UnderpantsWeevil
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
- Comment on Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket 30 minutes ago:
I suspect the AI is going to be more interested in your history with Delta (frequent flyer status) and the fanciness of your credit card than your zip code.
- Comment on Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket 1 hour ago:
the catch is that the vpn connects to the poorest areas of the country you live in
A common mistake.
You’re going to get a worse deal if the airline thinks you’re not going to be a repeat customer or part of a larger network of frequent fliers. The customers who get the best deals are the ones that airlines believe they will be able to collect money from routinely. If they have you pegged as someone who will only ever buy a ticket once or twice in their lives, they’re going to try and sell you the worst possible seat at the highest possible price.
- Comment on When everything is fake and we continue to believe it 1 hour ago:
Slight difference. When Trish Stratus Betrayed Chris Jericho, it didn’t cause me to lose health insurance.
- Comment on In the cave 7 hours ago:
“I warned you, bro! Didn’t I warn you? Your soul is bound within the confines of perceived reality, dude. The mind is a cage, my guy! You have to free yourselves from the cave and search for meaning beyond the simulacrum of the senses, man!”
- Comment on Steam is cracking down on porn games, to keep Payment Processors happy. 7 hours ago:
PayPal made Valve remove them
You can buy games outside of the Steam store.
- Comment on Steam is cracking down on porn games, to keep Payment Processors happy. 1 day ago:
not an argument for of against anything
Right. It’s a system of economic exchange, not a moral position. There are ways around this system, but they’re time consuming and annoying to accomplish. So the vendors tend to take the path of least resistance when setting their internal policies.
For some reason, people seem to confuse being naive and gullible with being moral and upstanding.
- Comment on Steam is cracking down on porn games, to keep Payment Processors happy. 1 day ago:
I mean, that’s exactly how third party payment systems have always worked. 🙄
I guess you can always try buying your porn game with Bitcoin or something.
- Comment on *Record scratch* freeze frame 1 day ago:
cut to small rodent slapping an alarm clock and burying itself in bedsheets
- Comment on Deserved? Poll inside 1 day ago:
This is about this
You don’t need photoshop to make a shitpost on 4chan.
- Comment on Deserved? Poll inside 2 days ago:
Fuck it, you could be a bot programmed to complain about people taking shitposts seriously.
- Comment on Deserved? Poll inside 2 days ago:
A story that practically glows in the dark with “That Happened” particles.
Definitely a real event that really happened and not some sort of weird incel power fantasy. Only thing missing was a bit at the end where everyone clapped.
- Comment on Someone MUST be hiring for this position 2 days ago:
Podcaster
- Comment on Realized 99% of all my chargers are USB-C. This can only mean one thing. New USB bout to drop! 2 days ago:
I recently thought that was the problem with my phone before I tried to scrape out any lint that might be in it with a pin. Now the cable seats better and it works fine.
Hadn’t considered that. I’ll give it a shot.
Thanks for the advice
- Comment on Realized 99% of all my chargers are USB-C. This can only mean one thing. New USB bout to drop! 2 days ago:
I’ve never had any issues with cables or charging ports not caused by user dumbassery
Build something fragile
Call user ‘stupid’ when it breaks
I’ll never understand the zeal with which people defend the USB-C. It’s a weird hill to die on
- Comment on Realized 99% of all my chargers are USB-C. This can only mean one thing. New USB bout to drop! 2 days ago:
The way that middle tang consistently gets loose and causes it to charge unreliably, suggests we’ve got a perfect piece of Planned Obselecence.
- Comment on Feds in Catalonia, Spain think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer 3 days ago:
Normal people either can’t afford these devices or don’t have time for all the hassle
Had a friend who was getting by on $2k/mo and got herself a $1400 top of the line iPhone, because her carrier gave her a reduction in her monthly payment plan (for an obscene amount of debt and locked-in service on the back end). Her brother jail-broke it for her and did the normal “cleaning off all the bloatware” due-diligence.
This is just something we all put up with in the modern day. “Normal people” have a harder time navigating the bullshit, but its a lake we all have to paddle through.
- Comment on Feds in Catalonia, Spain think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer 3 days ago:
Reminds me of getting a notice in Middle School, decades ago, about how a pager was considered “drug paraphernalia”
- Comment on Every time 3 days ago:
Broadly speaking? For the same reason every other state does. Continental unity opens up trade and travel, exploits economies of scale, and simplifies the legal system for interstate business and for civil rights purposes.
Specifically? Because federal coordination helps manage natural disasters (like wildfires) and centralize big programs life Medicare/SS and secures national defense (which California profits from handsomely).
- Comment on Every time 4 days ago:
There’s no compelling reason why a state a big and wealthy as Texas can’t afford to manage natural disasters on this scale.
Their state leadership simply chooses not to do so. And the state media saturated the airwaves with “Nothing to be done, government would only make things worse” which… given the leadership of the state, isn’t even an unfair critique.
- Comment on Every time 4 days ago:
That’s all
redstates.From California to Mississippi, the anti-tax era got everybody. Now states don’t have domestic revenue to pay for shit, so they have to go through the Feds for everything.
Ironic, in a way, since the core of anti-tax Republicanism was supposed to be about shrinking the size of government. But here we are, beholden to whichever idiot or asshole happens to be running the executive branch at a given moment
- Comment on PAPERS, PLEASE - The Short Film 4 days ago:
Yeltsin was such a drunk idiot
Backed by the US in a coup against the Russian government
- Comment on PAPERS, PLEASE - The Short Film 4 days ago:
Putin wouldn’t be President of Russia if the US and the USSR had been able to settle their differences without a 60 year long series of proxy wars and regime changes. Neither would Trump, for that matter.
You played yourselves.
- Comment on PAPERS, PLEASE - The Short Film 5 days ago:
Doesn’t seem like years of sanctions on Russia, Iran, or North Korea had a sufficient impact to cause any change.
Seems like it made them more insular, more self-sufficient, and more hostile to future diplomatic entreties.
- Comment on PAPERS, PLEASE - The Short Film 6 days ago:
…made in 2018 by a Russian team. Way before the whole Ukraine war thing, you understand
Flipping through a history book on Russian/Ukrainian relations in the 21st century
Closing the book, putting it back on the shelf, whistling, and walking away
More seriously, I’ll never understand folks who hear “So-and-so is from Nationality X, so now I must/must not purchase products from them because of their bloodline.”
- Comment on Financially rewarding and you will always have a job 6 days ago:
Have a friend who was a sort-of perpetual grad student - bouncing from Sweden to Italy to Australia - over about ten years, pursuing a degree in marine biology. Along the way, she contributed thousands of hours of labor to various research teams. Eventually, she got burned out, married a neurologist, and moved to a small house in Queensland. Now she mostly just gardens and raises bunnies, which she is extraordinarily good at thanks to her education.
Was this money wasted or did the universities get exactly what they paid her for? Idk. But it seems a far better way to employ people than what we’ve done with The Pentagon or ICE.
- Comment on Financially rewarding and you will always have a job 6 days ago:
“I graduated high school, got a good job at the Mill, married my high school sweetheart, had five kids, bought a second house with a boat, retired at 60, and went insane reading Facebook memes, and decided to shoot up the Harvest Music Festival in 2017. Why can’t you young people do that?”
- Comment on Financially rewarding and you will always have a job 6 days ago:
My wife graduated law school in 2010, Summa Cum Laude, and just barely got a job at a low rent firm.
Five years later, she’s earning twice the money at a much nicer place for not much more work, because the glut of students from '08-'10 caused grads in '11-'14 to look elsewhere. Suddenly there was a huge supply gap and you could write your own ticket.
Moral of the Story: Get good at something and stick with it. Markets go up, markets go down, but skills pay the bills in the end.
- Comment on Project Diva 6 days ago:
Reminds me of the movie “A Serious Man”
Larry Gopnik: A divorce-what have I done! I haven’t done anything- What have I done!
Judith Gopnik: Larry, don’t be a child. You haven’t “done” anything. I haven’t “done” anything.
Larry Gopnik: Yes! Yes! We haven’t done anything! And I-I’m probably about to get tenure.
Judith Gopnik: Nevertheless, there have been problems. As you know.
- Comment on Why Americans Can’t Buy the World’s Best Electric Car 6 days ago:
chinese companies are notorious for stealing IP
American companies sell the ip to China in exchange for access to capital and labor, then claim they’ve been robbed when the Chinese firms innovate and expand on the patents they’ve acquired.
The end result is a car company that produces better vehicles than anything an American or Japanese or German company can manage.
Curiously, these superior vehicles are “stolen” while the Teslas keep exploding under home grown technology.
- Comment on Why Americans Can’t Buy the World’s Best Electric Car 6 days ago:
A lot of these subsidies (both in the US and China) are implicit. Chinese state rail networks operate at cost, allowing cheap transportation of materials and labor. American borrowing is heavily subsidized through the Fed Credit Window, which keeps rates in the low single digits while corporate bonds and consumer loans can be 2x-30x as high. Both countries cut corners on environmental enforcement and subsidize waste management. Both countries subsidize education and incentive R&D through their university systems.
The real benefit BYD enjoys - even above its Chinese peers - is vertical integration. They own everything from mining interests to technology patents to dealerships. This is a deliberate consequence of Chinese trade policy, which requires foreign investors to partner with Chinese nationals in order to own and operate capital. Consequently, Berkshire Hathaway - a large early investor in BYD - cannot dictate Chinese vehicle manufacturing policy from a private office in Omaha. Chinese locals benefit from the innovation, the domestic capital, the experienced labor force (which can migrate to local competitors), and the increased economic activity it produces.
China is insourcing it’s wealth aggregation, which has a cyclical compound benefit over time.
