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BlameThePeacock

@BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca

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BlameThePeacock ,

Iran's government is the western definition of evil.

Celebrating deaths of dictators and war criminals is not a new phenomenon.

BlameThePeacock ,

It literally says you'll be notified, and can opt out.

BlameThePeacock ,

A lot of people misunderstand economic systems by anthropomorphizing (it means to give them human characteristics) them, giving them the illusion of thought or feeling.

Capitalism doesn't care at all about humans, it's not human, it doesn't think, it doesn't feel. It has no concept of right or wrong.

Capitalism says "what is most profitable", do that. If killing someone to make money is the most profitable, it's supposed to go ahead and do it, and it absolutely DOES already do this on a daily basis.

Now clearly, that's going to give us some really fucking bad outcomes from a human perspective. So government regulation is how we attempt to prevent corporations from doing these bad things.

If we tell a company: "if you kill people it will cost $X" and $X would reduce their profit below "most profitable" they will stop doing it.

If we want to fix the bad stuff corporations are doing, simply put a larger cost on those things. It's that simple. Pollution, Safety, Health, whatever... price the negative externalities (economic speak for bad things humans don't want) properly and the market will sort itself out.

BlameThePeacock ,

Yea, was more of a general take. Thanks.

BlameThePeacock ,

Unsarcastically, yes.

Capitalism can be great, if given the correct regulations to improve quality of life for everyone.

I will say however, that not all industries should be handled by capitalism, there are a few big ones where market competition simply doesn't work due to inherent physical flaws (like for example needing to run five sets of water pipes to your house if you wanted to have choice among water providers)

BlameThePeacock ,

I don't disagree.

BlameThePeacock ,

Some idiot said it was "almost required"

And a bunch of people piled on him for being ridiculous.

BlameThePeacock ,

What a first world take on this, it's not a requirement at all. Parent your fucking children. My kids watch D+ maybe once or twice a month, my wife and I honestly watch it more frequently than they do because they have shows we like. We could drop it tomorrow if our budget needed to be trimmed.

BlameThePeacock ,

Your comment makes it sound like you can't give it up because your kids use it too much. I didn't validate anything.

BlameThePeacock ,

I use it all the time to write Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerApps formulas. I use it to draft and re-write e-mails. I use it to come up with ideas and brainstorm.

BlameThePeacock ,

I just use Chat-GPT, I also have the capability to write my own formulas, but especially for more complex or repetitive formulas it's faster.

Here's one for PowerApps I asked it to extend

Patch(Timesheets, LookUp(Timesheeets, ID=SharePointIntegration.SelectedListItemID), {DataString:Concatenate(TextInput1.Text, ";",TextInput2.Text, ";", TextInput3.Text, ";", TextInput1_1.Text, ";",TextInput2_1.Text, ";", TextInput3_1.Text, ";", TextInput1_2.Text, ";",TextInput2_2.Text, ";", TextInput3_2.Text, ";", TextInput1_3.Text, ";",TextInput2_3.Text, ";", TextInput3_3.Text, ";", TextInput1_4.Text, ";",TextInput2_4.Text, ";", TextInput3_4.Text, ";", TextInput1_5.Text, ";",TextInput2_5.Text, ";", TextInput3_5.Text, ";", TextInput1_6.Text, ";",TextInput2_6.Text, ";", TextInput3_6.Text, ";")});
Refresh('Timesheets');

I just gave it the first bit and two text input fields initially and then asked it to add the remainder for me instead of hitting copy paste and changing the numbers a dozen times.

Probably saved me 5 minutes, but I do this kind of thing fairly regularly so it's probably saving me a half-hour to an hour per week on formulas alone.

BlameThePeacock ,

Start your own community to replace the one you don't like the mods of, keep the content fresh to attract people to yours instead.

BlameThePeacock ,

Boston Dynamics' videos seem to make us disbelieve a lot, but so far it's all been real.

BlameThePeacock ,

Or it's just to show off the joint rotational abilities the thing is capable of compared to the hydraulic limitations that were part of Atlas.

Or both...

BlameThePeacock ,

In the United States, parody is protected by the First Amendment as a form of expression.

BlameThePeacock ,

That's a very limited scope ruling.

BlameThePeacock ,

The word you're looking for is adoption, not adaptation.

BlameThePeacock ,

And some of us live in Jurisdictions with 90%+ renewable electricity. My EV emissions are practically non-existent.

BlameThePeacock ,

They're really the only option in rural areas like where I live at this point. I'd like to see more busses (we have hourly service along a nearby main road to only a single destination) but until we make them self driving and electric to reduce operating costs, there's simply no way the district could afford to run them frequently enough to be a viable alternative to cars.

I did use busses extensively while I lived in the city though. I wish they were cheaper (or free) though.

BlameThePeacock ,

See, the problem with that math, is that it ignores the fact that I would own a car regardless. A gas vehicle would have similar (yes EVs have slightly higher manufacturing emissions) base emissions, in addition to the tailpipe. They cancel out when you compare car to car. My emissions, compared to driving a gas model, are non-existent, which I guess is a clarification that you need.

Unfortunately for my total emissions, I live in a rural area, there isn't even a bus that would get my kids to hockey practice, let alone games in a 2 hour driving radius.

BlameThePeacock ,

I will literally build my own printer before ever subscribing to this bullshit.

Go fuck yourself hp, you are not as important as you think you are.

2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mobile data made some sense as it represents generational leaps in the technology itself but then Xfinity wants to advertise "10g" internet...

Comcast says it represents a 10 Gigabit cable internet network they are building (it doesn’t exist) so they are basically changing the meaning of the g from generation to gig to act like 10g is 5 generations better (or twice as fast)…or that they have a 10 gigabit network. Neither is accurate. It’s still just cable...

BlameThePeacock ,

Screen manufacturers just did a similar thing with the jump from 1080p to 4k

The 1080 part of the original number referred to the number of pixels from top to bottom, 4k refers to left to right. 4k is actually only 2160 from top to bottom though (at the same aspect ratio).

So they quadrupled the number when it should have only doubled, and it was entirely a marketing thing.

BlameThePeacock ,

I love SharePoint :)

Keep it simple and it's a wonderful platform. Too many people overcomplicate things and cause themselves their own headaches.

BlameThePeacock ,

I make a ton of money using SharePoint, why would I not love it?

BlameThePeacock ,

I think a lot of that is a lack of knowledge around it's capabilities, it's not as flexible as other systems, but at the same time it's absolutely amazing at doing certain things really fast and easily. I have thousands of people using systems I've built in SharePoint and more than half of them don't even know it's SharePoint. They just pop in, use it, and get out.

BlameThePeacock ,

It's frequently the best tool for the job BECAUSE they already have it. If you need another tool, with another login, with more licensing costs, and more training time, and more support, it's often a worse option even if it has more features.

If they're trying to spin up an intranet and share some files within the organization, it's absolutely amazing. If they want a simple database containing active work items for a small team to process, it can do that too. If they want a central place to see who's currently on vacation... SharePoint's got you covered.

If you're trying to use it as a ERP system, it ain't going to work. If they want a full fledged CRM, also a bad idea.

SharePoint can meet at least 80% of the requirements for most office business processes involving files, pages, or single database tables, and it can do it for 20% of the cost/effort of dedicated software. If you want all the bells and whistles, that ain't going to cut it though.

BlameThePeacock ,

Except it isn't a piece of shit. It does what it says it does on the box. The fact that people expect it to do far more than that is their fault, not the fault of the product.

ajsadauskas , to Technology
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Dude, where's my self-driving car?

A good look at The Verge about the history of false claims made by the Silicon Valley hype machine around self-driving cars:

"In 2015, the then-lead of Google’s self-driving car project Chris Urmson said one of his goals in developing a fully driverless vehicle was to make sure that his 11-year-old son would never need a driver’s license.

"The subtext was that in five years, when Urmson’s son turned 16, self-driving cars would be so ubiquitous, and the technology would be so superior to human driving, that his teenage son would have no need nor desire to learn to drive himself.

"Well, it’s 2024, and Urmson’s son is now 20 years old. Any bets on whether he got that driver’s license?"

https://www.theverge.com/24065447/self-driving-car-autonomous-tesla-gm-baidu

@technology

BlameThePeacock ,

There are autonomous cars on the road right now driving people around without anyone in the front seat. The article even admits this.

This entire article is just complaining that it's happening slower than predicted as companies refine the technology, like that's somehow a bad thing.

It's still happening.

BlameThePeacock ,

During testing, sure... That's not going to be the long term value.

BlameThePeacock ,

It isn't though, nowhere is it asking when, it's just complaining it isn't here yet.

BlameThePeacock ,

You're going to want a robotaxi when you get older and lose your license.

These technologies will make aging gracefully much easier.

Also benefits for people with disabilities and cost of living (reduced shipping/transportation costs)

But fuck progress, am I right?

BlameThePeacock ,

Because normal taxis are extremely expensive, and provide poor coverage in many areas. It would cost me over $30 to take a taxi to the nearest grocery store and back. It would cost me over $80 return from my house to the middle of the nearest town large enough to have a Walmart. The taxis also only operate during daytime hours in my area.

BlameThePeacock ,

You think humans driving cars is somehow valuable to society?

BlameThePeacock ,

Well then ban them from owning houses, not cars.

BlameThePeacock ,

Because they don't require a human worker, which by far is the most expensive and challenging part of running a taxi service. The operating cost per hour is super low.

Robotaxis only need downtime for charging and regular maintenance, probably only 2-3 hours per day in total.

BlameThePeacock ,

What you're suggesting in the first paragraph is price fixing, and because there are multiple companies it would require collusion to pull off. Not saying it doesn't happen, but generally speaking in capitalism competition will push prices down. That's why buying a TV is so cheap, and why you can get bananas for almost nothing still. Most products prices are pushed down by competition from multiple companies.

The robo-taxis themselves probably cost on the order of $100,000 at the moment, due to all the extra computers and sensors and stuff on top of a standard EV. Spread out over their expected lifetime of say 5 years at 20 hours per day, that's only $2.70 per hour.

They're electric, so there's that cost too, lets say they drive their maximum charge per day (400km) which is actually quite high for a taxi, that adds about $20 per day in electricity costs, or another $1 per hour.

Maintenance on electric cars is almost non-existent, you pretty much just need to rotate and replace the tires and change the cabin filter. This isn't insignificant, you'd change the tires every 100 days or so with that much driving, but you're talking about $5 per day, or $0.25 per hour. That's literally my entire warranty work for my EV. There simply aren't as many parts to wear or break as in a gas vehicle.

There will of course be other costs like regular cleaning, and fixing the upholstery from wear by patrons, I can't estimate that, but I suspect it's not a huge amount.
Plus insurance, also cheap per hour when you're operating that much.

So the total operating cost for a robotaxi per hour is around $4-5.

Even the cheapest taxi driver is going to be making what $15-20 per hour (with tips), in some cities it's double that.

So the cost to the company for running is going to be 75-80% less with a robotaxi fleet.

The price per hour for robotaxi's will also continue dropping, as EV battery costs come down and the self-driving technology matures they will be able to produce these at scale and go from a $100,000 current price to probably $50,000 over the next decade. The price of labour is going to keep going up though.

These big companies investing in self-driving systems are spending billions because they know how much money will be made on them. My wife and I pay about $300/month to have a second vehicle that we use only 5-6 times in that period. If I could have access to a $10 per trip robotaxi it would make far more sense to drop that second vehicle and use those services for the odd times I need it.

BlameThePeacock ,

There are three ridesharing companies in the city I live near, plus regular taxis. Is there an example of a region that only has Uber that you can think of? Airbnb also has competition from VRBO and local hotels keeping nightly prices down.

The engineering to design the product is built into the cost of the vehicle, it gets amortized over a massive number of units over many years and therefore doesn't need to be included in back of the napkin calculations like this.

I'm pretty sure that the government in my country (Canada) would destroy a self-driving car monopoly before it could establish itself. The EU probably would too. They would likely mandate the company license it's tech to other manufactures at government set rates like they do currently with a few other industries like Cellphone networks. That being said, there are already more than a half-dozen big name companies working on it, I highly doubt only one will succeed.

I live in an area very poorly served by Taxis, since I'm about a half hour (on a highway) outside of the city. We only have 2 taxis (total vehicles, not companies) in the community that only operate during daytime hours and a ride into the city is about $50 one way. $300 doesn't go very far when a return trip is $100+ tip. The bus into town only runs twice in the morning and twice back out in the afternoon and if your destination isn't directly on the main route it can take 2+ hours to get to a specific location in the city.

Self-driving busses would be great too, they would increase access in many areas reducing the need for cars. They are the exact same tech though there's almost no difference between driving a car or a bus from a machine learning perspective. The decrease in costs would be less though, since busses are much more capital intensive compared to their labour cost. They may only save 30-40% of costs by eliminating the drivers. Busses also operate at much higher utilization rates already.

BlameThePeacock ,

The equipment required to "make" a motherboard is orders of magnitude more expensive than anything you could afford.

There's a reason why it's all custom designed and there's only a handful of board manufacturers in the entire world, most laptop companies don't even have their own fabrication for these pieces, they just do the design and final assembly.

BlameThePeacock ,

If you think hate speech is acceptable, you may want to stop and reassess your life. You dun fucked up.

Try building a life that doesn't revolve around worrying about other people do that doesn't affect you, it's far healthier.

BlameThePeacock ,

I didn't misunderstand your question, I ignored answering your question and instead gave advice to a person who would ask such a question.

You will die an unhappy person if you make hating other people a priority in your life.

BlameThePeacock ,

A) This thread is 8 months old, what the hell are you doing going through stuff this old. Get a life.

B) If you do it intentionally, knowing that they don't want it, you're a bad person. It's not hate speech though based on the legal description in Canada. Just like I can call you a thin-skinned small-dicked asshole and it's not hate speech.

BlameThePeacock ,

I'm a Canadian, so the only hate speech laws that I care about are the ones for my country.

No I do not think intentional misgendering should be considered hate speech (in the legal sense)

I would absolutely fire an employee of mine for doing it though, even if I found out they did it outside of a work context.

Just because something isn't illegal doesn't mean there shouldn't be consequences for it.

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