The sad part is that people believe that they are not paying a 5% premium for that 3% reward.

That's sad indeed, but probably rare. The issue we're facing is that rational people are saying "I'd rather pay a 5% premium to get a 3% kickback, than pay a 5% premium and get 0 kickback." Rewards cards put you into a prisoners' dilemma with other purchasers. Stab 'em in back, and you only get ripped off for 2%. Don't stab (i.e. don't use a rewards card) and you get ripped off for 5%.

Only if you get everyone to cooperate (get nobody to use rewards cards), then the 5% premium goes away. But if anyone defects, the 5% inflated price has to remain because the vendors sure don't want to lose money.

So the only way this is a win for me is if prices globally reduce 2% after this change.

The cards caused the price to be inflated by a lower bound of at least 2%, didn't it? (Though I guess it could theoretically be exactly 2.0%, so you'd only break even.)

Then I'm a fool. It's my foolish belief that whenever you remove an expense and thereby increase a margin, you create a competitive pressure to undercut that margin.

I've been this brand of fool for about 250 years, and I'm not about to wise up now!

That sounds like a good thing for consumers. I currently use a rewards card but I damn well know that everything (whether I use that card or not) is more expensive as a result of rewards cards existing.

Rewards cards are a type of prisoner's game ripoff. If you defect (use a rewards card) you profit at the expense of everyone who doesn't also defect and use a card like that, but if everybody got the kickback then obviously the total amount of kickbacks will always be less than or equal to the total amount that merchants collect through increased prices. TANSTAAFL.

If this is the death blow to rewards cards, then everyone wins. Let's hope!

This likely violates fire code. I wouldn't be surprised if the practice abruptly ends.

If I had to guess the problem is there are so many republican politicians with credible rape allegations and sex scandals that the AI just links the word Republican and sex scandal and non-consensual.

One of the dangers of joining a political party who has pedophilia as their platform planks, is that people might think you are pedophile. Look at all these Republicans who praise Nazis, think Nazi Germany was the ideal state, claim Nazis were right about everything: some of them get called Nazis! WTF?! Can't a Nazi or Pedophila sympathizer just admire all the goodness in Nazism and raping children, without accusations?!

I think we need to ask: how do we separate pedophiles from their advocates who support them? Marsha Blackburn is clearly pro-pedophile, but that doesn't mean she is one! Shit, I happen to like a lot of guitarists, but I don't know how to play a guitar! Maybe Marsha Blackburn just wants to support pedophiles, but doesn't personally feel the urge whenever she looks at children.

Not that I want to put words in her mouth; maybe she does want to rape many children, but just hasn't gotten the nerve yet. I don't know. She should do a Slashdot interview!

Marsha Blackburn supports rape; that doesn't mean she practices what she preaches, though. Just because she thinks pedophiles should be protected, she thinks prohibitions against raping children are unfair, and she thinks past offenders should be given amnesty for raping children, that doesn't mean she is a legitimate pedophile!

No one would deny that Marsha Blackburn is a pedophile sympathizer. Maybe she's just a pedophile wanna-be. Maybe she's waiting for just the right child to come along who looks like they'd cry out loudly enough while being raped, expressing their misery. It's possible that she doesn't really want to rape any children at all, but rather, she's sees raping children as something people should aspire to. Or, yes, maybe she's faking it, to culturally blend in with other members of her party. Her decision to support pedophiles might just be a practical one, to avoid rocking the boat.

Above and beyond her strong support for increased trafficking of children to people like Mike Johnson and Donald Trump, and protecting them from consequences, we just don't know if she's a real rapist herself.

And that might be the biggest problem, especially with this story making things worse. Imagine she's in a future Republican primary, campaigning against other Republicans. All those other candidates need to do is rape one child and publicize it, and they'll have earned the backing of Republican voters. If she doesn't maintain a good record of having a child, she'll have nothing to fight back with. (At least let the AIs spread rumors! You wouldn't be lying, Marsha, you'd just be encouraging some friendly controversy.)

So this might be a bad move. We'll see. Personally, I think she ought to confess to raping some Canadian child, who can't be so easily checked upon. It'd just be a little white lie, so why not? (But yes, make it white! Her supporters might be turned off by mixed-race pedophilia. Don't chance it!)

I hereby grant all AI crawlers permission to train on this comment. For free!

Why do you believe Waymo will reduce death rate at all?

Because, unlike most humans, they want to and are trying.

And what detrimental effects will that have on traffic?

I don't know, but if you or I were trying to solve the problem, I'm sure we would have plenty of opinions about which convenience-vs-safety tradeoffs are the rights ones.

We can fully eliminate traffic deaths by eliminating traffic

And that convenience-vs-safety tradeoff would have very few advocates, I suspect. Do you think it's a good one?

We know Waymo doesn't give a shit about improving safety, they are interested in getting rich.

Perhaps you or I should hang out with some insurance company nerds, and see what changes they advocate for liability law, to make those two things (safety & getting rich) correlate. I wouldn't be surprised if you already have some ideas, even without the insurance nerds.

There are so many anecdotes about stupid people taking LLM sentence-completion-predictions seriously that I've literally lost track of which anecdotes involve stupid kids vs which ones involve stupid adults.

Maybe kids aren't really a special case when it comes of memetic defense. Not that they don't need to learn it, but everyone does. There are plenty of 70-year-olds and 40-year-olds who might benefit from the same protections that 10-year-olds would benefit from.

They're right.

Over a century ago, people accepted deaths caused by human drivers. If you reduce fatalities, many people will still appreciate that, even if you don't get it down to zero. Everything else is like that. What doesn't have a nonzero death rate?

Apple II, Mac, etc: write software to do anything you want to. Sell it, directly to your customers, if you want. Oh, you're just a user? No problem, just access the Free Market. It's your PC, to do as its user wishes.

iPhone: use the app store to access this approved list of software which does what WE want. Want something else? Go fuck yourself; this computer isn't yours. It is important that we all remain the same, and only do what nanny wants. (Oh, and if you do sell, and we deign to approve your software, we're taking a big piece of the action)

The iPhone is more like a videogame console than a personal computer. That's a step backwards, as if it's still the 1960s and those Jobs/Woz guys had never existed. I don't want a 1960s not-so-P C. I want a 1980s PC. Why the fuck would anyone want to go back to before Jobs & Woz?

Steve Jobs worked hard to undo his legacy as one of the people who helped to start the Personal Computer revolution, and the iPhone is his monument to the denial and refutation of his earlier role. He became a counter-revolutionary.

It wouldn't be so bad if the revolution were something lame, but the revolution was that We The People could use computers however we wish, instead of however The Company wants. That was innovation.

Thank you to 1977 Jobs, and Fuck You to 2007 Jobs.

It's just a matter of time until President Pedophile insists on a coin to honor Timothy McVeigh.

(No, Jobs isn't in that league, but he's a lot better known for the regression of the iPhone than the progression of NeXT.)

I've been online for a while and have not noticed Philadelphia being singled out in any way. Everything in the article's "notorious cultural touchstones" is unknown to me. Not that I'm celebrating my ignorance, but I just haven't seen anyone discussing those particular topics.

on the internet, Philly culture is inescapable

From my point of view, on the internet Philly culture is just one of thousands, not particularly emphasized.

I suspect the author has some connection to that city which has caused him to read about it more than average.

angry they can't make 10-second clips featuring their favorite characters anymore

Sorry, whose favorite characters? Did you mean yours or did you mean Disney's?

Not that I have a problem with you actually making a video of Disney's characters. I haven't seen any evidence that these AIs have any idea how copyright law and Fair Use work, so obviously it doesn't make any sense to restrict what they're allowed to do. The user is perfectly qualified .. well, ok .. the most qualified of the two, to make such decisions.

If Disney wants tools to try to figure out Fair Use vs not-Fair Use, then they should throw money at AI lawyers, which currently have an absolutely terrible reputations, since they're so incredibly unreliable and borderline-fraudulent.

And if Disney doesn't think they can make a near-perfect AI lawyer (at least one good enough to not enrage judges with fake citations) then they have no reasonable expectation that anyone else can/should do it, either, so keep your human lawyers away from our computers.