It got worse.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/elon-musk-vs-organic-farmers-bastrop/
As it turns out, Elon Musk had a bunch of farms + horses from all the land he bought in the 2022-era. Elon Musk was actively trying to get rid of horses on his new property.
Its not that Elon Musk was going to “buy her a horse”. He had tons of spare horses and was looking to dump them onto someone else.
No one is talking about automated theorem provers (see 4 coloring theorem) or symbolic solvers (see Mathematica). These tools already revolutionized math decades ago.
The only thing that came out in the past year or two are LLMs. Which is clearly overhyped bullshit.
Newspapers were always partially advertisement driven.
But I think everyone would agree with me that Newspapers were better when a substantial base of their $$$ came from their subscriber base.
Nothing is absolute in the world of money. There’s always additional sources of money elsewhere. From this perspective, I think we can argue that purely advertisement-driven media is what is most dangerous. Search is an important part of modern digital media, so thinking of the economic realities of funding, and how those economic incentives shape the website and future business is important.
Maybe it fails, but Kagi is trying something new. And that’s good enough as an experiment for me. I dunno, maybe I’ll revisit the idea in 5 years or so, that’s really not much money in the great scheme of things.
At very least, Kagi now has a “Fediverse search”, and now that “search-lemmy” seems to have died, I need something like Kagi to more easily search Lemmy.world and other Fediverse locations. (Google ain’t so good at this yet).
I’m just gonna plug “Kagi” here.
Kagi is a paid search engine. Yeah, sucks that we have to pay for good or decent search results, but… as the economic models of the internet change, we need to change with them. I’ve personally lost faith in freemium ad-supported websites in general.
Its an all-stock deal.
Meaning its down to like $47 Billion, last time I checked. As the stock price drops, the cheaper the pay package gets!!
The layoffs were known last week though.
Sure, the news is finally talking about the layoffs, but people were locked out of their badges and complaining last week about this. So now its official today, but it was public knowledge last week when that price declined dramatically.
So the employees were nominally on the books until today. Big woop. They stopped working a week ago and complained about it online. You can’t hide a mass of 10,000+ sad and angry employees talking shit about Tesla. The stock moved on that before the official layoff announcement today.
Zoom out about a week.
Its fair to say that last week, TSLA was oversold and is now bouncing back from that. But the -55% profits and -$2.3ish Billion FCF are bad numbers.
TSLA is down from $180, where it was just a few weeks ago. $140 prices this past week apparently was too low, but there’s no chance in hell that TSLA goes back up to pre-Q1 announcement numbers. Q1 2024 was awful. Declining sales around the world in all major areas: China, Europe, AND USA. They’re weak everywhere.
The 13th month should be called eleven, because it’d come after December (10), our 12th month.
I stole this line from someone else, but its great.
Elon Musk has invented fee speech, not free speech.
Dual SIM (2 physical cards)
With the dawn of eSIM, I’m not sure if Dual physical-SIM is very useful.
Last time I went on a trip, I just downloaded an eSIM + kept my physical SIM slot.
Ex: The movie Primer. A good time-travel idea in a bad movie.
Though there aren’t many female heroes in history, the few that existed made huge marks.
St. Olga of Kyiv famously slaughtered (!!!) her enemies (the Drevlians) to protect Kyiv and avenge her husband. She then converted to Catholicism and spread the message to the Slavs. And her lineage then founded Moscow. She’s considered the reason why Catholicism spread to the East, despite a patriarchy at her time.
But perhaps bloody stories of revenge and the spreading of the good word (a trope of the Middle Ages I know, but she’s known for it), is a bit “Just a man with different bits”. Still, she was smart, she was cunning, she was ruthless, she conquered, she ruled.
Perhaps a more traditional “Feminine Strength” is St. Joan of Arc, who raised an army and marched with them, though she never really won battle accolades or ruthless terror like St. Olga. St. Joan of Arc comes from humble beginnings and rises to become a leader of a movement in the 100 years war. Despite being tried for being a witch (erm, talking to the Devil? Something like that), she never gave up on her values and is widely recognized as a key figure in her time.
I think Joan of Arc is closer to what the English-speaking world would consider feminine strength. St. Joan of Arc never betrayed anyone, and largely served as an inspiring figure. (As opposed to the cunning St. Olga who has multiple atrocities in her name). She stood her ground as she was tried, and was burned at the stake at the young age of 19. Still, despite her young age, she was a key leader (though not a ruler), who inspired many to fight for France.
In any case, Joan of Arc was confident. She benefited from prophesies that a maiden would come to save France in the hundred years war, and she stepped up to be that role. She traveled across the country raising and inspiring soldiers. She marched into battle (though I don’t believe she was ever seen as a warrior or tactician type given her age and small stature), but this grossly improved the morale of the soldiers around her. Women (or really, young girls) like her weren’t supposed to be on the front lines like she was. But just arriving to dangerous positions and being confident, and telling everyone that they’re cause is righteous and they’re doing the right thing is hugely important.
Being around to witness the horrors of war, to tell people that things are alright and they’re fighting for the right things. Its… important. People need to know that.
Note that Joan was also on trial for wearing men’s clothes. Suggesting that she’s an early feminist who did fight for equality centuries earlier than other feminists. Truly ahead of her time.
You need to see the new Wily Wonka movie. (Probably a 7/10 movie, good songs, kind of bad plot but enjoyable)
But yeah, stealing Cocoa beans from Oompa-Loompas is a big plot point. And… Oompa Loompas stealing it back is also a thing.
Mobile games just make more money now than console games. It only makes sense to aim for casual gamers on the Apple Arcade or Android Play store.
It’s a problem in that it somewhat alienates the hardcore console players. But the console market is shrinking. That’s true for all fanbases, not just PuyoPuyo.
The only stuff that gets money in the console market are super mega AAA games that reach millions, like FFVII remake. But these mega-games cost so much that there’s no risk or creativity anymore. (I like PuyoPuyo Tetris’s style, it was a risk and a bit different. We need game makers to take risks like that)
That’s a lot of ranting.
I get it. PuyoPuyo main story is necessary for casuals to get introduced to the game. Chaining 10+ long while harassing is a skill that took me a literal decade to reach, and there are far stronger players than me at the game.
But PuyoPuyo Tetris was that big casual story driven game that truly did bring a lot of players into the scene. Myself included. So yeah, I wouldn’t be a serious PuyoPuyo without that.
PuyoPuyo Champions/eSports is pretty good for competitive players. We got Fever and Tsu mode, the main modes that people care about.
There are also more casual mobile games like that Apple Arcade one brought up. The real issue is that modern video games make money from Apple and Android stores, not really the consoles anymore.
Early wikis were wild.
“We” implemented forums by just repeatedly editing a page and leaving a --Username, and it was all on the honor system.
Kinda emulated like this --User2WouldReply
Yeah, like this --User3
FSD is the $12,000 upgrade package.
This isn’t the “free” Autopilot package included in every Tesla. This is literally an upselling maneuver for Tesla. If this were a “learning” kind of thing coming from Tesla / Elon, it’d only apply to people who were interested in the $12,000 FSD package, not the entire damn customer base.
This is dealership-level bullshit. Actually, its far worse than any dealership bullshit I’ve ever seen. Its not like Hummer sales-reps are going to force me to sit through a “Crab Walk” demo or Toyota sales reps are going to have me sit through Toyota-features when I’m shopping with them. There’s a bit of upselling going on in any car buying process, but $12,000+ upselling maneuvers (like FSD advertisement) is well into the bullshit territory.
This isn’t about “proper operation” of a car though. Every car buyer has a drivers license after all.
This is about Elon Musk trying to sell a $12,000+ upcharge onto customers (or a monthly payment of $200/month).
I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of personal computing device would fit in these power envelope.
I dunno if this is what I want, but I like the idea anyway. ESP32 is like 500mW class or so (very rough estimate because I don’t care to look it up right now lol). So you can get more than 24-hours of processing with 4x AA cells or 18650 Li-ion.
I feel like there’s something ‘under’ the classic smartphone that might still be useful as a personal gadget. But alas, smartphones are an always in your pocket device today. Bluetooth keyboard + Phone would be a more practical note taking application.
Maybe this same thing, but instead as a minimalistic SSH shell for computer IT tasks? I like the design of this things keyboard at least.