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Comment Re:Congress is the one with the purse (Score 1) 334

Bureau of Land Management Instruction Memorandum 2023-010 talks about refunds for leases. It is dated November 21, 2022, right in the middle of the Biden Administration. It has been superseded by newer versions that contain very similar language.

The purpose of the memo is to ensure that BLM practices are compatible with various laws, including the then-recently passed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

Additionally, refunds are standard practice everywhere.

Comment Re:Late to the party (Score 1) 179

No one has ever made that argument in the entire history of humanity.

The argument is that because EVs can't do everything, we shouldn't legislate the demise of gasoline cars and diesel trucks. That if an EV doesn't cover every possible vehicle use case, then we shouldn't take away the vehicles that do cover those use cases.

Comment Re:Curious looking with these wide mirror stalks (Score 1) 179

Are you deliberately trying to avoid understanding what he is saying?

With a mirror, if the sun is at a bad angle, you can move your head and change the apparent position of the sun. With a camera, you are fucked because the camera is in a single fixed location and can't be moved.

Sometimes "where you need them" isn't actually where you need them.

Comment Re:Meal Team Six: The Keyboard Warrior Chronicles. (Score 1) 188

Fraud. I'm talking about fraud.

When I say "destroyed the market for that model" I mean "the short-seller spread misinformation that severely and permanently reduced the value of the vehicles, such as falsifying evidence they were dangerous, from which the brand never recovered."—even if such deception were prosecuted (which, increasingly, under the current administration, it isn't) there is a massive temptation to attempt it, which is amplified by leveraging debt.

Comment Re:Meal Team Six: The Keyboard Warrior Chronicles. (Score 4, Insightful) 188

That is ideal. Economic growth is not an unqualified net positive for society, and lending is the root cause of most of its ills. With borrowing as it is practised by hegemons today, there are only two endings: either they must close the loop, using the dirty money to architect a revenue-extracting monster that milks non-borrowed money to pay off the debts, or the system collapses under its own weight, like Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme in the 2008 financial crisis. Debt creates its own incentives to abuse the commons and impoverish the public.

Of course, not being content with abusing the commons, there are also implications for abuse of single wealthy lenders, too. It would also effectively outlaw short-selling, since that consists of borrowing assets—the items being traded—then destroying the price, and pocketing the difference. If you think about it, this isn't even adding value to the economy; it's just skimming value off the inventory of whomever you're borrowing from.

If anyone tried this with a physical asset the lender would be apoplectic: "You borrowed 50 cars from me, sold them, destroyed the market for that model, and bought them back at a pittance. Now my inventory of 1,000 cars of the same model is worth a thousand pittances! Why would I ever do business with you ever again?!"—it only works as a system if the lender assumes that the assets will recover value over time, but the degenerate gambler doing the borrowing is incentivised to outright ruin the assets they're borrowing beyond any hope of recovery. In a sense they're even less ethical than corporate raiders, since both the company who issued the stock and the lender are being abused.

Comment Re:Meal Team Six: The Keyboard Warrior Chronicles. (Score 5, Insightful) 188

Yes, Polymarket is the most degenerate, nihilistic, accelerationist bullshit imaginable. At best its creators are willfully in denial about this, since they have tried to ban assassination bets, but more likely they are just trying to maintain a facade of plausible deniability.

In a healthy society, the case of Polymarket would be studied as precedent in an ongoing debate about the possibility of criminalizing the very concept of financial speculation, especially placing a bid with borrowed assets.

Comment Re:Good luck with that (Score 2, Insightful) 54

If a free work is freely used to freely train these LLMs about freedom, what chance does a "free" foundation have against these AI giants?

ftfy

Don't get me wrong -- I love Linux and all free software, and think the FSF has its place. But, they went a little coo-coo with GPL v3 (Linus is right), and this situation just further illustrates their chronic hypocrisy.

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