https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit
read this a couple days ago, fairly convincing argument (not wholly original) that the collapse of soviet models of state-sponsored r&d since the 1960s means that the last 60+ years of technical innovation are really just the gradual commercialisation of innovations paid for by state funded research. The idea that capitalism drives innovation is a myth and outsourcing technological improvement to private industry has predictably meant declining standards as the bottom line is better served by exploiting global networks of cheap labour than spending money designing robots that can do everything. I think the caveat he leaves out would have actually improved his argument. Medical innovation has been huge in the last sixty years but it also the most socialised model of provision of any sector, even in the highly commercialised US healthcare system where the figures of state spending are famously high.
recent uk government alignment of the university sector with private industry imperatives (Jo Johnson, the national industrial strategy) shows the gov pursuing a legacy where state-funded universities must compete to secure funding by directly appealing to the needs of industry. A sort of frankenstein partial regression to the model the article outlines but with the post 2008 crash neoliberal ethos of "socialism for the extremely rich, horrible venture capital logic for the rest of you plebs." No wonder everything is truly shit.
― plax (ico), Saturday, 7 September 2019 14:44 (four years ago) link
ticket taking used to mean ripping the stub and letting someone in. obv fraud was an issue so of course they moved to the scan system. ok, one extra second or so.
but now all these events are Mobile only so you have to wait for some asshole to remember to pull up the event on his phone, and god forbid his screen brightness is low, they sit there for five minutes trying to get scanned in.
i was at Halloween Horror Nights last night using an express pass and the line would come to a standstill multiple times while the staff had trouble scanning in someone's mobile express ticket because either the brightness was too low, they were holding the scanner wrong, they didn't know how to use the scanner, or the doofus didn't have it ready when he got to the front of the line.
― FUCK YOUR POTATO (Neanderthal), Saturday, 7 September 2019 14:47 (four years ago) link
mmmm meter data
― brimstead, Saturday, 7 September 2019 17:56 (four years ago) link
I dream of a basic HTML version of all websites and a way to make this default
― Never changed username before (cardamon), Saturday, 7 September 2019 20:18 (four years ago) link
xxp - ha, the argument and title sounded familiar - that essay is also in Graeber's book "Utopia of Rules" that I read a few months back. The title essay is really good, and then I got to that one and felt like it was a filler track on a 90s album in comparison
― sarahell, Saturday, 7 September 2019 20:26 (four years ago) link
― beard papa, Sunday, 8 September 2019 03:25 (four years ago) link
I use lynx to read nytimes
― plax (ico), Sunday, 8 September 2019 05:45 (four years ago) link
I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror, which won't fetch from other sites in such a situation).
― Dan I., Sunday, 8 September 2019 14:07 (four years ago) link
Are those safety precautions? About readability? Something else?
― alomar lines, Sunday, 8 September 2019 14:37 (four years ago) link
ah, sorry, jokes bruv
https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
― Dan I., Sunday, 8 September 2019 19:05 (four years ago) link
rms otm
― j., Sunday, 8 September 2019 20:33 (four years ago) link
i see he keeps that page up to date:
A friend once asked me to watch a video with her that she was going to display on her computer using Netflix. I declined, saying that Netflix was such a threat to freedom that I could not treat it as anything but an enemy.
― The Pingularity (ledge), Monday, 9 September 2019 07:42 (four years ago) link
my man
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 9 September 2019 08:07 (four years ago) link
I think you are misunderstanding, It was a DVD that had just arrived in the mail and she popped it in her DVD-R drive.
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Monday, 9 September 2019 08:59 (four years ago) link
My preferred joke with the future of "high tech, self driving transportation options" has been that you try to get on a toll road or cross a bridge into Canada and they're like ... this vehicle isn't compatible. You're gonna need a dongle. Pull over to that truck stop over there and you can buy a dongle, because your vehicle needs a dongle.
― ን (nabisco), Monday, 9 September 2019 17:41 (four years ago) link
nabisco!!
that future is now and it's called brexit
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 9 September 2019 19:33 (four years ago) link
it's also called the SF Bay Area, where they are probably going to completely eliminate the ability to pay cash on toll bridges (the Golden gate Bridge is already automated).
― sarahell, Monday, 9 September 2019 20:04 (four years ago) link
no dongles required
― Οὖτις, Monday, 9 September 2019 20:11 (four years ago) link
basically you just get a bill in the mail
don't be afraid
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 9 September 2019 20:17 (four years ago) link
dongles are your friend
it's the price of freedom
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 9 September 2019 20:18 (four years ago) link
In this dingle dongle morningI'll come following you
― FUCK YOUR POTATO (Neanderthal), Monday, 9 September 2019 20:24 (four years ago) link
lol
― theRZA the JZA and the NDB (darraghmac), Monday, 9 September 2019 23:31 (four years ago) link
Hey @Tesla can you help me explain to my wife why I can't drive her to the dentist? I gotta tell you, if you can't drive it then it's not a car. On hold 25 minutes and counting. pic.twitter.com/qA52jABFHm— Jon Johnson (@jrjohnson_) September 9, 2019
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 15:52 (four years ago) link
cars have never broken down til now
― theRZA the JZA and the NDB (darraghmac), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:00 (four years ago) link
you'd think we'd have figured out this whole dentist thing by now
― maffew12, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:02 (four years ago) link
yeah actually otm
― theRZA the JZA and the NDB (darraghmac), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:05 (four years ago) link
update on my new printer: prints great, slight odour of cigarettes
― maffew12, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:12 (four years ago) link
we found the place arcade fire sang about
― ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:16 (four years ago) link
Haiti?
― maffew12, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:20 (four years ago) link
magical place where dude's car does not go
― ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:26 (four years ago) link
I'd say you're romanticizing Haiti a bit though I'm no expert on the place
― maffew12, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:28 (four years ago) link
― theRZA the JZA and the NDB (darraghmac), Wednesday, September 11, 2019 9:00 AM (twenty-six minutes ago)
adding another thing that can go wrong to stop your car running beyond mechanical issues is dumb tho
― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:28 (four years ago) link
well put, though I've heard a bit about these self driving cars having a camera or something to make sure the driver person's eyes are open... I think I'm with that
― maffew12, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 16:30 (four years ago) link
My car has some kind of immobilizer if it decides something is amiss. I accidentally activated a warning for it the other day when I left it running a moment while I got out with my keys. Nice for security, but also ominous.
― Manitobiloba (Kim), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 17:09 (four years ago) link
ominous for your dentist's bottom line?
― ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 17:14 (four years ago) link
oh shit it's just like that arcade fire song
― maffew12, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 19:24 (four years ago) link
that other one about cars, Ready to Start
― maffew12, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 19:26 (four years ago) link
used to be unusual for a car manufacturer to remotely cause their product to break down, because they felt it was a good time for your car to break.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 19:32 (four years ago) link
he doesn't even want his car to start. he wants tesla to "help (him) explain to (his) wife."
― ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 19:48 (four years ago) link
i don't know where this fits but there's a computer system in our Honda which needs to be calibrated exactly right for the car to pass a smog test, even though its emissions are very little. I went in for the test and it failed, and the guy told me "you need to drive your car up the 2 freeway to the 210 freeway and head west for a couple miles and then exit and get back on and come back here and then it should be good, you just need steady nonstop freeway driving for at least 25 miles and that's the only route that won't have traffic."
I did it and it worked but wtf.
― omar little, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 19:52 (four years ago) link
Jon: I can't take you to the dentist because my car broke down,wife: I don't understand. You can't drive it?Jon: Nowife: Impossible. If you can't drive it, is it really a car that broke down?Jon: I've been tricked.wife: I don't understand.*tweet*
― ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 19:55 (four years ago) link
― omar little, Wednesday, September 11, 2019 12:52 PM (five minutes ago)
fuuuuuuuuck
― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 19:58 (four years ago) link
xxp that sounds fishy, like the VW emissions cheating stuff.
― DJI, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 19:58 (four years ago) link
there is widespread fraud in smog testing
― ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 20:03 (four years ago) link
just need the turbo or whatever to be heated enough to burn off that shit iirc
head down the n4 at 120 and throw her into 3rd is the common advice here
― theRZA the JZA and the NDB (darraghmac), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 20:04 (four years ago) link
in these cases, I don't think the emissions are necessarily even out of bounds. it's a software issue. the sort of issue non-teslas aren't supposed to have.
― ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 20:11 (four years ago) link
A car's "Check Engine" light 99% of the time has nothing to do with the engine but rather the onboard cpu/diagnostics.― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Wednesday, August 14, 2019 9:06 AM (four weeks ago)
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Wednesday, August 14, 2019 9:06 AM (four weeks ago)
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Wednesday, 11 September 2019 20:22 (four years ago) link
i get the "check tire pressure" light for no reason at all but it inevitably comes on while on the freeway and i have to pull over and do this other calibration thing so it goes off.
― omar little, Wednesday, 11 September 2019 20:29 (four years ago) link