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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • So they progressively increase closing force if it keeps detecting something but the owner keeps trying to close it. I can vaguely see the reasoning only if they aren’t confident in the frunk sensor for some reason. I mean garage doors solved this problem forever ago without having to resort to something like that.

    I wonder if the “vision-based everything” mandate from Musk applies outside of autonomous driving features? Makes sense to not be confident in it if it’s just a camera…



  • Instead of pretending One Man With A Gun is going to do something

    I used to agree with this train of thought, why be armed when the government has tanks?

    But the realities of the past several years have shown us that an armed rebellion can be significantly more powerful. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at Myanmar today where the rebel groups are literally 3D printing carbines. A guerilla group with small arms can put serious pressure on a modern military. Will lots of them die? Probably. Will they “win”? Probably not, but they could easily wear down the enemy with attrition. When you need to move a couple dozen men with rifles it’s an entirely different game than coordinating 12 tanks and 500 men, you can employ completely different tactics. Especially on your home turf that you know inside and out.

    Is an armed rebellion happening anytime soon? I sure hope not. But the threat that an armed populace can at the least put some serious hurt on a military/government is a deterrent to tyranny. Just the possibility of it is a huge deterrent, compared to authoritarian countries where citizens aren’t armed and get run over by tanks.

    I’m not saying gun violence isn’t a huge problem, but saying armed citizenry is zero deterrent is just factually untrue.


  • No one’s keeping you here.

    It’s actually very difficult and expensive to leave your home country for 99% of the population.

    Just in terms of cost you need a plane ticket (or other travel costs), money to navigate the country’s immigration programs and all the fees associated, you probably need to pay to learn a new language for a year or two before you’re fluent enough in that language (DuoLingo/self-learning has very mixed results), you need to pay for housing for when you arrive until you’re able to get a job. Realistically the ones fed up with our society are the ones living paycheck to paycheck, do you think they can shoulder those costs?

    This is all assuming they even let you in, most developed countries won’t unless you have an in-demand skillset and/or a job already lined up in the country of question (i.e., the type of jobs that are doing well here already). And often times even if you have valid reasons and a job lined up they can still just tell you to go fuck yourself.

    Add on top of that that if you somehow get that far, get past all of that, you’re giving away your right to vote in your new society for several years due to requirements to become a naturalized citizen.

    Makes a lot more sense to try to improve your own country and local society when you consider all of those factors. “Don’t like America then leave” is something only the privileged that can hop on a jet to a new country at a moment’s notice think is a valid suggestion. At best it’s shit advice and at worst it’s a bad faith argument to push aside any and all criticism of the current system.


  • Why would Amazon want to hinder the accuracy of the price tracking in that way?

    Accurate price tracking leads to people saying “Oh well it was 50% less a year ago. I’ll wait on a sale, not paying full price on that” and waiting on a sale, leading to less conversions. Amazon has pressured Camelcamelcamel into agreeing to not track specific low prices (i.e., Prime Day, if that actually had any good sales). I’m unsure if they track coupons or not, they were not clear about what the criteria for not tracking a price are.

    Camelcamelcamel is unfortunately compromised by Amazon, it’s probably mostly accurate but there are price points they do not accurately log at Amazon’s request.


  • my vision for a peaceful future isn’t a perpetual Mexican standoff. Nor do I like the idea of political power and representation being directly proportional to one’s intent and capability to do violence.

    The unfortunate reality is that all political power is derived from one’s capability to do violence, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. I pay my taxes because if I don’t the federal government will forcefully take the money from me, or my other possessions. Yeah, arresting someone is “nonviolent” until that person just says “I’d prefer not to.” Forcing someone to pay a fine is nonviolent until they say “I’d prefer not to.”

    It’s the only motivator the government or any body of real power has at the end of the day. It’s a bunch of social norms and agreements all backed by the understanding that you will be made to comply by force otherwise.



  • Chevy has had a perfectly serviceable and low cost EV on the market for years

    With the caveat that for those years it’s been basically unobtainium. I looked into buying one at the start of last year and five dealers all had none in stock + a 6 month wait. (Their websites listed several in stock but we’ll ignore that other thorn)

    They killed production of it to focus on building luxury SUVs (Cadillac Lyriq) and the Blazer EV (starts $42k), so the stock that exists today is all there is. Used ones exist but the problem is they never actually made them in sufficient quantities to meet demand, and instead of ramping up production decided it’d be better to sell $40k-60k vehicles instead.


  • I’m not arguing one way or another but I want to clear up some very common misconceptions about US gun laws.

    in some states, you can get semi-automatic weapons (which are completely banned in Austria) in a shop in just minutes. And that without any background checks, psychological reports, justifications, approval required, without anything like that

    This is just blatantly untrue and I wish people would stop parroting it. If you go to any shop you need to pass a federal background check to buy any non-vintage firearm (pre-1899…not exactly a ton of those floating around). The exception here is private firearm sales, i.e. I go to Craigslist and sell a rifle or handgun. The law states the seller has to have no reasonable cause to believe they would be an unlawful possessor (weak, yes). With that said, almost half of the states (22 per Wikipedia) have implemented state-level laws requiring a background check for private sales.

    In many states even convicted criminals can get guns like that.

    Again, objectively untrue. You are not buying a firearm from any legal, licensed dealer in the US without going through a background check. And a violent criminal offense will get you barred from purchasing. For the 28 states without laws around private sales, the seller can be federally legally liable if they sell to someone that is not legally allowed to have a gun and they use it to commit crimes.

    In the US, guns are sometimes a presents for kids which they can just…own and use (while in Austria everything is obviously 18+).

    No, a child cannot legally own a firearm. The parent can purchase and own a firearm that they are allowed to use, but they do not own it. In many states if the child hurts themselves or others with such a firearm the parents will be held liable, many states have laws around safely storing firearms when children are around.

    While in the US (in many states), you can just carry any gun around in public whatsoever. So even if the police sees you having weapons in public, they can’t / don’t do anything about that

    In most states if you don’t have a license to conceal carry and you do you are breaking the law and can be charged. I’ll say this one isn’t entirely false but heavily depends on your state.

    A large part of why this issue gets nowhere is that neither side can even agree on what is true today, rather than what should be true to bring down the issue of violent crime. If one side says “They’re totally unregulated you can just buy one off Amazon and start blasting. We have to do something!” The other side is gonna think “Well they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about, no point in listening to what they have to say”


  • pokemaster787@ani.socialtomemes@lemmy.worldBurgernomics Δ
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    4 months ago

    Even if it started out that way, where “surge” pricing is current pricing and “off-surge” pricing is cheaper, leading to consumers paying less overall, it won’t stay that way. It would only be that way to prime consumers mentally to accept that dynamic pricing. After which they’ll slowly increase prices, 10 cents or whatever every month. Soon enough it’ll cost more and the corporation can brag about how it increased profits again this quarter. Remember publicly traded companies are legally obligated to maximize profit - the only time they aren’t doing so is when they’re burning money to prime consumers to accept bullshit or building a captive base, in order to eventually maximize profits.



  • With guns in general, or with Polymer80 or similar products? I’m guessing he’s intentionally mixing the two to make it sound scarier than it is.

    This is what I hate about the rhetoric around gun control, especially “ghost guns”

    As a gun owner that thinks guns are fucking cool, I’m happy to have reasonable compromises and regulations around them. Compromises and regulations that do something to stop crime. Almost all cases of 3D printed guns being used in crime are when the crime is having a 3D printed firearm (mostly in Europe). Actual violent crime it is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. We should focus on legislation that does something about the problem, not ban things we arbitrarily give scary names like “Ghost guns.” Look at the actual numbers, the actual types of crimes being committed, go after those things. Don’t start background checking people for 3D printer purchases of all things.