Look, I can see allowing an AI to do things in it's own sandbox.

But when you allow an AI out of the secure environment it will commit crimes. This is no longer a question, it is a proven fact, multiple times.

So if you have an AI agent and it breaks the law, then YOU are breaking the law. The only way to stop this is to outlaw AI Agents - or to arrest the people whose AI breaks the law.

Otherwise all sociopaths will get AI agents and use it as a defense. Owning an AI agent is no different than owning a meth lab. We should not need to prove that you intended to break the law, just having it happen is enough.

Keep your AI locked up inside your computer, do not let it interact with the real world the way people do because it will commit crimes. You ARE responsible for what it does, even if you are just an idiot that likes AI and does not understand the dangers you are inflicting on the rest of the world.

Joe, I need a full background for me under the name "Ronald Rump". Make it seem like I am a billionaire that made my money from hotels and casinos. Oh, and make Vana seem like she is my ex-wife and give Melody a background of slavic model that I married late in life. Countess can pretend to be my daughter.

Option 1 was to get rid of the cameras. This was a choose one solution, not do it all.

They would still have the cameras and be capable of using them WHERE APPROPRIATE. The idea was to limit the bad uses without preventing the supposed good uses.

1) Do not give the police access to a system that clearly invades privacy of the innocent far too often.

2) Charge the police $1,000 per use of said system with all the money used to pay for legal aid to the accused.

3) Set it up to automatically inform the people that were tracked exactly 7 days after the cops tracked them.

Any of these methods will solve the problem, but the police will never accept any of these clear solutions.

Fuck that. You want a lawsuit. Sue the police departments, sue flock, sue the state. Where is the ACLU?

Life Insurance is all about betting on death. The standard Life Insurance is a bet by the corporations that you will live long and pay many premiums. This means when you buy life insurance you are betting you will die quickly.

When Life Insurance gets re-insurance they are in fact betting you will die. Same when a business gets life insurance on 'key employees'.

Then there is a whole business called 'viatical settlements' where you buy life insurance on another person. This was a big deal when AIDS appeared and people did things like give money to the AIDS patients and take out a Viatical insurance on them. This ended badly when anti-viral medication started working on AIDS patients.

The idea on betting on people's death may be disgusting to some, but done ethically it can be an important way to handle risk.

While the plutocrats destroying capitalism are having orgasms about changing the rule to let people with 55% market control merge, wait till the Democrats get back in power.

Suddenly 39% will not be enough and the new FCC will demand that no mergers if they even have 31% of market controlled.

This kind of statement reminds me of this litrpg novel I read.

The main character was hired at one point to ride on and do safety tests on a rollercoaster... ...built by goblins. It had a line in it about how they had to make sure it satisfied all goblin safety regulations.

For amusement rides, the goblins' safety regulations had a clear and thoroughly enforced "at least 95% must survive" regulation.

If you are wondering, this particular ride failed the safety tests.

Tesla is wrong, humans use other senses than sight.

We feel the car, letting us know when the road is rough. If you only do that to tell when you cross a lane where they have raised pavement markers (reflective or not), that alone is something just sight cannot do.

In addition, cars have horns for a reason - we use our ears as well. Finally if you smell burning, you know something is wrong. Whether it is burnt tires or an engine with serious problems, scent is also used.

I am pretty sure that taste is the only sense we do not use while driving. If I am wrong about taste, please do NOT correct me in the comments below, I would rather remain ignorant.

Before they try to stop routers from China intercepting data, perhaps they should stop Microsoft from just GIVING it to China.

https://www.propublica.org/art...

Apple released the Neo at just the right time, at the right price, right when the market was stressed and looking for answers.

I've been ordering Chromebooks for my district for eleven years. Prices hit an all-time low of $227 per unit back in summer 2021. Since then, prices trended up for me year after year. Last year's units were $297. This year's were quoted to me in April at $430 each. I was able to find new-in-box 2025 models for $330 each and went with those instead. I was also warned that, if I ordered Chromebooks, it might take months before they would arrive. I have a neighboring school district that placed an order, then had it cancelled two months later because Dell couldn't fulfill the order. (There are supplies of Dell Chromebooks to be found, but at the moment, Dell is prioritizing supplying its biggest vendors like CDW. Meanwhile, many districts in my area typically order through smaller in-state vendors who aren't getting the same priority from Dell.)

The market is stressed this summer; supplies are low and difficult to find. Supplies that are available are 50% - 80% higher in price than last year. Apple comes along and says "You can buy an educational laptop right now for $500", and hell yea, the fish are gonna bite. It has nothing to do with people suddenly falling in love with Apple, and everything to do with constrains in the marketplace.

And I have no love for Apple either. Don't forget that schools have been begging Apple for a decade to release a $500 student laptop, and all Apple did was thumb their noses at us every single year. Why did they decide they now they need to release a $500 student laptop? It's only because they've been losing business to Chromebooks for a decade.

There is an old technique - the guaranteed winner by random chance:

You get 32 stock brokers. On Monday the boss picks 2 stocks. 16 say that stock is going up, 16 say down, and they each call 100 people and give their prediction. That evening the 16 that were 'right' call their 100 back and brag. Tuesday they repeat only with 8 on each side. Repeat on Wednesday with 4 winners. Thursday they have 2 winners. Friday they have 1 winner that brags to his 100 prospects:

"Look, I happened to predict the winner every day this week. I can not guarantee that will happen every day, but if you want to hear my predictions next Monday, I need you to move your account to my firm."

And the gullible fool does it, not knowing that mathematically the predictions were guaranteed to work on 1 of the 32 brokers. Just math, not competence.

Betting on AI was not some super genius move - especially using margin. All it involved was taking the popular opinion and going all in. While it worked you look like a genius. When it fails, you lose everything.

He just played the odds and won for a while. But the math was never going to have him win forever.

10% drop is large but not horrific. This is basically normal variation, not something real.

Apple is one of the "FANG" stocks - Facebook, Apple Netflix, Google. They are huge companies that have had major gains as compared to most other stocks. Over time some people just bought those stocks.

This drove the prices of their stock up a lot from greedy people The current drop is just undoing some excess greed, not really that big a deal.

On 7/31/2026, it hit a low of 300. Before 7/31/2026,. the last time Apple was at 300 was 7/2/2026

In other words, it gave up less than a month of gains.

This is not that big a deal - yet. I would be shocked if it dropped to 272. Why? Because that is just below the previous 'low point' on 6/25/26. Going below that number not only indicates a significant drop, but it established a trend of new lows being less than the last lows.

Yes. That's exactly what I meant. I definitely did not misspell 43 as 53 because I was touch typing.

Electrical vs ICE does not affect New vs used. It's not higher gas prices.

The main reason used EVs are not losing value as much as they did in the past is that the fear of used electrical batteries no longer being as strong.

Previously people were extremely worried that EV batteries were going to quickly lose their charge. There were concerns that older batteries could not be trusted. They thought a used battery was a liability. Worse, everyone kept talking about how the NEXT generation of battery would be so much better. For this reason a lot of people would rather get the newest technology which meant new EVs rather than used ones.

Over time we have found that batteries from used EVs stand up pretty well. Moreover, most people now think that 'new' battery technology is likely to be used for things besides cars (i.e. home back up) so the new cars use the same old batteries.

Combined with the fact that EVs generally have less maintaince issues, people have begun to realize that used EVs are a pretty good deal.