gamerdonkey
There are a few reasons for this, and none of them are that the firefighters are bored.
The first reason, probably more relevant in Ontario, is just a matter of practicality. If an injury is reported in an accident, the assumption is that a person needs medical attention. Emergency services can't really make an assessment of a scene without being on site, so both are sent in case there needs to be some kind of fire suppression or an extraction to reach the person. Simply, we don't want an ambulance to arrive at an accident, realize on-site that the jaws of life are needed before they can help, wait for another response time, and then render care. The potential to save a life takes precedence over raw efficiency.
(A quick side note about assessing a scene: if you're just driving by, it's basically impossible to tell how bad an injury might be in an accident. Modern cars are very safe, but if someone wasn't wearing their seatbelt and had their head in the wrong place when an airbag went off, even a fender bender can be a life-threatening situation.)
The second, at least in the US, is that ambulances are not considered essential emergency services in many communities[0]. This means that they don't get the same level of funding and are not subject to the same response time requirements as the fire department. Emergency medical services might be covered by a hodgepodge of private companies and volunteer efforts[1], so this also means that public services, such as the fire department, often have to fill in the gaps. Especially in rural areas, ample ambulance coverage just isn't profitable to the private companies that operate the service, so response times can be close to half an hour.
[0] - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2023/06/26/no-amb...
[1] - https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2018/08/the-problem-of-p...
The incentives lead us toward the classic "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders." scenario.
https://www.insidehook.com/culture/story-tom-toro-new-yorker...
Why isn't even easier for an AI noob to jump in at the next step with less friction than the current one?
It's not practical in the terms that you can use it to plow fields and feed your family, but it's also not entirely a status symbol. The money spent allows you to participate in an activity you enjoy that may or may not have a social aspect.
> Beyond fears about bad actors attempting to distort the markets for profit, some political operatives say the sites rarely deliver political forecasts that are different from traditional polling.
> For instance, polls during Wisconsin's gubernatorial primary showed Democrat David Crowley lagging other candidates by wide margins. Kalshi similarly projected Crowley as a long-shot candidate — but Crowley landed a surprise win.
> "It appears that there really aren't any predictions here, they're just reacting belatedly to public information, like polls and news stories," said Eddie Vale, a Democratic strategist in Washington who worked on Crowley's campaign. "If it was just a fun entertainment tool for political junkies, fine, but to me, all of this is a marketing sheen for an online gambling operation."
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5945290/fake-poll-merid...
So it's not really that they provide bad predictions, it's more that they don't offer anything new. Except, of course, in the case when someone is using insider information in an attempt to profit. All this while also having the downsides of skimming money off every transaction and encouraging gambling habits.
Thanks for your opinion. I see you disagree with my first point.
> I would also be shocked if you couldn’t find a way to repair and use this 1966 sewing machine… so it seems like a red herring.
"Repair of the sewing machine is obviously simple and thus left as an exercise to the reader."
Seriously, though, I'm trying to say that you can't make that call for me. You can think that, but I know from experience repairing old machines (with more or less sentimental value) that having the original manual can be the difference between fixing it and irreparably damaging it. I could also, in turn, suppose that you probably do not actually collect and preserve rare "unique artifact" books, and therefore your argument about them is a red herring. But then we would both just be casting aspersions.
Like so often in its usage, the word "just" is carrying immense weight in this sentence. Please see "hoovered up into the walled garden of Amazon's AI [...] such that I have to go pay them to access even a facsimile of it"
> has become much more accessible
This accessibility rests on a number of assumptions, not the least of which is Amazon's (of all companies) charitable good graces in offering access to their AI at an affordable price. It also assumes that the model can accurately regurgitate the text without hallucinating about other, similar machines, and that it can faithfully recreate any diagrams.
And beyond just benefit to society, don't forget how subjective the decision about what constitutes a "unique artifact" is. That random product manual from 1966 becomes a near-priceless relic to me if it lets me repair and use the sewing machine handed down from my grandmother. Not necessarily the ink printed on paper, but the information contained within.
The above is based on a true story involving archive.org's Manual Library. The idea that even such esoteric and forgotten information would get hoovered up into the walled garden of Amazon's AI and then destroyed in the outside world, such that I have to go pay them to access even a facsimile of it, is frankly disgusting.
However, a title can be cross-referenced against purchase histories in probably under a minute.
> Sarah also did something that appeared a bit unnatural. Instead of simply continuing straight a few times, she intuitively and preemptively turned in a snake-like pattern. This highlighted a key difference between real-life mowing and our simplified game, an approach that strong mowers exploited. Sarah, an avid gamer, seemed to recognize this strategy immediately.
But the argument that established, profitable organizations in the atproto space have no qualms with this move is not as reassuring as you might think.
The 4400 number is based on a capacity test that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority performed[1] to certify the Vegas Loop met its contractual requirements, which was 4400 riders per hour. The test was performed with "about 300 people", so results were extrapolated to reach the final number. The LVCVA didn't publish any further information about their methodology, so we can't really comment for sure on how realistic their conclusions might be.
However, a few months after the tunnel opened, there was some criticism[2] saying, "the highest hourly passenger rate hit thus far is 1,355 passengers per hour." It also notied that the ride took 4 minutes instead of the 2-minute goal. A spokesperson from the LVCVA responded:
> “The ride itself does in fact take two minutes,” Nelson-Kraft said. “What wasn’t taken into account are other factors of the Loop experience, like passengers load in and load out time. [...]"
Given that the LVCVA conducted the original capacity "stress test", I think it would be reasonable to guess that they tested only how many passengers can be pushed through the 12-foot-wide tunnel and did not consider loading and unloading as part of overall rates.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210707125245/https://news3lv.c...
[2] https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/news-columns/road-warrior... (soft paywall, viewable with JS disabled)
Point being: just because a thing technically fits the genre does not mean it is something that the audience wants to listen to.
I mean, yes and no. It is most likely that the majority of carmakers are not collecting detailed telemetry. But we know from data breaches that some cars collect pretty detailed information.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a63306050/exposed-vw-data-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTrKmP7oU9U
It's pretty funny, and includes Fronalot's characteristic wordplay with lyrics like:
> Captains are we. Of what? Industry.
Which could also be taken as:
> Captains are we, of what industry?
I think they want to sell that perception, but the biggest thing the tech execs want in their SWEs is fear.
Fear that makes us stay in our jobs, even when raises and bonuses stagnate, because the market is scary with all the "AI layoffs" (which have largely been regular downsizing with the AI label slapped on).
Fear that makes us use the LLMs and then put in extra hours when we don't see the 10x productivity gains that they expect.
Fear that makes us erode our own skills and become dependent on these gatekeepers to maintain even a base level of productivity.
So much of the advertising and discussion around AI is based around fear. It's inevitable. It will take your job. Render you useless. It will render humanity useless. You better get in now, or you'll both lose your job and could end up in a virtual hell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk).
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/03/tax-loop... (viewable by disabling JS)
No, that's missing the emphasis. "I Strongly Encourage Businesses to Have a Website"? There we go. That sounds bland enough to be regurgitated by your LLM of the week.
Enjoy your war on adjectives, I guess. It's certainly going to make the world more interesting. Jesus fucking christ.
Anyway, here's new research demonstrating the near polar opposite of the original claim, in case anyone digging up these old threads was also wondering if slibhb's foundational arguments held up: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389855619_Global_Wa...
Do you have a source on this?
On the broader topic, I'm not sure that just voting is the way that we'll get out of this mess, but I think a large part of the problem is how our focus on wider, national issues has eroded the interest in the local. So people seem to be most disenfranchised from the level of politics where they can actually have the most influence, both by voting and direct action (protests, calls, etc).
Of note, they have a "Setting the record straight" addendum[1] that includes a couple important quotes:
"Misconception #1: Office workers should now be confused about whether they should sit or stand, and about whether sit/stand stations are a good idea. They shouldn’t be, says Smith. The study’s main finding was about workers who are required to stand for long periods (i.e. five hours or more) throughout their work shift, without opportunities to sit. Extending this to any worker who stands (e.g. an office worker using a sit-stand desk) is not correct. This is because office workers who stand at these types of workstations likely have the option to sit down when they get tired or when they feel pain in their legs and back."
and
"Misconception #2: We no longer have to worry about the negative health effects of prolonged sitting, thanks to this study. Not so fast, says Smith. There was nothing in this study to refute the research on the health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. Much of that research is about sitting too much throughout the day—at work, while commuting and at home. This study only focused on prolonged sitting and prolonged standing at work.
"And even within the study, another finding about prolonged sitting at work got lost in the coverage. Yes, prolonged standing occupations were linked with twice the risk of heart disease as prolonged sitting jobs. However, prolonged sitting jobs were still linked, among men, with a 40 per cent higher risk of heart disease compared to jobs that involve a mix of standing, sitting and walking."
[0]: https://www.iwh.on.ca/newsletters/at-work/90/standing-too-lo...
[1]: https://www.iwh.on.ca/news/study-on-prolonged-standing-and-h...