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Cake day: December 6th, 2024

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  • What “democracy”?!

    The whole point of Neoliberalism is to have Money be a higher power than the State (which is the part controlled by voters via elected representatives) - their entire schtick being all about how the Market should not be “interfered” with by the State and the State shouldn’t actually own or do anything other than National Defense and a Judicial System - so the very opposite of Democracy (were the greatest power of all is that of voters and it is not restricted to just some areas).

    This kind of “liberalism” is never and was never about Democracy (though it definitelly disguises itself as “democratic”), it has always been about replacing Democracy with Oligarchy.



  • From what I’m seeing here in Europe, the fines for driving with a phone are seldom applied and outside a handful of countries aren’t even that large.

    Also infrastructure for pedestrians hasn’t actually improved significativelly in Europe since 2009 - the big difference in the quality of pedestrian infrastructure between Europe and the US comes all the way back from the 60s or even earlier, so it doens’t explain a change of trend on the US but not Europe in 2009.

    I’m leaning more towards the “oversized light trucks are dangerous as fuck” theory since, well, they are and the trend to see more of those on the road hasn’t happened in Europe but it has in the US.


  • I remember back in the day when they had to pull Cobol programmers out of retirement to update mainframe software because of Year 2000 and they got paid a bundle for it.

    Similar thing for customization of older SAP systems after SAP changed the language used to Java but those systems were still done in the old language.

    So I expect that freelance senior designer-developers are going to get paid A LOT of money to come fix things in a few years’ time, especially since in places with high AI adoption this is going to be way bigger in terms of size, complexity and seniority of expertise needed that either mainframe code updating for Y2K and updating customizations in old SAP systems.




  • Anybody who has worked through the life-cycle of large projects knows that as time passes and the software gets adjusted and expanded, code just accumulates problem and brittleness - especially because multiple different people change it and they tend to each do it their way, often without full understanding of the code base - not just at the code level but also at the software design level - and eventually that code gets so hard to change or fix that a whole new system has to be built from the ground up.

    In my experience this happens maybe at around 5 - 8 years of age of a codebase.

    So I expect we’re headed for a spectacular industry-wide explosion because using AI code vastly accelerates this because for just about anything but small projects that can entirelly be generated in one go, AI isn’t consistent in coding style, much less software design.

    Throwing software engineers at it right now only works if they end up spending even more time reviewing and ajusting the AI code than they would if they did the work themselves, since having AI coding is pretty much the equivalent of outsourcing to a pool of random junior developers.


  • All the right wingers are hard at doing so, as are the “center”-“left” mainstream parties though in a more dilluted way - essentially the conquests of the post-War period are being destroyed, same as in the US but starting from a higher basedline in Europe so there’s more to destroy before reaching the bottom.

    Shit, even the “fringe” “left” has a large subset of parties led by people whole detached from any single global and consist ideology (such as the older ones like Socialism, Social Democracy or Anarchy) who grew up only ever knowing Neoliberalism and thus whose idea of being “left” is the Neoliberal “moral liberalism” (mostly commonly known as Identity Politics) that very explicitly excludes the greatest, most widespread and most suffering causing inequality of all - Wealth Inequality - which is probably why the Far-Right is gaining massivelly from the fall of the mainstream parties than those “left” parties, since even the Far-Right lies are more appealing to the Working Class than the upper middle class well-off scion of well-off parent’s idea of “equality” that these parties defend.

    (I was actually a member of such a “fringe” “left” party for a few years and was thoroughly dissapointed)

    And yeah, I’m terrified.



  • An Oppo A5M 4G costs around a bit over $150 in AliExpress and that’s including the VAT for Europe (which will be the VAT of whatever country they imported it into, normally around 20%).

    This thing has a 1080p 7" screen, which judging by the pictures is more than that Commodore phone.

    Electronics are expensive for these things but that’s when you’re aiming for heavy use such as gaming, and that means larger/higher-density screen, more CPU/GPU power and bigger battery to feed those all the things as well as more memory and storage, which are the most expensive parts. LTE modules are comparativelly cheap nowadays, as are stupidly high resolution cameras and good DACs.

    The only reason I would see for this to end up in the expensive electronics range is if they’re aiming for it to run heavier AI models locally, which might very well be the case since judging by what others said the CEO of the company which bought the Commodore brand is AI-bro.




  • The entire system in the US is made to keep as many people as possible teetering at the brink of absolute poverty and scared shitless from that happening (since what follows that is mostly homelessness or prison, both dealth with in the most inhumane way imaginable), since that makes it much easier to exploit those people to the max.

    The point of the Social Safety Net was to stop that, but whatever little of it ever existed has been torn down in the US (and is even being torn down in other countries as mainstream politicians there have aped American “liberal” politics)


  • Road speed has definitely increased since 2009 exactly and by so much that the trend of falling pedestrian deaths in the US completelly turned around???

    Also I’ve actually lived in 3 countries of Europe since 2009 and beyond a handful of larger cities (such as Paris) closing a handful of streets and making them pedestrian only, pedestrian infrastructure has barelly improved in that period.

    Absolutelly, Europe invested in much better infrastructure than the US, especially for pedestrians and cyclists, but that long predates 2009 - in fact Europe always had much more pedestrian-friendly infrastructure than the US, even in the most car friendly countries in Europe.

    Methinks you’re trying too to exculpate the huge increase in average car size in the US.


  • Such differences remained steady during that time frame, so whilst they explain the actual baseline levels, they don’t explain the change in trend that happened in the US but not in Europe.

    (What you suggest would only make sense if in 2009 the road infrastructure design, driving standards and average speeds became much worse in the US and kept getting worse, something not really supported by observation of those things)

    The most logical conclusion is that something changed in one place that did not change in the other.

    The biggest change that happened in the US but not in Europe in that time frame was the in the US the prevalence and size of light trucks increased massivelly but not at all in Europe. Further, as we see in this study such vehicles are far more dangerous to pedestrians, so this specific change that happens in one geographical zone but not the other does seem to be the most likely explanation. Certainly this is a lot more logical than an increase in mobile phone use whilst driving (as that also happened in Europe) or the better road conditions in Europe vs the US (as that didn’t change even though the rate of pedestrian deaths in the US reversed its trend and started climbing up whilst in Europe it remained on a trend of slowing falling down)


  • They’re a “me, me, me”, “don’t give a shit about endangering the lives of anybody else”, anti-social choice of vehicle.

    Those are core character traits of people who are Fascists, though, granted not all people with those character traits are Fascists.

    Personally I do believe that the spread if that mindset and the increasing immunity from consequences for being like that towards others is one of the things backing the rise of Fascism.

    That said, I do agree with you that “Everything that’s bad is Fascism” just devalues the word and reduces its impact.


  • The danger from higher kinetic energy comes from the longer break distance and time to stop: given the same driver reaction time and distance to the pedestrian, a heavier vehicle will take longer to break to a stop and thus have a higher velocity when it collides with that pedestrian than a lighter vehicle.

    This is not to deny the difference that a higher front makes, just pointing out that kinetic energy does in fact make a difference, though of course as you point out not because of any “higher energy transmission on collision” or such, but rather indirectly because the vehicle is more likely to collide at a higher speed because it takes longer to break.

    I couldn’t find info on this for explicitly for light trucks, but here’s some for trucks.