They behave exactly like black mold. They start coalescing in some adjacent space and suddenly BOOM. Online storefront, starts hosting its own servers, that becomes part of the business. Starts building out warehouses, that becomes part of the business. IoT things that run on their servers, then cameras, gobbles up Blink. They even had a pilot project for restaurant delivery, we’ll probably see that again once they can tie it into their parcel delivery fleet

Props to anyone who can laugh at themselves over something like this, although it might be the kind of attitude that got him in that pickle in the first place

We evolved to have that response in a world in which hospitals didn’t exist and in which we faced predation by other animals, and ‘curl into a ball feeling like shit for a couple days’ was the most viable way for the body to handle even the most mundane of infections (all the other ideas didn’t make the cut and here we are). But now, 21st century, we’re like ‘oh it’s just the cold’ and actively attempt to mitigate it.

A slew of other things are still stuck in 20,000BC as well, like our bodies not being able to deal with copious amounts of sugar, or thinking we might have difficulties securing our next meal. Cut too many calories trying to lose some fat and your body legit thinks you’re dying and starts breaking down all sorts of soft tissue that isn’t fat. Or vasoconstriction when we’re out shoveling snow with a warm house 15ft away, all sorts of shit

The shitty thing is that if margins are high enough only a very small minority of owners need to subscribe in order for them to break even and then we get stuck with it for eternity like SiriusXM being implanted into practically everything.

And of course there’s no way to just ‘opt out’ of the hardware via trim levels. Shitty industry in general

That image is of the bus so it probably requires a ‘fleet’ type purchase alongside a maintenance contract

It’s pretty wild to think they took this long to prohibit using US-based software for such sensitive information

Sometimes a writer will use what they feel is a more recognizable but ‘technically incorrect’ word as a colloquialism for a less-used term that’s more accurate, and then go into more detail in the article, but it’s good and proper to wrap that colloquialism in apostrophes (‘air quotes’).

But in this specific case, it was ruled that Google has a monopoly on general website searches and that they have utilized a variety of anti-competitive practices to bolster their presence as such.

Not dissimilar to Microsoft’s antitrust case in the late 90s, specifically regarding Internet Explorer. It was a very small chunk of a much larger antitrust suit but they were found to have used Windows in order to stifle competition for web browsers and maintain their standing as the dominant browser (they also leveraged their market share for Windows and IE with OEMs and ISPs respectively but I’m digressing).

Microsoft was ordered to split, or spin off their browser business into a different entity, but they settled with DOJ on appeal (probably what we’ll see come of this - Google will probably make a big long list of things they will change or no longer engage in, and the government will feel as though all those changes will be sufficient remedy)

For me it’s the difference between a preponderance of evidence suggesting such, and something being applied and proven until any doubt is removed.

For example, I was trying to find studs in drywall recently (last house was plaster and lathe), and looking at things Socratically, I could use a stud finder but I might be drilling into conduit or a pipe. So I was like “I can use magnets to hit drywall screws to try to confirm the presence of a stud”, and it seems reasonable, but I’ve never attempted it in practice, and there could be all sorts of things a magnet could hit, since I’ve no experience with drywall, how close a steel pipe could be, any of that. So it’s a belief. It’d be rather arrogant of me to accept this as a reliable method without testing this method, drill through a pipe and wind up with egg on my face.

So, I tested this by getting two magnets to stick vertically, then measured 16" out, got 2 more magnets to stick vertically, kept doing that until I hit half a dozen spots, all 16" apart. Drilled a pilot hole, felt resistance and the smell of wood, drilled a couple more.

I think somewhere between mounting a flat screen to fixing 3 closet shelves it became knowledge, not sure exactly when, but all the doubts were removed and it never blew up in my face. I can just waltz in a room and sink a bunch of holes in the right spot now without being skeptical of some electronic stud finder.

I guess what I mean to say is that testing something and having it consistently work and be reproducible is what leads to knowledge imo

Pretty much.

AI: You don’t have to use plastic! Silicone, graphite, ceramics, glass, woods, and aluminum can all be used as substitutes and often have more desirable physical properties for specific applications.

CEO: I hear you, I really do, but scientists already recommended this and we’ve already done numerous analyses that have all concluded that it’d be too costly to implement and would leave us with products that aren’t competitive.

CEO: …Could you figure out how to increase our gross margins by suggesting changes to these designs?

AI: Sure! We can start by replacing those braze-on threaded nuts with a plastic clamp. I suppose that lag bolt could be plastic as well.

The problem is a confluence of flaws related to capitalism and psychology that allows guys like these to be as they are, gives them ample opportunity to speak, and compels others to listen.

Eric Schmidt and people like him have so much money and influence that they’re presented the opportunity to sit down with policy makers and use media as a megaphone to the point that his voice alone is louder than tens of millions of dissenters and the collective group is able to speak over the entire scientific community.

We’ve normalized it to the point that he can pitch an idea that is as existentially catastrophic as this, and the article writer spins it as some profound statement worthy of deeper discussion.

The CEO of Starbucks attempted to justify flying across state in a jet in order to commute to work, and a lot of people either accept it as some sort of tenet of capitalism or attempt to play the devil’s advocate as to why something like that would be deemed necessary by a person. And while he’s doing that, he’s not univerally lambasted for it, policy doesn’t change to prohibit that, and we just squabble amongst ourselves about the merits or necessity.

But as long as guys like these continue to receive money, they and their lobbyists will be chanting the same mantra

Gaetz and MTG are batting .500 for ousting their own party’s house speaker. I don’t think we’ll need a coliseum, just C-Span lol

The thing about that is that it’d require cohesion and unity across all Republicans, and it seems like Trump himself is the only one seemingly able to pull this off.

The Whigs tore themselves apart in similar manner and all it’d take is a third of Republicans to back some group of MAGA (or rebranded) politicians who decide to stay on the ballot as third party. There are already multiple factions under the ‘R’ namesake and it’d just take a little pull in opposite directions. They’re a stubborn bunch

I know. Will they work together or back an outsider of a presumptive nominee such as MTG? Or will they all just duke it out while a more mainstream Republican capitalizes on the dysfunction? We’ll find out soon enough

Purely anecdotal but I tend to avoid any sensitive hardware purchases off of Amazon because they suck at packaging things a lot of times and I’ve had more than a few DOA components because they just tossed the box into an even larger box then apparently yeeted it down a flight of stairs

Edit: I should add that I live 10 minutes from a Microcenter which plays a large part in my overall pickiness, but that said, when I’m looking for something sensitive to handling and needs to be purchased online I stick to computer hardware retailers solely because they love packing peanuts and bubble wrap as much as the components love them

There’s no apparent successor and there hasn’t been any attempt by Trump to nudge anyone towards that (he doesn’t give a shit about a post-Trump lanscape), but a half dozen people would attempt to claim it as their own, so if MAGA does survive it’d probably be really messy for a while.

Normally we use conventions for this kind of thing but they’d be competing against traditional Republicans in that space, so I’m expecting to see MGT and DJT and Boebert and a bunch of others just try to pull each other’s hair out, like an obscenely wealthy grandparent that had no will and no clear next of kin.

The heirarchal structure is basically Donald so the risk of the entire collective decapitating itself is pretty high