The solar-scam model is well established by now and has lots of creative permutations. It's at the point where finding a legitimate company to install them without shenanigans is
All the rebates and other incentives played a huge part in creating this of course. Shocking how 'free money' drives up prices and brings corruption so consistently.
The very concept of a 'wealth tax' is just retarded.
I start a company. It grows. I hire more people. More growth. It's popular, great place to work, sells a bajillion widgets. One day someone decides it's worth $500mm. The next day they seize 80% of my company?
Now who runs it? Why do I have any interest in it's growth anymore? Heck, it would make me want to keep my company poor and smaller...and incapable of doing the things at scale that our society needs. Things like launching an electric car company or developing viable, cost-effective, reusable space launch capabilities...or providing internet to the underserved parts of the world?
What companies SHOULD be forced to do is give back a much larger portion of their net income and equity to their employees. Stop with the 'let's steal labor and wealth from people and make it taxes' and turn it into 'people collectively building valuable companies should be rewarded much more in proportion to their contributions in building them - not just if they invested $ to start it up'.
The only way I'm giving AI access to that level of personal information/interaction is if I own - and retain EXCLUSIVE access to the data.
Basically, the AI and data are mine and no one but me ever has access. No spying. No viewing. No data mining, anonymous or not. ZERO access during normal use unless I intentionally share something with a specific person or company. Think zero-knowledge encryption, but for my 'personal AI'.
Granted, companies want you to use AI largely so they can mine your data and it's gotten so expensive all the advertising/data-mining can't pay for it anymore...so they want to charge now. Nope. No thanks.
The biggest risk with any cloud storage is that it goes away without notice.
"That never happens" but it does. If they flag and shut down your account(s) they can, and have, hung people/small businesses out to dry that either didn't have a proper backup-to-the-backup solution or needed too long to restore the data and transition to another platform.
Your data is not private on DropBox and there's no option for Zero Knowledge Encryption/BYOK. 3rd party tools exist (ugh Vera) but they make the experience even worse.
I dislike Apple's ecosystem, but that's one thing they do extremely well, and pretty much seamlessly. I wish MS/OneDrive had a consumer-level option for this.
I used to get crashes out of DropBox years back when I moved many (many) thousands of files repeatedly and the database couldn't keep up but otherwise it was fine-just-fine in that regard.
> Winning
You would like losing a LOT less.
I'm no highly respected scholar on the middle east like you clearly are but a nuclear-armed terrorist-state doesn't tickle my happy places.
Nuclear weapons would give them actual
Trump is good at making enemies, but they still need him for better or worse.
Iran is making lots of enemies, none of which want or need them at all. Heck, even Russia who quite possibly would have
Funny thing that. You can buy digital goods that don't technically exist, labor, services, etc.
But you buy physical goods (amazon, walmart, temu, etc.) and
... 1986 when the pols insisted on complicating an already very hard problem by building a "reusable" spacecraft with boosters from jurisdiction for votes while launching in another...then both cutting safety factors AND ignoring warnings from the actual engineers. I was a child and watched 7 people die on live TV.
The people who actually build rockets are AMAZING. When pols get in the way it gets expensive and dangerous. This is why SpaceX - literally - revolutionized space launch and everyone is desperately struggling to catch up to their soon-to-be-retired platform. Love em or hate em, Musk put the actual engineers in charge and
When the goal is cost-plus we all lose. When the goal is 'do the thing' and then they'll come...we all win.
OMG NO!
You've hit on un-mined gold which...I hope will cause a revolt.
Imagine of monitor mfgs. build in a motion sensor to briefly activate and show ads? So you could still be 'green' but also abruptly blink-on with some stupid paid-for-reason-to-punch-a-screen?
It's bad enough...please no
Which CEO paid to have this "survey" article posted exactly? We already know the RTO mandate is solidly centered around corporations having long-term lease commitments and not wanting to look stupid having expen$ive office space mostly empty.
To be honest, a smaller, full office isn't so bad. But when you have a big, sweeping office with all the 'collab' spaces and it's a ghost town, yah, that's depressing.
Being realistic, companies are happy to dump the commute time/cost burden back on employees - why not? It costs them nothing but a bit of churn. If there's a negligible increase in productivity due to 'engagement' they still win. What we don't see if travel budgets cracking back open to 'engage' with all the 'offshored' employees.
Nope. You'll 'engage' with the staff local to your office, even if they have nothing to do with your line of work because it costs the company nothing and they *might* see a slight benefit.
Fuck all that. If your job doesn't need daily engagement then make a point to only accept occasional 'engagement' activities instead of the pointless 'hide in a conference room for meetings with people not-here' every day you're in the office for 'engagement'
No, NO, no, and NOOO.
What level of stupid, pointless, and literally useless idiocy is this?
42
Can we just
Ok, plan B. If you're making a language that accepts emojis, it must ONLY accept emojis and classis operands. No text. Have kind kiddies. Let me know when you manage 'hello world' while the rest of us do something - anything - vaguely more useful.
> Government is incredibly efficient
Sarcasm? Troll?
Government is anything BUT efficient by almost every measure, at least in the US.
Per capita Medicare (and Medicaid which is the low income one) costs are HIGHER than private insurance. A quick google gets me 2021 data of $9108 median for Medicaid vs $7380 for employee sponsored plans (total cost, not just employee contribution). I do agree that Medicaid coverage is better.
So yah, think critically and google competently.
Agreed. They whole 'we need more profits so let's force-feed more random ads' has gotten way past the diminishing returns point.
When my FB feed (yes i'm old) is easily 80% 'promoted' 'recommended' 'xyz follows' 'direct advertisement' 'suggested whatever' 'outright ad not labeled as such' and so on...like why? You're not actually giving me anything out of your product that I want so I'll just stop using it.
I saw the new one, it seemed like a cheezy generic attempt at he MCU playbook. Faux Ironman and bots, obviously fake CGI (why? WHY???) over and over including the "star" of the movie.
Oh, and at least they skipped the gender politics (kinda) and only threw in mockery of other political topics. Eh. The movie wasn't really that good and seemed very formulaic.
Even with Natural Language (we are not there IMO) interactions it's still easier, faster, and arguably less distracting to turn a knob 2 clicks and make the AC blow harder. Basic interaction works best with basic (physical) controls you can manipulate by feel and never look away from the road.
Semi-complex interaction, like asking GPS for a gas station along your route in the next 20 miles is a decent use case. A human would probably pick a better option, but this falls under 'close enough' and can be faster/easier than doing it manually without any significant distraction.
Once you get to complex operations like scrolling around maps, find adjustments to things, etc. you're back to manual control being far superior to voice control (even if it's on a touch screen) because explaining those actions is too complex to do accurately.
The manufacturers want it. Multiple physical buttons are (apparently) expensive in the context of all the added wiring, etc. vs a single touch-screen that can 'do it all'.
BUT with all the focus on distracted driving the last decade or two, it seems awfully counter-productive to make people look at a screen to find the buttons to adjust climate control. In many ways, it's easier to hold your phone up and thumb thru things (so the road is still in center-view instead of hiding it in your lap like people do now) than look over to the touch screen and try to tap the right spots at arms-length.
Common controls like climate, traction, shifting, signals, and probably basic media control should all have physical buttons. Then just give me a screen for CarPlay/Android Auto and the remaining car controls. There's really no point in any kind of GPS/infotainment in cars anymore other than a pricey, bundled, upsell to pad profit margins. Even grandma has a smartphone.
Programming is an unnatural act.
