Some IT guy, IDK.

  • 0 Posts
  • 152 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 5th, 2023

help-circle



  • Even with the years he has as a disadvantage, I would not have bet against Tyson.

    It was genuinely surprising that he didn’t win.

    To be fair, it went to the judges, and they decided that Tyson didn’t do as well as what’s-his-face… And looking at the numbers, it wasn’t by much.

    Say what you will about the man himself, but Tyson knows his sport and he’s damn good at it.

    With all that being said, what a crock of shit to waste so much time and effort so that some YouTube wannabe can match up against a retiree. Tyson won more fights than pretty boy has even officially fought, before that dickhead left his daddy’s nutsack. Let me put that another way, there was no time in this guy’s life where Tyson had yet to win a championship. He’s been a world champion for tube boy’s entire life.

    As far as I’m concerned, Tyson was in it for the payday. Win or lose, Tyson was walking away on top.





  • Those have been researched and tested for decades and the tech still hasn’t caught on. They just don’t put out enough power to be useful for much more than a clock circuit (not even enough to power a full watch, just keep the time).

    I have serious doubts they’re going to suddenly become viable anytime soon.

    Any useful energy production from nuclear is basically just making steam to run turbines. Same with coal but you know.






  • I’d bet that channel “members” don’t get ads for that channel regardless of premium status.

    IMO, Google made premium, almost nobody bought it. So they went after adblockers, hoping that people would get premium to get rid of the ads. People most just Adblock harder.

    While this is happening, one exec is peering over the fence at twitch. Where they only way to get away from ads without a pretty good Adblock, is to subscribe to the individual creator.

    So they make “memberships” to channels a thing.

    Almost nobody buys that either. So they go… What if, even if someone is premium, we give them ads, unless they’re a channel member.

    Genius.

    Paying to block ads per creator/channel/whatever, is a special level of bullshit that twitch has always had.

    The system is working as expected. The companies are trying to find the best way to extract the most value from you using their platform.



  • That’s certainly a possibility.

    I would argue that we’re both right depending on what the widget is.

    (Assuming the price is changed to be proportional and appropriate for the product) Something like a grocery item is more prone to my thought, and something that has generational differences, such as a laptop or something, will likely follow your theory more closely.

    I think a lot of this will still be tied to price elasticity. If the price is very elastic then the former system would be more likely. Drop the price so you can push more units (and overall, profit goes up), where things that are far less elastic, say, an iPhone, would tend to simply continue to increase like the latter system you describe.

    At the end of the day, both are horrid, terrible, and very very common. So I’ll finish by saying: no matter what happens, people are going to be getting massively fucked, and corporations will post record profits yet again.

    Fuck corporations.


  • I learned all about this in “thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman. He talks about system 1 and system 2, where system 1 is your kind of knee-jerk reaction to a thing (thinking fast), and system 2 is the contemplative and careful consideration of a thing (thinking slow).

    I would argue that some people overly leverage system 1 (thinking fast) because it’s generally easier, and takes less time and mental effort to do. Those that either can’t, or are unwilling to engage system 2 in their day to day activities, will 100% fall for these kinds of misleading prices, since system 1 is cutting so many corners so that it can be fast and efficient (mostly on how much energy is used), that it skips a lot of the cognitive steps and goes right to the (often incorrect) conclusion. That $19.99 is $19 (or $10 in some cases).

    In the book, they discuss that system 1 often gives the wrong information that is later rejected by system 2 when further consideration is given to a particular input/stimulus.

    If someone isn’t engaging system 2 as a check to ensure system 1 isn’t lying to them, then shit like $19.99 seems cheaper than $20. It doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny, but they’re not targeting thoughtful people with these practices. For thoughtful people, there’s functionally no difference between $19.99 and $20.

    Yes, the difference is one cent, but given that one cent is so worthless in today’s society, to the point that Canada stopped making one cent coins (and other countries have done so as well), there’s functionally no difference between the prices.

    One cent is only worth anything if it is combined with many other cents. The sum of those pennies becomes valuable when you conglomerate enough of them.



  • I’m not American, but tariffs to fix import issues is pretty stupid.

    This is the capitalist dream, export all the production of the goods you use daily to third world countries, who will have shit labor practices like the US used to have when slavery was a thing (and bluntly, for quite a while afterwards), so that the boots-on-the-ground laborers that produce everything are either treated like slaves or literally are slaves, then import the raw material to be manufactured into whatever you’re selling in the US, so you can slap a “made in the USA” sticker on your shit to enhance sales and charge more. Meanwhile “made in the USA” doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that there’s no imported goods going into the manufacturing process to make that thing, just that you took raw materials (from wherever) and made this thing in the USA.

    Tariffs unduly harm end consumers, pretty much everything we buy and own is, or has components that are, imported shit.

    Most microchips, a large amount of the food we eat, most electronics, pretty much everything you’ll find at a dollar general, etc (the list is very very long)… all imported in whole or in part.

    Hell, there was a time that it was more economical to have your raw materials, even if they’re mined/harvested/produced in the USA, shipped overseas for assembly by slave labor, then shipped back for sale to the US public, than to have it assembled inside the US. Much of that is still true. The US neither has the manufacturing capacity, nor the desire to build their own shit. The only time that’s not the economical option is for large cost (and scale, either in size or money) items, like housing or vehicles. Assembly generally happens in the country/landmass where the vehicle will be sold and used. Even a company like Toyota, a Japanese brand, will have assembly plants in the USA for cars sold in the USA, because that’s cheaper than importing hundreds of vehicles. For everything else, it’s generally cheaper to assemble it outside of the country and import the final product.

    You think process are high now? Wait until the tariff wars really kick off.

    No company is going to accept the costs of tariffs and be okay with that eating their profits, they’re passing that cost into consumers, because we’re the saps that are still going to buy it.

    When the tariffs come down, and they will eventually, prices will drop, but not to where they were from before the tariffs. Companies will continue to post record profits, justifying not giving raises because tariffs, and wages will remain stagnant. We’ll earn less, while they rob is for more than they already do.

    The worst part is that when the tariffs are lifted, we’ll thank them for lowering the prices by buying more of their shit. We’ll be grateful for the opportunity to pay even more into their profit margins.

    Congratulations, you’re experiencing late stage capitalism. The system is working as intended. You are poor, you remain poor, barely able to scratch out a living, while your owners profit more and more off of your hard work, and you get to thank them for that opportunity.

    I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.