megopie

@megopie@beehaw.org

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megopie ,

“The Death of Stalin” is perhaps similar to what you’re thinking of, basically about the shenanigans with in the Kremlin fallowing Stalin’s death.

I mean, I guess the term might just be “historical comedy”

Electric Aviation is already better than you think - Volts with David Roberts ( www.volts.wtf )

Electric vehicles that can take off and land vertically, but then fly like a plane, are already being sold and used by hospitals and shipping companies. These vehicles have 5 batteries that give it a range of over 350 miles using current battery technology, though the batteries are intended to be swapped over the life of the...

megopie ,

Flying cars exist, you just need a pilot license to operate one, that is not something that will go away any time soon, and for good reason.

Everyone driving at 60MPH in 2D is dangerous enough as it is, 160MPH in 3D is way more dangerous. It’s not an issue of technology, it is an issue of the fundamental impracticality of the concept.

megopie ,

I see a lot of potential for electric aircraft for short haul flights between regional airports, or for distribution of cargo between hubs, but not in any sort of dispersed capacity. Hub to warehouse cargo? Sure! Delivery to doorsteps or air taxi? hell no.

Anything that isn’t flying along a designate air route between already establish large volume facilities is just fundamentally impractical due to the safety issues with aircraft. No amount of new tech will solve how fundamentally dangerous a 4 ton hunk of metal going at 160MPH going anywhere but a designated route away from populated areas is.

megopie ,

While riding in American trucks, flying planes with American fuel, marching in American boots, and eating American canned food.

"The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war." -Stalin

"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war" -Khrushchev

megopie ,

News outlets make a fraction of the money they did 3 decades ago, people having previously payed directly for a newspaper. Now they basically have to rely on web page ad revenue and subscriptions which most people won’t sign up for since they can get the news for free somewhere else.

So news outlets understaff to cut costs, leading to more mistakes and less due diligence. journalists get under paid, so independently wealthy people have an easier time taking the positions and pushing personal agendas. And news outlets need outside funding to stay afloat, making them beholden to the interests of those outside interests.

So yah, the quality is worse, objectivity is down, sensationalism is up to drive clicks, and they’re pushing agendas and world views way harder than they used to.

megopie ,

This is a common misconception based on an argument put forward my Milton Friedman. It’s based on legal cases where CEOs were taken to court for knowingly defrauding shareholders for their own personal gain (say, selling all of a companies assets of the company to a different company the ceo owns privately for a single dollar).

Friedman argued that these cases set precedent that meant all CEO were legally obligated to maximize shareholder value and could be held legally accountable for not doing so. Friedman was wrong about this, like many other things he said, as he was not a lawyer, nor a particularly good economist. No CEO has even been successfully sued for “failing to maximize shareholder value” despite some people taking Friedman’s work to heart and trying to do so.

megopie , (edited )

He was sued for miss use of company profits, not for failing to maximize profits.

He took profits and was reinvesting in new plants and cutting car prices, while also ending dividend payments to do so. That was the crux of the case, ending dividend payments despite having money to continue paying them. This case is routinely held up as an example of shareholder primacy but has been dismissed as an example of such by most modern thinkers In the field, in large part because the court also ruled that he had final say on how to proceed with company operation. Increasing worker pay was not the issue, ending dividends to make capital investment was.

Edit: also, I should clarify, he was the majority share holder, and the minority shareholders could thus not replace him with someone willing to pay dividends. He was not being sued for failing to seek profits, he was being sued for holding those profits hostage from other shareholders.

megopie ,

This is definitely realistic and not an over valuation based on AI-hype investor brain rot. Like, they’re a fucking graphics card company. Like, sure graphics cards can do some cool linear algebra, and linear algebra can do some cool things… but I’m sorry, they’re not going to be earning as much as Apple or
Microsoft, companies that sell the whole rest of the computer to people and/or the plurality of software that runs on it.

megopie ,

It’s also a chromium based browser so good chance it will loose any ad blocking ability if google decides to play hardball.

megopie ,

Reminder than most other browsers are based on chromium, and Google can probably break ad blockers on them if they want to.

megopie ,

Worth adding that “unemployment” in this context just means people who are claiming unemployment benefits, a things that runs out, and when they run out, they no longer are counted by it.

Also difficult to claim unemployment if you lose a gig economy job. So many people who lost their “job” doing something like uber eats are not represented.

A better metric is workforce participation rate which is at an all time low. There are a lot of factors to that, including a higher rate of retirement, but that alone does not account for the record low number.

megopie ,

When metrics become targets they cease to be useful metrics.

megopie ,

Might be that information about when you do and don’t use the output is helpful for training. Like, if you use the output, good sign the output is good.

megopie ,

See, it isn’t new and it isn’t AI, but it’s the same line of development as modern LLMs. They’ve just rebranded existing projects and lines of development as “AI technology” to be marketable.

megopie ,

Normally I’m not a big fan of protectionist tariffs since they often are just a way to allow uncompetitive domestic manufacture to stay afloat rather than adjusting to the market, it’s a different story when one state begins to intentionally price dump on the global market to push other countries manufacturers out of business.

A lot people are up in arms because they think cheap battery electric vehicles will help assist in the energy transition, and thus see this as a step back, but I’m a lot less bullish on BEVs than others are. I think they have a place but they’re not a panacea to decarbonization of transport, and often discussion of them seems to bury discussion of other arguably more important elements of transport decarbonization, such as rail transit or trams which we are way further behind on getting momentum behind than electric cars.

megopie ,

some are talking about this like it’s going to be the straw that breaks the camels back and suddenly everyone will flock to a Linux distro, but, realistically, most market share is based on what companies use for work stations, and companies ain’t gonna change unless it starts to seriously impact productivity or it cost them more.

For personal/freelance-work computers, some people will just suck it up because of inertia. Of those who just can’t stand it… most will probably buy a mac next time they get a computer. There will probably be an increase in Linux usership, but it’s probably gonna be a 5-1% change in market share, depending on how fucked 11 ends up being as time goes on.

Probably the biggest increase in market share will be from schools adopting chrome books or the like.

megopie ,

Now I’m wondering if the point of the ads is not to make revenue, but to get people used to paying a subscription fee for their OS by way of a “removing ads” fee, maybe they start bundling other things into the subscription version like game pass or office to sweeten the deal, then slowly transition to a purely subscription model.

megopie ,

The website formally known as twitter runs face first in to the results of chasing another tech hype train built on sound technology being applied way too broadly, and operating in unsustainable and dubiously legal ways.

megopie ,

so the NHS is really fucking bad about trans healthcare for a lot of reasons. The process is unusually bureaucratic even for the NHS and hyper gate kept, like they will just deny care based on single answers to weird questions. Without a really good doctor who is willing to go to bat for you and stick it out and who understands this very specific process in the NHS, you probably will never actually be able to get care.

Partially this is due to NHS being underfunded and partially because people in positions of power have worked to make trans healthcare as difficult as possible to get in England.

megopie ,

The most space efficient parking space is one outside the urban center at a bus stop or train station. Having parking inside urban areas just creates more traffic by making it possible for more personal cars to enter the city. The issue of parking and traffic in cities can only be solved by a paradigm shift away from trying to accommodate cars in dense urban environments.

megopie ,

the problem with flying cars is that most people can barely be trusted to operate a 60MPH vehicle in 2 dimensions, 100MPH vehicles in 3 dimensions is a recipe for a disaster. Pilots licenses are difficult to get for a very good reason.

We should be trying to get large personal vehicles out of cities and towns as much as practical, not introducing new types that are even more dangerous.

megopie ,

People who make the information fed in to the automatic plagiarism machine suing the automatic plagiarism machine company.

Wild to me how far this has gotten before some institutional actors realized that this “amazing new technology” is only financially viable if they don’t have to pay a fair price for the training data.

megopie ,

I mean, maybe not the mini disk specifically, but yah, a cartridge system for CDs would have been better.

Mini disks are super cool but they’re a lot more materially demanding than a CD, CDs being just aluminum and plastic, where as a minidisc has some truly wacky elements in it’s make up to get the magneto optical and curie point to work.

megopie ,

The mini disk was a truly weird system. Half way between a cassette and a CD. CD used a laser to to reflect off bumps(or dyes in some varieties) on the disk to get a signal, and a cassette would use a metal head to detect magnetization along the tape to get a signal.

The mini disk used a laser to read the magnetization around the disk. Essentially the magnetism would change the polarity of the light as it bounced off, and by measuring what the polarity of the reflected light is, the device got the signal.

Writing to the disk was also wild, as unlike the cassette, the magnetic field of the disk couldn’t just be changed by putting it next to a strong magnet like. Instead, it had to be heated up before the magnetism could be changed, this heating was done with the laser, and was very precise compared to a cassette’s method. This meaning way more information could be squeezed on to the disk than on a cassette.

megopie ,

That is also for NG plants is the bigger win TBH, coal is such a minor part of power generation in the US these days. Methane powered NG plants also have a worse heating effect as, although it produces less CO2 per BTU, it also has between 5-12% leak rate with in the supply chain, depending on who you ask, and that methane has about 40 times the GHG power as co2.

megopie ,

Reddit has had an issue with being a platform of public manipulation for a while. This is not new, it’s just much more noticeable now, and thus a lot less effective.

Reddit was always full of reposts and content yoinked from other sites, it’s just that the content taken from other sites was curated. There was also a fair amount of original content mixed in. The people who bothered to do the free labor of curating content from other sites or creating original content, have largely left or retreated to smaller subreddits.

Where as before the influence and marketing campaigns were mixed in with genuine/well curated content, now they are 90% of what is left. Even their content is worse than it used to be since it’s largely just LLM generated slop now.

megopie ,

The fact that he is so vulnerable to the furthest off the rails of his party makes him useful. That they’re keeping him in the position means they can get him to support legislation they want.

To just toss him aside after one vote would mean no further leaders would be willing to rely on them and go against the most absurd.

Think of it like a new coalition in government.

The race to decarbonise the world’s economy risks repeating the mistakes of the colonial era by building industries on forced and child labour, rights advocate warns ( www.smh.com.au )

Almost 90 per cent of the global supply for polysilicon, a common raw material in electronic devices and solar panels, comes from China, and about half of that comes from Xinjiang, the north-western province that is home to the Uyghurs, says Grace Forrest, founder of Walk Free, a charity dedicating to fight forced labour....

megopie ,

It’s wild because we don’t need to. We can use extant technologies with established supply chains, it just requires us to move past minor hang ups.

Battery electric cars/trains/buses are unnecessary. Trains and busses can use overhead/3rd rail electrification, most personal trips can be done safely and easily using an E-bike (much smaller batteries that can be produced en mass with existing supply chains) and cars should be reduced in usage outside of particularly rural areas where they truly are a necessity (which is a tiny portion of the overall population).

For the power grid… WE HAVE NUCLEAR POWER! IT IS SAFER, CHEAPER, AND LESS POLLUTING THAN LITERALLY ANY OTHER OPTION! The only thing holding it back is massive amounts of red tape put in place due to fear mongering funded by the gas and coal industries.

megopie ,

It is cheaper when you’re just talking about the actual construction, operation, and externalized elements of the fuel cycle. The reason they are so expensive is the massive difficulties and delays that come from getting the projects approved and the constant legal challenges to shut down construction once approved. If construction is delayed by an injunction, you still have to pay all the specialist until construction starts again.

Solar is only particularly cheap if the power goes directly in to the grid and doesn’t need to stored. Including the cost of grid scale storage bloats the price to be uncompetitive with natural gas.

megopie , (edited )

This is a serious issue with the Democratic Party right now, they’re relying on metrics and measurements that do not properly reflect the realities of the average voter. It goes beyond just misreading economic numbers, they are struggling to even understand what voters will respond positively to in general.

Many of the questions they ask in polls are somewhat obtuse and don’t touch on what voters think the issue is. They ask “how important is X to you” but be it, immigration, environment, healthcare, or guns. All that question does is tell the party how much to talk about certain issues, not how the voters want them to be addressed or treated.

Decision makers with in the party apparatus have a strategy of working with in narratives that are accepted by the voters they’re trying to court. Narratives crafted and popularized by traditional media/news/journalistic sources. Ideally these narratives would be crafted to best reflect reality, a difficult task that requires a lot of talent and large dedicated staffs. Right now though narratives are being crafted by under staffed, underfunded teams, at the behest of powerful moneyed interests who are keeping news sources afloat; revenues from digital distribution having failed to match that of old print and cable distribution. These same interests provide the bulk of funding for political campaigns.

So narratives are crafted that are divorced from reality the public is experiencing, in a shallow effort to control public opinion, making the public increasingly distrustful over time of these traditional news sources. The party relies on these narratives to communicate with voters. They also takes ques on what policy to support based on how the voters identify with the narratives and what the campaign donors want. But increasingly voters do not identify with the narratives at all, so the party is left speaking past voters trying to speak to narratives that voters ether haven’t seen or are baffled by.

megopie ,

There are many different metrics that can be used, in politics and campaigns we’ve focused on one set for a while now because it generally gave us an accurate idea of how people were going to feel. If it no longer accurately predicts that, then we need a new set for political discussions.

This is not a case of online spaces filtering experience, nation wide polls and indicators suggest that people are generally unhappy with the economy. To turn around and tell people their wrong for not liking the state of the economy because one set of metrics looks good is tone def at best and political suicide at worst.

megopie ,

The consumer confidence index has been on a down ward trend over all since an initial jump with vaccine rollouts. If you pick small parts of the graph and focus on fluctuations that support your argument you can make it look good but if you map it all the way back to the end of lock down, the trend is clear.

There are also other metrics beyond the consumer confidence index, such as Gallup’s economic confidence index which shows the same over all downward trend.

This is just the reality the number show, people are not happy with the sate of the economy and they don’t expect it to get better. Telling people they should be happier because unemployment is low is an awful political strategy.

megopie ,

It’s worse now than ever though, many managers have been steeped in tech optimism their whole working careers. The failures of “revolutionary new systems” have been forgotten about while the success of other things are lauded.

They’ve been primed to jump on any new “innovation” and at the same time B2B marketing has started adopting some of the most manipulative practices that used to be only used on consumers. They’ve crafted a narrative that shapes discourse so the main objections that appear are irrelevant to the actual issues managers might run in to.

Stuff like “but what if it is TOO good?!” and “what if the wrong people get their hands on this AMAZINGLY POWERFUL new tech?!”

Instead of “but does this actually understand anything or is it just giving output that looks correct?” or “ Wait, so, how was this training data obtained? Will there be legal issues from deliverables made with this?”

The average manager has been primed by the zeitgeist to ask the sales rep the kinds of questions they want to answer.

megopie ,

Doing better than trump is a low damn bar.

megopie ,

I do not think any but a slim minority on here seriously believes that Trump is preferable, but being better than trump does not make one immune to criticism and doesn’t entitle Biden to enthusiastic support from people who didn’t want him as the candidate in the first place and only settled on him in the primaries as a compromise.

If a second trump term is as bad as we fear, then the democratic establishment should probably work harder to speak to the concerns of disaffected voters. A failure to make real commitments to pursue significant policy changes is tantamount to voting for trump at this point.

megopie ,

How much you want to bet that a lot of that money is going to end up being used to pay trumps legal fees, fines and settlements?

megopie ,

It’s probably not a data mining machine for china, they’ve done a fair bit to divest them selves from china at this point. If the CCP wanted to data mine Americans they can just buy that information from data brokers.

I suspect the main reason so many establishment politicians are terrified of it is because of how it suggest content.

Because there is very little direct user input on what it shows, It tends to spin people off in to communities and places people wouldn’t normally end up in. Trends there also tend to spread fast and unpredictably, most people won’t know about a trend until it shows up in their feed, making it difficult to monitor by a third party.

It can really throw a wrench in political messaging when you can’t be sure what narratives and ideas your constituents have been exposed to. These issues come from social media generally, but most big social media platforms are a lot less volatile in the trends, are easier to monitor, and are less likely to send people off in to spaces that they wouldn’t normally be exposed to.

megopie ,

Yah, this is very much politicians being terrified of how much TikTok undermines the narratives they want to play to.

megopie ,

I mean, this will probably kill the platform long term. Not the stock its self, but what’s going to happen when they need to start answering to an outside pool of share holders.

The website became popular because of its user curation and moderation. That meant it was showing people what they wanted to see and allowed them to self select into communities that facilitated that.

They’ll be forced to bring in smooth brained business types that will focus on putting ads and “native content” in people’s faces as much as possible. At the same time cracking down on “not advertiser friendly” content and mod teams that don’t play ball.

All of this has kind of happened already to some extent, but it’ll get a lot worse when shareholders demand they bring in consultants or new leadership who think they know better than the team that’s been struggling with this for over a decade. Even if the average user won’t understand what is wrong, they’ll spend less time there as it starts to fail to show them what they want. But hey, the share holders might make their money back before the platform dies.

megopie ,

See the consistent problem these kinds of groups have, is that there just aren’t enough people who agree with them and fit their preferences to do even a fraction of what they want.

They think they can just repress everyone who doesn’t agree with them, but repression is expensive and inefficient, and it takes more people to maintain that kind of governing system than a system where people just go along with it.

megopie ,

Accessing public domain content that’s not hosted digitally otherwise.

megopie ,

I mean, they didn’t need machine learning systems to do this. they’ve been paying people to take pictures with him for a while now, got plenty of mouth pieces they have on the payroll too. Just a bit cheaper now.

This election was going to be dirty with our without this nonsense. As far as ride or die trumpers are concerned, there are no rules this election. They’ve convinced them selves the last election was stolen, so, they have a moral blank check to do anything in their minds.

megopie ,

I really like tapes, if only because they’re a very versatile and accessible format. The tech behind them is also simple in a way I really like. I enjoy world building and because tapes and their readers are so relatively simple, they fit in well with worlds where there is technology but no huge supply chains and economies of scale to make more complex things practical.

I also like mini disks because they’re so interesting in how they work.

Not much of this is relevant to the music I suppose, but it’s why I have these things and music on them.

megopie ,

Daily reminder that the constitution does not explicitly give the Supreme Court the right of judicial review, they gave them selves the right to strike down laws as unconstitutional by “interpreting implied powers” from the constitution.

megopie ,

The case was about wether he could be removed from the ballot (having not actually been convicted for treason yet) but some of the judges used it as an opportunity to state that only congress could do that for federal elections. The case was pretty open and shut on the first part, not so much on the second.

megopie ,

Recommending that he be investigated for treason is not the same as him going to court and being convicted of it. That’s kind of the rub of the whole situation, removing a candidate from a ballot because they’ve been accused of treason is a really bad precedent to set.

megopie ,

Because Ukraine is generally a fairly popular foreign ally with little mainstream controversy around supporting them. So if you wanted to undermine support for them, easier to knee cap support for the bill from the other direction.

megopie ,

The framing is a poor one, it is built on a fundamental lie about how money works in the US government. It’s a very weak framing that only ever convinces people who already wanted to defund a foreign effort. More importantly, most of this bill isn’t tied to Israel, it’s tied to other efforts like Ukraine, so really what this is arguing for is to stop supporting Ukraine. Most of the funding for Israel comes through other channels.

So to support this framing is to just undermine support for Ukraine and do little to stop Israel. Support for Ukraine is non-negotiable.

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