I laughed because this was posted just the other day:

https://lemmy.world/post/20950697

The key phrase to remember here is: Price Discrimination.

Stores already possess the technology to track anyone’s shopping experience through loyalty cards. The “discounts” you get are really just a tax on everyone that doesn’t participate, and the benefits to the company for having your data are worth potentially losing business from un-tracked customers. That’s how valuable your data is.

So why aren’t we seeing per-customer targeting? This is not to suggest that businesses are benign here, but rather, just cautious about outright per-customer discounts and other price manipulation. Custom coupons are kinda/sorta a part of this. IMO, the door is still wide-open to find ways palatable to the customer (and courts) while dialing everyone in.

In that context, all cameras do is make the system practically impossible to dodge. Considering how much stores value that kind of information, it makes sense they’d invest to capture 100% of their retail activity.

For me, it’s all the suck brought on by a pathological fear (trauma) of authority figures abusing their power. In this case: TSA, and their ability to completely screw with your travel plans. To be clear, this is not rational and 100% nothing bad happens.

As true now as ever.

At the same time, this kind of confusion is essential to TST tactics. If everyone knew and understood that they are a morally upstanding institution, they’d lose a lot of their scare-tactic leverage when asking to join in on bringing “religion” into public institutions. Bad optics are the whole game here.

It’s one thing that these chucklefucks show up. Knuckle-draging jerks like this are always going be lurking somewhere, but what people in charge do about it is far more important, IMO. The lack of response from GOP leadership is the part that really gets me riled up; by saying and doing nothing they’re saying everything very loudly.

Meanwhile, we’ve had things like this where the (Texas GOP) party leadership was split on a vote to not associate with these assholes:

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/02/texas-gop-antisemitism-resolution/

What I dislike about this is that what was on the table were “holocaust deniers” and “Nazis.” So even with the most minimal definition of “people problematic to our brand” they couldn’t kick them out.

Too bad.

…

Hello there!

In the meantime, keep buying cybertrucks.

I agree with your professor. It’s one of these things that people have a hard time understanding. A lot of folks can easily imagine the end-state, but have no clue what has to be solved to arrive there. A lot of folks think that projects in electronics, software engineering, computing, etc. are just a linear march from beginning to end; failure is a human or resource problem. In reality, there are problems out there that get exponentially harder to pull off with linear inputs, which is much harder to imagine let alone a great way to scare off investors.

In this case, the framing of the problem is all wrong. We’re not trying to solve “a car that drives itself” (e.g. autopilot). Instead we are “simulating human sensory organs and cognition in order to pilot a vehicle without catastrophe or injury.” The latter is much harder to solve, but IMO, is a much more realistic portrayal of the job.

Story takes place in a whole-ass galaxy. Everyone winds up back on Tatooine for some stupid reason; the planet with barely one ecosystem, practically zero vegetation, no economy that matters, yet populated with two (?) cities. Other planets also have exactly one ecosystem, culture, and one optional urban center¹. There’s also only 12 or so planets that matter, yet half of everyone you meet are from all the other ones. You may not like what you see, but this is peak sci-fi writing performance, right here. /s

This story could take place in a diverse corner of a single Earth-like planet and it wouldn’t be all that different.

¹ - Meanwhile planet Coruscant is an urban center where the ecosystem can best be described as “traffic” and the culture is “city folk that inexplicably eat at 1950’s-style diners”.

For me it’s the damn scale under the bag, and how long the kiosk takes to register the weight of the last scanned item. Then the system “unlocks” and lets me scan another item. This system slows me down to the speed of the worst clerk in the store.

Maybe? I think that’s open to interpretation. IMO, only the devs at Bethesda can make that call.

Me? I’m not going to hold onto the opinion that it’s game-breaking so strongly. After all, if you’re having fun, what’s the problem?

Well, it’s a shitpost so: Hacks and exploits. But since it’s Skyrim, probably just exploits.

True, but it’s clearly no Powerthirst.

Oh, is that what this is? Here I was thinking they “shipped Amazon Prime” to people and thought “well that’s bad grammar but… what did they actually ship using Prime?”

And yeah, fuck that guy.

I never played this game; is it really so good that fans were clamoring for a re-release? What am I missing if anything?

Also, I may be misremembering when this was launched but isn’t it a bit early for a re-master on this one?

Not just porn, but classic art by a famous artist. Check out Hokusai’s “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife.”

I think this meme template is a bit like The Aristocrats; many tellings but it’s all the same joke. In this case, I think almost any back-and-forth text would work and would have it’s own “ew” factor, some worse than others.

A: I want to grow up to topple the proletariat!

B: Bro, we’re in a coconut.

Oh, it’s petty cash to be sure. If you have $100-ish bucks to throw around, you probably aren’t going to miss much by not doing this. Unless, of course, letting someone else take even one dollar from you in this way is against your religion or something (i.e. the principle of the thing). Conversely, if you need the handful of dollars this makes, you probably don’t have that kind of walking-around money in the first place.

Which season is this? Winter, Still Winter, or Road Construction?