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AcerbicZero

Do you think disrupting an organized protest is inherently egregious?
Re:The Economic Complexity of the Western Roman Empire on Friday October 16, 2026 @12:25PM (#50120440)
Carthago delenda est.
Re:The map that keeps Burning Man honest on Thursday May 07, 2026 @02:56PM (#48053319)
Is there anything more "Burning Man" than taking something we've been doing for decades (A FOD walk), giving it a worse name, and bragging about it on some random blog?

I mean, hats off, the author really did nail it. This is as honest as I've ever seen BM get, and the juxtaposition of the unintentionally contrasted with the title makes it even better.

Probably time to reinvent the license plate as a concept; or start spinning up LLC's to put the cars under and just each the extra insurance costs.
Re:Sixteen Bottles of Wine Riddle on Thursday August 21, 2025 @10:33AM (#44973296)
Too easy. You just mix all 16 together, chuck them into the machine, take cover, then walk out through the now exploded door/hole.

Bonus points if you convince her to leave, and rig it up right above the door for when she comes back, home alone style.

Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.
Re:GPS Needs to Toughen Up, or Get Trampled Down on Wednesday May 21, 2025 @12:11PM (#44053003)
It does seem that if next-gen GPS tech isn't already being tested/deployed then we've managed to already begin falling behind. GPS III just isn't anywhere near as useful in a non-permissive environment

Also, I read something on ITAR being relaxed specifically for CRPAs, this year, so maybe some of this is improving? ->

https://rntfnd.org/2025/02/20/first-fix-freeing-crpas-gps-wo...

Not directly related, but I also think its impressive that a major airliner could take a SAM hit, from what was likely a Pantsir-S1 (20KG of HE moving at Mach 2 is not something airlines usually design for) and still land with half the souls surviving. While not great, that is certainly far better than I expected and shows some excellent airmanship.

If you're in a hierarchical structure and someone higher up gives you an ultimatum, your choices are: comply, resist and face consequences, or find subversive, incremental ways to undermine it. None of those are cost-free.

"Fighting" isn't about magic moves that keep everything safe. It's about choosing when and how to accept the risks. Expecting a fight with no threat to your position is cowardice disguised as pragmatism.

You're getting a lot of pushback, but this resonates with me. I guess I have a hard time understanding the value in a "noble departure" rather than just going down swinging.

If a shark was eating me, I wouldn't say "welp I'm boned, better just resign from life". I'd punch the shark, until that shark had to fire me from life.

Maybe from a PR perspective its somehow better? Idk, I don't see it.

I like to save my resignations for the whole "you can't fire me, I quit" part - when the fall is all thats left, it matters a great deal.
Re:Sixty Years On, We Still Dream of the Arrow on Wednesday April 23, 2025 @12:50PM (#43774053)
Eh....cancelling a not very good design in 1959, well before most countries realized ground controlled interceptors were kind of a bad idea might be the real story here. The US (and the Soviets to a hilarious degree) went down the other path for many more years, at high cost; the USAF (Fighter side) didn't truly recover from those choices until the late 70's - early 80's IMO. (Vietnam being the real tutor here)

If you're interested in the subject, look up the performance of the beam riding missiles in use, and the limitations for deployment of the AIM-9B - those do a good job highlighting the extremely limited envelope in which these weapons could be deployed, and the difficulty in getting the aircraft in that envelope.

Re:There Are Two Types of Dishwasher People on Thursday April 17, 2025 @05:26PM (#43722403)
If I don't like how the dishwasher did, I just run it again. Either the plates are coming out clean, or I'm buying new plates.
Re:OpenAI o3 and o4-mini on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @03:18PM (#43709282)
I can't even get ChatGPT to tell me which chatgpt to use.
Its abundantly clear that narrative is being driven. Its much less clear why, or by who.
Re:Anthropic launches its own $200 plan on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @05:34PM (#43638254)
lol no. Claude Pro gave me like, 20-40 questions every 12 hours before it would throttle, and half of those were mistakes we already corrected that it was trying to re-integrate. Plus Claude is always trying to censor itself. I got suckered in by the "claude is better at code" shit, but wow was that BS.

Compared to ChatGPT, where 20 bucks gets you hundreds of prompts, and if you ask it hard questions it actually answers instead of lecturing about morals, and why you shouldn't be asking these questions in the first place.

Other than using Free Claude to generate resumes to apply to job postings at anthrowhatever, it is by far and away the most useless of the LLMs.

Re:Crew-9 Returns to Earth on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @04:36PM (#43417025)
Look as long as they keep being this salty about authoritarianism when a guy with a different letter next to his name shows up and does it, I'm fine with it.

My concern is that many won't.

Legit what i was aiming for :)
Truly one of the greatest cars of its time, a snarling, cybernetic banshee that bent physics to its will; Now, just a fading watermark on the walls of history—a reminder of how high the tide once surged, before receding for good.

We've lost a lot of ground since the glory days of the mid 90's.

Re:There Was a Texas Lottery Arbitrage on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @06:03PM (#43273975)
I feel like this argument could have legs, but I can also see some easy counter points depending on how you proceed with it. Thank you regardless, as this made me think for a bit.
Re:Skynet Won and Destroyed Humanity on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @03:07PM (#43271629)
For a machine that could invent time travel, it was impressively stupid.
Re:There Was a Texas Lottery Arbitrage on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @03:01PM (#43271560)
I call it a tax because it is a government organized/run operation with the objective of removing wealth from individuals for (ostensibly) the betterment of the citizenry as a whole.

My complaint is about the targeted nature of lotteries and the extremely poor investments they make for individuals who tend to already struggle in this area. This is compounded by the nature of the education system being operated primary by the same government.

Hard to say how this will actually go but as a vet, I've had some pretty poor experiences with the government support networks as a whole, and the VA is no exception; I know the VA has improved from the horror days of 03-06 but it certainly feels like it could have done so much more, especially after we got out of Iraq and the overall operation tempo dropped.

I have friends who were hurt 15+ years ago now, and have been through the ups and downs of the VA system; its just sad that after all that time they're still struggling (occasionally at least) with basic things and keeping their care going.

I get this vibe, but I also wonder roughly how much intentionality and thought went into hiring these folks in the first place? Kinda seems like when it comes time to hire they're mostly focused on "what can I get away with".
Re:There Was a Texas Lottery Arbitrage on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @02:18PM (#43270975)
The lottery is a tax on people with poor judgement skills and I'm not comfortable with the state taking direct advantage of its vulnerable citizens.
Re:TSMC Expected to Announce $100B Investment in U.S. on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @06:12PM (#43260742)
Why block the whole thing when all shipping traffic goes through 3 chokepoints and the chinese navy is brown water at best?
Re:Who's Afraid of Tom Wolfe? on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @06:08PM (#43260719)
Why would you be worried? I've got The Right Stuff.
Re:IBM Completes Acquisition of HashiCorp on Thursday February 27, 2025 @06:51PM (#43199954)
Too bad you can't sell the option to buy your shares the day you get them at whatever price you want :/
Re:IBM Completes Acquisition of HashiCorp on Thursday February 27, 2025 @06:49PM (#43199935)
Well, darn.
Re:How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed on Thursday February 13, 2025 @05:58PM (#43042563)
Ahhh TY; that makes sense.
Re:How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed on Wednesday February 12, 2025 @06:20PM (#43030865)
I haven't been following this closely, but what was the appeal for Honda? I mean, Nissan has a few cars that are moving in OK numbers these days but I don't see many routes for a return to form over the long run; Commodity cars are a dying breed.

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