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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • AI is and always has been a bullshit technology. Its no where near as capable as its proponents in tech industry have been claiming. Its all driven by greed to feed into a stock price frenzy but its the emperor’s new clothes. In the future it may be something useful but at present even the tools that exist are unreliable and broken.

    Self Drive Cars is different, very much a Tesla issue rather than generalised. Tesla has a first move advantage but then Elon Musk blew it by forcing his engineers to cut back on sensors and tech to save money because he knows best. Other self drive manufacturers are doing well and even have licenses to test their fully featured systems in multiple locations.

    AI is a generally crap technology (maybe in the future it will be something useful). Self Drive is a generally myself up technology, except at Tesla where they went for the crap unworkable version.


  • No one seems to have actually read the article, just the headline. This is the ultimate click bait title - kudos to the headline writer in 1939.

    The tl/dr: It’s saying Hitler’s authoritarian actions were galvanising other countries to step up and protect democracy after the failures after WW1.

    In the final paragraph:

    It is one of the most interesting phenomena of Hitler’s political activity that it has resulted in bringing about so soon such an overwhelming and unprecedented manifestation of defensive solidarity amongst the democratic peoples.

    And the final line of the article:

    It would be the height of paradox if Hitler, of all persons, were destined by his statesmanship finally “to make the world safe for Democracy.”

    The article is surprisingly prescient.


  • Well all we have in the article are claims from the perpetrators family and vague innuendo about what was on the victims phone.

    The only facts outlined in the article were that the victim was shot 7 times in his own home, and managed to call from help from the street before dying. The purpetrator was on the run for 2 weeks, and allegedly on drugs during that time.

    Its trash journalism and a shit article. The allegations may be substantiated or they may not, but at the moment the story as written is the family’s opinion spliced into a few details about the crime.


  • Batteries can be replaced. An EV that could run 1 million miles would still need maintenance - I think the point is that they could be designed to last.

    Planned obsolescence is so wide spread we don’t even notice it, but lots of products are designed to fail either through cheaper components or deliberately flawed design. That means we have to go and buy a replacement. It is also generally cheaper.

    So we either have cheap products that will break or seemingly expensive products but they last for a very long time. But in the long run the cheap products generally cost you more to buy than one expensive product.




  • It depends on use case. If you’re driving in a city or living in a small country or state, electric makes a lot of sense.

    Range anxiety only really kicks in if driving long distances. But 300 miles on a full charge is already common among electric cars. I’m in the UK - that’d easily covet the 200 mile journey from Manchester to London.

    I think the real anxiety around range is a lack of chargers either on the journey or at the destination. Without that infrastructure then it will put people off electric cars. But the infrastructure is getting better every day -at least in Europe anyway.


  • Doesn’t really matter if you see the survey or not - valve can validate their data other ways. They easily know how many clients connect from each OS and what proportions as that’s fundamental to the client itself. The survey fills in the rest of the data like which kernel, distros, and hardware.

    All this would do is maybe weight some of the answers on which flavour of Linux and which hardware is being used in the favour of proactive users. But really good survey data relies on being representative and that is bes achieved by large random samples rather than people saying “count me!”


  • Skyrim was fun which is why its endured. Starfield is unfortunately fundamentally a bit boring and feels dated - they didn’t learn from the RPGs that came after Skyrim and moved things forward (Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 spring to mind).

    I doubt it’ll be fixed. Its not like No Man’s Sky -the developers only game and their number one priority. I think well get the usual small DLCs and Bethesda moves on to its next big project.

    I hope they learn from Starfield and make the next elder scrolls something special.


  • Manifest V2 phase out is a big deal, as Google is pushing towards Manifest 3 only. Google’s version of Manifest 3 is hobbled by removing WebRequest blocking which breaks privacy and ad blocking tools - an obvious benefit to Google as an Ad and data harvesting company.

    Firefox is implementing Manifest 3 with WebRequest blocking, as well as supporting Google’s hobbled version declarativeNetRequest to allow compatibility with chrome extensions.


  • This is what makes the EU dysfunctional - there is not a way to bounce a member from the EU nor a way to override a member states veto. The state can even veto changes to try and override vetos.

    The EU continues to exist in a black hole between a super state and a club of nations. Until it resolves that long standing conflict small states like Hungary can hold the whole EU hostage to its demands.

    The problem is you’d have to override national sovereignty to get rid of Hungary and once you do that the EU suddenly looks much less democratic. The EU may be too big to force such a fundamental change through now.

    The solution to the current problem is obvious - European nations should bypass the EU to provide funds for Ukraine. But that is not palatable to the EU as it undermines the EU itself, making it irrelevant to an area it’s trying to take control of - security.



  • Most people who are using TRT don’t need to use it so be very dubious about what you’re reading on the Internet. Testosterone is unfortunately abused. People are taking testosterone as a performance enhancer and a quick fix to get what they want. Look up “anabolic steroid abuse” or misuse if you want to see the side effects and problems with inappropriate use. Example include aggressive behaviour, mood swings, paranoia, cardiovascular effects that can cause heart attacks or stroke, kidney problems, infertility and small testicles. This is when you use extra testosterone on top of normal levels of testosterone.

    Your case is very different and a lot of what you see online does not apply. In your case you have low testosterone - that is an actual medical condition and you’re being prescribed testosterone to get up to normal levels. Having low testosterone can delay puberty, lead to low muscle mass, lead to reduced growth of the penis and testes, and lead to low sex drive, low energy, and long term infertity, erectile dysfunction and even osteoporosis.

    If you’ve had a blood test showing you have low testosterone and are under a decent doctor who is prescribing this and monitoring it then you should follow their advice. You have a medical condition that should be treated for your benefit and quality of life. All the quackery from people who self medicate and abuse testosterone does not apply.


  • As a software developer you should have a bit of a head start - you can read the code - one of the big pluses of open source projects is it’s all there in the open. Even if not familiar with the specific language used you can see the source and get a rough idea of scope and complexity.

    And look at the Github details like the age, the frequency between releases, commits, forks. Malicious projects don’t stick around for long on a host site like that, and they don’t get 1000s of stars or lots of engagement from legitimate users. It’s very difficult to fake that.

    Look at the project website. Real projects have active forums, detailed wikis, and evidence of user engagement. You’ll see people recommending the project elsewhere on the net if you search, or writing independent tutorials on how to deploy or use it, or reviews on YouTube etc. Look for testimonials and user experiences.

    Also look at where the software is deployed and recommended. If it’s included in big name Linux distros repos thats a good sign.

    Look at all the things you’d be looking at for paid software to see it’s actually in use and not a scam.

    And try it out - it’s easy to set up a VM and deploy something in a sandbox safe environment and get a feeling if it does what it claims to do. Whether that be a cut down system with docker or an entire OS in the sandbox to stress test the software and out it through its paces.

    There are so many possible elements to doing “due diligence” to ensure it’s legitimate but also the right solution for your needs.



  • So is this adjusted for inflation? The word is not mentioned once in the article.

    Using inflation calculators I get the following (used https://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html and https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/; getting similar results)

    • 1990s - $124,800 ($298,200 today)
    • 2000s - $165,300 ($299,800 today)
    • 2010s - $219,000 ($313,600 today)
    • 2020s - $327,100 ($394,700 today)
    • Now - $420,800

    Looking at FRED economic data (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS), it looks like thats where they got their figures. As far as I can tell is it not inflation adjusted. They have picked the Q4 results for each year as base for the 1 Jan.

    When adjusted for inflation, the increase in value since the 1990s is much less AND the increase was biggest between 2010-2020.

    Also on their own figures in the article; between 2020 and now the median price is up 28% without inflation adjustment, and 7% with. Compared to 1990 the median price corrected for inflation is up 40%, but the biggest jump is 2010-2020; it began 2020 32% above the 1990 price.

    The point? House prices are up, but inflation has been uneven over that period, with a big spike recently - the dramatic figures in the article may not reflect the real story. According to the calculators from 2020 to 2024 the total inflation rate is 21.54%; equivalent to 4.7% a year. Inflation accounts for much more of the perceived price rise than the actual real value rise.

    The problem with inflation is people only think about today’s inflation rate. Current US inflation is 3.5% but that is on top of last years inflation, and the year before that etc. So dramatic articles like this are really of dubious value.

    EDIT: The article links to “analysis” by another website ResiClib. They do not seem to have looked at inflation at all either.


  • I think your library is a good example of what’s going on and the key is probably what you’re buying. You have lots of games but I bet many of those are smaller games from indie studios; even if you’re not playing those games the studios are benefiting from you low price impulse purchases.

    I’m guessing you’re not impulse buying £60 and £75 games from big studios and leaving them unplayed. And I doubt you’d even buy those games if they’re not scoring well; certainly not at full price anyway.

    That is the story of the games industry right now - smaller studios are doing well, some very well when they produce very good games, while the big Publishing houses are producing overpriced games, which are poorly quality controlled or even just fundamentally bad.

    Can you saturate a market when a £5 impulse buy on a discounted indie game or a discounted AAA game with good review scores from 3+ years ago is about the same as a coffee? Whose going to buy a £70 poorly reviewed new release when you could have bought 100 good games on discount. Even if you don’t play them all, it’s just too good a proposition.


  • Nope, a car company with no car design team won’t be making new models.

    Tesla shows what’s wrong with capitalism - companies bloat on speculation driven in this case by a show man. Tesla is a house of cards - it squandered it’s first-move advantage, the competition are now building better EVs, and it’s self-drive technology is a lemon because Elon decided to remove all the essential sensors in his solution to reduce cost.

    Meanwhile his competitors are getting licenses to self drive and Tesla have jackshit. Robo-taxis are coming but they won’t have the Tesla logo on them.


  • Tesla is a massively overvalued stock and has been for a long time. When they announced their recent dire sales, the share price actually rebounded because the clown Mush spouted his usual nonsense about the real value in the company - self drive and robo-taxis - but it’s been widely reported for some time that the companies tech is a dud because Musk decided to remove all the expensive components that actually make the technology work. They lost their first-move advantage; their competitors have caught up and surpassed them both on EVs and self-drive tech.

    The guy is a joke, the company is a joke.