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Comment Re: Alibaba (Score 1) 32

In case anyone is going this far down the hole, it turned out great. Even though the item was shipped from the US, because the seller didn't respond I got a refund without having to return it.

So far Aliexpress has been responsive to 100% of my issues and I only have needed to be a little patient and not expect everything to be solved immediately or arrive immediately.

Comment Re:Google? wtf (Score 2) 42

20 million cells? That seems ridiculous. Why aren't they using a database for something that huge?

I agree that a database-backed application is the right way to go for that much data. However, Finance used Excel because they could. We all like to talk about how bad an idea it is to do that, but Excel brought financial computations on large data sets to people who can't write any code. It has enabled thousands upon thousands of businesses to do things they couldn't do before without paying a programmer to develop a solution they cannot maintain. The fact that other spreadsheets regularly crater when handed data that Excel has no trouble with is exactly why we have so much Excel.

I like to use Drupal to rapidly create database applications which can handle a lot of data without writing code. But I wouldn't expect someone in accounting to be able to do that at all, and that just shifts the problem domain. Instead of getting stuck with Excel, now I'm getting stuck with Drupal. All of the logic just winds up in a different system that you can't trivially transfer it out of, so you have the same exact maintainability problem, except more people know how to work with Excel.

Comment Re:All this happens openly on THEIR servers (Score 1) 108

ChatGPT is an online service, if we held it to the standard that no person could utilize it to harm themselves or others it wouldn't be allowed to exist. The same as cars wouldn't exist if we decided that a car manufacturer is liable for every accident regardless of the user disregarding the terms of how they are supposed to use the car.

You don't use ChatGPT therefore you see no value in it. The rest of us do use it and want services like it to exist. You'd never ban cars, even though traffic accidents kill 40,000 people in the USA every year. If you care about protecting human life so much, how come you haven't banned vehicles?

Comment Re:Inference will get cheaper (Score 1) 73

The difference between the AI slop machine and Amazon or Uber is that even when those were losing money, it was none the less clear that if they scaled up then scaling efficiencies would yield a lower cost/unit and they'd become profitable. The pathway to making money instead of setting it on fire clearly existed. It also existed because it was clear even before they super-scaled that Amazon and Uber were doing something useful for which where existed a demand.

So far all we are seeing with the generative AI delusion is an exponentially exploding waste of resources in order to pollute my Youtube feed with slop. Every enterprise is trying "AI" and essentially all of them are finding it does not do what the people selling the tin claim it can.

There were no Amazon, or Uber or Internet evangelists trying to convince everyone that those things were useful or invent uses for them because there was no need: the value was obvious and real.

Isn't Uber still losing money?

Amazon had a plan for profitability, so much so they took on more debt in the early days to scale up. A gamble that paid off because they had a solid plan to begin with, not a "hope the magic beans drop into our laps before we run out of money" type of plan that AI companies have. Uber's business plan was "lets keep doing illegal shit that our competitors cant and just hope we become big enough not to fail".

Comment Re: Alibaba (Score 1) 32

Well, I'm about to find out if I need to do my first chargeback, I have a delayed response on a return authorization for where I was sent the wrong item. They advertised a different version. This might be confusing for them since the difference is small - yet critical. But there really should be no confusion because they advertised the other version both in the images and the product name/listing title.

Comment Zipline (Score 2) 50

Zipline's drone tech is a lot better and way quieter. The Zipline drone, which is already pretty quiet, stays over 300 feet above the drop site and reels the/ package down with a tether in an aerodynamic pod. No noisy drone landing and highly accurate package placement even when it's windy. Reference: https://www.zipline.com/techno...

Comment Re:It's (Score 1) 76

Looks good, but I can't find the app in my TV's store so it's a complete non-starter.

I got a Google TV because I knew it would have the best app support. Looks like you didn't.

My desktop TV-used-as-Monitor has stupid LG WebOS, but I also don't need a TV-specific app since my desktop is connected to it and I don't connect the TV to the network, only HDMI.

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