I don’t think I have, but I’m always mildly irked by broke people stealing from other broke people instead of from people that can afford to replace the stolen whatever.
I used to steal food from the local big chain supermarket.
A friend in college gave me his Gameboy Advance SP and some games, and I’d collected more games over the years. I lent everything to a coworker and then I was home sick when said coworker moved away and took it all.
Could’ve left it at work, could’ve left it with a mutual friend. They were coming back for a visit so I asked if they could bring it and they accused me of not caring about them, only the gameboy, so they did not give it back then either.
It was a huge bummer because I was on THE LAST LEVEL of Pokemon Sapphire and now it’s too expensive for me to get another copy. I’d also told the guy who gave it to me originally that he could reclaim the GBA and his games if he ever felt inclined but thankfully that has not happened since I wouldn’t be able to return them now.
I’ve had other belongings stolen from me in the past but it was the accusation that trying to reclaim my property meant I did not care about the person who stole from me that really grinds my gears even now. I’d spent a lot of time trying to help them through some difficult life stuff long before I ever lent them the console.
a) Co-worker is an asshole and who the hey knows what happened to your stuff but you can reach out and see if they maybe have it in a box somewhere. $12 will get you most smaller things shipped across America (pending you're here).
b) Idk where you sit on the whole retro-gaming thing. But they've got gobtones of little handheld systems that can emulate most older systems and they're loaded to the gils with games too. I don't have one (if I feel the spirit I emulate on my phone) but they look pretty nifty. I've actively looked at them and though "Hmm, that's pretty nifty!" I am just not sure how much I would play them, and I already do well enough with my phone.
c) On the tail-end - most people will be friendly first if you do reach out. They don't feel a bunch of shame about anything, especially if you were nice to them. They might just think about the good times you spent with them and reminisce. Seriously, I would consider reaching out and seeing whatsup and then ask them if they remember the DS. But also you clearly kissed it goodbye, so it is what it is. I hope you kick the tail outta the last bit of Sapphire some day =)
This happened many years ago now and I don’t have contact info for them or much desire to find out if they’re less of an asshole now. I would’ve thought if they were interested in returning it to me they would’ve done so at my request back in the day so I imagine asking again now wouldn’t make much of a difference.
I’m not too broken up about it; a much better friend who heard the story got me a used GBA and a couple of games for my birthday a while ago so I’ve managed to rebuild some of my collection. Mostly just upset that someone who stole from me called my character into question when I requested my stuff back. It made me feel like all the time I’d spent helping them with their issues was a waste of my time seeing as they were so quick to make me responsible for their own bad behavior.
Of course, no worries! I was thinking if magically they were a male (I mean 50/50 right?) that they might have the same name as when you knew them. A gal? All bets are off. Some folks are easier to track down than others. Ah, I think I missed the part where they questioned your character. You know that's some bs deflection crap.
Also your friend sounds like super dope, x100. That's awesome =)! I still don't know where you sit on things, but I will say that when I did have a gameboy (I gave it to a friend when I moved at one point in my life) I did have some kinda flash card I think? It is shaped like a cartridge and connected to my laptop via a cord (Maybe a micro, maybe a mini?) and I coudl put a handful of games on there. I know scalpers have ruined the joy of retro gaming to a point. I once went into a retro game store and could have slapped every face in that store having seen the prices games go for nowadays. I've been sticking to basically "lofi" pc gaming. Like the super amazing intergalactic fishing and Sword of the Samurai *Sugoi~! But I do wanna toss one more thing your way just in case you end up deciding to check out retro-handhelds. I actually saw one recently, because someone posted a whole thing on PieFed I believe. That had lists of handhelds and their prices on AliExpress. But this one caught my eye because it looks like an SP and can play up to Dreamcast I think. Here's the review that I watched when I looked into it. I kinda hopped around, because I don't care too much about sound or teardown or anything. Feel free to check it out if you're interested =)!
“I never learned or thought about how long my trash will actually insist on existing and polluting my environment. I’m completely ignorant of how incredibly slowly plastic decomposes and how toxic it is for plastic to leach into the lowest parts of the food chain and concentrate on its way up.”
“AFAIK, because the earth will take care of it somehow - everything turns into dirt when you leave it in the dirt long enough, right?”
“I’m just sooo ignorant, plastic will just break back up into little plastic fibers and the ocean can recycle it for us, like tree bark or w/e, right?”
That’s my best, but still invalid, justification. What do I win ::: spoiler spoiler /sarcasm (I hope this spoiler works bc it’s not working on boost) :::
Yeah, had a drug dealer burgle our apartment (just an opportunistic thing, spare keys had been left outside by a friend who was moving). Fortunately no-one was in, but it sucked to have to deal with all the damage and security.
We eventually tracked them down when they sold some stuff though and they were actually arrested and we got a few things back.
It was awesome the police actually raided them. Unfortunately the new government released them as prisoners with “non-violent” offences.
I had a friend who made bad life choices and while I love them, they are most def not in my life anymore. They stayed up with a dealer and smoked a bunch of shit. The dealer, who is in one of the best pictures I've ever taken in my life by the by I think bitterly, proceeded to steal everything from this person. They met up while we were on a walk, and while my buddy used to buy weed off this person they started doing harder and harder drugs. But that's all to say this fuck-face magee stole everything they could from my buddy. They no longer could do their work, which was remote. They ended up homeless and got ultra fucked (literally and figuratively) while on the streets. I had just moved away, or else I woulda helped. But who the hell knows what that woulda brought in to my life. Sigh.
But fuck drug dealers. Most of them are total fucking assholes. I am glad you got the fkers. Surprised they got off, considering what they probably had around.
p.s. - This wasn't some tab shit btw. This was smoke up a lotta stuff and then gank kinda stuff.
Not sure them just defederating to stay small and to be able to handle all the reports, if I recall correctly, is the same thing as making arbitrary decisions in order to feel powerful.
I suppose it was a human typing at first, and the dog barking because it saw a huge spider. Then during the struggle, the keyboard mashing happened, including the sending of the message. Then the spider tries to play it off.
Back in primary school someone stole one of my bakugan out of my bag. It was the snake trap which folded into a cylinder instead of a sphere like the normal ones. So sad.
Ohhh that takes me back. I forgot all about those. I wasn’t really interested in them, but kids at my school were. I’d steal them from stores and trade them for stuff I actually wanted.
I always played with them a tiny bit before I’d trade them. They were pretty neat. Lots of different shapes. I have no idea how they were actually meant to be used. Hard nostalgia wave, though.
Legitimately, while I write all this fuck thieves shit I will say that when I was a kid I sometimes got cheap stuff from a "friend" (who's name i sitll remember probably on account of being one of the only people around with green eyes, let alone being black with green eyes). He would always bring me stuff and trade me for things or if I had a little cash I could buy it. I later realized (much, much later) that he was stealing it from ???? but I def had a cd player from him and rocked it for like...fifteen years? So in one sense that's pretty cool, but in another it is a =(!
I had Utena cards, freakin' UTENA CARDS. That someone once stole. Who wants Utena cards? At leaast way back when? Nobody but this bitch. Yet someone else took them and lord knows did what with them. But yeah, I feel this.
Pretty much all of google products do that. I have to work with gsuite, and when you go to chat, you click on the person you want to talk to, start typing as you see the box, but then, for whatever reason, it switches to a search on the right, or bring you back to the chat home page.
On YouTube, you see a video, you click on it and then for whatever fucking reason, the video moves right and you click on a dumb ad or a video you don’t want to watch. Go back once and the video isn’t there anymore.
my father gave me a lesson once when my bike was stolen when i was a child. he told me that they did it because they felt they had to; not because they wanted to target me and that remaining angry about it was unproductive because they will never know nor care.
i try to apply that same lesson every time someone wrongs me.
That's some good stuff. Like it's on them. It's why I try not to get upset if someone's having a mood swing or something. Cause that's on them, not me. But it can be harder to practice the more toes that get stepped on.
Ohh… I have thought about that, but India is not a country which takes criticism lightly. They will immediately say I am funded by Pakistan, Soros or by the enemies of the state and if the book is even published, it will gain me infamy making me immediately unemployable for anything else. It’s no joke being an author in India.
They have jailed people for reporting on UP schools serving bread with salt and this is not an outlier, journalists are in constant danger here.
edit: Read up the Broadcasters bill, I just read about this and this is 1984 level shit.
I can’t say I know what I’d do if I were in your situation. But many people throughout history have chosen to write those books, and they have suffered for that choice, but they have also driven change.
It’s got a decent chunk of good uses. It’s just that none of those are going to make anyone a huge ton of money, so they don’t have a hype cycle attached. I can’t wait until the grifters get out and the hype cycle falls away, so we can actually get back to using it for what it’s good at and not shoving it indiscriminately into everything.
Also, for GPU prices to come down. Right now the AI garbage is eating a lot of the GPU production, as well as wasting a ton of energy. It sucks. Right as the crypto stuff started dying out we got AI crap.
Those are going to make a ton of money for a lot of people. Every 1% fuel efficiency gained, every second saved in an industrial process, it’s hundreds of millions of dollars.
You don’t need AI in your fridge or in your snickers, that will (hopefully) die off, but AI is not going away where it matters.
Hardware for faster matrix/tensor multiplication leads to faster training, thus helping. More contributors to your favorite python frameworks leads to better tools, thus helping. Etc.
I am aware that chatbots don’t cure cancer, but discarding all the contributions of the last two years is disingenuous at best.
Those are going to make a ton of money for a lot of people.
Right, but not any one person. The people running the hype train want to be that one person, but the real uses just aren’t going to be something you can exclusively monetize.
Depends how you define “a ton” of money. Plenty of startups have been acquired for silly amounts of money, plenty of consultants are making bank, make executives are cashing big bonuses for successful improvements using AI…
I define “a ton” of money in this case to mean “the amount they think of when they get the dollar signs in their eyes.” People are cashing in on that delusion right now, but it’s not going to last.
It’s a money saver, so it’s profit model is all wonky.
A hospital, as a business, will make more money treating cancer than it will doing a mammogram and having a computer identify issues for preventative treatment.
A hospital, as a place that helps people, will still want to use these scans widely because “ignoring preventative care to profit off long term treatment” is a bit too “mask off” even for the US healthcare system and doctors would quit.
Insurance companies, however, would pay just shy of the cost of treatment to avoid paying for treatment.
So the cost will rise to be the cost of treatment times the incidence rate, scaled to the likelihood the scan catches something, plus system costs and staff costs.
In a sane system, we’d pass a law saying capable facilities must provide preventative screenings at cost where there’s a reasonable chance the scan would provide meaningful information and have the government pay the bill. Everyone’s happy except people who view healthcare as an investment opportunity.
A hospital, as a business, will make more money treating cancer than it will doing a mammogram and having a computer identify issues for preventative treatment.
I believe this idea was generally debunked a little while ago; to wit, the profit margin on cancer care just isn’t as big (you have to pay a lot of doctors) as the profit margin on mammograms. Moreover, you’re less likely to actually get paid the later you identify it (because end-of-life care costs for the deceased tend to get settled rather than being paid).
I’ll come back and drop the article link here, if I can find it.
Oh interesting, I’d be happy to be wrong on that. :)
I figured they’d factor the staffing costs into what they charge the insurance, so it’d be more profit due to a higher fixed costs, longer treatment and some fixed percentage profit margin.
The estate costs thing is unfortunately an avenue I hadn’t considered. :/
I still think it would be better if we removed the profit incentive entirely, but I’m pleased if the two interests are aligned if we have to have both.
Oh, absolutely. Absent a profit motive that pushes them toward what basically amounts to a protection scam, they’re left with good old fashioned price gouging. Even if interests are aligned, it’s still way more expensive than it should be. So yes, I agree that we should remove the profit incentive for healthcare.
Sadly, I can’t find the article. I’ll keep an eye out for it, though. I’m pretty sure I linked to it somewhere but I’m too terminally online to figure out where.
It sure is. But this is basically just making something that already exists more reliable, not creating something new. Still important, but not as earth-shaking.
The hypesters and grifters do not prevent AI from being used for truly valuable things even now. In fact medical uses will be one of those things that WILL keep AI from just fading away.
Just look at those marketing wankers as a cherry on the top that you didn’t want or need.
I think the vast majority of people understand that already. They don’t understand just what all those gadgets are for anyway. Medicine is largely a ''blackbox" or magical process anyway.
There are way too many techbros trying to push the idea of turning chat gpt into a physician replacement. After it “passed” the board exams, they immediately started hollering about how physicians are outdated and too expensive and we can just replace them with AI. What that ignores is the fact that the board exam is multiple choice and a massive portion of medical student evaluation is on the “art” side of medicine that involves taking the history and performing the physical exam that the question stem provides for the multiple choice questions.
And it has gone exactly nowhere either hasn’t it. Nor do those techbros want the legal and moral responsibilities that come with an actual licence to pass the boards.
I think there are some techbros out there with sleazy legal counsel that promises they can drench the thing in enough terms and conditions to relieve themselves of liability, similar to the way that WebMD does. Also, with healthcare access the way it is in America, there are plenty of people who will skim right past the disclaimer telling them to go see a real healthcare provider and just trust the “AI”. Additionally, there’s enough slimy NP professional groups pushing for unsupervised practice that they could just sign on their NP licenses for prescriptions, and the malpractice laws currently in place would be difficult to enforce depending on outcomes and jurisdictions.
This doesn’t get into the sowing of discord and discontent with physicians that is happening even without these products existing in the first place. Even the claims that an AI could potentially, maybe, someday sorta-kinda replace physicians makes people distrust and dislike physicians now.
Separately, I have some gullible classmates in medical school that I worry about quite a lot, because they’ve bought into the line that chat GPT passed the boards, so they take its’ hallucinations as gospel and argue with our professor’s explanations as to why the hallucination is wrong and the correct answer on a test is correct. I was not shy about admonishing them and forcefully explaining how these “generative AIs” are little more than glorified text predictors, but the allure of easy answers without having to dig for them and understand complex underlying principles is very alluring, so I don’t know if I actually got through to him or not.
The hypesters and grifters do not prevent AI from being used for truly valuable things even now.
I mean, yeah, except that the unnecessary applications are all the corporations are paying anyone to do these days. When the hype flies around like this, the C-suite starts trying to micromanage the product team’s roadmap. Once it dies down, they let us get back to work.
I once had ideas about building a machine learning program to assist workflows in Emergency Departments, and its’ training data would be entirely generated by the specific ER it’s deployed in. Because of differences in populations, the data is not always readily transferable between departments.
kbin.life
Hot