dageshi

Does anyone think the US would defend Taiwan at this point?

I think that ship has sailed under the current administration.

Page loaded, I read the story for a bit then the entire page went black with "Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information)."

2025 when websites implement their own blue screens of death.

Yes, but we can't do anything about it can we?

I imagine it's because people are worth far more to advertisers than they themselves are willing to pay to browse. That and once you've given something away for free, for so long, it's very hard to then charge for it.

Based on previous conversations on this topic, I think the issue is that people don't actually prioritise the mini size above all else.

In other words whatever size the audience is for a mini phone they are further fragmented into people who want a flagship phone vs mid range phone vs budget phone.

And those market segments are too small to make it worth Apple or even most android manufacturers effort.

Samsung was the first out with foldable phones 5-6 years ago I think?

I don't think it's complacency I think the existing form factor is just overwhelmingly popular and good enough for most people.

That just sounds like terrible luck to be honest.

Catching a cab from the airport in a new country after a flight is a pretty common thing to do no matter where you're going. Depending on flight length you might well be too tired to really navigate public transport in a new city in a foreign language.

There's not a lot to learn from that.

Yeah it is.

Tackling climate change would've required people to potentially change their lives, possibly drastically and in doing so likely have a lower standard of living.

And they didn't want to.

They don't want to drive less, they don't want to fly less, they don't want smaller houses, they may say they want to do something about climate change but only so long as it doesn't actually meaningfully effect them.

I think it's pretty obvious that nothing meaningful is going to be done.

As a species we're not willing to sacrifice enough to solve this problem and I think we're probably out of time at this point.

If all it costs them were never having access to those chips again the chinese would've taken Taiwan already.

The chinese want to invade Taiwan because they think it's a rebel province, their only consideration is whether the US will oppose them militarily if they do.

It doesn't beat it but honestly it's good enough based on my experience using a 4g mobile connection as my primarily home internet connection.

They're uploading all the Mythbusters episodes to youtube for free as well. It wouldn't surprise me if in another 5 years much historical tv will be on youtube to watch for free.

I think "deciding whether to emotionally respond" to something... isn't emotion?

Emotion is something you feel, not something you decide to allow yourself to feel.

Like, if I hear about someone being raped or murdered, how am I not going to have an emotional reaction of sadness or anger to that? And ultimately what use was that emotion? I cannot prevent the event happening, it has already happened, I am just a voyeur to someone else's tragedy.

Most of the news is like that. It's events that have already happened, that I can do nothing about but I'm vaguely meant to be up to date with because.... reasons? Some vague concept that everyone is meant to have an inch deep understanding of current events so they've got something to gossip about?

I truly don't see the point or the benefit.

Perhaps it depends on the individual, but I never found it possible.

The news just made me sad, sad and angry most of the time, it's just a stream of 24/7 misery and if there's not enough misery going on locally the news will find misery from around the world to fill the run time.

Honestly maybe just because they can?

They have these relatively obscure movies that aren't really worth much so why not throw them on youtube and give them the best possible chance of being watched.

I think it's a great move honestly, I know a tv show from the UK that's been doing the same, hopefully more shows/movies will do it as well.

I have just poked around and it looks like most of them are back online?

I run a tobacco related subreddit (cigars) and we are technically NSFW, presumably to stop ads running on the sub?

Anyway, the tobacco subs occasionally get this "closed for lack of moderation" message when someone from reddit is doing an investigation into something.

In our case organising private sales or trades via reddit is against their TOS, which we (mods) enforce by removing posts trying to sell or trade. However they also don't like it if someone posts whatsapp or other chat links to places where trading might happen. Last time we got that "closed for lack of moderation" message it was down to a whatsapp link that stayed up too long.

I know they do this with porn subs as well, but I'm unsure what the exact criteria for triggering it is, must be some behaviour they don't like going unmoderated.

At any rate, I would guess maybe this was a fuckup with some automated system? I don't know that they could properly "investigate" all these subs in one go?

I believe BMW just got rid of gesture controls, which they've had for a long time in the past month.

The youngest in gen alpha are just being born, there's a real chance they may not learn to drive at all because self driving is ubiquitous.

Yes, I know they've said that. I don't believe them. Or rather even if they do sell them I think it will be at a point where their robo taxi's are complete ubiquitous already.

The self driving bit has to be nailed down first I think, once that's done nothing I've described is even remotely difficult to implement, it's more a matter of peoples thinking around driving evolving.

I think it might go this way because people feel like they want to "own" their "cars". Especially in America it's a big part of the culture, so I can see being able to buy the coach part as being a popular compromise.

Powering electric cars is already cheaper, but right now they're less convenient, with self driving they become as convenient or more than gas vehicles. You no longer have to stop and charge anywhere because there's a fresh "horse" waiting to be hooked up while your existing one drives off to a charging station, all the downsides are automated away.

I've been thinking about this.

In self driving world it no longer makes sense for a car to look like they do now.

Instead I think they operate a bit like Coach and Horses used to. You the consumer own the "coach", you have it specced out how you want it, your choice of seating (hell even a bed?), your sound system, your big screen tv, whatever you want because you're a passenger not the driver.

The "horses" are the self driving bit + batteries. The ubiquitous taxi service owns these. Maybe you permanently rent a low range model (100 miles) that is attached to your "Coach" at all times for quick errands. For longer range journeys you hire a model with more battery and longer range that drives over and attaches automatically to your coach.

For really long range journeys, your self driving "horse" drives into a coaching station along the way, detaches and another one attaches in 30 seconds and off you go.

I think the general public has believed that self driving would arrive as some big bang moment where it just "worked" in 95%+ of environments where people drive. One morning there'd be an announcement it was cracked and then in six months you'd be able to buy a new car with it.

I don't think from either a business, technical or legal perspective google ever wants to sell or license their tech directly to a car being sold to the public.

They want to run a taxi service, they plan on running a taxi service, they're never going to sell it directly to consumers but they don't want consumers thinking about the implications of that.

They're just going to keep expanding Waymo in the background till it's ubiquitous.

This is another reason why I think they will remain low key.

They'll perpetually be in "beta" until they're so ubiquitous that the idea of getting rid of them is unthinkable.

I'm pretty certain they won't undercut Uber or other taxi services any time soon because they don't want to provoke the political headache that comes with it. That type of politics could shutdown their licenses, I'm sure they want to avoid that at all costs so they're pricing above existing services.

What they may do is refuse to raise prices and eventually inflation will make them the cheapest.

I'm convinced that Waymo will quietly continue to roll out self driving taxi's to ever increasing areas in "beta" until one day they're covering a significant percentage of the most profitable areas to be a taxi in.

Instead of trying for universal self driving, they're going to prioritise being self driving taxi's for the most profitable areas.

I'm sure that's true but... I know that I would never check that blog again had I written one.

Google photos pops a reminder of somewhere most days for me with a photo slideshow of somewhere I've been.

Well this thread got nuked

I'm going to take a different view on this.

I travelled a lot circa 2008-10 in and around Asia and recently I've been uploading all those old travel photos to Google Photos simply because every day it randomly pops up pictures from a place I once visited.

Even the bad photos I took back then (I didn't have a great camera) are way better at keeping those memories alive than I would have expected, they may not be the best, but I was there and I took them.

KU is amazing.

There's entire genres like litrpg, progression fantasy and cozy fantasy that likely would either not exist or be a fraction of their current size without it.

And authors can make a living, there's plenty in those genres (not to mention romance) who via a combination of patreon + KU + Audible are doing just fine.

I too wish there was someone who could compete with amazon, but the thing is nobody seems to actually even try? I feel like the entire book industry would be quite happy if things had remained stuck in time circa 1990, on their own they would never have invented something like KU.

I'm convinced he has draft versions of the complete story at this point and will keep revising it till he passes away whereupon it'll be published posthumously.

Or perhaps this is just copium on my part.