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Comment Re:We all pay (Score 1) 41

Local stuff is just that, local so I am not speaking to every local opinion because I can't, but the reason we are even having this discussion still is the overall negative public perception of AI. There's a reason these come up in the news about crypto and AI and not regular-ass datacenters or manufacturing plants:

The public and experts are far apart in their enthusiasm and predictions for AI. But they share similar views in wanting more personal control and worrying regulation will fall short

Comment Re:Tariffs (Score 1) 9

I like the iPhone because it's a pretty good piece of hardware. Yes they're expensive but Samsung sells even more expensive models. Resale value is also pretty good and you get many years of OS updates. Google has pledged 6 years of updates with the Pixel but we know how often they cancel projects.

It's a bit hypocritical for political leaders in the US to paint China as some sort of boogey man that's out to get everyone. China is primarily concerned about China.

Comment Re:What value added? (Score 1) 43

Walk the dog for the neighbors once through Wag, then make your own (cheaper) deal

If you only walk one dog you're not doing much business and are probably not even remotely interested in negotiating deals.

How did Wag honestly think they would stay in business?

Why wouldn't they? They were perfectly profitable pre-COVID. What has changed isn't the business model, it's the underlying way people treat their pets. Why pay someone to walk the dog now when I'm home. Incidentally since I'm home I can walk the neighbours dog too. Could you predict that we would experience a global pandemic that would result in people staying home from work, ending up with lots of spare time on their hand and have lasting cultural effects in the way we go about our lives many years out? Because that is what ultimately put them out of business.

Comment Re:What value added? (Score 1) 43

You could say that about literally any system that brings together any parties. Why do you need Uber? Just phone for a ride. Why do you need Doordash? Just call a restaurant. Websites are dime a dozen, why bother with Amazon, sell your own product. etc. etc.

Much of our modern commerce is created based on the convenience of instantly connecting a need to a service provider. That's all these guys did, and they are one of many such companies operating in many industries in the same way.

They replace Google and the Yellow Pages phone directory in connecting you to someone who could walk your dog at the push of a button. They are the dog walking equivalent of a TV remote, providing just convenience and speed and reducing effort people need to put into anything.

Comment Re:Oh holy shit (Score 1) 43

Oh holy shit. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

It legitimately was a good idea. Objectively so, it was a perfectly profitable business. A lot of idiots keep pets as a status symbol, or do so without any thought as to the effort which goes into maintaining a healthy pet relationship. Paid dog walkers, pet sitters, and other animal services are a thing, as are friendly neighbours (I walked our neighbour's dog yesterday). It's an industry that predates an online booking system and will continue to exist beyond it.

What changed was COVID forced people to be at home. Suddenly everyone could walk their own dog. Post COVID many people have more flexible hours. Post COVID disposable income is such that people start questioning what they are paying others to do which they could instead do themselves.

The business idea was good and solid. What they didn't anticipate is that the world changed so dramatically in the course of a year and that was something they didn't recover from.

Comment Re:Visa/Mastercard are not payment processors (Score 1) 152

Visa and MC like money, and they will lobby to get laws changed if anything is affecting their money flow.

Sorry but this is incorrect. MasterCard actively was the root cause in shutting down the beastiality industry in America at a time when only 2 states had laws against it. And more to the point, none of the laws in any way made it illegal for MasterCard to process the payments from an illicit producer.

Make no mistake, these companies like profit, but as an effective duopoly in the industry their profits are not impacted by their other favourite thing: playing the world's morality police.

They talk about "protecting their network" but their network is under zero threat. The laws do not required Mastercard to police payments, only to preserve information should law enforcement come knocking at the door. Their network is indemnified, the fraud and illegal actions are after all committed by someone else.

Comment Re:We all pay (Score 1) 41

There is though, anecdote but in my neighborhood a new large development is going up and they had to do open meetings, public opinion, votes and such because specifically it would come with some changes in taxation and other public services. This is it's second go around, it was denied the first time.

  Any large project has some sort of buy-in from the town, just a matter of how much notice and pressure there is, it's the whole bedrock of NIMBYism.

Comment Re:Adult Games? (Score 1) 152

In most civilised countries the payment processor has no idea what you're buying, just who you're buying something from.

In many cases that's a distinction without a difference. I don't think the payment processor is thinking you're purchasing cat food from Dan's Dildo Empornium. Or if you are, they'll probably rightfully assume that it's for consumption of your ... errr ... "pet".

Comment Re:Be careful what you ask for (Score 1) 152

That's not fair. MasterCard are just as bad. They literally have promoting human decency in their mission statement, and while I wasn't aware that furries are being attacked, MasterCard definitely directly targetted beastiality pornography despite it being legal in most of the USA at the time they did it.

But don't take my word for it. Here is their policy on gatekeeping something that has nothing at all to do with them: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mastercard.com%2Fus%2F...

Comment Re:We all pay (Score 2) 41

The cost of meeting the new energy demands for AI is going to be shared by all of us.

Well this is where the subjectivity comes into play, a lot of people are not convinced AI is worth absorbing more shared costs.

For a completely hyperbolic example but if a company came in and said "We have a new firm that takes your elderly relatives and processes them into nutrient paste. It requires 6GW of new power capacity but you all get some of the nutrient paste and it keeps the nation out of a nutrient paste gap" many would say "I dunno, we don't really care about that and seems like a waste of energy. Why should we share that cost?"

I can see the pitch of a new housing development or a factory to a town of people as an economic upside worth the shared costs. The AI companies have done a piss-poor job of that, probably into the negative.

Doesn't help when the pitch seems to be "Our stated goal for AI is to put you out of work. Oh and we also supported the party that wants to provide zero safety net for that outcome".

Comment There is something deeply frustrating (Score 4, Insightful) 41

About having my electricity taken away by the technology that's also poised to take away my livelihood.

I think one of the things folks don't realize is that the upper class is painfully aware that they are dependent on us pleads as consumers for their wealth and prestige and they don't like it.

They want to go back to being Gods like the days of the divine right of kings. Completely unmored from the concerns of lesser species of human. And AI is there ticket to doing that.

AI exists to allow wealth to access skill without skill accessing wealth. It is the fundamental breakdown in the capitalist system and the social contracts used to maintain it. Techno feudalism.

Comment Re:The world is over-populated by stupid people (Score 1) 104

The 15% in the poll that say that abortion should not be allowed for any reason is either not understanding the question or was not given the option to specify an allowance for life of the mother.

Wishful "thinking"

I've yet to see anyone oppose an abortion to save the life of the mother as the expectation is if the pregnancy were allowed to continue that the child would die

Because you didn't see it, it didn't happen? Or you just weren't looking? Are you willfully defending anti-abortion absolutists? Because the alternative is even worse for you if you want people to take you seriously, i.e. you just pretend that things are true in order to support your arguments while doing zero research even though you have the same access to search engines as everyone else.

Comment Re:Pro-Abortion (Score 1) 104

You don't understand the concept of later texts being considered to override earlier texts, do you? If I'm recalling correctly this is a single passage in the Old Testament which is considered a sinful practice in the New Testament.

"Jesus" "says" in the bible that he's not there to refute God's law, but to confirm it. Yet somehow the same book also supersedes the old information in the same book? All the Christians are really supposed to be Jews, but they're too lazy to actually do things. That's why Christianity is orthodox instead of orthoprax, to embrace laziness. You don't have to do anything to be Saved, just pretend to believe something.

Comment Because people work 12 hours a day (Score 3, Informative) 43

6 days a week. My kid is using these services sometimes. you work literally 6, 12 hour shifts in a week while you're trying to build your career. In exchange for that you might get a middle class wage 10 or 15 years down the line.

At some point your dog needs to get taken out and if there's nobody around to do it your options are to come home to a pile of poop or pay somebody to do it.

In the old days you would have a neighborhood kid do it but our birth rate is something like 1.6 and a lot of those kids are doing cram schools now.

So you take some of the money you got from those six 12-hour shifts and you pay somebody to take your dog out to poop.

It's not a good system, it's a symptom of late stage capitalism. It's the same reason doordash is so popular. At the end of a ludicrously long shift you're too exhausted to do anything but order in and the only one that delivers anymore is pizza unless you pay for doordash.

Again late stage capitalism.

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