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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • It’s kind of pointless. Reagan blew billions in this crap in the 80s and the laws of physics haven’t changed since then. The kinds of missiles that can reach North America from overseas simply can’t be reliably intercepted using terminal stage defences.

    It’s not hard to take out drones, cruise missiles, short range rockets etc. Those are going Mach 1 or less. Hypersonic glide missiles hit Mach 5. ICBMs come down at Mach 25.

    It’s the difference between hitting a home run and shooting down a bullet with another bullet while blindfolded.

    We’d be way better off spending our time and money on diplomacy and peace so that nobody feels the need to nuke us. There’s no winning in that situation.


  • Certain things are fairly easy to detect like wheel imbalance vibration or a bad muffler sounds. but there’s so many “vibes plus experience” things that I don’t think software will catch. The human brain is exceptionally good at picking signal out of noise, and “feeling” a bad set of tires or an old timer being able to “hear” how healthy your motor is, aren’t really things you can teach an algorithm.

    I’m sure somebody will try to predict failures, but it might not go well. Surely it will be used to gouge consumers, and of course the owners of self-driving cars won’t know any better.







  • 100% agree. I love driving, road trips, windy roads, and take pride in having a clean and well maintained car. But I despise the car-centrality of most western cities. Any chance I get, I park well outside a big city and take a train in. It’s almost always faster and far less stressful. Even though I can parallel park, yield to cyclists, not run over pedestrians, and safely follow the rules of the road, most other people can’t or won’t because of how normalized bad driving is. Even worse, most people don’t really want to be driving and do it simply because their job/home are not properly accessible, so they have no other choice.




  • nbailey@lemmy.catoFacepalm@lemmy.worldDesign flaw
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    3 months ago

    I once found myself in the rat poison isle of a Lawson in Tokyo a couple years ago thinking they were all tasty snacks. Wasn’t until I noticed the tiny little icon in the corner I figured out it wasn’t junk food I was looking at. Packaging design is very cultural, and being less than fluent in a foreign place can have some wild outcomes if you’re not careful…




  • Toyota Alphard van, ideally the Vellfire version because it looks even cooler.

    Minivans are seen as lame and boring in the US/CA markets, because that’s all we had for a generation. Dodge caravans, windstars, uplanders, siennas, ugh. All boring, blob-like, uninspiring, uncomfy, and profoundly uncool. Luxury was only for Mercedes sedans and hulking Escalade SUVs.

    But JDM vans absolutely rule. Doilies on the headrests. Pop-out footrests. Recliners. Curtains. More speakers than you can count. Cool body lines. Leather and wood absolutely everywhere. It’s like a limo you can park anywhere but still shag in.

    But alas they’re exceptionally rare in North America, and difficult to import unless you go for a very old one. Maybe someday I’ll import one if I have the time and money for a silly van…



  • Yeah, real “efficiency” would come from standardizing tools and procedures, getting rid of “shadow IT”, making annual budget requests more flexible (ie if we don’t use it this year we won’t get it next year), and empowering the workers to make more decisions and initiatives without involving committees, managers, etc.

    They are not doing that. It’s not about efficiency, it’s a libertarian crusade to strip out anything valuable from the public sector and leave what’s left to rot.