HalloweenSnarry
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User ID: 795
HalloweenSnarry
2d ago
Quick comment:
The Chevrolet Tahoe is a large vehicle with controls in the form of a dial you twist from R to P to D to N.
Chevy isn't the only brand to do that, IIRC. Jaguar and Land Rover also do that, so does Mercedes, so does Audi.
HalloweenSnarry
3d ago
But so many companies expect employees to magically appear, fully formed and massively overqualified, and would rather hire for months than actually try to help somebody improve.
I'm under the impression that this isn't even confined to tech.
HalloweenSnarry
3d ago
I guess it makes sense, the De Santis vs. Disney episode of the Culture War had the right looking at copyright terms, and that probably made Disney flinch when it came to Steamboat Willy.
HalloweenSnarry
4d ago
More concerning to me is how a former Green Beret can't even rig an improvised explosive device correctly.
"We trained him wrong on purpose...as a joke."
HalloweenSnarry
4d ago
I do wonder how the Soviets of the latter-era Union felt about these kinds of extreme measures compared to the Soviets of Lenin and Stalin. This was the era of the Gerontocracy, men like Andropov were most likely alive to witness Stalin's regime. Then again, perhaps the gerontocrats were soft by comparison precisely because they were alive to witness Stalin's regime.
HalloweenSnarry
4d ago
I wonder if Disney's own power in that regard has waned as of late. I think there was a potential copyright expansion some time ago and it never came to fruition, almost as if Disney...just didn't care?
HalloweenSnarry
5d ago
Now hold on, surely the counter is that some of them were Republic Chinese instead, who lost out to the Communists.
HalloweenSnarry
5d ago
Eh, I thought the real backlash always started with those kids trapped in the cave and him calling that ex-pat diver a pedophile over being told that his submersible idea was bad. It wasn't exactly partisan, but I think that was the beginning of the polarization.
Plus, also, I think people were looking for anything to make Elon and Tesla's fanboys shut up, and it just escalated from there.
HalloweenSnarry
9d ago
As I understood it, "compromise" in the sense of "nobody is going to let you have this dream, give it up."
HalloweenSnarry
9d ago
Besides what SS raised, there's been a few more government movements against Big Tech than was typical during Biden's admin. There's probably more examples.
HalloweenSnarry
9d ago
The common counterpoint to this is that they mostly just come here because even an illegally-low wage is still more than they can earn busting their butts back home. I wonder if "we shouldn't pay the cost for other countries being poorly-run" would be a strong counterargument to immigration.
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
The latter policy which might be considered intentional by those who enacted it, but has eventually spilled northwards to fairly negative effects.
I'm pretty sure the Radical Republicans did want to make the freed slaves go back to Africa or somewhere like Liberia, but were defeated on this point by the necessity of compromise, never mind the practical challenge of such after a costly civil war.
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
Is this not the real source of your gripes, then? This probably isn't a problem universally across America like some here seem to think.
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
I think tech and tech policy wonks are another area where this breaks the other way. Fight For The Future, for example, is a pretty liberal organization (at least now, post-election), but much of their messaging is about the dangers of things like facial recognition and data brokers.
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
I wonder what Azerbaijanis are going to do about it? Are they going to just say "shit happens" and let it go, or there would be some consequences to their relations with Russia?
Could go either way; it would be an incredible own-goal by Russia to have pushed away Armenia and then also push away Azerbaijan. I could see Russia making at least a token effort to smooth things over instead of doubling down on denial.
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
That was because computer hardware was improving at a rapid pace in the days of the Internet Explorer anti-trust suit. Nowadays, there's more freeware (free as in speech and beer!), most PC games worth playing can still be run on hardware from a decade-plus ago, and some of the code monkeys competing with the H1Bs being discussed in this thread sometimes pop out a very useful piece of open-source programming that might solve some need you have.
HalloweenSnarry
14d ago
Maybe it's some deep-rooted primitive instinct. Defectors in the tribe are supposed to end up dead, lest they end up destroying the tribe.
HalloweenSnarry
16d ago
Didn't Scott write a post on ACX about how AI has actually blown past a lot of old goalposts for "true intelligence" and our collective response was to come up with new goalposts?
HalloweenSnarry
16d ago
Also, it looks like Ben Franklin is the male leader option for America alongside Tubman.
HalloweenSnarry
16d ago
I suspect it's the human tendency towards imagination that lets us place so much mythological importance on the unverifiable. Everyone wants to believe the heroic legend, that people existed who were larger than life itself and who did incredible things. The air of mystery may in fact be more tantalizing than the surety of reality, for some.
HalloweenSnarry
19d ago
To a first-order level, it's good to respect treaties insofar as they function as a Schelling point, ethical value aside(?).
That being said, the Assads have ruled Syria for about as long as said treaty has existed, though, no?
I suppose it depends upon whether treaties are generally made between governments, or between countries. Does the presence of the country override continuity of government, or can they functionally be tied to specific regimes or governments?
HalloweenSnarry
20d ago
Scattered thoughts that I might as well dump here where few may see it:
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I think there's an unconscious secondary purpose to too-large houses like McMansions as discussed in the standalone thread: having multiple bedrooms makes it piss-easy to host your extended family for a holiday occasion.
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Re: Kinkade: I think there needs to be a happy medium, where art can be something more than overwrought, mass-produced kitsch like Kinkade's Christmas scenes, but also not be products of an uncontrolled spiral of elitist bullshit that's better at making money than making memorable impressions. Thankfully, there's legions of online artists on places like Pixiv and Twitter that make things like well-rendered fanart of anime and video games, or original pieces that truly stand out on aesthetics and subject matter in a way that modern high art doesn't.
HalloweenSnarry
24d ago
Did you mean to say "the former" instead of "the latter"?
HalloweenSnarry
26d ago
Eh, I think the electronics skill example is a wash: yes, the vast majority of people today will have to get to grips with how to work their smartphones and smart watches and smart TVs and Fitbits and so on and so forth, but the actual knowledge of how computers, operating systems, and actual physical electronics in general work has arguably declined. This is because companies like Apple have put in Herculean amounts of effort into dumbing down tech and sanding off as many rough edges as possible, while hiding as much of the working bits as they can. User-servicability declined once consumers didn't really need it as much.
Skimming the link, at least it seems like both the dam is there and the minnows aren't extinct.
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