[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Fun fact: most gasoline car fires are started by electrical issues. Mechanical fuel pumps died out with the carburetor, just about every car made has hot wires going to the gas tank. The conflagration is completely fueled by gasoline though. Diesel is pretty hard to ignite, you can toss a burning match into a pool of diesel and the match will go out. But once ignited it'll burn like a champ.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Then it should be an objective test. Familiarity with current events, geography, physics, calculus, micro and macro economics. Final exam of 101 courses would be sufficient. 80% or higher and you get to take office, otherwise the next highest voted politician gets a shot at it.

A board of representatives from the 10 largest public colleges gets to write, administer and grade the test.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

X-creting, not posting. Or would that be xitting (pronounced 'zitting').

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Your instincts are very likely correct. By not demonstrating eagerness to comply with any demand, regardless of reason, you are now damaged goods. However, I question your timing. My instincts honed over 25 years in the viper pit of office politics are saying you need to have an extreme sense of urgency. Don't wait to get certified, you can get certs elsewhere. It's always easier to get a new job while you still have a current job.

The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

If the company suddenly bends over backwards, gives you a signed assurances of an exemption to general policy and a raise then feel safe. Anything short of this is an invitation to Get Out Now.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Indeed, OMFG. But that's the whole point of my approach of divining AI vs human. No human has such canonical knowledge of Unicode blocks. Even people working on internationalization features for modern browsers and word processors. Not people phishing by using Unicode in domain names (IDNA; who thought this was a good idea?) to spoof legitimate sites. Definitely not ones chatting with randos on the Internet. This is a hill I'm willing to die on.

So in a more generalized sense, to determine human vs A.I. one must indirectly ask incredibly specialized technical questions as you have done.

I'm still in utter awe at how well GPT manages 'l33tsp33k', even across every possible Unicode block. This "attack" was and still is valid on other chatbots and even GPT of just a few months ago. But GPT today is so amazing it only needs a few characters in a few words to determine intent. The ability to filter out noise is unmatched. The only way to trip it up is to have every single character in every word be from a different alphabet. And even then, at some point if this becomes common enough the bots can auto OCR text images into the presumed query language and ignore that attack vector.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I used to specifically not want A/C in my cars back in the 90s living in Denver. It was never hot enough to need it. In the past years I've spent quite a few days sitting in stopped traffic in my open Jeep with the thermometer reading 104-107F. Once was behind an uncovered manure truck. Good times, good times.

Where I live now (further north from CO) there's a massive junk yard with thousands of snowmobiles. Apparently my current area used to be a mecca for snowmobiling in the 70s and 80s, with 1500 miles of snowmobile trails. It snows maybe 3 times a year now, average of 10 inches total per season. Neighbors all around me have every kind of motor toy imaginable, but I have not seen a single snowmobile. My snowblower hasn't been seen use in over 4 years, and the city routinely forgets how to plow or sand streets.

Weather definitely got hotter year round over 3-4 decades. I'll fight fellow Gen-X and boomers over this.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, air conditioning is rare in Europe. Pretty much only hotels have it, and by far not all hotels. About 5% of private residences have A/C, even in southern regions of France, Spain and Italy.

Source: Wikipedia, and my kid that went to Italy and Greece and Germany for the previous few summers worth of heat waves.

Edit: Formal, government supplied cooling centers are a CA thing. Informal ones like shopping centers are more widespread in the U.S., but don't really exist in Europe.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Nah, spez would murder you for money if he could. And then carpet bomb your corpse with ads.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Even big corps can't make money on rentals. Not enough to bother with the risk. Higher property taxes, higher insurance, higher maintenance costs on one side, deadbeat friendly regulation and wages not keeping up with inflation resulting in not being able to pass the extra costs along to renters.

Starwood is the first REIT looking to sell 2000 of their 3200 homes, I expect more to follow especially if Fed hikes another 50-100 basis points. Why would anyone go for a < 3% return cash on cash from operating rentals if they can make 5-6% from loaning money to the government?

Normally you'd expect this to be good news, with falling demand making homes affordable. Not going to happen. The costs of building a home, between more expensive materials, tight labor and high cost of debt (builders take out unsecured loans to buy land/build the home) mean new homes are stupid priced, and that feeds into higher costs of older homes. Just like the insane car market post COVID shortages. Expect paralysis and continued housing shortages, not cheaper housing.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Shell supports Russia in their aggression on the people of Ukraine. I already have a personal boycott against them. Like Unilever, they're making MORE profits than ever from their operations in Russia in spite of making noises about curtailing business there.

If anyone doubts their thirst for blood money that's just another data point.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

I thought I was the only one to answer unknown calls using my best Barney Gumble impression (which is really, really good I've been told). If it's a legit call I can pretend I was choked up due to allergies. If not, the telemarketer can continue to enjoy talking with Springfield's best known alcoholic.

[-] nobodyspecial@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Even if you're not a psychopath to start with you would be a complete misanthrope with uncontrollable rage issues (if not a full blown psycho) before too long.

view more: ‹ prev next ›

nobodyspecial

joined 1 year ago