megopie
@megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on what are your thoughts on Bidirectional brain-computer interfaces ? 2 weeks ago:
Exactly, we don’t know how the brain would adapt to having electric impulses wired right in to it, and it could adapt in some seriously negative ways.
- Comment on what are your thoughts on Bidirectional brain-computer interfaces ? 2 weeks ago:
I don’t think the understanding of the human brain is really good enough to engineer a properly functional one.
And I suspect that any companies touting they have such a device are ether overstating how effective what they have is, or outright lying about the capabilities.
If we did have enough understanding to engineer a device, I suspect it would be possible to fix such issues without grafting in electronics.
Anything beyond publicly funded research smells of grift to me.
- Comment on Things at Tesla are worse than they appear 2 weeks ago:
It’s a fundamental and inevitable outcome of how these businesses are structured and run. Were the decisions to chase larger more premium vehicles short sighted? absolutely. Was the pursuit of Financialization in car sales to make up for pricing out lower income buyers obviously a bad idea? Without a doubt. Could they have made any other decisions? Not without being replaced by shareholders.
The solution to this problem is not just to “kick the bums out”, these companies need to have their management and ownership restructured in a way that generates incentive structures to maintaining a stable long term market rather than quarterly revenue growth.
- Comment on Things at Tesla are worse than they appear 2 weeks ago:
The interesting thing is, Tesla is perhaps the most obvious and extreme example, but they’re not the only auto manufacturer this is happening to right now. Nissan is in a bit of a tail spin as well.
There are so many problems slamming in to the auto industry right now. Even beyond the tariff instability.
In the US in particular, As cars have gotten more reliable and longer lasting, the market for new “budget” cars has dried up. Car buyers who might have once bought budget are now buying used cars that probably have a good many years left. The sales of new cars have been declining since 2016 but new car price have been skyrocketing, keeping up revenue growth for automakers.
This seemed ideal for automakers as it meant they could drop the lean margins of cheap cars and focus on higher margin markets, which looked much better to shareholders. Those companies that focused on this budget market have suffered, the best example being Nissan. The ideal for automakers is that people will buy “up” the value chain over time, buying higher end or “less used” vehicles when they trade in their old vehicle, going from a twice used, to a once used and eventually to a new car.
This kind of came to a head during the pandemic. Not only was the supply of lower end used vehicles dwindling as less and less entered the market due to less being made a few years back, there was also a shortage of new cars due to supply chain break downs and an increase in demand. Many people were taking out insane financing on massively over priced cars, both new and used. Now a lot of people are underwater on those auto loans from the pandemic because the trade-in/sales price is less way than what they have left on the loan. Many are also defaulting on those insane pandemic auto loans and their repossessed cars are ending up back on the market, increasing supply in the used market.
Many who are underwater on their auto loans but can still make payments can’t afford to make even larger payments, so rolling over the principle from the last loan into a new loan on another car is impractical. So they aren’t buying, let alone moving up the market to buy new or higher end. The demand being suppressed in the used market and the supply being bolstered by repos means used prices are massively depressed. This depressed used market carries over to the new market in turn, as most people buying new probably couldn’t afford to do so without trading in their old car, so a depressed used market hurts their purchasing power. Why would someone buy a new car when the only new one the could afford is probably worse than the existing car.
Tesla is getting a lot of focus because of the political entanglement of their high profile CEO, but the whole industry is under strain. Nissan is frantically looking for buyers to help them out of the debt hole they’re in, and groups like Stellantis (owners of Chrysler, Fiat, Jeep, Ram and Dodge) are desperately chasing new revenue streams as absurd as ads in the central console.
- Comment on Paradox Interactive announce Europa Universalis V 3 weeks ago:
it’ll definitely be less feature complete than eu4, but that’s probably a good thing given what a bloated mess of modifiers and tacked on systems Eu4 is by this point.
I read a few of the dev diaries, and it looks like they reworking the underlying mechanics quite a bit, which gives me hope.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
“Of course the Americans introduced the Colorado potato beetle! After all, where is Colorado? America! Check mate liberal”
For real though I hate those little fuckers. Every time I try and grow potatoes in a garden I get an infestation and it’s a pain to deal with in a small plot, can’t imagine how much of a nightmare they are on a proper field.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Propaganda, is a craft, it’s a whole world of tricks and manipulations. Not just censorship and positive stories about the leaders. It can get shockingly sophisticated. We usually only take note of the obvious and obtuse propaganda.
People aren’t dumb for believing it, it’s a whole field of figuring out how to convince people about things. Often if the propaganda doesn’t work on you, that’s because it’s not designed for you.
- Comment on Even PewDiePie thinks you should install Linux on your computer after saying he was "tortured by Windows" 4 weeks ago:
I mean, no? He lived in England throughout the controversy, he didn’t move to Japan till 2022, years after his controversy died down. He probably moved because he’s a fucking dork.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI | TechCrunch 4 weeks ago:
They’re lying about using AI to write software, they probably have required all their programmers to have an AI plugin installed, and are thus counting any code they make as “written by AI”, and then are counting any minor edit to existing code as the entire thing being “written by AI”.
The software is bad because it’s written to serve the infinite growth imperative. The reason they claim they’re writing code with AI is because that being true is the only hope that they have for achieving the infinite growth imperative. It’s a con, it’s a cult, they are extracting as much value as they can before everything falls apart.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI | TechCrunch 4 weeks ago:
The AI is not the reason their software is bad, but their software is bad for the same reason they’re claiming to use AI to write it.
- Comment on Even PewDiePie thinks you should install Linux on your computer after saying he was "tortured by Windows" 4 weeks ago:
I mean, he never really went anywhere, still gets like 2 to 6 million views a video, he just stoped doing news worthy edgelord shit for attention.
The stuff that was getting him in trouble was stuff like paying some kids on fiver to hold up an antisemitic sign, used some Nazi imagery in videos, shouted the N word on stream, and a bunch of other things. This was all between 2017 and 2019 and while he hasn’t made amends, he also hasn’t kept doing it.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI | TechCrunch 4 weeks ago:
I could see stuff getting small changes and them claiming that the entirety of the new version is “written by AI”.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI | TechCrunch 4 weeks ago:
I’d guess a lot of the people writing the code don’t even have it turned on, it’s just installed because management said it had to be, because management wants to be able to tell investors they’re “innovating work flows”.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI | TechCrunch 4 weeks ago:
I bet they’re counting code written while someone had an AI plugin installed as “written by AI” and I bet that accounts for almost all of that 30%. On top of that, I’m betting that they made it mandatory to have such a plug in, and the other 70% is just code written before they mandated this.
- Comment on Microsoft has created an AI-generated version of Quake 1 month ago:
But, we already have quake.
- Comment on Microsoft hypes another generative AI model but doesn't really explain how it'll help [game] developers 3 months ago:
It’s not for game developers, it’s to convince capital that they should keep funding Microsoft’s data center expansions. Keep funding the methane companies that provide the power for them.
- Comment on ugh i wish 5 months ago:
It’s so bizarre to see this discussion play out on the basis of “health”
Because there is a legitimate discussion to be had about the economics of how milk pasteurization requirements have affected local dairy farms. How the unsanitary conditions of industrial scale milk production have made it a necessity. How marketing and corporate interests have shifted consumption patterns.
And yet these fucking dipshits have turned this in to “pasteurized milk personally harms you!” In grifter circles.
How screwed are we that we can’t talk about the complexities of how corporate farming practices have effected our food supplies with out couching it in terms of “health food”.
I cannot express how much I hate the term “health food”. There is no such fucking thing as a “health food”.
It makes me want to rip my hair out when these topics come up.