Sears used to own a bunch of real estate and a trucking fleet. This let them ship things anywhere in the country in a reasonably timely fashion and keep costs low on both ends. They did absolutely, pathetically flub web sales, but it really wasn't too late to fix that. They at least had done the work of getting the product information digitized, even if the web site was otherwise a loss. (It really was terrible, and so were the prices, wtf.)

Compared to cryptocurrency, LLMs are dramatically useful. They don't do just of the things their proponents claim they do, and probably never will, but at least they do some things. Cryptocurrency is only a way for a different group of assholes to get rich enabling crime. It does nothing you couldn't do with just another normal fiat currency.

Even if it's all true, it's all irrelevant. Not only are these problems not those problems but we don't have decades. It's small comfort though that the ultra wealthy won't get what they want because even if they killed off literally all of the rest of us, AGW would not stop.

Sears did not "fail", they were willfully destroyed by a vulture capitalist.

Explain why relying on storage is a bad thing when renewables plus storage are cheaper than nuclear. Explain it like you're twelve, because mentally, you are - nuclear is shiny so you want it.

To a certain extent, I don't disagree. I think programming via LLM is an insane goal, and frankly will just lead back to something akin to a programming language, just more poorly defined. Learning some arcane incantation to get consistently good answers isn't anything I would stake a career on.

But it really HAS been useful to me when I'm trying to learn new programming languages because the state of documentation is so poor. As long as I have links back to source documentation, I can read up if something goes wrong. And for things like giving me tasks and writing questions to test my knowledge, it's quite good.

It's a pretty good tool, and given the energy/environmental costs, I wouldn't actually be sad if it were shut down. But it can occasionally make my life easier as long as I use it judiciously.

Don't exist like a non-shit keyboard layout on iOS? They're not even smart enough at Apple to give you a layout where the number keys are across the top row when you're entering a password.

That's an obvious consequence of the Big Pharma war on anything that doesn't make them a profit. The regulations they buy drive legitimate herbalism underground. The US doesn't recognize studies from other countries, using bullshit excuses about how they don't meet our standards to justify this, when those standards are parts of laws purchased by Pharma Cos in order to keep down competition.

Yeah, imagine you have an AI agent that does what the bank would have done for you if they were actually working for you like they claim they are. They're not serving you, they're milking you, and not in a fun way.

What causes you to imagine that I do not work? Projection, like all the other maggot bullshit?

I'd say all of those things, and probably some more I haven't thought of, but all of those are honestly things which leap to mind.

Yes, a person can choose not to participate in modern society and be at a disadvantage because they don't have the things everyone else has, or because they have to recreate them even more poorly.

"Bill Clinton at least got the family leave act passed."

He also signed the TCA which brought us the dominance of Fox and Sinclair. And also the welfare reform act that brought us the work requirement for SNAP. Fuck that fucking fuck.

Other companies do sell hardware with everything soldered, but they also sell hardware which is not like that, like apple USED to do. Claiming they are the same is nonsense.

We request crap. It's made in Asia and when it breaks we send it back to Asia. They take it because we pay them to take it.

It's people paying to move crap around all the way down.