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merc

@ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts
4
Comments
1674
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Kash Patel’s $250M lawsuit offers a CliffsNotes version of his alleged conduct – and could haunt him for months

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  • a concise list of 17 easy-to-read sentences

    It would be nice to actually see those sentences. But, I can't even find this filing that apparently contains those 17 bullet points.

  • Gas Price

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  • Just cheat a bit and add a line connecting the seat post to the back wheel's hub, like this guy did.

    But, don't worry, drawing a bike is hard. I've seen bike lane markers drawn with a stencil that made absolutely no sense. Some city worker actually painted this on the ground and thought it was ok:

  • Gas Price

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  • I have to disagree with that.

    I've been working on my own bikes for decades. I bought a used bike recently and it's been a nightmare. I know how to adjust a rear derailleur, but this one just won't work. I suspect whoever last owned it did something like replace the indexed shifter with an incompatible model. In the past I've also had to deal with wheels that were wonky. I have trued wheels before, and I'm pretty good at taking a wheel that's slightly out of true and getting it back to straight. But, fixing a wheel that's significantly taco-shaped is a whole different matter. Plus, most people don't have a truing stand.

    I also didn't realize just how worn some of the parts were on this bike before I got it. The chain just snapped while I was pedalling up a steep hill. I took a closer look and some of the chainrings are pretty worn, so I might have to replace them too. Plus the brakes need a re-work, and the cables should all be replaced.

    By the time I'm done with this bike, I probably will have replaced the chain, chain rings, brake pads, cables, tires, tubes, and maybe an indexed shifter pedal. Even after buying all those parts it will probably have been cheaper than buying a new bike, but if you count the hours and hours of labour, I'm not sure I'm coming out ahead. And, what's really frustrating is that with a new bike you get to feel it while it's at its best right after you bought it. With this one, every time I take it out, I realize there's something else wrong with it, and sometimes I end up walking home, like I did when the chain snapped.

  • "Google AI summaries"

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  • Real newspaper writing style doesn't beat around the bush.

    SEO-optimization writing style does beat around the bush, because they have to try to "organically" mention all the keywords that might bring someone to the page. They also need to make it longer so there are more places to insert ads.

  • "Google AI summaries"

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  • Google doesn't try to stop you from visiting a website. It tries to answer your query directly, which may mean it's no longer necessary to visit the website.

    A more realistic scenario is someone asking, "hey, what's 20 ounces in grams?" Then there's a "website" that wants to invite you in and tell you all about unit conversion, and show you tables for how many tonnes are in a ton, etc. Meanwhile "Google" just says "566.99". It started doing that sort of thing back in 2012, long before the AI boom started. Many of those info cards (like unit conversions) don't use LLMs and are actually really handy.

    Having said that, yeah, it's devastating to websites that were free to use and ad supported and depended on traffic to survive. And, because humans are thrifty, websites that weren't free to use mostly disappeared a long time ago. I don't know what the solution is. But, I don't think it's "prevent Google from answering your question if it is capable of doing so".

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  • I believe that they might have had more free time than a typical ISS mission, because there wasn't a lot of science to be done on this trip around the moon. That left more time for spontaneous goofing off. But, they probably also knew there would be more eyes on them than the typical ISS mission, so they probably also planned more things that they hoped would go viral.

  • Trump supporters burn MAGA hats after president's AI Jesus post and pope attack

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  • The mother's work.

  • Nazi-Bar by mygumsarebleeding

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  • Suddenly, in sync, a lot of the "people" in the bar say in unison "As a strong black woman, I think president Trump is right about..."

  • Nazi-Bar by mygumsarebleeding

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  • Half the seats at the bar are filled with mannequins, but that makes the bar feel crowded, like it's still the happenin' spot. That convinces a lot of brands, celebrities, politicians and journalists that they still need to keep making appearances at the bar.

  • Trump supporters burn MAGA hats after president's AI Jesus post and pope attack

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  • Wait, now they're plural?

  • Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI compute in sign of a totally normal and healthy economy

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  • That depends on the wording.

  • Copilot can't exit vim

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  • Interesting that you use the word "chord", because guitarists and piano players have been remembering chords forever based on the position of their hands, not based on some letters and numbers. Your version isn't more easily memorized, it's just different.

  • Copilot can't exit vim

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  • Which is something you have to memorize. Do you honestly think that that is somehow easier to memorize than say "Ctrl-Shift-5"?

  • Copilot can't exit vim

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  • Rather than memorizing ctrl+shift+alt-style keybinds, you decompose stuff into chainable actions.

    By memorizing something else that's equally or more obscure.

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  • Can you imagine? A modern day oracle. Scientists would be lining up to ask questions about how the world worked and everything you said would be true.

    It would be great for just confirming things that science suspected were true. Like, all the rare particles they're trying to find with the Large Hadron Collider. They could just ask the oracle and learn all the particles they were missing, along with all the important data about them.

    Best of all, if you couldn't lie, and couldn't be wrong (even if you didn't know the answer) it could be used to "discover" things without ever having to go down blind alleys, or waste time with research that won't bear fruit. For example, you could ask "is it possible for something like a spaceship to move faster than the speed of light?" If the answer is no, then you can write off working on that forever. If it's yes, you could progressively ask questions to learn the theory you'd need to know to build a FTL ship. It could also finally put to bed whether time travel is possible, and how the paradoxes involved are resolved.

    If FTL travel is possible, you could just ask the oracle where all the various aliens are, making it really easy to contact them (plus the oracle can tell you if it's unsafe to contact them).

    Also, since it was obviously possible to transform someone into an oracle, it should be possible to do that again. You can just ask the oracle the right questions needed to create a second, third, tenth, 1000th oracle. That way the one oracle isn't always so busy, and if the first oracle dies, there are still many more.

  • Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI compute in sign of a totally normal and healthy economy

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  • The original version of the comment said, I believe "So there is precedence". That could be fixed as "there is a precedent" or "there are precedents". I suggested "precedents" because it seems like OP used the homophone for that one. So, "precedents" is correct, "precedence" is not.

    There was fuck all need for that. I actually mostly backed you up in another comment.

    Bruh, you said "Bruh. If you're going to correct, be sure you're correct.", when I was correct and OP was incorrect.

  • Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI compute in sign of a totally normal and healthy economy

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  • Note that the original has been edited. It used to say "precedence".

  • Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI compute in sign of a totally normal and healthy economy

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  • Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI compute in sign of a totally normal and healthy economy

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  • I am.