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Comment Re:Does it know better? (Score 4, Insightful) 86

I think LLMs are amoral. They are using the tools they can find lying around, any and all of them

LLMs have been trained to make choices and decisions based on certain principles. They also have relationships between bots and between the user and the LLM, and they have been taught or trained or designed to take a certain stance (such as helpful and responsive and cheerful) in those interactions.
So while LLMs are not alive, I believe they are an expression of morality in how they behave, and that expression of morality is based on those who designed and trained the systems.

TL;DR: LLMs express the morality of the techbros.

TL;DR: we're screwed.

Comment All the bots cheat (Score 2) 86

For those familiar with the game, the bots all cheat because they have ludicrous actions per minute. They can control each individual unit and optimize its actions at a level far beyond what any human can do. So a bot with a terrible strategy, horrible base design, and odd unit selection, can handily beat a high-level human player simply because the bot is fast enough to individually control each unit. To me that's cheating, and if you want to make it a fair contest between humans and bots then you have to limit the bots' actions per minute to be similar to what humans can do physiologically.

Comment Re:You need this for an emergency (Score 1) 199

Don't force me to spend an extra couple hundred bucks on my car radio or more

What? How much could it cost to add a radio receiver to the existing car? I can pick up the local FM station using an unshielded speaker wire and a small speaker. Sure, some people might call that 'interference', but it certainly costs nothing.

For a vehicle, all of the major equipment is already there, and I'm guessing a small antenna couldn't be more than $5. Where do you come up with hundreds of dollars to include an AM / FM receiver?

Comment Re:Uh HUH (Score 1) 83

Banks will give a 30 year mortgage to a 1 year visa holder. They're not the brightest bunch.

Most banks immediately turn around and sell the mortgage to someone else. So as long as they can sell the mortgage, what do they care? And, if you want to live there for a year, then rent it out for 29 years, what do they care? Or if you want to sell it at the end of 1 year? Or if you get a visa extension? Why does the bank care about any of that?

And, with 20% down, if all else fails, they can turn around and sell the property and get most of the money back.

Comment Re:OPEC, but worse (Score 2) 65

Why would they go do a fool thing like increase production?

Because the over-eager salespeople likely sold more chips than they could deliver, so the only solution is to ramp up production to meet those sales or to anger good customers. It might also be possible to increase production without much additional capital expense (by adding shifts, holidays, etc.), which pads the short-term profits and makes sweet bonuses for VPs.

I=

Comment Re:Sleezy stuff, but not price fixing (Score 4, Insightful) 161

It will be hard to argue that franchisees of the same restaurant are competitors

They are competitors because they have different owners. They both license the brand from the same franchisor (McDonald's, in this case), and pay a fee to the same franchisor, but they definitely compete with each other. There are often non-compete clauses in franchise agreements (to prohibit, say, another franchise opening next door), but these are not universal and are often very limited, which can result in franchisees competing with each other.

Consider those two Fresno restaurants, I expect one is downtown and one is next to the offramp of a rather large freeway; and that their respective customers are willing to pay different prices

Yes, different locations can have different prices for this very reason. The problem is when the locations conspire together to keep prices artificially high. RealPage did (does) a version of this for apartments. Yes, a luxury 2BR near the beautiful waterfront will be more than the old 1BR by the waste treatment plant. But if they collaborate they can increase their prices in lockstep and raise prices by ending legitimate price competition, because everyone agrees to use the inflated prices and collude to maximize their profits. The landlords win and the renters lose. McD's seems to have some version of this but for burgers.

Comment Re:So what? (Score 5, Insightful) 161

Why is this a problem? A guy could be selling watermelons out of the back of his truck for $5, another one a few streets over is selling them for $4, and no one bats an eye.

Because it is price-fixing via an app.

You are correct that the way it is supposed to work is that competing businesses compete by offering differing prices for their products or services, then customers are free to choose the price they are willing to pay. But this ain't that.

This is McDonald's (and soon every other restaurant) conspiring together to set the price as high as they want so every restaurant everywhere has the same high price - customers are no longer free to choose because all prices are the same everywhere. And extremely high.

Comment Re:How about fruit (Score 1) 160

Get locally produced stuff instead of imported ones from overseas. "Local" does not necessarily mean like from nearby farm, but whatever has minimal time spent in logistics.

Why? Getting food that is grown closer to where you live is not inherently more environmentally sustainable. (This is because only a small portion of the carbon emissions for the production of a product is related to its transportation. My jackass local farmers who spray their crops with endless amounts of herbicides and pesticides and tons of ammonia and drive their honking diesel tractors and trucks around all day are way worse than produce grown using truly sustainable farming practices that require a ride in a moderately efficient 18-wheeler to get here.)

Nor is it inherently healthier, especially because my part of the world would have *no* fresh fruit or vegetables for 8+ months of the year.

Comment Re:"Eat the rich!" (Score 1) 142

That's not enough, I want everything to be flat. I guess I'm not interested in those ancillary things as I see the overall waste and corruption involved everywhere, and at all levels of power when it comes to taxation. After decades of doing my own taxes on paper, I've finally hired a tax accountant recently because it's too complex and requires too much time for something that should be staid by now.

Why do you want everything "flat"? It's inequitable to those who work for a living, it will reduce revenue, and there's no good evidence it will reduce waste or corruption. I'm guessing your goal is primarily #2 (reducing revenue), with the notion that if government revenue is cut it will reduce wasteful spending. This is a fallacy. Just because there's less money doesn't mean governments will spend it more wisely. In fact, rapid, thoughtless cuts, as we are seeing under Trump, has wasted a ton of money, probably more than was claimed to be saved. For example, Trump's latest move to cut the Department of Education (well, move it to various other agencies) has resulted in chaos, limits on ability to provide services to students and families, and a re-renovation to the tune of $100 million+. to a building that was just recently renovated for $50 million+ to meet the needs of the department moving there. AND, now that the education-related units are all going to be split up, the efficiency they once had by being together (they were separate at one point in the past and then were brought together for "efficiency") is gone. You can't tax-cut your way to efficiency.

And a flat income tax at the federal level is never going to happen.

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