berberous (u/berberous)

berberous commented on 'First Amendment Auditor' Sues NYPD over Right to Record in Police Stations reason.com/2023/07/24/fir... · Posted by u/jawns

voakbasda · 3 years ago

I once had to go to my local station to get a copy of a police report that resulted from harassment by a neighbor. I was legally open-carrying my sidearm and had a camera on my hat recording the interaction.

While I was waiting for the report to be printed, two uniformed officers emerged from the back room and started interrogating me; they obviously were trying to intimidate me and get me to say something that would allow them to arrest me. It was incredibly unnerving and put me off from ever wanting to set foot there again. I felt lucky to not have been arrested and charged for no legitimate reason.

As far as I am concerned, the police are a gang of thugs and crooks. They cannot be trusted.

berberous · 3 years ago

Why did you go in with your sidearm and camera? Legal or not, it seems unnecessarily provocative, and that you went in with a camera because you knew it would cause a reaction.

berberous commented on Tesla directors agree to return $735M following claims they were overpaid engadget.com/tesla-direct... · Posted by u/thunderbong

sterlind · 3 years ago

Do you get what you pay for? Are the executives that get paid $50M/year bringing in >$40M/year more than one who only asks for $10M/year? On average?

This seems like a question that can be answered with data. My gut feeling is no, based on how bankers kept their golden parachutes intact during the Great Recession, but maybe I'm wrong.

berberous · 3 years ago

On average, I don't know, but I certainly think in some instances, the answer is yes, e.g. if I was Apple's board, I would have been happy to overpay Steve Jobs and Tim Cook relative to an average CEO.

berberous commented on Twitter’s legal letter to Meta: a guided tour of a weak litigation letter davidallengreen.com/2023/... · Posted by u/AndrewDucker

ksaj · 3 years ago

It does appear Twitter's legal experts were also fired / laid off when Elon took the reins.

When I first read it, I thought some of it sounded really amateur. I've read lots of lawyerese (I used to provide expert testimony in certain types of technical cases), and this did not come across like it was written by a legal expert of any level.

Now reading this analysis, there are a lot more bells going off. I personally would disregard it - and if forced to respond, I would require a rewritten letter with an appropriate level of authority in its wording.

berberous · 3 years ago

The letter was sent by a partner at Quinn Emanuel, a well known and highly regarded litigation firm.

berberous commented on Threads, an Instagram app apps.apple.com/us/app/thr... · Posted by u/Xeophon

quadcore · 3 years ago

Musk made a lot of mistakes with twitter

Now call me crazy but I disagree. I think - or rather I feel - he's doing an excelent job somehow. He's doing what other executives are afraid to do: he's building and building requires some walls to be hammered down ; and yeah this makes some noise and smoke. He's moving fast and breaking things (if you'd excuse the easy punt). To me, what he's doing is exciting and I think twitter is gonna thrive once the big work is done.

berberous · 3 years ago

I take no view on whether Elon will be successful on making Twitter more profitable. But as a user -- and someone that typically supports Elon -- I have to say he's made the app subjectively worse IMO. I find the "For You" page and algorithm to boost more "junk" content than before. I used to find it interesting, now it feels like scrolling through Instagram meme pages. I'm at the point where I am thinking of uninstalling it.

berberous commented on Loneliness is stronger when not alone pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3... · Posted by u/hirundo

hhjinks · 3 years ago

A bit of a tangent, but the fact that some people just never feel full is so strange to me. My feeling of fullness feels like being literally full; like my stomach would distend uncomfortably if I ate more. How can one not have this sensation? The stomach can only fit so much food. Would physically expanding my stomach cause me to have to eat more to feel full, or is what I feel just an "illusion?"

berberous · 3 years ago

Louis CK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be-NXGbepU0

berberous commented on MusicGen: Simple and controllable music generation ai.honu.io/papers/musicge... · Posted by u/famouswaffles

the_only_law · 3 years ago

I won’t speak to music, as I listen to a lot of stuff, enough to know there is good stuff out there being made.

But for movies and TV? Where do I find the good stuff? It seems Hollywood is creatively bankrupt and just milking people off boring franchises and cheap nostalgia through crappy remakes and sequels. My eyes rolled to the back of my head when I saw an ad for a show called “how I met your father” on Hulu.

berberous · 3 years ago

For TV, hard to go wrong with an HBO series. Most recently, Succession was excellent.

berberous commented on Apple's Vision Pro headset deserves to be ridiculed disconnect.blog/p/apples-... · Posted by u/cdme

bluejekyll · 3 years ago

Ok, but $3,499 is a steep price tag. Granted, the pixel density and design look amazing. They are probably the absolute best VR/AR goggles on the consumer market to date, but to try something out and totally shift your computing habits at that steep of a tag is going to be a stretch for a lot of people.

Like it might be worth it if you really are able to replace your standard monitor setup and use these for long stretches with out neck or eye strain. But how will you know until you try?

I saw someone say elsewhere, these are not for consumers in general. They are for developers to work with, build software for, come up with new things… then, if and when a niche is found, they’ll probably make a much less expensive consumer model that focuses on that use case.

That being said, I would love to try these, but I’m more interested in an upgraded laptop at the moment, and that money would buy a nice one.

berberous · 3 years ago

Sure, $3,500 is too steep for this to be a mass market hit with v1. But I think it's a fairly reasonable price to get the ball rolling, and they will see a fair number of early adopter consumers (much more than Google Glass or Magic Leap, less than Oculus).

I remember admiring flat screen TVs in the early 2000s when they cost like $10k: https://www.applianceretailer.com.au/eeqycmzusg/

I also used to have this SGI 1600SW monitor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_1600SW. 1600 x 1024 17", $2,500 (equivalent to $4,490 in 2022)...

berberous commented on The proto-fascism of Elon Musk nickcohen.substack.com/p/... · Posted by u/jlpcsl

gambiting · 3 years ago

What's MSM?

berberous · 3 years ago

Mainstream media

orionsbelt commented on The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007 econofact.org/the-mystery... · Posted by u/jeremylevy

X0Refraction · 3 years ago

Keep in mind that I've said it's one of the factors, not the only factor.

But why should my standards be just better than most times in human history? That seems a low bar to me, most times in human history were miserable for the majority of people compared to the living standards I've become accustomed to.

To be clear, I don't feel there is any moral duty to continue my particular genes and the world population will continue to increase for the foreseeable regardless. If I were to have children I personally would feel guilty if they had it significantly harder than I have and I think the likelihood is that will be the case - it's really as simple as that.

orionsbelt · 3 years ago

If you grew up with $50M+ and lived a luxurious life, but lost it all, would you not have children over worries they may not have the same standard of living that you did?

If you could be born in America in 1925 and live until 2015, would you? Or would you decline because the standard of living dropped right away with a Great Depression followed by a world war?

I agree with you that if I knew, with certainty, that my children’s lives would be filled with nothing but suffering, I would make the same choice. But a fear of a theoretical drop in a standard of living, and which may not even impact an American over the next 100 years all that much, does not seem to me like it should reach that threshold, and I suspect it is starting to for others because of the media playing into their anxieties. There are people living that lived through the holocaust and are still happy to have lived and, over their lifetime, have had fulfilled and happy lives. I suspect your children could likewise carve out a happy life, even if their standard of living is somewhat reduced.

I agree you have no moral duty to have kids, and if you don’t want them, don’t have them. But if you want them, but are not having them because you find that to be cruel to your unborn kids, I question whether that is really a rational choice.

berberous commented on The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007 econofact.org/the-mystery... · Posted by u/jeremylevy

than3 · 3 years ago

don't forget education is expensive, and quite a few have received funding in predatory lending ways where the debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy without even receiving the degree.

you need to marry, be debt free, and have a down payment (20% of 700k is 140k down) for a house to have kids. Kids need to happen before 35 for your wife; mortality increases greatly after that. You need 2 with modern medicine, or 4 children without for one to make it to 18. These are all very known quantities.

If you can't make enough to cover your expenses and enough for 2 others you can't have kids.

Couple that with the job market, education, debt, and all the other unlivable things the silent generation didn't have to deal with and that's why we are where we are. A lot of people aren't having kids because there are no incentives; you bear the cost. Its stupid, but that is the world we all have created over the past two generations. Through inaction or action.

Personally I'd like to have kids but just like everyone else, the economics just isn't there. There's also the general unlivable coercion that's everywhere nowadays. So a lot of people are choosing to be the last generation of their family line.

That's not even touching things that will never likely pay out a benefit by the time I get to the age where I can use those programs. It has no funding after 2032 or something like that.

berberous · 3 years ago

You think you need two children for one to make it to 18?