olyjohn (u/olyjohn) - Readit News

olyjohn commented on South Korea deploys hologram police officer scmp.com/week-asia/lifest... · Posted by u/amichail

gus_massa · a day ago

> It pops up every two minutes to deliver a pre-recorded audio message reminding passers-by that they are being watched by security cameras

Was the reduction of crime caused by the image or by the cameras?

olyjohn · a day ago

Or was it because it attracted more people to the area, making criminals less likely to hang around?

olyjohn commented on Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears telegraph.co.uk/business/... · Posted by u/pera

stephen_g · 2 days ago

> They're competing with Google, X, MS, OpenAI and others in terms of AI interactions

Am I the only one that find the attempt to jam AI interactions into Meta's products useless and that it only detracts from the product? Like there'll be posts with comedy things and then there are suggested 'Ask Meta AI' about things the comedy mentions with earnest questions - it's not only irrelevant but I guess it's kind of funny how random and stupid the questions are. The 'Comment summaries' are counter-productive because I want to have a chuckle reading what people posted, I literally don't care to have it summarised because I can just skim over a few in seconds - literally useless. It's the same thing with Gemini summaries in YouTube - I feel it actually detracts from the experience of watching the videos so I actively avoid them.

On what Apple is doing - I mean, literally nothing Apple Intelligence offers excites me, but at the same time nothing anybody else is doing with LLMs really does either... And I'm highly technical, general people are not actually that interested apart from students getting LLMs to write their homework for them...

It's all well and good to be excited about LLMs but plenty of these companies' customers just... aren't... If anything, Apple is playing the smart move here - let other spend (and lose) billions training the models and not making any real ROI, and they can license the best ones for whatever turns out to actually have commercial appeal when the dust settles and the models are totally commodified...

olyjohn · 2 days ago

God the AI answers that it gives in the Facebook Groups are so wrong that it's hilarious.

olyjohn commented on Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears telegraph.co.uk/business/... · Posted by u/pera

danpalmer · 2 days ago

You're right about Instagram, I did forget them. That was a huge get. Was that skill or luck though?

olyjohn · 2 days ago

Didn't they just buy it though? Then they proceeded to fuck it up just like they did to Facebook.

olyjohn commented on Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears telegraph.co.uk/business/... · Posted by u/pera

danpalmer · 2 days ago

Zuckerberg either doesn't have the resolve for changing the business, or just keeps picking the wrong directions (depending on your biases).

First Facebook tried to pivot into mobile, pushed really hard for a short time and then flopped. Then Facebook tried really hard to make the Metaverse a thing, and for a while, but eventually Meta stopped finding it interesting and significantly reduced investment. Then AI was the big thing and Meta put a huge amount of money into it, chasing after other companies, with an arguably novel approach compared to the rest of big tech... but now seems to be backing out or at least messaging less commitment. Oh and I think there was some crypto in there too at one point?

I'm not saying that they should have stuck with any of these. The business may not have worked in each case, and that's fine, but spending billions on each one seems like a bad idea. Zuckerberg is great at chasing the next big thing, but seemingly bad at landing the next big thing. He either needs to chase them more tentatively, investing far less, or he needs to stick with them long enough to work out all the issues and build the growth over the long term.

olyjohn · 2 days ago

Maybe he can work on making Facebook not be such a piece of shit. I feel like he got his one lucky break and should just give up on trying to make more money. He already has billions. Is he proud of Facebook as a product? Because as a user it feels sluggish, buggy, inconsistent, and just full of low quality trash. I would be embarrassed if I was him.

olyjohn commented on Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts petapixel.com/2025/08/20/... · Posted by u/mikece

rovr138 · 3 days ago

The worst part for me is when they prevent you from scanning the same item twice.

Yes, I want 2 boxes of cereal.

I just find it easier to go to a cashier.

olyjohn · 2 days ago

I always go to a cashier. Every damn time the self checkout is open, there are two or three employees standing around doing nothing while one runs around fixing all the errors and does all the ID checks. If those people has just been in a regular checkout area, all those customers waiting at self checkout would have been out of the store already. Self checkout is a fucking joke 90% of the time.

olyjohn commented on Nissan announces 2026 Leaf pricing, 300 mile range starting at $29,990 arstechnica.com/cars/2025... · Posted by u/coldpie

fragmede · 4 days ago

buying the car and fitting smaller rims on it is too obvious, so there must be something I'm missing

olyjohn · 4 days ago

It really depends on the size of the brakes. The real reason to fit bigger wheels is to clear larger brakes for better stopping power. Usually a higher performance trim level will have larger brakes to make up for the extra speed or weight. But that became a styling trend that just trickled down in a lot of cases to "it looks cool" because you see it on so many performance cars. Many cars now have gigantic wheels that can easily be downsized.

I know a couple people who have done it. You get much better ride because you have taller sidewalls, and you're much less likely to destroy a tire when you hit an object. These massive wheels on cars now are totally ridiculous.

olyjohn commented on ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes bmj.com/content/390/bmj-2... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

FreezerburnV · 7 days ago

Not doubting you but… how? Adderall leaves your system in like 4 hours. The half life is crazy short and it’s extremely noticeable when it happens. I don’t understand how someone would fail to sleep for 3 days, or even hyper focus for 12 hours, when the drug is going to be completely gone from their system and not affecting them a fraction of the time into that period. Are you sure it wasn’t something else or they didn’t take more doses or other things?

olyjohn · 7 days ago

Extended release. Those fucking things would keep me up for 3 days. If I take a the same dose of instant release, it'll be worn off at the end of the day and I'll sleep like a log. They say it wears off in 4 hours, but a single dose keeps working all day for me. Depends on how you metabolize it.

olyjohn commented on Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription autoexpress.co.uk/volkswa... · Posted by u/t0bia_s

dare944 · 8 days ago

Manufacturers have been shipping cars with detuned engines forever, and tuners have been tweaking them to unlock the hidden power for just as long. Back in the beginning of the century I owned a 2000 Audi S4 twin-turbo. The torque curve on it looked like a perfect plateau between 2,500 and 5,300 rpm. I replaced the entire ECU with a chipped duplicate (a five minute swap) and instantly gained 50 horsepower. Of course, Audi limited the torque for a variety of reasons, including reliability and the fact that otherwise the car would have encroached on their higher-end RS4 line.

Similarly, the car I have as a track toy, a 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo, was famously limited by Porsche to avoid competing with their flagship 911 Turbo. Tuners figured this out and came up with all sorts of modifications, from mild to wild, to extract more performance.

Back in the 2000s I didn't have a problem with insurance. Probably not the same today.

olyjohn · 7 days ago

I hesitate to call turbo cars detuned just because you can turn up the boost or add timing. A lot of the "hidden power" in turbo cars is for emissions and reliability. Just because you can run 30psi doesn't mean the car is gonna last 200k miles like that.

olyjohn commented on Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy washingtonpost.com/nation... · Posted by u/reaperducer

socalgal2 · 10 days ago

does it matter? If mine is way better than I had before, why does it matter that someone else's is better still? My sister's $130 Moto G is much better than whatever phone she could afford 10 years. Does it matter that it's not a $1599 iPhone 16 Pro Max 1TB?

olyjohn · 9 days ago

A therapist is not a phone. Everybody deserves the best care, not just what is better than we have now. That's a low bar.

olyjohn commented on Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-s... · Posted by u/Sgt_Apone

SoftTalker · 14 days ago

I have 40V electric lawn mower. It takes nearly the full charge on two batteries to cut my average suburban-sized lawn. Sometimes I can't even complete it on that depending how tall the grass is. Add in edge trimming and blowing away the clippings and then multiply that by a number of lawns or larger properties and I think you would need dozens of batteries.

BTW "more convenient and cheaper" are strong arguments when you're in a competitive business. Lawn services are usually just a guy with a truck hustling for customers. The more lawns you can cut the more money you make. Anything that causes downtime such as running out of charged batteries is going to be a large negative.

olyjohn · 13 days ago

Honda has a new electric mower coming out that can do like 12-15 acres on a charge.

We're talking a commercial mower though. I haven't seen prices yet, but I'd guess you're in the $15k range.