The company that makes the prescription antihistamine I'm on fired the staff responsible for making sure that I get my prescription.

It took me about 4 months to sort that out during which time they lost about $400 in revenue.

The thing is they just don't seem to care. In the past there would be competition. But there just isn't any anymore anywhere. Like not too long ago my doctor would have just put me on a different drug that was easier to get and had the same effect. Those companies have been bought out and they just don't exist anymore.

It's an entirely new kind of economy. Capitalism without competition. They can keep raising prices and screwing us over and firing us and making us work longer hours for less pay and there's basically nothing we can do about it.

He's upset that he gave up a treasure trove of incredibly valuable data for nothing more than some help raising money and a few contacts.

That data was worth billions and had he realized it back then he'd be part of the billionaire club.

Basically he's upset that he's not going to be the one getting to screw you over using ai and llms.

I'm all for it if it actually happens but I'll believe it when I see it. I think all Microsoft wants to do is stop subsidizing the hardware which would defeat the purpose. At that point I can just buy my own gaming PC.

What makes steam stuff interesting is that they just kind of focus on getting it right with medium level performance and a decent price and I don't think Microsoft can do that so they're probably just going to put out a $1,200 gaming PC. That's assuming they actually pull it off and it doesn't get shot down by other people from company and fighting.

So who knows what's going to happen with AI bullshit devouring everything

Of getting a battery for. You can get a cheaper off-brand Chinese one but good luck getting a replacement battery when the battery inevitably goes. You basically have a slab of ewaste at that point unless you're going to play around with the electronics of it and wire up your own power supply.

As far as the rest of it make sure you have at least 8 GB of RAM and they're all basically the same at that point. You might want to get a high density display which I think Samsung has a model for if you're going to do stuff like play vector games on it

So it's not a thought terminating cliche numbskull.

A thought terminating cliche exists to end debate by dumping a simple and wrong statement.

You are already thinking about the implications of whether or not it's possible to be happy with a 40-hour work week. That's thinking you're doing is why it's not a thought terminating cliche. And if you had any self-awareness you would have figured that out all on your lonesome

Oddly enough at least last I heard Marvel rivals is fully supported. It can best be described as playable just because it's a relatively modern game and the steam deck is getting long in the tooth but the company does actually support it and when it's broken they've fixed it.

Show me the how you can create a system where the price totals of all possible combinations of inventory selections result in only (3 or 4) mod 5.

Um... People that want to play PC games in the living room that's who.

There are tons of games that never get released on console that people like to play or that have inferior versions on the console.

The biggest issue here I think is going to be that the console only has 16 gigs of main RAM and I think it has 8 GB of video RAM.

It is at least upgradable but I think you really want 32 GB of RAM.

The Xbox and the PS5 for example have several strategy games that basically grind to a halt 2/3 of the way into the game because it's just too much for the CPU and RAM on the Xbox or the PS5.

Also if you already have a large library of games this is a convenient device that may be affordable with the price of RAM and hard drive skyrocketing because of AI bullshit.

AI is guzzling down all the RAM and hard drives so it's going to be tough for valve to source hardware at a price that's affordable.

And the private insurance companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars convincing the public that you're going to kill grandma

When there was a possibility of a public option in the affordable Care act the private insurance company spent $750 billion dollars that we know of to shoot it down.

I get pissed off when people complain the Democrats didn't give us a public option back then because what the fuck are they supposed to do in the face of nearly a trillion dollars of propaganda?

I don't think you can directly fix the healthcare system which you need to do instead is have a federal jobs guarantee that gets everyone used to the idea that healthcare is a right and then you can gradually start moving in the direction away from the parasitic insurance companies.

Also we need to get comfortable using the word parasite again. We get really antsy about that because fucking Nazis use it. It's a word and a concept we need to reclaim.

Because money is the ultimate fungible commodity, the headline should really be:

"Singapore to subsidize production and use of sustainable aviation fuel"

I am skeptical that the "sustainable aviation fuel" is really sustainable and it isn't just disguised fossil fuel (like almost all hydrogen production for vehicles).

More than it needs to because it's a private health care system. So yes the employer gets taxed to pay for healthcare along with the employee but it is substantially less because you don't have the bloated parasite of private insurance.

The problem isn't that your company is paying for your health care, the problem is your company isn't paying for your health care it's paying for the profit margin of the private insurance company it is forced to do business with.

People need to consider: Rounding to a nickle isn't going to be greater than 2 cents more inaccurate than rounding to pennies. Let's say you live in a backwater state, and still only make $7.25 per hour. Each transaction could potentially cost you at most 10 seconds of extra wages. However, transactions randomly round up and down, so the average error gets reduced by the square root of the number of transactions you make. Statistically speaking, you'll gain or lose only a couple of seconds of your time per purchase. Probably less time than it took to fumble for all those pennies.

But it sucks to be poor. Without pennies, someone who makes $50k per year will gain or lose only milliseconds worth of salary per transaction on average.

"But the stores will set prices so that it always rounds up!!!!1!" -- That only works for one item at most. Savvy shoppers would strategically buy combinations of items that always round down.

You get a lot more job opportunities. Every time these companies merge they fire somewhere between 10% and 40% of their staff.

That means fewer job opportunities for you and that means supply and demand kicks in and lowers your wages.

If you're American you are also losing out on jobs to countries like Canada and Germany and United Kingdom where they have universal Health Care.

That's because as an American every company that hires you needs to budget at least 10,000 a year to pay for your health insurance on top of your premiums. Assuming you're not working at some place like Walmart that just tries to put you on government programs because they pay you so little...

It's all connected. We need to start thinking about how these systems are lowering our pay and costing us our jobs.

How about getting a refund from your credit card company? Wasn't that possible?