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As long as the tech or the software doesn’t become obsolete, or the company doesn’t go bankrupt.
You know about the blind people that were able to see for a while but the company making their implants went bankrupt, leaving them blind once more, as their their implants will eventually all stop working?
Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out secondhand that the company had abandoned the technology and was on the verge of going bankrupt. While his two-implant system is still working, he doesn’t know how long that will be the case. “As long as nothing goes wrong, I’m fine,” he says. “But if something does go wrong with it, well, I’m screwed. Because there’s no way of getting it fixed.”
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
It’s obviously understandable to want to try something, anything, to help with a disability, but relying on private for profit companies for experimental medical devices is far from ideal.
Addendum: Also, disabled people are unfortunately often used as an excuse to push agendas. “We can’t have a bike lane there! Think about handicapped people using their car!” Or like "Tesla’s FSD will help disabled people get around No need to fund dirty dangerous public transit!! " Or again “Neuralink is going to help disabled people so they must have good intentions and obviously not plan on selling these to the general public eventuality. It’s purely for the embiggening of society!”
FSD is soooo full self driving that blind people can’t use it as it requires constant babysitting, and more importantly, a driver’s license and thr ability to drive a car… for a car that’s supposed to drive itself.
Anything coming from Musk is obviously a scam. He’s a con artist. He will say anything to convince people. He keeps promising his shit is always just on the verge of revolution but it’s mainly just empty words for hype.
Helping the disabled is probably just an afterthought for Neuralink. People are so desperate, they will try anything, and Neuralink will be the creep profiting off them.
This reminds me of the efforts made against tobacco and for cleaner air in certain areas, but it also reminds me how we do this for other things too.
Radium toothpaste, lead paint and asbestos curtains.
So, as someone that sees cars as a significant source of pollution, from exhausts, brake pads and tires, I find it ironic that some places are banning outdoor smoking in public areas while it’s perfectly acceptable to drive a gas guzzler around and among those places.
Like, I’m so grateful nobody can smoke around me on that restaurant’s terrace, this way I can fully enjoy breathing the pollution from the thousand of cars around.
6·2 months agoMeanwhile I’ve always been the one that takes the smallest possible meal at McDonald’s, and would think that 5 nuggets with fries and drinks is just enough. In fact I hate going to restaurants in general because portions are always much too big for me. I can’t usually take doggy bags, and I feel like I’m wasting most of what I’m served. I can’t recall even finishing a plate in a (real) restaurant; there’s always too much. I’m always like “oh it was really tasty but I can’t eat much more!”
How do people intent to power cars during the apocalypse? I guess electric cars can be charged with solar or wind but it’s not a small battery to charge. As for ICEs, stations are going to run out of gas after a few hours, and AFAIK, gas has a limited shelf life so making reserves for the long term would be a problem.
As someone that doesn’t get cars nor the “freedom” they supposedly confer, I also never got that part about an apocalyptic future. To me, a car is already a burden, and I can’t see why I would want one during the apocalypse.
Why is it sad? No lawn to care about. No snow to remove in winter. No garbage day. No electricity bill. No roof or windows to change. No water heater to worry about.
I much prefer to rent than be stuck owning a condo where I have to deal with the other owners and plan maintenance. And I wouldn’t want an “affordable” house that is much too big, in a suburb or in the middle of nowhere, where a car would be a necessity, and another thing to own (or rather pay for).
As far as I am concerned, owning a home is a social construct. A goal imposed on us by capitalism. Our collective dream, should be to own a home in the middle of nowhere before we’re too old to have a family, with obviously, a car! But I never wanted to have a “death pledge”, nor a family, nor a house, nor a stupid condo. Renting is perfectly fine for a whole lot of people. It’s not something to be sad about. The only sad thing is that we don’t have enough cheap housing of any kind for everyone.
Around here we have “half furnished” apartments that include appliances.
I’ve always lived in a place where they are included with the rent. So I don’t have to move them up and down the stairs or the elevator every few years. Also, if they break, the landlord just change them.
To me, winning a refrigerator would be a burden. I’d have to store it and sell it. I’d prefer what it’s worth in money.
Unfortunately this one depends a lot where you live.
I never owned a car but I live in Canada and public transit sucks. Our provincial government is actively cutting funds to cities’ public transit. And intercity routes are detained by VIA Rail or coach buses >!!<that sucks.
It’s easier for me to go to the airport and in another country than move in my own province.
VIA Rail trains are infrequent, always late, pricey and most employees are jaded. They also don’t take bikes. It’s a problem. Sometimes you can get stuck as a prisoner on the train, without food, water or toilets for multiple hours.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/via-rain-passengers-stuck-1.7311176
Another one was stuck for 12 hours last year.
Coaches are cramped and also have very limited intercity services. The city I need to go to frequently only has three coaches a day at inconvenient times. They are usually full and they charge $15 to bring a bike.
I’ve been car free for 20 years but I’ve come to hate taking the train or coaches here. I’m slowly realizing that my province really really wants me to get a car.
I did that years ago to make backup reports and job monitoring on old servers with uncommon operating systems at work.
Before my script, coworkers and I had to connect to more than a dozen servers and fill reports about the status of backups and the server. It took about 20 minutes if all went well. Now we just click a button and the report is filled automatically.
It may just be 20 minutes a day, or maybe less if you were quick, but we’re still using it and it’s been nearly a decade. It saved a lot of minutes in the end. More time for naps.
No thanks, I’ll keep pedaling.
I work with IBM i/AS400 servers and those are not exactly the quickest thing to “reboot” (technically an IPL). Especially the old ones. I have access to the HMC/console but even this sometimes takes several minutes (if not dozens) just to show what’s going on.
It’s always a bit stressful to see the codes passing one after the other and then it stops on one and seems to get stuck there for a while before continuing the IPL process. Maybe it’s applying PTFs (updates) or something, and you just have to wait while even the console is blank.
I’ve been monitoring those servers for years and I’m still sometimes wondering if it hanged during the IPL or if it’s just doing its thing, because this part, even with codes, is not very verbose.
Fortunately it’s also very stable so it pretty much always comes back a few minutes after you start wondering why the hell it’s taking so long.
11·4 months agoI am fortunate enough to know how to set up VMs and use Linux, so I run my own IRC server with a web interface (TheLounge). I can set the upload limit to what I want and settled for 100MB. This way my friends and I are not at the mercy of some proprietary software.
I do pay for a dedicated server that I also use to host my games’ servers and also a mumble server, but it’s so worth it, just to have control over our stuff.
In Québec there is a moving company that has been using the same jingle and phone number for decades. Ir’s really catchy and sticks in your head.
Le clan Panneton, pour déménager, faut composer le 937-0707.
The ad from 1997: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBIADSFYoVk
The ad from 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_VYYkFMcFk
Ask anyone in QC what’s the Clan Panneton’s number and they will start signing it.
Reminds me of my father. He’s up super early, like 4 am, and to him 7 am is perfectly late enough to run the wood planer on a weekend day.
Pourtant c’est plutôt commun au Québec. Ça s’enchaîne pas comme les sacres liturgiques mais c’est bien utilisé. Quelque chose peut être fucké. Une personne peut être fuckée. C’est fucking chiant. Fuck ça! Juste, fuck!
I wasn’t aware of her comment. Googling for it showed me an article in English saying she dropped the F bomb. I thought it was in an interview in English but no, she used it in French, which makes it a bit less impressive.
Pour les gens qui veulent pas googler, voici la citation exacte
« Fuck aux réacs, fuck à cette extrême droite, fuck à tous ceux qui voudraient nous enfermer dans la guerre de tous contre tous ! »
I hope it’s using a shit load of energy, like other “AI” stuff. Because we’re absolutely not in a climate crisis where reducing consumption is necessary. More “AI” that consumes more power, that’s exactly what we need.
I do that too but only because it’s much easier to help my relatives with Linux than those with Windows.
I even “convert” some people because Llinux is easier for them if I just manage it. I had a neighbor that was using Window on a very old computer, it was slow and choking under the weight of simple updates. Plus, she was always asking me why her computer kept rebooting by itself while it was obviously Windows update. So I installed Mint and all the problems went away.
Anyway I don’t want to have to deal with Microsoft accounts, licenses, office365, the general bloat, the ads, the new versions of Windows… I have enough at work, so if I am going to help on my free time, it has to be on the OS I find easier to deal with.