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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Penn and Teller do a bit with a nail gun where Penn does a monologue about how they are magicians so there is obviously a trick, and that’s the point - they want the audience to come along and enjoy the show and watch them do things that seem dangerous, while knowing that even if something goes wrong they aren’t going to be complicit in someone getting hurt or killed by encouraging them to take those risks.

    Idk, not really relevant to what you said, but I think about that a lot








  • RegalPotoo@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldForbidden Tech
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    5 months ago

    It does, but it’s super dangerous to do unless you have it wired up properly. Proper installations will use a special connector so you can’t plug anything else into that receptical, and will have it interlocked against the main breaker - you can’t plug anything in without disconnecting from the grid. The dangers of doing it amateur-hour are:

    • You now have a cable that you can unplug and have live ends exposed - which if you don’t realize is connected to an active generator is super dangerous, and even if you do one slip and you are now the ground conductor
    • If you connect the generator while still connected to the grid, your generator is almost certainly going to be out of phase. This will probably cause damage to your generator and anything else plugged in at the time
    • If you don’t have an interlock and run the generator while connected to the grid (say during a power outage) you will be back-feeding power into the grid. This is super dangerous for anyone coming to fix the outage, as things that they’ve isolated to fix can still end up being live

    Note that this interlock is also required if you have solar - although it’s usually in the form of an automatic breaker that will disconnect and put the circuit into “island mode” if it detects a loss of grid supply



  • Idk, even before Musk went full meth head things were already heading south pretty fast - they’d completely squandered their first mover advantage and their “move fast and break things” approach was really starting to take a toll on their brand reputation. Teslas were already starting to be known as expensive cars with terrible build quality, then the constant delays and broken promises about self driving did them no favors either.

    A Tesla made sense when they were pretty much the only really viable luxury EV, but when you can get equivalent cars (with better build quality) from established Western manufacturers for ~75% the price or from a Chinese manufacturer for ~60%, what advantage do they have?

    Musk’s cult of personally is/was a big part of it, so they are kinda screwed either way - the stink of Musk won’t instantly vanish if they get rid of him, and taints everything while he stays


  • I find it telling that AGI people seem to assume that AGI will spontaneously appear as a distinct entity with its own agency rather than being a product that will be owned and sold.

    People who have hundreds of billions of dollars can get mid-single-digit percent ROI by making very safe investments with that money, but instead they are pouring it into relatively risky AI investments. What do you think that says about their expectations of returns?






  • RegalPotoo@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldGet your new PebbleOS watch
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    8 months ago

    I’m pretty excited about this; my Pebble Time was the best watch I’ve even owned - smart or otherwise.

    That said, I don’t think I’m going to be preordering this given how badly the last Pebble Kickstarter went. For those who weren’t around at the time, Pebble (whose CEO is behind this venture) built his whole business around Kickstarter. The first 2 generations were wildly successful, but for the third generation they massively overextended themselves trying to get hardware into mainstream retailers, prioritised building stock for retail channels (because contracts) and ran out of cash before shipping for the majority of backers who had bankrolled this whole thing. Eventually everyone who hadn’t had their orders fulfilled got a refund, but that was only because FitBit decided to buy them. Eric seems like a nice guy and great at the technology - and I’m not saying that I could run a business any better - but I think I’ll wait until there is stock on hand for me to buy outright before I hand over my cash




  • This is exactly the sort of argument I was talking about

    • The forth amendment counts for less than the paper it is written on outside the bounds of the US
    • Most of the rest of the world has laws requiring companies that operate in their jurisdiction - even if they aren’t based in that country - to prove access to law enforcement if requested
    • If complying with the law is truly actually impossible, then don’t be surprised if a country turns around and says “ok, you can’t operate here”. Just because you are based in the US and have a different set of cultural values, doesn’t mean you get to ignore laws you don’t like

    To illustrate the sort of compromise that could have been possible, imagine if Apple and Google had got together and proposed a scheme where, if presented with:

    • A physical device
    • An arrest warrant aledging involvement in one of a list of specific serious crimes (rape, murder, csam etc)

    They would sign an update for that specific handset that provided access for law enforcement, so long as the nations pass and maintain laws that forbid it’s use outside of a prosecution. It’s not perfect for anyone - law enforcement would want more access, and it does compromise some people privacy - but it’s probably better than “no encryption for anyone”.