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.

I'm the same, always use a good credit card, but the occasional hassle is worth it. The prices are 1/10th the Amazon ones.

Used to be, but Trump has kinda ruined it for the rest of us. He complained that they were charging Americans more, so instead of reducing their prices, they just increased them everywhere else.

As an example, Mounjaro went from around £180 in the UK, to around £300.

I saw a YouTube video from a guy who bought a mini excavator from AliExpress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's surprisingly good. Japanese Kubota engine, everything else looks decent quality, especially considering the incredibly low price. I've seen similar videos from other people who bought heavy machinery like farm equipment and lathes.

On the one hand it's a shame that our domestic manufacturing is finding it hard to compete. On the other, they aren't doing themselves any favours with things like DRM to stop you working on your own tools. The price competition is a good thing for consumers.

Take Germany luxury/performance cars, for example. The Chinese ones are every bit as luxury and well made, and often exceed them for performance. On top of that, the German manufacturers can't resist screwing their customers with bullshit like subscriptions for heated seats and no owner access to the engine bay.

I regularly buy from AliExpress. Their customer service isn't as good as Amazon's, but the prices are 1/10th of the Amazon ones so even though the odd things gets lost or is of poor quality, I'm still well up on what Amazon would have cost me.

Occasionally I need to do a credit card chargeback. Had to do that on a computer case that got damaged. For small stuff costing literal pennies I don't bother with the maybe 1 in 20 items that is lost or no good.

As you say, it's the same stuff they sell with a hefty mark-up on Amazon, and in every other shop.

If chasing ratings is taken too far, you end up with Fox used to be, where shows would get cancelled a few episodes into their first season because they were not instant mega hits. Netflix is nearly as bad, cancelling stuff days after it premiers.

A lot of shows took a season or two to really find their feet. A lot of shows that struggled early on ended up doing very well in syndication, or started a long running franchise.

They will probably charge a much fairer price for their treatments too, which will be very welcome.

They've done great stuff, but I honestly don't feel dependent on them and simply don't see them as more than a one trick pony.

I'm 100% convinced that other than spending irresponsible amounts of money on building an infrastructure which is only competitive because they are willing to outspend their peers, they don't offer anything of value.

I currently am using glm-4.5 on a computer with 64000 cpu cores and 304 H200 GPUs. I share the machine with 10 other users. It's pretty fast. It gives me an idea of how AI will perform in 20 years.

But that's the point. OpenAI is interesting because they have computers that cost $1 billion. My little computer cost 1/20 of that. But, consider the NEC earth simulator cost $350 million in 2002. Performance-wise, it was about as fast as a $250 NVidia RTX 5050. It had 10TB RAM but the RAM performance could be matched by 8 2TB PCIe Gen 5 drives in RAID.

So, in 20 years, we should expect to see the biggest computer OpenAI has today for about $2000 in the size of a laptop.

OpenAI's edge isn't their IP. It's their spending.

They have been having decreases in their ability to grow food, so yes they absolutely want Ukraine. You really think people around here know dick.

I have overly expensive cable internet already, I don't need to also pay for CATV.

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.