redditmademedoit

But they all suck, or rather the Internet kinda sucks these days. Google very much included in the sucking.

In Google Search’s prime DDG was still terrible and not a viable competitor even with the privacy advantage. Now both services are almost comparable, so it’s kind of a no-brainer to ditch Google.

Yeah, search has degraded along with the Internet, you almost need an LLM now to filter out all the garbage hits. For a while, adding “reddit” to your search term was an OK high level filter to remove blogspam and e-commerce sites, but interacting with reddit is so annoying now that it’s barely an option and many of the quality reddit posters have moved on while the state and corporate astroturfers are running the show. Never mind that the “reddit filter” also removed results from much better sources, like specialist forums.

What does Mozilla doubling down on AI and becoming less appealing to core users mean for Firefox forks going forward? How independent of Mozilla are the biggest ones in practice?

The problem is that it isn’t clear what kinds of exposure private credit and other actors in the shadow banking space hold, because they generally operate on a model of financial obfuscation to get around banking regulation (i.e. being actual banks). What is known is that they are deeply intertwined with financing the AI bubble, even if all their exposure is through debt instruments, crypto schemes or insurance contracts (that probably is not the full scope though), they will be hit hard when their “borrowers” can’t pay back.

It’s the difference between a nice gesture and giving away his life’s work to take a stand. It’s still a nice gesture, but I doubt he will financially notice the lost streaming royalties from his fanbase on Greenland. Boycotting Amazon is probably the bigger thing here.

And possibly the most parts of shadow banking, i.e the alt accounts of major financial institutions.

Fun times ahead!

If you’re rich, you look good

That’s not news

Dry Cleaning – Anna Calls from the Arctic

Tl;dr surveillance equipment working perfectly, used for dystopian surveillance. Major shocker.

In the context of parenting there are certainly better things you can do to prevent “shennanigans” other than subjecting them to surveillance. Like you know… raising them?

Terrifying with a generation of peole grown up under total control and expected to be perfectly obedient. They will be shitty adults. But hey, at least they won’t have memories of that time they snuck out at night to watch the stars.

Subscriptions are thieves of intentionality

It’s included, but good lord if that’s not a very high price for temporary access to a collection of bargain bin games. You could buy a full price game every other month for that money.

I think we should also focus on using less energy overall – e.g. replace short to medium persinal car trips with walking, bicycles and public transport, medium to long travel with trains, eliminating unnecessary travel that can’t be accommodated by those modes of transport. Environmental solutions like replacing fossil fuel powered cars with emissions free, but equally dangerous and still inefficient EVs for personal use will keep us burning oil even longer by tying up investments in highways and hostile, car based infrastructure.

Things like rethinking infrastructure, labor, economy and housing would have been more achievable and, for most, felt more like progressing towards a better future than straighup sci-fi level efforts to continue the status quo without as much oil. But it’s the latter we get, they’re putting carbon capture machines on Norwegian oil rigs as we speak.

Heh, I got Google Stadia’s launch bundle for CP2077, it was heavily rebated next to all other console options, ran on high end hardware, came with a controller and a Chromecast. In the end it cost me nothing because all of it was refunded when Google shuttered Stadia.

Overall, I enjoyed the game at launch. The city was dead, glitches were everywhere, Game streaming was hit and miss, but the side quests and story missions were very good. Its biggest fault was looking like GTA while being nothing like it.

Megabonk has some “fun” challenges that probably counts towards both. I did the “AFK gaming” one, where your character isn’t allowed to be moved by the player ( a huge handicap). It was kind of fun figuring out which character would be best, what pickups to prioritize etc.

As far as I’m aware peak oil production has not been recognized to have happened yet.

Over the last century, many predictions of peak oil timing have been made, often later proven incorrect due to increased extraction rates.[9] M. King Hubbert introduced comprehensive modeling of peak oil in a 1956 paper, predicting U.S. production would peak between 1965 and 1971; his global peak oil predictions were predictive through the 1990s and 2000s but eventually were deemed premature due to improved drilling technology.[10] Current forecasts for the year of peak oil range from 2028 to 2050.[11] These estimates depend on future economic trends, technological advances, and efforts to mitigate climate change.[8][12][13] Peak oil, Wikipedia

It is still assumed that global oil consumption scales with economic growth and under 2025 consumption increased.

Global liquid fuels consumption increased by an estimated 1.2 million b/d in 2025 and is forecast to increase by 1.1 million b/d in 2026 and 1.3 million b/d in 2027. Consumption growth rises next year as global economic activity picks up pace. Based on forecasts from Oxford Economics, our forecast assumes global GDP will grow by 3.1% this year and 3.3% in 2027. Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA (U.S. government)

When you have plug-in hybrid tanks or nuclear powered strategic bombers oil will see a diminish in it’s strategic relevance as a resource.

Fusion is nowhere near being in industrial use or being profitable. In the future, maybe, pending more breakthroughs.

Whether nuclear is a good idea to cling to going forward or not, it takes time to deploy. Those small reactors don’t just come off a shelf, ready to be turned on. Oil, however, can generate power TODAY, anywhere you can ship it.

The question isn’t whether it’s a good idea to keep burning oil – it definitely isn’t – the question is whether oil is still a hugely important energy commodity and the answer is a resounding yes. Notably, the article mentions that China’s oil use hasn’t even peaked yet. China does not use a small amount of oil.

Oil is still king. It’s not by a long shot about to lose it’s value as a strategic resource.