The Moon, unprovoked, collided with the Russian vessel that was approaching amicably. An old, whitened but still recognizable USA flag was planted on the Moon's surface, indicating this as a clear act of aggression from the imperialist power
Yes, South Korea wouldn:t want to ruin their friendship with their neighbors in the North. You know the ones always sending them gifts
Zorr'ak notes, page 2:
Earthlings' nutrition consists mainly of elongated pieces of synthetic rubber. These can't be fully digested, so consuming the nutrients they contain is achieved by inserting them repeatedly in one or more of the mouths that Earthlings have in different parts of their anatomy.
Zorr'ak notes, page 3:
Several attempts to feed the Earthling specimen we collected have failed. We are releasing it to avoid it dying from starvation
NY Post, page 3 headline:
Texas man claims he was abducted by aliens and anal-probed
Genitals. Both male and female. (Generally) awesome when in use but a maintenance nightmare otherwise. Reasons for being the worse (some depending on gender) include: initiating takeoff visibly and without reason, leakages, being very fragile, requiring more packaging than any other body part and others
No, you see, we didn't intend to ask...
Have seen that too. The canned press release from all of them is something like "as part of our continued effort to make the org more efficient we have aggregated tram X with team Y and as a result a handful of roles were no longer needed. Our company remains focused and confident in our growth". Has AI taken over the PR department too?
From what I can see, this is not even about individual performance. It looks like a continuous game of musical chair where an entire team here and there is suddenly decimated or completely removed with non-existent internal communication.
Yes, fuck Trump but forgetting a guy who interviewed you months before does not sound like a good example of severe memory loss. Sounds more like the guy who already made some money by writing books on Trump is now back to try and make some more and needs to remind people who he is. So fuck him too
I can't say if this specific one is authentic but I would not be surprised, as my company does the same: branded pride flags, t-shirts for their LGBTQ+ employees. And I'm torn on this, because I feel a bit bad about the branding aspect of it, but on the other hand the company putting their name to openly support all sexual and gender identities does seem like a good thing to do....
Yes, the irony of a company that produces more efficient ways of killing people being concerned with social issues does not escape me. But there are employees of the company who apparently support both (and good for them)
If you didn't like it, you shouldn't have let your laptop walk around dressed so provocatively
I'm not even remotely a legal expert and I don't know what type of popup that is but I think the anti-competitive piece is "could Google use the same technique to push the user to switch to google search on Edge or not?".
If this was an ad from a web page OP had opened or from the game and if clicking "Yes" only directed the user to a site with instructions on how to switch default search engine on Chrome, then yes, obnoxious but probably fair. Google could strike a deal with the game developers to push their search engine to Edge users or buy an ad. Someone writing a new browser or search engine will probably have considerably less money than Google but could reasonably do something similar to try and gain market share.
On the other hand, if that popup comes from Windows itself and especially if clicking "Yes" directly changes Chrome's settings, then this is Microsoft using their ubiquitous (on desktops) OS to nudge more users to switch a competitor's browser to their own search engine. Google, or even less a new competitor. would probably not have the same type of OS-level access to switch the settings of a different browser.
Toilet break
Is it still "disputed" if absolutely nobody else thinks it's Chinese? if I claim the Grand Canyon is mine, does it make it the Disputed Canyon?
Agree, it definitely rocks!
there's an old joke about this:
man goes to doctor saying "I keep farting, doc; my farts aren't smelly and luckily they are also silent but I am worried because I fart all day long. Even now, as I was talking to you, I kept farting the whole time".
"I see", says the doctor. "I will prescribe you this pill, to be taken twice a day for a week".
"And will that help with the farting?"
"No, but it should help you with your sense of smell. Then come to see me after one week and we'll try to fix your hearing"
she saw the photographer and she's trying to hold him back from sucker-punching an Amazon warehouse worker he's just spotted
"see this chart here? We lose money for every subscriber! We'll never make any money until we get rid of all of theml"
All right, you get the chip opening for free, but masturbation requires a paid subscription
This lead to lots of people investing in companies. As long as those companies paid out more money than those low interest rates, it was worthwhile. But at the same time, this meant companies didn’t have to be profitable, because they could pay out investors from money that other investors gave them???
I'm not an economist, but this is how I understand it works. If interest rates are low and your company can deliver 2% returns to investors, more people will invest in your company rather than leaving their money in the bank. Your company can ALSO borrow money from banks at near-0 interest and deliver a 2% return on that borrowed money (I'm probably over-simplifying, here, but I hope not by too much....). Basically, after building and selling more of your product thanks to the borrowed money, your company will have enough to return the money they borrowed from the bank and then some. If interest rates are 5%, your company now needs to be much more profitable for the whole thing to work.
This is why I understand most companies (even big and solid ones) have what is considered a "healthy" amount of debt. As long as your company can earn enough to repay that debt and keep something, not taking that debt is considered a lost opportunity.
If you're a start-up, though, you're almost by definition not profitable to begin with. You need money in exchange for a promise of big future profits. Access to that money becomes a lot more challenging with higher interest rates, so you might not be able to operate at a loss for long enough to turn profitable.
EDIT: as I see a lot of discussion on speculation, stock market and such. While these elements do exist and magnify the effects of the higher interest rates, I think the basic mechanism can also be explained without them. Low interest rates are a way of pumping "free" money into the economy, when you stop doing it, the economy goes to shit in various ways. For instance:
You have no job but own a car. You plan to drive to the countryside, buy $100 worth of potatoes and resell them in the city for $110. You estimate that gas will costs you $4. You have only one problem, you don't have $100. But hey, interest rates are super-low! You can borrow $100 from the bank and give them $101 back after selling your potatoes, so you're good to go! In the end, you're $5 richer, as you've spent $105 and earned $110.
WAY #1 things go to shit: if rates had been higher, you wouldn't have even be able to start your business (low interest rates attract more new businesses to the market)
Now say you want to do this again. Your net worth is no longer 0, you have $5! Can you buy $5 worth of potatoes and go on without borrowing any more? Not worth it, you would barely be able to cover your gas costs. So, even if your business is overall profitable, you still rely on borrowing. Given your earlier success, if anything you will probably want to try borrowing more and go for $200 worth of potatoes this time! Note that in this example you started with an owned car; if you'd had to buy one, it would take you years to repay the car and start actually turning a profit.
WAY #2 things go to shit if rates get higher now, you will have to shut down your business. You will still have earned some money, but you can't continue
Fast-forward a few years, your business is moving about $1M worth of potatoes You buy them for $1M and sell them for $1.05M, earning a cool $50K. From your years in the potato business, you have accumulated $200K in cash. Now, if you want to buy your $1M worth of potatoes, you still rely on the bank to lend you money. OR at this point, you could scale back your business and only use your cash reserves to buy potatoes. You would buy for $200K and make $10K every time. But rates are still so low and demand for potatoes is still very high, so why wouldn't you borrow and make a $50K profit instead? Or, by borrowing $2M maybe you could buy a field and start growing your own potatoes (since the farmer started raising his prices).
WAY #3 things go to shit if rates get higher now, you might still have a sustainable business, but you will need to scale it back and probably cut some costs. Maybe not too shitty for you, but probably not great news for the people you've hired to help you ("guys, due to difficult market conditions, our business has now 5 times less profit and we have to downsize")
And I haven't even touched on how an unexpected event, let's call it Schmovid, can leave you with $1M in potatoes that you've already paid but nobody can buy any longer. Your $200K savings have been wiped and now you're $800K in debt with the bank. You're starting to recover and.... NOW the borrowing rates get much higher.
This seems different, though. Google and Facebook still exist, with their respective logos as part of a parent company that mostly nobody, except for investors, should really care about. Maybe this is what will end up happening here as well, as Elon is sadly famous for saying outrageous things and then backtrack on them, change his mind or just never mention them again, but the way it’s been communicated Twitter and the bird logo are just going away completely.
We're supposed to be doing hybrid, 50% in the office. I don't think we ever went over 30-35% of people in the office. My company tried the carrot, more than the stick to get employees back, like events. Everybody hated the almost-full office in those days. Most teams tried to have in-person team meetings, so there were no available meeting rooms and nobody is really used to the noise of an open-office plan full of people. There is clearly some push from above on our managers, because they try to sound happy but they mostly look as miserable as everyone else.
How was the return for you? Is the whole company back in the office or just you/your team?
The one thing most religions agree on is that all other religions should be eradicated from the world until only the true one remains. Turns out they are ALL right!
Except for counterfeiters. They eat the whole thing to make sure their copies are accurate but now we can track their poops. I'm telling you, Mario, this thing is genius!
I don't want to get too deep into your business but just to understand better what you're trying to communicate.... Please tell me if I get this right: there's current (not past) drama in your family and you think that not acknowledging father's day at all would feed into that drama (maybe your dad's reaction would be "see, you're all against me" and he'd play the victim or something like that) . On the other hand you also don't want to pretend everything is right with your father. So you want something to communicate "I don't want to be against you, but I certainly am not on your side either; I just want to be left alone and talk to you the strictly necessary amount of times". Is that it?
If that's the case, yes, the standard-est, humorless "happy father's day" card you can find, with nothing but your signature in it should convey that message pretty well. If you can't find anything, just a white one with a handwritten "happy father's day, [your name]" would do.
That makes you more talented than Einstein, Newton and Leonardo da Vinci
Love them and try to follow every... Wait, it says "shall not"?" Ah nevermind...
sorry for the question, I'm not a native english speaker... do you mean this as in "this is the Googlest thing ever" or "I have never read so many Google news in a week"?
Thanks for posting this, I've learned things about cold reading and the Forer effect that, regardless.of whether they can be applied to LLMs, are fascinating information on our own minds.
I will try experimenting some more with ChatGPT and Bard and see if I can spot these effect the author deacribes
What's a "book"? Wouldn't want any of that witchcraft near our kids!
Why go and confuse people? The world is a simple place. There's only one gender and that's Man. There's Man and then there's Weaker Man with Boobs. There's only one colour and that's White, which also comes in darker shades. See how that resolves all conflict? We're all white men!
thank you!!
So far I've mostly seen iPhone 15 panned for lack of innovative features, but if it turns out that it's actually easier to repair (as Apple is saying) it would be a killer feature for me
You're in a situation you don't deserve, but you are trying not to make it worse for your mom. I think you rock! I wish you all the best
Well after seeing Teams that would actually be a decent line of defense... "we aren't competent enough to build something that works as intended"
I understand that from a party perspective, it helps the "I'm not racist I have black friends" narrative.
But from the black friend's perspective I'm not sure I get it. Is Doctor Reddy trying to "change things from the inside"? Does he see a demand that he can exploit to get visibility and votes? Does he align so strongly with Republican views on, say, economics that he's willing to overlook the views on diversity programs?
Hahaha I was like that boy too.
Girl:does he have interests? Is he passionate about something? Do I see ourselves spending quality time together?
Boy: I'm on a date, my shirt is clean, I have mints for my breath, I have gone for the romantic walk in the park, this time I've done it all perfectly! I'll get at least a kiss for sure!
But it is exactly because they're cheap, widely available and work well. Before AirTags, I'm not sure where you could acquire the technology you mention, but probably through some specialized channel requiring at least some tech knowledge. Also purchasing from that channel would presumably look at least a tiny bit suspect, because you were purchasing spying equipment, not something that is marketed as a way not to lose your luggage
And I get it, I have never tried AirTags but they do sound great for not losing your luggage. It's just that the illicit way to use them is so evident that it's like those "face massage" vibrators
we have windows 11 on our work machines. The OS and Office 365 apps are forcing more and more links to open in Edge instead of the default browser. Microsoft has been fined in the past over their push for Internet Explorer (at least in the EU), but what they are doing now has already become much worse.
it's just a convenience, not a magic wand. Sure relying on AI blindly and exclusively is a horrible idea (that lots of people peddle and quite a few suckers buy), but there's room for a supervised and careful use of AI, same as we started using google instead of manpages and (grudgingly, for the older of us) tolerated the addition of syntax highlighting and even some code completion to all but the most basic text editors.
I do. Right now I'm listening to music on my phone through wired headphones. I have too many smart things already connected via bluetooth to my phone: 2 different wireless speakers, an electronic drumset, smart TV, car, fitness tracker (I'm sure I'm forgetting something) and I came to like the idea of physically plugging something in order for sound to be played through it, especially if both phone and external device are physically close to me during the whole interaction, like with a headset.
One of the ways big, established companies look at change is this: "will this change make it easier or harder for new competitors to enter our market and take some of our business?". Depending on the answer, big players will ask for that change or will oppose it (and try to maintain the "status quo", I.e. things the way they already are).
In other words, what is called the "barrier to entry" for new competitors must be as high as possible.
For instance, when OpenAI's CEO started giving interviews on how dangerous AI like their own ChatGPT is and calling for more regulations, they are probably doing it to make it more difficult for new AI companies to enter the market and close the gap with them.
So, with that in mind, how would a big company view WFH? if a company already owns an office that they can't easily take off of their balance sheets and remote working can now be an effective, cheaper alternative, then a new competitor could enter the market and do what your company does at a cheaper cost (not having the office cost). WFH is a chamge that lowers the barrier to entry, so big companies will tend to oppose it (or at least delay it)
I do see your point, it would probably look funny from a safe distance.... Chicken (especially roosters) can be vicious. Up close, a dinosaur-sized chicken would be freaking terrifying!