoughts, hopes, regrets etc. just like everyone else.
Maybe there are better places to live or visit, but the US is pretty easy and most folks I've met are genuinely nice when they realize you might need help.
Edit: try to avoid police and if you encounter them play that foreign visitor thing up or make your English really bad. A lot of them are former soldiers that served in the middle east. They default to a pretty aggressive demeanor because that's what we did to them. Your safety won't be a concern, but they can waste lot of your time.
While this is obviously true, it's important to note that the US certainly isn't unique in this regard. Non-Americans often underestimate how diverse the US is. Americans often underestimate how diverse other countries are.
Of course variance in terms of culture, demographics, and industry in even small countries can be massive. My home city in Southern Brazil of almost 1 milliom population has less than 1% black population. Last time I visited for 2 weeks I didn’t see a single black person. This surprises some people because of the perception of Brazil and the fact they imported more slaves than any other country in the America’s.
So yes, I’m not claiming US is uniquely diverse. It’s just unusually large so it has large amounts of diversity due to geographic distance and total population + historic & current immigration.
However what I was trying to say by 50 different countries is that the laws can vary wildly from state to state. It is something that isn’t common in other countries. Of course there are other counties with strong federated systems where the provincial-level governments have strong autonomy (Germany and Switzerland come to mind) I think these types of countries are uncommon.
For example in Brazil no state regulates specific substances. That’s a power for the federal government. So if you buy a substance that’s legal in one state, you can safely bring it anywhere in Brazil. However in US this is not the case. I have the example of kratom, but Marijuana is another one.
This is what I was trying to say by 50 different countries. They aren’t actually countries but in some ways they have just as much if not more autonomy than countries, besides of course foreign policy decisions. But look at California for example. It’s economy is bigger than most countries in the world.
Belgium (different languages, laws, educational systems, public broadcasters per language region, taxation, etc.)
UK (different laws in Scotland, different laws in Northern Ireland, education policy, etc.)
Spain (autonomous regions with their own languages, seperate civil law in Catalunya, tax collection in the Basque country, etc.)
Canada (IRC Quebec has a Napoleonic inspired civil law system, whereas the rest of Canada uses common law similar to that found in the US and UK. TLDR one legal system uses precedent, the other doesn't. )
China (the unofficial city tier system, Xinjiang, Tibet, etc.)
Russia (autonomous regions in the far east, Kadyrov/Chechnya: strict alcohol prohibition and possibly years in jail, etc.)
India (IRC autonomous administrative divisions can make their own laws, tribe/caste based laws/tribunals, Jammu and Kashmir which until quite recently had its own seperate consitution and for example Indians from other regions weren't allowed to buy land or property there.)
The problem is that as a foreigner, you're usually ignorant about all these things. Whether it's a Brit who thinks all Americans are Yankees, an American who thinks all Brits are English, a Scotsman who thinks Spanish and Castellano are synonymous, or a Spaniard who goes to Belgium expecting to speak French everywhere.
According to etymonline, Yankee has been used to refer to different sets of Americans by different people for hundreds of years.
1683, a name applied disparagingly by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (New York) to English colonists in neighboring Connecticut. … In English a term of contempt (1750s) before its use as a general term for “native of New England” (1765); during the American Revolution it became a disparaging British word for all American natives or inhabitants. Contrasted with southerner by 1828. Shortened form Yank in reference to “an American” first recorded 1778.
The British calling someone from Texas a Yankee isn’t really any more right or wrong than someone from Texas calling someone from Pennsylvania a Yankee. Words can have contextual meanings.
I think the main thing is that people often hear bad things about the US because they’re comparing it to other developed countries. Like I wouldn’t want to live there because I live in a different developed country, but I would take living in the US over a good 80% of other countries.
Think of most of the world. We’re talking Africa, India, China, Ukraine, Russia, Middle East, South America, etc.
Obviously Europe has a one-up on healthcare and infrastructure and probably China has a one-up on infrastructure… but generally speaking it is still a 1st world country.
In power strips, the lights are (in the overwhelming majority of cases) actually a neon bulb! They’re cheaper for that specific purpose because they can be powered directly off of the mains power with a single resistor.
Your point is entirely valid and I bear the same cross, this is just a fun fact you can use to impress colleagues, strangers, and potential lovers, dazzling them with your deep esoteric knowledge of and passion for illuminators in power strips.
Hah, this is what I liked the most about reddit - learning random bits of knowledge about things I knew nothing about. I’m glad to see this happen here too!
This is also why those power strip lights can sometimes flicker in the dark. They are sometimes over-driven for extra brightness; this does cut their lifespan, but they usually still last for many years regardless. However, towards the end of that shortened lifespan, the accumulated damage to the electrodes leads to flickering as it struggles to keep the neon excited. However, incoming photons can give just a little extra nudge, which sometimes is enough to keep the neon excited and glowing.
Seeing boing boing articles in my Twitter feed was one of the reasons I started using it years ago. When junk started filtering in, that’s when I stopped using it. When musk started messing with politics and using Twitter to push his views, that’s when I nuked it.
This concept is also why I’m so hopeful for federated software. The federated model means that there’s no single instance that holds all the power. Many of these instances are run by admins of their own kindness and initiative. And at worst, if any instance were to start being “enshittified,” people could easily move to another instance and continue participating in the greater network.
Between all of what we’ve seen unfold in the last few months, and even weeks, on Twitter and Reddit, it’s safe to say that “enshittification” could be reaching critical mass. That’s why I came here, after all, and I’m looking forward to seeing this community simply persist here on the web.
My fear is that even if you’re correct, as the internet monoliths that have been built on the past decade fall to federated software, we will lose forever an immeasurable amount of arts and culture that has been stockpiled in these corporate spaces. Think of all the great educational YouTubers whose videos won’t be able to be passed on to whatever the next thing is if YouTube collapses.
Unfortunately, this isn’t likely to happen. Video files are huge (tens or hundreds of gigabytes) and many creators delete old videos once they are uploaded to Youtube so that they don’t run out of space or keep having to buy more and more drive space. Even tech YouTubers like MKBHD pull clips from their old videos directly off YouTube because they no longer have the originals (he did a podcast talking about this)
That is stupid. I get that smaller creators it maybe lesss feasible to backup. Because they don’t make enough money. But a video file, certainly if you put same compression as yt, isn’t that big. Say one gb per vid, that is 30 gb a month (say times 3 for redundency) you have less than 1tb a month, of lees than 60 bucks of storage drives a month. Small price pay for someone that has a million dollar studio to not be trusting on yt for your videos. But thay also disn’t talk about the risk of putting your 2fa in the cloud, so i am not that surprised
I get that. Thats why i included that it is a bit different for smaller creators. So yes, we cant assume there are a lot of backups for if youtube decide to go more evil. But I think of you make your money with youtube, you should invest in storing your own backups. If only for if your channel get hacked and they delete al your videos and youtube cant/wont help to restore them. And that is why i get a bit sad if a big channel says something like this, because in my eyes its very bad practice to relay on yt for your backups. ( Assuming they dont do a seperate backup amd only just rip from yt because of ease of access).
Not all of them. What about the ones who are no longer active on the platform? The ones people forgot about? The ones who have died? You think there will be 100% coverage? In the case of YouTube, many channel operators don’t actually keep a local copy of all their videos, since the files would be too big. So the only copy is the one on YouTube.
What about the ones who are no longer active on the platform? The ones people forgot about? The ones who have died? You think there will be 100% coverage?
Maybe that’s not that much of a bad thing. The day had the same length before YouTube was a thing, and people spent 100% of their time. Differently. Some things might have been pushed out of sight by YouTube, and a dying giant can create room for new things to grow.
I get your point, but the comparison barely holds. The Library of Alexandria had many unique works of cultural and scientific importance. YouTube is full of mundane content, mostly entertainment. Especially the scientific parts are merely re-tellings of other works which do not live on the same platform. Nobody stores their scientific findings on YouTube alone. Many creators do not upload to YouTube alone.
The more people value a specific video, the higher the chance it got copied elsewhere. So for the important parts, we probably have decent coverage.
undefined> The Library of Alexandria had many unique works of cultural and scientific importance. YouTube is full of mundane content, mostly entertainment.
Are you serious? The vast majority of culturally significant artifacts were, at the time of their creation, mundane and/or entertainment.
What about all the old art and other stuff that hasn’t been kept around? They probably weren’t worth preserving through the ages, if it’s good enough we’ll see it again
Those folks will re-upload old content onto the new platforms. I know people don’t like to talk about money, especially in relation to the fediverse, but it’s important. If you want someone to dedicate a large portion of their energy into making high-quality content, it’s not unreasonable for them to want to make money doing it. How can we get money into the hands of content creators without allowing centralized control of the content?
I think I can understand your point. Large ‘“media” companies will horde the content and refuse to let it see the light of day because they believe they own it. I don’t think that’s how it would go down. Anything I’ve ever produced to be put on the web still exists somewhere on a hard drive that I control. I doubt the big name educational YouTubers are deleting the source material as soon as it goes up to YouTube.
Besides, a lot of the good ones have already moved to Nebula as well. If thought like educational YouTube you should check it out.
Educational YouTube was just an example. But there is a real danger of culturally important media being lost. See cases like the Operation Soda Steal video
Thanks for the link. That was an entertaining watch! Still, the narrator states that he is sure the original exists on a hard drive somewhere. He also gives a solution towards the end of the video. If you really like something download it.
Absolutely. I was a big part of the non professional music production side of YouTube a decade ago. Imagine getting 100+ new songs every week, from talented artists putting everything they had into their work. It was incredible! This year I got into data hoarding and looked into downloading my old favorite songs… Turns out most of them deleted their old work from YouTube when they went pro or simply closed out their channel for personal reasons. Not even the compilation channels were still around. Hundreds of thousands of songs are just gone, along with the records of that community’s culture.
Not an amateur producer at all, but a few years ago I was listening to a lot of YouTube mixes while working. Lofi stuff might be cookie cutter elevator music to you, but I loved some mixes over others. I got attached to some of them, and discovered a ton of artists that way. These were single, long videos with many tracks each.
My heart sank when I started finding some of them turn into broken links. I figured out YouTube-DL and got to archiving. I found some reuploads of playlists I liked such as the wonderful Morning Coffee by the amazing SoulSearchAndDestroy (the lead song, damn fine coffee by mtbrd, is one of my favorite lofi tracks ever). Other playlists have been lost to time.
Sometimes I skim through my archived playlists to find a song I can remember in my head, and sometimes I don’t find the song, and it’s possible that I will never find it again. Again, silly for this to happen with lofi of all things (one of the most dispassionate and almost disposable genres of music).
I still think YouTube is unmatched for music discovery. Yes, you’re clicking on songs for “bad” reasons such as the thumbnail or recognizing the curator’s channel, but it worked pretty damn well for me.
7 years ago I got introduced to this really small local artist by a friend who had just a handful of songs on his YouTube channel, but they were all incredible. I could listen to music while I worked but it wasn’t super practical to have my phone out for it, so I always converted songs from YouTube to mp3 and downloaded them to put on my mp3-player. I did that with this artists songs as well. A few years later, I wanted to show another friend this music, and the whole channel was deleted. Sometimes I wonder if I and the artist itself are the only people who have a recording of his songs in the world.
Makeup and makeup companies promote unhealthy beauty standards and are responsible for a disproportionate amount of microplastics. No one should wear makeup
I used to think that and tell my wife that. She told me she wears makeup to feel all sorts of things: strong, assertive, sexy, dignified, powerful, invisible, whatever. Who am I to tell her she shouldn’t use eyeliner to feel strong when she’s got a big meeting at work? If you like makeup live your life
As someone who militantly refuses to wear it to work, I appreciate it as an artistic and stylistic choice. It’s never a tool to hide my face or imperfections but rather to express myself at times. And yes sometimes it makes me feel powerful, much in the same way a dress cut just right for my body makes me feel powerful or wearing steel toe boots into a business meeting makes me feel powerful.
The problem is the expectation of it. If you can’t treat people with respect whether or not we wear it that’s on you.
People have been wearing and using make-up well before capitalism and make-up companies were even a thought in people’s brains. It’s just a thing humans do, and that’s okay.
…okay? If you’re alone with other people, you can tell them that you’re fine with them being homophobic. But in a public space, you’re not the only gay person, and just because it’s okay for you doesn’t mean it’s okay for everyone, so you can’t just say that it’s okay.
Yeah, I kinda hate the types of comments that you replied to. “As an x-person, you can make fun of this person for doing x thing.” That’s a really bad precedent to set, kinda like black people having blanket “n-word passes” to give out to white people
Yeah. Even if it doesn’t hurt you, you’re not the only person existing. And it can hurt other people in the same minority, you don’t just get to say that it’s fine for everyone.
I have to say the mascara is probably the coolest thing about him. Everything else about this guy is absolute dogshit. DeSantis was destroyed by his own base for using heel shoes. It would be funny if Vance got annihilated by MAGA for being a “makeup wearing soyboy” and not being an empty vessel for corruption and political donors who will say and do anything for power
I agree he’s a piece of shit, so why not make fun of the things he’s a piece of shit for and not “lol he’s a BOY who wears MAKEUP and is mean to other BOYS who wear MAKEUP!” It’s a bad look for a group of people who don’t want to be, you know, bigots.
Take your smug self righteousness and give it to someone who deserves it. This piece of shit would attack anyone who claims that he wears makeup even though he does. It’s not about the makeup. It’s about the turd that’s wearing the makeup
Then make fun of the turd and not the makeup? There’s plenty to make fun of. Why are you mad that you don’t get to be a bigot even when the target of your bigotry is a piece of shit?
i liked this meme because it can be read as celebratory if you are chill, like we are, but also as mocking, if you are a biggot, like his voterbase. so win win
Idk I find all the memes mocking closeted or queer presenting republicans for being closeted or queer presenting pretty gross. A bunch of people who are suffering because they can’t be out is sad, not funny, to me. Even if those people suck. I can still hate the parts that suck and feel sympathy for the parts that don’t.
It is terribly sad - they must live in a world of hurt.
However so many of these people actively try to hurt LGBTQ+ and trans people by inciting hate and changing laws to harm the non-straight. In particular they have been preaching that being gay/trans equates to being a child molester. This is horrific and needs to stop. Exposing the hypocrisy is essential to reducing the harm they are inflicting to real people right now
Fine, then mock them for being hypocrites. So much of the criticism is shit like the Grindr search volume in Milwaukee. What’s the joke - a bunch of gay people came to Milwaukee? They can’t be out? They aren’t who you’d think you were? It’s not funny if you apply it to some other group. It wouldn’t be funny if Republicans made the same comment about the DNC convention.
If you want to mock someone for being a hypocrite, mock them for being a hypocrite. JD Vance sucks in part because he’s a hypocrite, because he wears makeup while criticizing people who don’t adhere to gender norms. To just criticize the makeup alone is not good enough to expose the hypocrisy.
of course, but this problem is solvable without any understanding of complex numbers, and 10*i^2 is a really clunky, multi-operation expression whereas -10 is just an integer.
simplifying one’s answers is standard practice and any grader who received the answer in the OP would be obligated to point out that while technically correct, they’re missing the basic fact that the answer is -10.
The Rube Goldberg comment is apt as the solution is absurdly complicated and overengineered for the task it performs.
Yeah exactly you’re right, why overcomplicate the problem like the Reddit comment did? I guess that’s just typical Reddit thinking that being pendantic and using lots of fancy words and long explanations makes you smart.
Wrestle the pig first, every day. Whatever is your worst, most unpleasant, annoying task for the entire day, do it before you do anything else. It minimizes your stress and worrying and puts it in the rearview mirror.
There was also that one that was cut from the camping episode.
Rocko is foraging for berries and he grabs one on a bush and the bush recoils and you hear a bear growl. Then a bear jumps out from behind the bush grabbing his crotch and running away in obvious pain.
Yeah, everyone’s neurochemistry is different and should be experimented with.
I didn’t know this for so long, that I needed a few easy wins to set the pace, that I feel like I could have been way more productive throughout my 20s haha
I always heard it as “Swallow a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day”. Same meaning, and I think I like yours better.
I don’t think “waking up early” counts, but it’s definitely the most unpleasant and annoying task of my weekdays, followed closely by actually getting to work.
Human memory is bias towards most recent things in a group set. If your set is a “workout” or a “workday”, doing the fun stuff last will affect positively all the memory items in the same group set. This works even if you know that your memory is doing this.
We don’t live in a “present now”. We live in a mental image constructed from memory of recent past.
Trick is not to do unpleasant stuff first, but to do pleasant stuff last.
I have some paperwork to do that will likely result in $2000. It’s been over a year and i cannot just sit down and do it. I stress over it every day but continue to put it off.
Excellent. I hope you did OK. I got mine done! It wasn’t as bad as I thought. If you haven’t finished yet, don’t give up, pick up the pieces and carry on. Thanks for being my Internet buddy on this.
I’m on vacation until Wednesday so I will finish it on my flight home. Getting started really was the hardest part. Now it’s just putting numbers into boxes and adding them up. By gathering info and starting on it, i find that the expected $2k gain is closer to $10k. That’s some great motivation to get it done!
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