During world war II, a Japanese general was once quoted as saying “you do not invade the mainland US. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass”.

Compare the cost of doing this, with the deterrent effect of your enemy’s knowing that basically the entire population can mobilize as a militia, it’s pretty extreme.

Go Poland!

Exactly. I would extend that and the article’s premise to say, tech isn’t innately good or bad, it is just a tool that can be applied in good or bad ways. For example at his cafe, a QR code ordering system could have been optional for those who prefer it, and could be easily implemented without collecting any personal data. And that could actually be a positive thing for those who want to reorder without getting up or who have social anxiety. But by forcing all customers into this confusing and privacy invading system, the tech becomes a bad thing.

The villain of that story is not tech. The villains are the online ordering company that decided to make a data grab, and the cafe owner who decided to buy tech so he wouldn’t have to pay servers.

That would require genuine intelligence. We only have artificial intelligence, both in the machines and the empty suits who market them.

For the last year or two AI has been the buzzword of the day. Anyone not investing in AI is considered dinosauric. Just like cloud was 5 to 10 years ago.

Only the cycle has happened a little more quickly this time. AI was supposed to produce immediate revolution, and we are seeing the immediate results are… Just okay.

Google spends billions building an AI that takes 10x more power per query than a standard search, only so it can tell people to superglue their pizza together and jump off the Golden Gate Bridge when they are depressed.

Copilot 365 costs about as much as an E3 license, so turning it on basically doubles your monthly spend with Microsoft. I don’t see it doubling anybody’s productivity.

AI is like cloud. There are some places where it makes sense, where it can be helpful, where it can save time or help do difficult jobs. That is not everywhere doing everything for everybody, and I think perhaps some of the world is starting to realize that.

I hate this. I think it should be illegal. Or make a building code that there has to be a real extractor hood above the stove in all cases.

I’ll bet they are great live. I actually have only heard one song of theirs, which I found by accident years ago when trying to find something else. Everlasting Light, played live. One of very few songs that completely makes it obvious how much mp3 compression sucks, and even if you download the FLAC (sadly not high res) you can still hear everything wrong with your speakers and if you listen to it on good headphones then you can hear the deficiencies of the mic they used to record it.

Truly a huge amount of audio information in that track. I love it!

His old electrician is correct. Paper towel wrapped around the wound, wrap it with one layer of duct tape or gaffers tape and you’re good to keep working. This is one of those ‘everybody who’s ever worked a trade knows it’ type things.

It’s part of a worrying trend which seems like Google is trying to hyperconsolidate Android. Apps can already check if a device is running genuine original firmware, which means a lot of banking apps don’t play well with third party firmware is like grapheneos. It should be none of the apps fucking business what OS I am running. But by giving developers the ability to check this stuff, they can wash their hands of it and complain they aren’t forcing anybody to run anything it’s those darn app developers.

And this is why people are pissed at Democrats.

Democrats are apparently annoyed that constituents are writing demanding they act like an opposition party, aka FUCKING EXERCISE THE FUCKING POWER YOU WERE VOTED IN TO WIELD. They act like they are powerless to stop Trump and they have press conferences talking about how it’s red alert scenario and then they GO ON TO VOTE FOR THE VERY THINGS THEY ARE SOUNDING THE ALARM ABOUT.

If this truly is a red alert situation as another Connecticut Congressperson called it, then stop voting for this shit! Throw a wrench into the works, refuse to confirm anybody, make use of the shitty procedural filibuster and grind things to a halt.

Because if you are voting in favor of any of this you don’t get to fucking complain.

How many times did he shoot himself?

I mean there is a pattern to these things.
If Putin doesn’t like you, you shoot yourself and then jump out of a building.
If the Clintons don’t like you, you shoot yourself twice in the back of the head before driving your car off a cliff.
If you have dirt on powerful people, you hang yourself in prison.

Ukraine has had a lot of success using remotely operated suicide drones. They are cheap, built mostly from off the shelf hobbyist grade components, but with a few inexpensive upgrades the signal goes for miles. Strap a grenade on the bottom or any kind of bomb with an impact fuse and you have an excellent remote control weapon.

So of course the Russians start deploying radio jammers to block the drone signals.

The solution to this is fiber optics. The drone carries a giant spool of hair thin fiber optic cable which sends control commands from the operator and video back from the drone. Because it’s a cable, it’s immune to jamming.

The cable is insanely thin, usually in the tens of microns thickness. So they don’t bother recovering the cable, drone flies out spooling out cable behind it, hits its target and blows up, operator just detaches that fiber and pulls out another drone with another spool of cable to start again. This leaves tons of little fibers laying around on the countryside because every drone leaves one in its path.

That’s the point of this video. Most of those fibers have a dead Russian soldier at the end of them.

It’s frustrating that so many people downvote this sort of thing rather than considering it. It’s like if you say anything at all other than TRUMP NAZI ELON NAZI REPUBLICAN NAZI ALL BAD you are obviously wrong and fuck you.

Trump may be an asshole. He may be a horrible president. But during the campaign he promised to hack and slash away at the federal government, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. It may be a bad idea, it may cause a ton of its own problems, but he is doing exactly what he promised his voters.

Democrats need to learn some hard truths from this. Specifically, that while life may be great up in the ivory tower, the people on the street are hurting. The people on the street are angry that their struggle has been ignored and marginalized for so long. And when people with two incomes are struggling to afford groceries, they will always vote for the guy who says ‘there’s a problem and I want to fix it’ over the person who says ‘everything’s peachy’.

That doesn’t make them racist or sexist or Nazi. It makes them desperate.

Not asking for instruction on the issue, only clarification on your assertion that I don’t understand.

For example, if you argued that video games cause violence, I could say ‘you obviously don’t understand the issue, specifically, the sort of attitude players take toward the game. Nobody plays like ‘yeah I wish I could do this IRL’, rather, it’s just a game and there’s friendly banter between both teams.’ I don’t have to write a page on video game culture or statistics to do that.

Saying ‘you don’t get it’ on a huge broad subject while offering zero detail on what specifically I don’t get or even a counterpoint is lazy debating. If you think I’m wrong, explain why I’m wrong. Otherwise you are just a low effort shitpost that contributes nothing to the discourse. Do better.

Your entire premise is that they are happy taking shit pay and no benefits. And that’s just not true. They’re forced to do that because they have no negotiating power when their employer can just have them deported.

We agree they have zero negotiating power when they’re under threat of deportation.
I don’t think they’re ‘happy with shit’ but I also don’t think they’re as likely to demand more as an American. And if they don’t speak the language, they’re less likely to GET more as they can’t negotiate on equal footing.

I expect the government to do its job. But as an example forget Latin America, let’s say a person comes to the US and they’re skilled but they only speak Tagalog. Do you think they can negotiate as effectively as a native speaker?

That practice was halted and now the vehicle video is under MUCH stricter control with an option to not share any of it at all.
Given the choice, I’d rather have some Tesla employee joking about what I park next to than Tesla Inc selling my driving data to insurance companies like most other automakers do…

That was from years ago.

Tesla used to sell cars rated by pack capacity. For example the ‘P85D’ was the performance model, 85 kWh pack, dual motor.
There was also a 40 kWh (cheaper) and 60 kWh version.
After a while they stopped building 40 kWh packs and just software-locked the 60 kWh pack to only have 40 kWh of usable capacity. I think for a while they offered an upgrade where you could pay to unlock the extra capacity.

I don’t think they’ve done that in some time. I know when I bought my car (model y long range) they didn’t even advertise the pack capacity nor was any upgrade offered. The only paywall thing I’ve seen with Tesla is FSD and they’re pretty transparent about that. I don’t think they’re awful for paywalling it, because if they build the car without the FSD hardware it won’t have other safety systems like lane departure notification.

I’ve done it. I think it might have opened the charge port or something. What do you think happens?

Something to consider…

Elon may be going down a conservative rabbit hole these days, but this is the sort of thing Tesla would never ever ever do. And things like using the telematic system to sell your location and speed to insurance companies. Never happened on a Tesla. You may not like the guy, but the cars are fucking solid.

This, exactly this. The fact that they would even consider this rules them out for me forever.

I have no problem with the migrant, and I’ve no intent to dismiss facts. I did NOT mean that as an ad hominem attack (attack the person rather than the idea). I only meant to point out that your ideas sound nice but run into trouble in the real world.
Expecting government to stand up for people who won’t stand up for themselves (because even marginalized they’re still light years better off and they don’t want to risk that) isn’t a solution, it doesn’t work.

At the end of the day it’s not a story of two groups, it’s a story of what we’re willing to tolerate. … the reality is a large minority will work in minimum wage their entire lives.

And that’s exactly my point. An awful lot more immigrants will tolerate working minimum wage their whole lives. That’s not a dig at the migrant- I have great respect for them. But there’s a culture thing at work. That’s not a dig at any of their culture either, it’s a recognition of the fact that there’s differences. And the simple fact that the migrant who comes here and can let his daughter walk to school without her getting raped on the way isn’t likely to rock the boat too hard. He won’t say ‘pay me $30/hr or I quit’ knowing that if he gets fired that could mean having to go back home where his daughter will get raped on the way to school. I don’t blame the migrant for that- if I was in that situation I’d feel the exact same way. I’d keep my head down and I’d work hard and I’d try to make sure my kid gets good grades so they can have a chance at better. I think most decent parents would.

Because there’s only 11 million undocumented immigrants in a country of about 200 million working adults. That fraction of the working age population isn’t depressing anything.

If it was spread out equally among all industries, it’d make zero difference. It’s not. For the most part, you don’t see undocumented migrants becoming doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, computer engineers, etc. The effect is concentrated in blue collar jobs.

As you say, it’s a story of what we’re each willing to tolerate. And if you have a nation where the laws of supply and demand govern prevailing wages and working conditions, a large group of people who will tolerate an awful lot DOES make an impact.

Where we agree- I 100% agree that we need labor regs to make things better for everybody. Companies should not be allowed to mistreat workers and that IS a legal problem not an immigration problem.
I also believe (and I suspect you would agree) that for someone who wants to become an American- not just come to the country and work, but adopt an American way of life and become a citizen- there should be a clear, obvious, accessible path to citizenship.

Those 11 million people, like I said above those are some of the hardest working mofos on American soil, citizen or not. My problem with them isn’t that they’re here, it’s that they’re not being paid more. If they competed in the labor market on an EQUAL footing, as CITIZENS who fully understand and will stand up for their rights, most of them could easily command a high hourly wage due to high work ethic. I would LOVE to make that happen. I’m open to any way to do it. But if you just give someone a green card or a citizenship and say ‘congrats you’re an American’, you aren’t changing the culture, the mindset, the understanding of their rights and determination to stand up for those rights, And thus nothing will change.

That’s why I say I want an accessible process for such a person to become an American. If they want to truly learn about the country, and that means learning about their rights, take a place on equal footing with other Americans, if they choose us and they’re willing to follow the laws and pay their taxes then I don’t believe it’s the American way to slam the door in their face.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” That’s carved in stone beneath the Statue of Liberty. Those words aren’t lost on me (although I suspect they are lost on a lot of modern day ‘patriots’).

But part of that means actually choosing to be American. I think learning English should be a big part of that-- not because I have a problem with ‘press one for English, para espanol marque dos’ on the phone menu. But because if you don’t speak the native language, then you can’t compete in any sort of negotiation on the same footing as an American native.

If you CAN do that (and for many, I’m not sure you can) the result is the immigrant now has the security of citizenship, knows that getting fired doesn’t mean his daughter gets raped, and hopefully you can instill in him the kind of attitude and culture to DEMAND better of his employer. As far as I’m concerned that’s just as effective as deporting him, because either way the underclass is removed from the labor pool. And a few million more Freedom-loving Americans won’t make much difference either way.
I just don’t know how to make that happen.

I’m open to any thoughts you may have.