PawParole posted:

Number

Gildiss posted:

thechosenone posted:

Counterpoint: Bitcoin is a black hole that can suck up even a supernova of quantitative easing. If it gets hooked up to the money hose it defeats it, breaking everything. Mark my words it is bailout proof. Putting more money in is either just as bad as everything else or worse if the people bailed out run off with that money too.

spacemang_spliff posted:

I hope Bitcoin destroys the great satan

triple sulk posted:

not sure whether bitcoin or all of ai is worse for the environment *right now*

i'm guessing ai is probably worse if you add everything up

Paradoxish posted:

Right. The big companies that do this were producing almost unimaginable amounts of "content" even in the pre-generative AI days. LLMs have upended the entire thing at this point, but there were content mills out there producing literally thousands of human-written 500-1000 word blog posts every day. In a lot of cases, the intention was never even to have a human read these articles, although everyone plays the game of pretending that they're actually creating useful content.

The ideal style tends to be as simple as possible with a lot of keyword rich phrases, but avoiding keyword stuffing, which is when you just repeat a single keyword or its synonyms over and over again. Find a local plumber or HVAC company with a website and look at any article on their blog and you'll find a good example of SEO drivel. There's a high likelihood that article (if it's not just AI- generated) was written by someone with zero domain knowledge or experience who had to put the whole thing together in 20 minutes or less for it to be monetarily worthwhile.

This stuff is everywhere and it's clearly deeply embedded in all these models. It's been relatively well known in that space for years that companies like OpenAI were just directly paying content mills for this stuff, too. Pretty much paying gig economy writers to put themselves out of a job, but through at least one layer of indirection.

Xaris posted:

lol they're not just locking up overpriced pair of thieves socks, also generic hanes rear end underwear and wifebeaters

Canned Sunshine posted:

where the hell are these targets, lol.

Canned Sunshine posted:

where the hell are these targets, lol.

Xaris posted:

since economics = consumption, just fyi aliexpress is having their winter sale in about 8 hours. it's basically if Prime Day didn't suck entire rear end. going to pickup a TS101 soldering iron, some insanely powerful flashlights, some powerbanks, and another 100-pack of melamine sponges. also if anyone needs a 4TB NVME, they've got em for $25. if you want your cheap junk, might as well get 'em directly from the source for 1/2 the price of amazon.

Xaris posted:

also word on the street: if you're with GEICO, gtfo if you ever want to actually have your insurance pay-out. todd combs is ruining the place into the ground with widespread gutting of teams across the board and working the remaining few reps or inspection guys to the bone with increased tracking/spying every waking second of their work. everyone is bailing under todd. it's gone from a pretty good place to work to a dumpster fire in the span of a year.

Gildiss posted:

Nitevision posted:

SKULL.GIF posted:

Low prices, everybody and everyloser

Xaris posted:

low prices for mee, high prices for btc

Akratic Method posted:

Thank you for the reminder. I checked competitor prices after they jacked up my rates and I could be saving several hundred a year. I only put off the switch because policy renewal comes up in February, but now's a great time for that.

err posted:

Speaking of that, one of the Twitch streamers made $57 million from OnlyFans alone. Not including Twitch money, sponsorships, donations, etc.

https://twitter.com/Amouranth/status/1744763888808108540?s=20

Xaris posted:

word on the street is the google layoffs is more than just a hundred at the voice department. it's more like four figures and across a lot of departments, including search

Canned Sunshine posted:

where the hell are these targets, lol.

quote:

BEIJING, Jan 11 (Reuters) - China's 2023 vehicle sales rose 12% year-on-year to 30.1 million vehicles, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said on Thursday.

Vehicle sales in December including exports jumped 23.5% on the year, CAAM said.

Celexi posted:

the person that rear ended me had nationwide, and they were good and nice taking care of it that I will switch to them when my current one expires

Business Gorillas posted:

They jacked my car insurance up by 30% because of "wildfires in California" with zero notice in December. Good luck!

gradenko_2000 posted:

In the Age of AI, Her Is a Fairy Tale

In the 10 years before 2023, sub-Saharan African nations issued, on average, nearly $10 billion a year in international bonds, injecting much-needed funds into their economies. Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique and Angola issued their first-ever bonds in hard currency. The foreign debt market was particularly important after the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 and in 2020–2021 during the worst days of the pandemic. Each time growth weakened, the debt machine resolved the problem, providing countries with a short-term sugar rush.

The current funding squeeze aggravates a protracted trend that’s been years in the making: The level of public debt in sub-Saharan Africa has more than tripled since 2010. As a result, the interest burden is rising, in some cases rising to a fifth of the country’s revenue. That’s partly due to a greater reliance on expensive market-based funding, like loans from commodity trading houses and international bonds, coupled with a long-term decline in aid budgets from the West and China. On top of that, local currencies have depreciated against the US dollar sharply since mid-2022, further increasing the cost of servicing hard-currency bonds.

Unless US interest rates fall soon — something Fed officials recently said wouldn’t happen — the squeeze will get worse. Two countries, Zambia and Ghana, have already defaulted on their foreign debt. Many others facing a maturity wall in 2024, 2025 and 2026 will be forced to either refinance their bonds issuing new paper at yields well above 10%, or cut government spending to find the money to repay foreign investors.

fits my needs posted:

https://x.com/ReutersChina/status/1745390436242559200?s=20

Xaris posted:

lol they're not just locking up overpriced pair of thieves socks, also generic hanes rear end underwear and wifebeaters

webcams for christ posted:

I'm not thrilled about the environmental and public health externalities of automobile proliferation

Good Soldier Svejk posted:

love the image of having to flag down an employee and going "yeah let me get the boxers with the fly" and they pull out the giant key ring like I'm buying videogames in the 90s