So, I never believed the “Golden Dome” was going to actually be a thing, but wasn’t the contract for that supposed to be going to one of Elon’s companies? Is the project just off now? And follow-up question: is anything (short of scrambling some nearby jets) preventing Elon from “landing” a Falcon Heavy Rocket on the White House?

Wild that there’s an AI-generated summary of the article before the article, on a story about the problems with AI. Also, is it that hard to ask your writers to write a summary of their own articles? Hasn’t writing tweets (or similar microblog posts) already allowed most writers to develop the skill of writing a concise, simplified version of a story? Why are we entrusting this to AI when a human will be able to more accurately summarize their own article, and include appropriate nuance.

Apologies for the mini crash-out that isn’t really related to the real story here. Thank you OP for sharing, and kudos to the MP for taking a stand.

Fakespot was somewhat accurate at catching when Amazon sellers take a well-reviewed item and swap out the product for another, by changing the title, description, and pictures. We’ve probably all read a review on Amazon that feels like the reviewer is posting a review of a completely different product, like a review that seems to be about a kitchen utinsil on a listing for an unusually affordable camera. It’s a pretty common scam that Fakespot was pretty good at catching. It didn’t seem as good at adjusting ratings for legit products and seemed to kind of randomly knock off a a half to one and a half stars on pretty much every listing, even on quality products.

I was going to say there’s no way they still are since Silverlight was discontinued by Microsoft in 2013, but it is Riot Games so ¯\(ツ)/¯

A bunch of Disney movie sites did for a while, back in the day when every movie had it’s own website with trailers, promo, and a link to buy tickets and/or the DVD release.

I wish I was joking, but he doesn’t like the straight line border on the map. He wants to “get rid of that artificially drawn line.”

You would think, I have a similar intramedullary rod in my leg, and my screws also stick out. Since the screws are there to hold the rod down the inside of the bone in place, they care more about that stability than the screws being a bit long.

I’ve been told that now that I’m healed, if the hardware is giving me problems, I can have them go in and remove it. Unfortunately, being in the US, that would probably be another 15-20 grand to have done (basically as much as I paid to have it put in when my leg was broken). So at least for now, even though I do have some hardware-related pain, it’s not bad enough for me to justify the cost.

Mine (early LCD model) has “Made in China” on the label, which even if most of the parts are made elsewhere, if final assembly is in China, that’s the tariff rate that will apply.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the SteamDeck doubles or triples in price before long. We already knew Valve wasn’t making much, if anything, on them, and with a 245% tariff, I kinda doubt they’ll just eat that.

If nothing else we should move all the current (over)investment in AI companies into carbon-free energy production for a few years. The fact that we essentially have coal-powered AI (along with other fossil fuels) is ridiculously stupid and silly - and way less steampunk than it sounds like it should be.

Technically this is already the law (in the US at least). And while Churches are generally careful about not donating, the rallying thing gets bent quite often. Arguments I’ve heard are generally of “free speech” and/or “churches are above the law, and we shouldn’t bind God to the laws of man.” Occasionally there are high-profile cases where the IRS does go after a church for boldly breaking the law, but it’s rare.

But what qualifies as social media? We can all probably agree that Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, etc. count, but what about say Discord or WhatsApp? How about browsing older forums (like open ones where you don’t need an account to read them)? What about news articles or blogs with a comment section? Is a wiki social media? Depending on how you define it, the majority of the internet could be considered social media.

Plus there are plenty of sites that just won’t ever bother to try to comply. For example, I live in one of the more stupid states in the US that has required age verification for porn sites, PornHub has complied by just blocking their site in the state with a notice that they won’t implement a system like that for privacy reasons. But they and their sister sites are the only ones I’ve seen that have bothered to make any changes. The same will inevitably happen with social media. You’re just going to push kids to shadier corners of the internet that don’t care about laws, and they’re gonna end up radicalized by nazis, or taken advantage of in worse ways.

The whole problem is parents who don’t want to be parents and tell their kids they can’t have a smartphone. And I get that the dumbphone market is kinda limited, and that some parents just don’t care what their kids are exposed to. But trying to fix this problem by changing the internet is never going to work. The only way to fix the problem is to have a spine and make appropriate changes IRL - like banning smartphones for underaged kids in school, or show your full distopian side and prosecute parents who let their kids use social media.

This is the tune I thought of (apologies for linking a YT short, but it was the only version I could find)

There’s also a longer YT Music version here, but I’m not sure if it’s a premium thing or not.

How much do you think we could crowdfund to buy out some foreign prisons and turn them into revolving doors that the US government pays to take prisoners, and then just lets them go. Unfortunately, I’m sure I’m not the first person with this idea, except the others with the idea are human traffickers who want slave labor.

Alternatively, we steal Elon’s dumb tunnel digger, and go put a basement door in some foreign prisons now.

Yeah, right after the election, we all had a few days of reckoning with ourselves in realizing what we allowed to happen, and realizing that maybe the US really is just like this. And then a whole bunch of people, turned their own guilt around on trans people, and people who were against funding a genocide, and the concept of “woke,” blamed them for the loss, and convinced themselves that they aren’t responsible for what happens now.

And to Americans, I know that there are limits to what we can do when Trump has majority support of every branch of our Government, and we’re rightfully scared of what they’ll try to do to dissenters. I know how strong the temptation is to sit back and smugly watch the FAFO roll in. But we also need to be loudly rejecting this whenever we can, otherwise we’re going to normalize it for a generation. I know it’s gonna be difficult. I have some family members who are in the cult, and I don’t know if I can talk them out of it. But sitting around waiting for my parents and grandparents to wake up on their own, or pass away isn’t a good plan either.

I do agree that Trump managed to destroy the image of the US in a few months, he’s not actually the sole reason. It’s the ~33% of the population that voted for him again that really destroyed the image of the US.

The world has known for a while that Americans are dumb, but the fact that we not only let him run for president again, but let him get elected again is the real loss of trust. We (in the broad sense, probably not any of us actually in this thread) voted for a felon, and as far as anyone can tell democratically elected a man who had already made us the laughing stock of the world in the past. They graciously forgave us once, and then not only did we not change, we doubled down on crazy. We’re a democracy, we’re all also a bit responsible for the destruction of our reputation by allowing this to happen and continue. Even those of us who have never voted for Trump.

Honestly considering his just-announced 24% tarrifs on Japan right after this price came out, I would not be surprised if we get more of a price jump before release.

Based on their current management model of “desks on wheels” they’d probably be most comfortable becoming a worker-owned coop. I know I’m in dreamland, but it would be amazing if they could go that direction when Gabe is gone.

The ado is the commotion/activity/fuss that is unnecessary. So “without further ado” is just another way of saying “without any more unnecessary fuss [let’s get down to the important business we’re all here for]”

Also bombing Yemen is a presidential tradition that every president in the past 25 years has done. Yes, Trump probably bombed them more in his first term than all his predecessors combined, but no matter what kind of president is in office, American’s are very normalized to hearing that the president bombed Yemen. And because they are generally just periodic attacks, it gets hard to keep up the push to get the government to stop because the answer is always “well, we’re done now anyway, national security reasons, bla bla bla.”

So instead Americans vote for candidates who say they’re going to get us out of foreign wars, which Trump knows to do on the campaign trail, and he talks about it more than any other candidate and people keep believing him, even though he’s lied before.