Sxswmichigan

Perhaps, I was thinking about it in terms of furniture the other day. Like most people just go for their factory made, flatpack, cheap IKEA or IKEA-like furniture. But at the same time there is a whole industry of craftspeople out there making beautiful furniture by hand. Some people go out of their way to get something carefully crafted just for them, or make something themselves because it adds soul.

Nobody really knows what the future will be like, but I hope there will always be a space for things created with love and soul, no matter what.

For the downvoters: This kind of AI is nothing like generative AI / LLMs. This is the kind of AI that’s actually been used for decades and has proven very good at handling large amounts of data. Machine learning excels at ingesting huge amounts of data and doing stuff like pattern analysis and predictions. The advancements in hardware have meant larger models, that can handle more data with more precision and weather prediction is one of the places where these advancements have shown good results.

So don’t just downvote because AI bad. I fucking hate genAI and what the handful of AI companies are trying to push onto people. But machine learning in data analysis is actual science and a good thing.

Also: Weather systems are chaotic by nature and by that I mean chaotic like in Chaos theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory) often misunderstood and misquoted. But it means very small variations can have huge effects. That’s why the prediction van be 90% confident and still be absolutely wrong. That’s inherent in how these systems work and cannot be fixed. So better weather prediction does not mean perfect weather prediction.

Because he told the idiots he would make everything better. But in Trump language that means better for himself and his cronies, not the idiots that voted for him.

Does your bank not offer this as a basic service? I think most banks do.

You can assign incoming and outgoing transactions into folders and do stuff like assign repeating transactions automatically to a folder and set targets. So you can make a folder “Saving for a new car” and occasionally add some money to that. Or create a folder “Rent money” and make sure it’s topped off and rent payments always go out of that folder. You can setup so a part of your wage automatically gets assigned to that folder for example, so you can easily see how much you have left after assigning money to stuff like rent/mortgage and a food budget for example.

I thought all banks offered this, but it might be different in other countries, or perhaps a paid service?

But even if the bank doesn’t offer this, people used to do this in spreadsheet software or dedicated software for years. And even before that, a lot of people used to do this kind of stuff in a little book. In a lot of languages there is even a name for this called Haushaltsbuch in German and Kakeibo in English (from Japanese). I used to do it in Lotus 1-2-3 back in the 80s, later in the 90s I think I had Microsoft Money which worked pretty good, but a spreadsheet was more flexible.

So nobody is stopping you, you can just do this.

Yeah I can already see it, everything that is wrong, yeah its the Dems fault. We really really want to fix it, but those damned Dems are blocking everything.

I would not be surprised shit goes to absolute hell by the end of the year with the AI bubble popping and we get another terrible Republican president because of the timing with the election now.

Can’t even use sarcasm on the internet these days, thanks Obama!

Uhm akshually, that’s a ladybug or ladybird, not a love bug. A love bug is longer, black with an orange thorax. More importantly a ladybug is a kind of beetle where a lovebug is a fly.

Lovebugs get their name because they fuck all the time. While fucking, and after, the pair sticks together, even in flight, which has given them the nickname double-headed bug. So in a sense they spread love, a love for fucking.

Ladybugs on the other hand get their name from religion, where the lady referred to is the mother of Jesus, Mary. Their name in German is Marienkäfer, where Marien is from Maria/Mary and Käfer is beetle. In Dutch their name is Lieveheersbeestje, where Lieveheers refers to God and beestje means bug, the same is true in French where they are referred to as bêtes à bon Dieu where bêtes is beasts/bug and à bon Dieu refers to God. It’s interesting how their names are similar in these different languages, although the official name is some variation of Coccinellidae.

As stated they aren’t actually bugs, but beetles. But it probably still thinks you are smart and cool tho.

And I still wonder if there even is any demand at all. Sure it’s used a lot, but most of that is free or highly subsidized services. And from startups that throw money at the wall and have no chance at all of ever becoming profitable. But there is demand from enterprise tho! Is there? The era of tokenmaxxing is over and enterprise is cutting down on AI costs after seeing spending balloon and no real increase in profits or revenue or even productivity. Some people claim to be more productive, but it’s not by a wide margin and the ROI is hard to see.

All AI is used for is filling the internet with slop. If generating an image of AI lobster Jesus would actually cost what it should cost, I wonder if they would still be generated as much. So these AI companies see high usage, more than they can handle, and claim high demand. They buy all the hardware, hardware producing capacity and force the construction of all these datacenters. Often by bribing officials, speed building, cutting corners and not caring about anything sensible like the environment. Instead of also investing in renewable energy, they just plop down gas turbines, because it’s cheaper and faster. And for what? So we can generate more slop?

But no worries guys, we’ll ask Grok how to solve climate change, not a problem! A little more fucking up the environment now doesn’t matter, we’ll get our magical genie to create a magical solution to all our problems. Which is so fucking dumb, it’s doubtful anyone actually believes that.

We already know how to solve climate change, we just choose not to because it would mean giving up some luxuries.

People also seem to be under the impression that a steam engine is a simple machine, because it is old tech. But I like to watch people on YouTube who restore and repair old steam engines and those things are complicated AF. So much engineering goes into the design, materials and function. Sure the basic principle is you put in water and heat and use the steam to do work. But that’s so far from reality it’s like saying an internal combustion engine is adding ignition to fuel and using that to do work.

Yeah I think that’s accurate. I had a car crash late last year. I was driving home on a single lane road with a car in front of me. This road has some slight height changes, so people just driving slow down some and speed up. I however was on cruise control, so my speed was constant. This was annoying because as the person slowed down I’d get close and as they speeded up the gap would grow. So to prevent getting too close to them on the slowing down parts, I put some extra distance between us and them, which meant leaving a longer gap on the downhill parts. Chill driving for me, no tailgating idiot for them.

However the person behind me was not pleased with the gap I created. He began tailgating, swerving, blasting me point blank with highbeams. I touched my brake pedal a couple of times, enough to flash the brake lights, not enough to disable cruise control. But he didn’t back off. As I was close to the point where I would turn off the road, I ignored them. As we got to the offramp, he tried to overtake me, but he also had to make the offramp. He couldn’t so he braked hard and went over the hard shoulder behind me. Figuring that was the last of it, I slowed down because there was an intersection at the end I would need to yield at.

However this dude was in full rage mode, so he gunned the gas, overtook me on the right and just steered into me. I managed to stay on the road, but the whole right side of the car was destroyed. When we stopped on the shoulder and got out, he was calmed down again. He had his wife and little kid in the car. Everyone was shook, but only the cars were damaged luckily.

He had no idea why he did what he did. He was so angry because of the gap I created to the next car and didn’t know why he did what he did. I explained the gap I left went from the normal 2 seconds to maybe 6-8 seconds? So he tried to use his car as a weapon because he would get home 6 seconds later than otherwise. Now he got home an hour later, with a damaged car, angry wife and kid and probably much more expensive insurance going forward. That’s what road rage does to a person.

He turned out to be a good dude and we handled everything in terms of paperwork and even had contact a few days later to figure some stuff out and chatted for a while. The insurance handled everything, I didn’t need to pay anything and a few months later I had the whole right side of the car replaced. Good as new, including a new right front wheel. I didn’t trust that wheel so I couldn’t use the car for a while, but that’s fine, I don’t use it all that much and can always borrow cars or rides when needed.

I do think the American story of the Wright Brothers single handily pushing humanity into the era of flight while the whole world called them idiots and didn’t believe is kind of a stretch. There were at that time many people and teams working on the same general concept.

The idea of a flying wing was well understood, as people had been jumping from high places with them for a while. Some dude in Germany had a private hill constructed, just so he could play with his flying wings. The concept of propellers was also known. So people generally understood if one could build something light enough with enough power, powered flight would in principle be possible. The general public might have been skeptic, but all over the world there was money being invested and people working on it.

Doesn’t mean what the Wright Brothers did wasn’t brave and impressive, because it was. Building a rig with enough lift, while being light enough and sturdy enough not to fall apart. Building their own engine to shave down the weight. Figuring out some sort of control scheme and then trying it out without getting killed. One gust of wind and one of the brothers might have been dead, the project canceled. Some say Percy Pilcher could have flown before the Wright Brothers, but he died in a glider accident before his plane was ready to fly.

But in the end if those two could do it, others would be able as well. If they weren’t the first I would think others would have gotten there within the year. The technology was on the cusp of it being possible and as people had been trying for hundreds of years, it was bound to happen.

Thank you, fixed.

No not at all. That’s just a fantasy he likes to perpetuate. He was actually fired and kicked out of PayPal because the other dude hated his guts, when he was away on his honeymoon, but he still had shares so he still made a lot of money from it. That other dude was our other famous Nazi, none other than Peter Thiel.

Also the plastic was made from cancer. Like pure 100% distilled cancer in plastic form.

I second the Beyerdynamic. I have the DT 770 myself, bought them 15 years ago and still going strong. I’d expect these to be the last pair of headphones I’ll ever need. Mine are however fully closed, which can lead to hot ears. They are super comfy and I get cold ears quickly, so I prefer them. I also really like the sound isolation and the sound quality is absolutely perfect.

A friend of mine has the DT 990 which are open backed, so they don’t suffer as much from hot ears. However the sound quality can be a bit worse as they have less isolation. It’s a bit of a trade off, both have excellent sound and in a quiet room there is no difference. So it’s just preference really.

Lmao what even is this argument? We should let Russia invade other countries, abduct children, murder and rape the people and commit genocide, because they have nukes? We don’t care about what happens to the people in Ukraine, as long as we are cozy and safe far away from the front lines? And what if we’d let Putin steamroll Ukraine, where does it end? When he takes the Balkans? When he takes Poland?

Specifically to prevent an all out war all the countries have gone out of their way to prevent open warfare. We provide money, weapons, food and other aid to Ukraine. We provide specialists to assist them with management and infrastructure. But we don’t send in our troop, we don’t attack Russia or even help fight in Ukraine. Economic sanctions are applied and yes these sanctions hurt everyone, it’s a big pain in the ass. The idea is to provide a way of applying pressure without resorting to war. As long as they hurt Russia, it’s worth it.

Saying stuff like the sanctions are making Russia stronger is total nonsense, the sanctions are hurting them a lot. Russia was heavily reliant on selling their oil and gas, now that they can hardly do that anymore, their economy is in big trouble. And sure it strengthens the bond between Russia and China, but that’s not the boon for Russia some people make it out to be. China knows Russia is hard stuck and has been milking them hard, buying oil at a very low price and selling stuff for higher prices. And China also wants to keep the rest of their trading partners happy, so there are limits to what they will do.

If we stand together we can contain the fighting in Ukraine, where Russia was the agressor and prevent escalation both in size and scale. I doubt very much Russia will resort to nukes, as that will unleash the rest of the world against them. We might all lose, but they will lose themselves and it’s their choice to prevent that from happening. We will be able to beat back Russia and hopefully allow them to reform and come back into the fold.

Slava Ukraini!