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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)PS
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2 yr. ago

  • It's unfair to discount Google's early days. They DID have technical excellence. Search was leagues better than the competition. Gmail was an amazing leap from other providers. Android started as trash but improved rapidly. The Nexus line of phones was amazing. Google Maps was a huge improvement over what else existed. They did a lot right.

    I can't pinpoint exactly when the fall started. Was it when Pichai became CEO? When they removed "don't be evil?" I remember a speech Pichai gave where he talked about "more wood behind fewer arrows" as why they were getting rid of employee child projects, so maybe it was that.

  • I know this is a bad idea but I want to know parameters. Is ONE ice cube okay? Or say 2 ounces of ice, but not 3? How big could the splatter get? Could I make a party game out of putting a fryer in a driveway and having guests throw ice cubes at it?

  • Maybe it's the Communist in me, but I don't get why some people are so eager for Nintendo to file a lawsuit. Nevermind whether it actually infringes anything, it isn't eating away at Pokemon's sales or anything. It plays very different, a little closer to Arceus than any traditional Pokemon game. I see it as a win. Maybe it will encourage Nintendo to take Pokemon in a more open world direction with more features.

  • It's a bit of both! Certain commands to the car can be done locally via Bluetooth OR via Tesla servers. The tricky bit is that status always comes from the server. If you are on a VPN that is blocked (like I use NordVPN and it is often blocked) then the app can't get status and as long as it can't get status it may not even try a local command. It's unclear to me under what circumstances it does local vs cloud commands, and it may have to do with a Bluetooth LE connection that you can't really control.

    When you don't have service, or you're on VPN, it may be worthwhile to try disabling and reenabling Bluetooth. I have had success with this before. If you're using android, it seems like the widget also uses Bluetooth, so you could try adding the widget to your home screen and using that. You can also try setting the Tesla app to not be power controlled, so it never gets closed.

    Either way, there's a definite engineering problem here that feels like it should be fixed by Tesla. But I can at least confirm that, even in situations with zero connectivity, you should be able to perform basic commands like unlock and open trunk without data service.

  • I agree but I think it needs to be slightly more practical. Sometimes a line of business just dries up and it would damage the company to try and keep that service going. It wouldn't make sense to force a company into bankruptcy to keep one line going that few people use anymore.

    Earlier today, though, I was thinking about sunsetting guarantees. Companies can and should decommission things when it makes business sense, but the user generated content it has gathered shouldn't just disappear, and they shouldn't be allowed to destroy the user experience of things people have bought.

    So I would propose rules like:

    • If a service is being decomissioned or an entry point to that service being shut down, the content available on that service must be made available as a bulk export. Personal data, such as account data, messages, etc should be made available to users individually, while publicly accessible content should be made available publicly.
    • If a public service is being taken down completely, source code should be made available publicly.
    • If the service for a device which was physically purchased by consumers is being taken down, an update must be provided to allow users to use a local or alternative backend service. The source code for the service must be released publicly.
    • If features are being removed from a service which backed a physically purchased device, an update must be offered which allows users to point to a local or alternative service for either all functionality or, at minimum, the removed functionality. Looking at you, Google, keep removing features...
  • I'm a solid thousandaire who bought a used Model 3 in 2019. I'm one of those fuck cars people, but living without one is not currently possible for me, so I went with one with a high safety rating, low maintenance, and no need for gas. Since then, I've bought one set of tires, refilled the windshield wiper fluid, and had a few car washes. It's been pretty great, as a car.

    The only problem is... random pickup trucks and Dodge Chargers act crazy around me because the existence of EVs apparently threatens their masculinity. My mom sends me random articles where someone who has no idea what they're talking about complains about the car being a death trap. And now that Elon Musk won't shut the fuck up, I get to read the random ramblings of petulant children online who can't fathom that people might like something they don't.

    Fuck me, though, I guess I'm a member of the bourgeoisie now.

  • I use this constantly when I try to talk to people who think climate change is a hoax. Out one side of their mouth they'll say it's all a hoax to make money, and then turn around and say the insurance companies are pulling out of Florida because of greed. I mean, yeah, it's kind of out of greed but...

    The insurance companies do not care about the politics of this issue, they aren't "going woke" whatever that's supposed to mean. They ARE greedy, and if they could make money in Florida, they would stick around and make money. Every mathematical model they have for calculating the income they can make from premiums versus the payments they would have to make due to natural disasters is starting to come up all frownie faces, so they're leaving.

  • Robert Heinlein. His works were all over the place, and it would be a mistake to assume that he believed in something just because he wrote it in a fiction novel, so on that front I think he gets a fair amount of undeserved heat. He was pushing the limits of progressivism for his time, tossing out and seemingly defending everything on all sides from fascism to anarchy to direct democracy.

    If we discount his fiction, though, since it can be hard to tell from that what he actually believed, then he still falls pretty short by modern standards. A homophobe, almost certainly racist, and although he was practically a feminist by the standards of his time I would have to admit that he's pretty misogynistic by our standards.

  • I got in to Dilbert Young, too. I don't know why it appealed to me exactly, but I started reading his comic strips around 8 or so, and even got some compilation books. I also read some of his non-comic books... They were largely hippy woowoo bullshit, but still good reads. Then he came out with God's Debris which I thought was genuinely interesting.

    So I don't think he was always this way, or maybe he hid it better. To teenage me, at least, he seemed pretty logical and fairly progressive. A bit of a hippie at times, a bit of a look at times, fairly anti-corporate and pro-little guy, overall his writing made him seem like a decent person. Maybe some vaguely problematic takes here and there, but nothing all that bad.

    It was like some combination of success and wealth and Twitter access broke his mind. Or maybe it was always there and I just didn't recognize it and I'm blinded by nostalgia. It was just a wild rollercoaster ride watching him melt down.

  • When you're fat, you have a personal problem. When a large percent of your population is fat, you have a social problem. It's super easy to say, "All these fat people need to eat better and exercise more" but it's harder to look for answers to... Why aren't these people eating better and exercising more?

  • TBH, this was my first thought when I read the headline. Surely they can't be so bald-faced racist as to just deny someone because they're black, they'd be caught easily. So I assumed it must be something like lower credit scores or some other confounding factor, which, to be clear, is still the result of racism. But like a deeper, more systemic racism. That it's apparently not feels more concerning to me, like they just didn't think it would be a problem if they got caught.

  • The thing that sticks out to me, that no one seems to be talking about, is this:

    "...this week oversaw a sentence that included probation and requiring Quantavious to write a two-page report about Kobe Bryant."

    He's charged with urinating outside. Already stupid and ridiculous. But then the judge assigns homework, which... What? And then it's about Kobe Bryant which has what to do with urinating outside? Why Kobe Bryant?? Is there a public urination charge in his past I don't know about? Did the judge ask "who's your favorite person?" and assign homework based on that?

    It's a dumb thing to be concerned about, but it's somehow even weirder to me than the rest of it.

  • So many things are unnecessarily wrapped in plastic. We use bubble wrap in situations where paper would be a perfectly fine buffer for shipping. We use plastic bags when paper and reusable bags work perfectly well.

    I get so frustrated about it not even because I'm scared of the environmental impact of all this plastic floating around, although that does suck, but because plastic is currently absolutely crucial for modern medicine. One day maybe we'll find alternatives but until then I think a rational society would be preserving the limited life-saving miracle material for uses that aren't as basic as "use it to take home groceries, then throw it away."