vvilld

@vvilld@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How can a military buy fighter jets that the seller has kill switches for?⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  If a country doesn’t produce their own fighter jets (which only ~20 countries do) but needs to buy some, they don’t have a lot of options. And while it’s private companies that manufacture and sell the jets, the government of the manufacturing country isn’t going to let a business sell weapons of war to just anyone. The US doesn’t want to sell jets that might later get used against the US. So any weapons sales have to be approved by the US government first. Just like they don’t want to sell to an enemy, they don’t want the weapons they agree to sell to get stolen by an enemy. So they include technology (kill switch) than can prevent that from becoming a problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do people give their unwaivering support to autocrats?⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  People don’t when the system works for them. The problem is when the normal system of government stops working and seems to be more of a hinderance than a benefit. Then people start looking for alternatives. Autocrats present an incredibly simple solution: give me all the power and I will solve all your problems.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is electricity not part of the classical alchemical elements? (Earth, Fire, Wind, Water)⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Mostly because the only real exposure to electricity the people who came up with the “classical” elements had was lightning. I’m sure they experienced static electricity from time to time, but they probably didn’t associate it with lightning.

  From their perspective, lightning is a very brief moment of extreme light, then maybe a fire if they can actually see the impact site. So it seems a lot more closely related to fire than we would suppose.

  maybe there is a scientific explanation of why it isn’t

  Nothing about the “classical elements” is rooted in what we would understand as science today. It was just people making guesses about how the world around them worked without the rigor of the scientific process. It was little more than wild speculation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did you get your job?⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  In my experience, a LOT of commercial construction companies prefer to hire inexperienced workers in order to teach workers “their way” of doing things. Residential tends to go for more experienced workers because they don’t have the time or money to train workers.

  If you go union, the union will set you up with apprenticeship school and help you find a company to work for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did you get your job?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Doss that mean you had no experience with the topic at the time of hiring?

  Yes

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did you get your job?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been with the same company for 17 years. I dropped out of college right before the Great Recession started. I had no prospects or ambition other than paying rent and keeping by stomach full. My dad sent me an ad from the classified section of the paper (actual physical print paper) for an electrician job.

  I was impressed initially that the company did not lay off a single worker through the entire Great Recession. In fact, they promised every employee your full 40 hours every week regardless if they had enough work for it. There were months on end I was just sitting in the company office waiting for them to get more work, but at least I was getting paid 8 hours each day. They also paid for me to go to school for my electrical license and offered pretty good insurance.

  I started as an entry level pre-apprentice, worked my way through the apprenticeship program and got my journeyman electrical license. I was a foreman for about 9 years before they promoted me into the office as a Project Manager.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did sites end up making money from API restrictions?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  At least with Reddit, banning 3rd party apps was just a byproduct. The overall point of paywalling their API was to prevent LLM AIs from training their models on Reddit user content without paying Reddit to do so.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are Autocracies more powerful than Democracies?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Obligatory correction that capitalism =/= free markets and free markets =/= capitalism. Markets existed long before capitalism and will exist long after it.

  Capitalism very specifically describes the economic relationships between owners of capital and workers. Without the exploitative relationship, it’s not capitalism.