SpaceCowboy
@SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
- Comment on Was the fall of Rome this stupid? 4 days ago:
Incitatus was more competent than most of Trump’s cabinet.
- Comment on It's true... 5 days ago:
Even better: I’m going to write my PhD thesis on this one!
- Comment on A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley 5 days ago:
You could do this (there are websites you can find easily) but Pelosi isn’t in power anymore and wouldn’t be in the loop on Trump’s corruption which is way more significant than just knowing which company the government is going to award a big procurement contract to or whatever.
The Trump corruption seems to have gone with crypto shenanigans and you can’t track them. We just know that someone made >$100M by doing crypto shorts exactly one minute before Trump posted about more insane tarrifs on China, but there’s no way to know who did that and we can’t track them. They’ll probably make similar amounts of money on the inevitable TACO.
- Comment on A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley 6 days ago:
Given what Peter Thiel’s been talking about lately, that’s not all that far fetched.
- Comment on A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley 6 days ago:
Yeah I remember a VC guy during the dot com boom was saying they were just about to invest in another start up (following the same plan they’d been doing for a few at that point) and they got a call form upstairs telling them to pull out. The next day the bubble burst.
These bubbles burst not based on random chance. The big guys know the business isn’t sustainable, but if they keep their money in it the shares maintain their value. Then one day they all pull out and pop! The bubble bursts. But they’ll make money on that too by shorting everything.
They make money when the stocks go up and they make money when the stocks go down. And they have enough money to make those stocks go up or down.
- Comment on ??? Profit!!! 1 week ago:
Instructions were unclear… now some guy from Spain (or maybe Egypt?) with a Scottish accent is hanging around telling me there can be only one.
- Comment on FlatEarthers will work around it 2 weeks ago:
Spotlight above the north pole that spins around and lights up different parts of the world at different times, obviously. Why doesn’t the Sun appear from a northern angle when it’s pointed at you in the daytime? Shut up round earth shill, nananana I can’t hear you!
- Comment on FlatEarthers will work around it 2 weeks ago:
I can find some flights from Australia to Columbia with a stopover in Hawaii, but it looks like a non-optimal route. But yeah there’s not much there between Australia and South America other than New Zealand… and Antarctica if you’re a round Earth shill ;)
Weird how there’s a direct flight between Melbourne and Santiago, Chile… two places that are in in the southern parts of their respective continents.
- Comment on Anon makes games 2 weeks ago:
If you put all of the US dollars in the world in a pile on the left and all of the gold in the world in a pile on the right, the pile on the left (the dollars) would be worth 10x more than the pile on the right.
There simply isn’t enough gold in the world for a gold standard to work without there being some kind of manipulation of either the value of the dollars or the value of the gold, or both. And if you’re manipulating the value of gold and/or the value of the dollar, what’s the point?
The gold standard stuff is just conspiracy bullshit meant to create discontent and distrust in institutions based on ignorance of what money is. You’re told money should have intrinsic value so you feel like your employer is rewarding you with something of value when you’re paid. The reality is money represents debt, you did work and the money represents what you’re owed by your employer, not a reward. A system based on borrowed money matches the reality of your employer is borrowing your time and skills with that debt being paid once you’ve spent the money. A more realistic system based on money being debt isn’t as prone to manipulation as one based on a belief that shiny bits of metal have magical properties that you’re rewarded with because you’ve a good loyal servant.
- Comment on Anon makes games 2 weeks ago:
That works until someone starts manipulating the market by redeeming their dollars for water, selling the water on the market, getting dollars again, redeeming for more water and continuously profiting from the endless cycle.
This is actually why the gold standard ended. Money and real world materials will fluctuate in value and are sold on different markets. Having money pegged to a real world material means someone can take advantage of a treasury by manipulating those markets. This was happening with the US dollar, then the Nixon shock happened and no more gold standard.
Why would people in the future use a currency system that’s similar to one that we used in the past and stopped using because it was fundamentally flawed and vulnerable to manipulation? I suppose if it’s set in a small community where there isn’t anyone that would work out how to manipulate the currency it might work. But if there were bad actors, you’d expect a water based currency system to be manipulated same as the gold based system was before the Nixon shock.
- Comment on Doug Bowser Retiring From Nintendo, Successor Announced 3 weeks ago:
If they want a CEO with some balls, they’d choose Lemmy.
- Comment on Costco Confirms It's Removed Xbox Consoles, Calling It A "Business Decision" 3 weeks ago:
I gotta make connections work with pretty much any retailer you can name. And yeah when the biggies say jump you gotta say how high.
That being said, Costco isn’t so bad. But then I don’t deal with the contract stuff. Amazon does indeed suck. Costco is a bit old school but I’d rather that than dealing with Amazon’s shitty AWS APIs.
- Comment on Jeebuz Rode A Velocirapture 3 weeks ago:
Dinosaurs and Unix systems coexisted, I saw it in a documentary.
- Comment on Jeebuz Rode A Velocirapture 3 weeks ago:
I went to Australia and went with a tour group and the bus stopped. All of the cars were stopped on the road for some reason. The tour guide said “nobody get out of the vehicle!” Then I saw a velociraptor with a couple of baby velociraptors just walking down the side of the road.
I think they call them cassowaries, but if you see how they move, those things are goddamn velociraptors.
- Comment on Can you think of any now? 3 weeks ago:
Vietnam had a regular army, it wasn’t entirely a guerrilla force.
Did they not teach that North Vietnam (and therefore the NVA) existed?
- Comment on Dinner is ready! 3 weeks ago:
And Australia’s got you covered for the occasional barbecue.
- Comment on Barely sustainable 4 weeks ago:
Going along with narratives pushed by people fighting for only their own self interest simply because it ticks the right boxes (contrarian, corporation bad, media bad) isn’t going to make the world a better place. Especially if you’re going on about things that makes it clear you’re out of touch with reality.
I drink coffee hotter than that every day. Why do you think McDonald’s was serving hot coffee instead of luke-warm coffee? Did you consider why the working class people they serve coffee to during the day might want it that way? Are you so out of touch you can’t understand why the working class would want coffee hotter than the pumpkin spice mocha frapa whatever that a cute barrista writes your name on your cup of at the fancy coffee shop you go to?
- Comment on to hell I say 4 weeks ago:
What region northern lights may I see it?
No.
- Comment on Barely sustainable 4 weeks ago:
Have fun defending personal injury lawyers so you never think about having a healthcare system would mean people wouldn’t have to sue to get their medical bills paid. Could you imagine a world where people wouldn’t need lawyers to sue to get medical bills paid?
- Comment on Barely sustainable 4 weeks ago:
Another reply linked to an article (by a personal injury lawfirm, naturally) and the temperature cited was 185F. I drink coffee that’s hotter than that every morning. Note that I take my coffee with lots of cream and sugar. It’s above 185F after adding cream and sugar. I drink it when it’s that temperature.
When people say “coffee is supposed to be hot” you may be assuming that it’s out of ignorance of something you saw on the internet. But it’s not exactly difficult to dip the meat thermometer by my stove into a cup of coffee. It’s possible you may be the one being ignorant of the facts because you’re trusting articles from biased sources without any verification… which is very easy for anyone to do. Yup, coffee is hot.
I interact with boiling water everyday. It’s dangerous and I know to be careful. Coffee, while not as hot as boiling water, is still dangerous enough to burn me (>185F) if I dump a full cup of it on my crotch. So I try not to do that. It’s actually not that hard, I do it every morning when half asleep.
- Comment on Barely sustainable 4 weeks ago:
My point is that humanity is fucked because people will believe anything they see on the internet without consideration of the source, basic science, or even common sense. People in the media who are responsible enough to verify claims and don’t report something that’s bullshit are considered to be hiding something while those presenting sensationalized unverified contrarian narratives are considered to be more trustworthy.
Because of the way social media is consumed, it’s too easy to distract from the real issues. Why did this woman have to sue McDonald’s to pay her medical bills? We commonly deal with boiling water when making food, why is it an accident that could occur to anyone results in financial ruin?
Next time you make Mac & Cheese you could have an accident and injure yourself similarly to this woman. What are you going to do, sue the Kraft corporation because the process to make Mac & Cheese is too dangerous? Or maybe there’s a better way to handle a situation where someone is injured in an accident than putting them in a situation where they either sue someone or go bankrupt? But I don’t think the personal injury law firms you’re getting your information from want you think that way.
- Comment on Barely sustainable 5 weeks ago:
On the front page of the site you linked to:
The Gravier House Press sponsors a collection of books and other writings, including a literary blog and a law blog (or “blawg”), to promote discussion around literature, the media, pop culture, the arts, the practice of law, and substantive legal developments.
So a site made by laywers is telling you it’s reasonable to sue for stupid reasons. Like I say, it’s a narrative promoted by lawyers.
The temperature cited on the site is 185 degrees. Seems like a lot, right? It’s no problem to put a thermometer into a cup of coffee. Unfortunately I can’t find the photos the last time I did this very difficult experiment to verify the claim of these lawyers. But science is about peer review, so do you want to measure the normal temperature of coffee or should I?
- Comment on Barely sustainable 5 weeks ago:
If I spill a pot of boiling water onto my crotch while making Mac & Cheese I’d suffer the same injuries it’s not the Kraft corporation’s fault. Making coffee involves boiling water and McDonald’s is not actually able to change chemistry and make water boil at a higher temperature in their restaurants.
You can easily just make a cup of instant coffee according to the directions and use a thermometer to verify the whether the temperatures cited in the lawsuit are “too hot”. They actually were lower than the temperature of coffee people commonly make at home. Sorry, you got played by personal injury lawfirms and internet meme culture.
- Comment on Barely sustainable 5 weeks ago:
allaboutlawyer.com doesn’t make you think this might be coming from personal injury lawfirms?
Now find me the temperatures cited in the lawsuit and I’ll find the photos I took when I actually measured the temperature of instant coffee when made according to the directions. Spoilers: the temperature even after adding cream and sugar is hotter than the temperature McDonald’s was serving.
- Comment on Barely sustainable 5 weeks ago:
It wasn’t when some lady sued McDonald’s because she injured herself spilling coffee on herself.
It wasn’t when they started printed “warning coffee is hot” on the cups.
I realized humanity is fucked when personal injury lawyers made the argument that “actually that lady was right to sue” go viral. Some mix of internet contrarianism, distrust of “mainstream media”, and general dislike of anything “boomers” have said made people so incredibly gullible that they’ll agree with anything that will make them feel smart for being dumb enough to believe coffee isn’t supposed to be hot.
- Comment on Misogyny or something... Idk 5 weeks ago:
It’s quantum incest… you just made it be incest by observing it.
- Comment on WATER! 1 month ago:
Yeah kinda. I ask it to do something simple like create a a typescript interface for some JSON and it just gives me what I want… most of the time.
Other times it will explain to me what JSON is, what Typescript is, what interfaces are and how they’re used, blah blah, and somewhere in there there’s the code I actually wanted. Once it helpfully commented the code… in Korean. Even when it works and comments things in English the comments can be kinda useless since it doesn’t actually know what I’m doing.
It’s trying to give you what you want but can sometimes get confused about what you’re asking for and give a bunch of stuff you didn’t actually want. So yeah, the comic is accurate… on occasion. But many times LLMs will give good results, and it’s getting better, so it’ll mostly work ok for simple requests. But yeah, sometimes it’ll give you a lot more stuff than what you wanted.
- Comment on WATER! 1 month ago:
Some days it will be but other days it won’t be. Most of the time it can save me typing because it’ll do what I want. Sometimes (for similar tasks in the same context) it’s just be completely off. Once it helpfully commented my code… in Korean.
LLMs are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.
- Comment on project paperclip be like 1 month ago:
Since the Nazis were fighting the Soviets in cold conditions, they did a lot of research on hypothermia. Their methodology involved putting Jews out in the cold and measuring how long it took for them to get hypothermia.
There was a lot of debate over whether the results of their research should be used or just be destroyed because using it might encourage future scientists to use immoral methods in their research. They ultimately decided to use that research.
But when they looked at the data, there was no real science happening. They were just freezing people to death out of cruelty with no benefit to science.
A lot of “Nazi science” is very overrated. Turns out cruel and hateful people don’t make for good scientists. Science is done by people and people and if those people ignore morality, they become very warped. “Science at all costs, ignore morality” doesn’t actually result in useful research. It may feel like ignoring ethics in favour of scientific progress is a strong pro-science stance, but it’s just another fascist power fantasy.
- Comment on project paperclip be like 1 month ago:
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
The Treaty of Versailles was really unfair to the German people but that didn’t justify anything the Nazis did. The terrible things the Nazis did also didn’t justify the terrible things the Soviets did.
