What shocks me here is how long it took to become such a popular thing? Parking domains isn't that expensive, but certainly isn't free, especially in large numbers. The people doing the parking are basically squatting on property they speculate will have value down the road. They may as well collect a little "rent" on them while they squat?

I can remember when "domain tasting" first became a thing, I looked at it and thought, "This is a TERRIBLE idea, it's going to make it more expensive for people to start up their own web site and 'interesting' domains are going to be unobtainable by the average person just because some squatter thinks they're parked on gold." No random person is going to pay thousands of dollars for a domain name they fancy just for a hobby, so it's just going to stifle small private sites.

I don't know how it currently works, but back when it started you could "taste" a domain for months almost for free, and there was nothing stopping you from "tasting" it again the instant your current taste expired, So you could squat domains for an unlimited time almost for free. "gee, nobody would ever abuse that!"

Though now with the explosion of TLDs, it's widened the market so far that the squatters are finding it hard to cover all the bases. Raise their rent! (and make the price go up exponentially to KEEP it parked) Watch the squatters scurry away like the cockroaches they are!

When a data center is done with the water it is not potable anymore and it is extraordinarily expensive to make it potable again. To the point where it might be cheaper to do desalinization.

None of this is necessary but it is cheaper and these data centers are already unprofitable right now and not replacing enough wages to make them profitable.

So yes molecularly speaking the water still exists but it's not in a state usable by human beings and we do not have the capacity to put it back in that state.

None of this is necessary but it is marginally more useful to the billionaires and that is the only criteria that matters anymore.

We gave up all agency in our communities and government in exchange for a handful of petty moral panics and a rapey game show host.

I think it's much more likely these companies know damn well they're hiring dodgy employees and they just don't care because they are cheap.

For decades companies have used plausible deniability to hire illegal workers it just makes the news because it's North Korea. Normally though we all just look the other way and pretend like nothing happened

For anyone to actually care about climate change. If you're an environmentalist you need to fix your local economy first before anything else.

And it doesn't do any good to explain why climate change is going to make the economy worse. Nobody wants to hear your explanation. They want to hear that somebody is going to make groceries cheaper and rent cheaper. If you're not telling them that they've already tuned you out.

Remember when you're explaining you're losing.

What you're going to get is unpredictable weather caused by disruptions in the water cycle.

So for example a whole bunch of trails you want to walk are going to be closed because heavy rain washes them away. On the other hand you also probably are going to have droughts. Because you're going to get big sudden rain storms that do damage to the trail you want to walk followed by little or no rain...

There is no upside to what's happening here no matter what the oil companies tell you.

If it wasn't all being devoted to the singular purpose of eliminating wages.

Remember the problem AI is designed to solve is paying wages.

Did you notice how expensive beef is? Yes some of that is because of douopoly and monopolies. But a lot of it is because of drought. A lot of cattle had to be killed off and weren't replaced because there just wasn't enough water for them. Especially in Texas

Now we could be building giant desalinization plants with all this money but instead somebody has to lose their job to an AI...

It really does show how your priorities, such as lower grocery prices, always take a back seat to whatever billionaires want.

You damn well that I'm going to tell you how to raise your goddamn kids when it comes to vaccination and education.

I am tired of right-wing douche nozzles raising these little disease breeders full of wrong information and bigotry because that's how grandpappy raised them.

You have a right to impart your culture and values up to the point where you are just wrong.

Objective reality exists whether you like it or not. Measles is real. Ivermectin doesn't treat covid. America is not a Christian Nation. These are facts and you don't get to teach lies to children just because they popped out of your crotch.

If they can't keep up with custom hardware then somebody else is going to build it. What's more because AI is a technology that by design is going to consolidate into a few players who have access to training data (google, Facebook and maybe Apple) you are going to have companies so huge they are just going to want to make their own chips.

You've got these companies that a few changes in who makes the chips could drop their value by hundreds of billions of dollars. And you have investors buying in during those high-valuations.

I don't think AI will go away, the ability to replace paying wages is so valuable to the billionaire class that it's going to keep getting pushed, but I do think that it's likely that a bubble will burst and of course when it does it's going to screw over working people because it always screws over working people.

Plus we all know we're going to have to bail out the banks that wound out all the money to these AI startups because if we don't when they go down they take the entire economy down and us with it. And we're too much of a bunch of pussies to just nationalize them however briefly

Just their luck the AI bubble pops as they finish, and there's a glut on chips on the market.

Black Friday was bigger in raw dollars because of hyperinflation but overall units of everything sold were down.

Traditionally we get 8 years of Democrats fixing Republican malfeasance. We didn't get that this time we barely got 4 years and two of those for the Republicans were heavily sabotaging anything the Democrats did.

So buckle up it is going to be a rough three years and it's entirely possible Trump's getting a third term.

Brown university has plenty of cameras, it's just that the perp was wrapped up like a burrito, making it hard to see his face.

...couldn't handle their bad grade.

To be honest, if I had that much money I too would chase pie-in-sky ideas.

But this VR chase is stupid. Meta should purchase the Second Life or Roblox franchise, get a web-based world working well with FaceBook, and THEN gradually add 3D and reach stuff. He has it backward.

Legs are obsolete! We superior humans just float. Non-floaters will be deported to El Salvador.

Right wing politics do not result good economic outcomes. It's basically trickle down economics combined with corruption.

So they have to give their voters something. Some reason to keep voting for them even as the economy collapses.

Anti-science and anti-vaxx are the solutions they came up with. You might not have a job or a home but nobody's going to tell you how to raise your kids and nobody's going to make you get the fauci ouchie.