KoboldCoterie

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

Feels too obvious, but… Diamond Heart, by Alan Walker?

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

I hope everyone who was taking this drug and the insurance companies that were backing them collectively sues this company, because as far as the article covers, there’s not even any mention of the fact that some number of ALS patients are out potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars which they probably wouldn’t have been had it not been for this company’s claims that the drug did what it was supposed to…

Patients already taking the medication who wish to continue taking it will be able to do so through a free drug program, the company said. It is no longer available to new patients, effective Thursday.

If you fell for our bogus study showing that this drug worked, and would now like to continue taking it despite the fact that it’s been shown to not work, we won’t charge you anymore!

Edit: From the article linked to in the article posted here, they note:

The F.D.A. decided to greenlight the drug instead of waiting until 2024 for results of a large clinical trial partly because the treatment is considered to be safe. The agency said that although the evidence of effectiveness was uncertain, “given the serious and life-threatening nature of A.L.S. and the substantial unmet need, this level of uncertainty is acceptable in this instance.”

and

Amylyx officials predicted that most patients would pay little or nothing for the treatment because the company expects insurers, both private and public, to cover it. Amylyx plans to provide it free to uninsured patients experiencing financial hardship.

So maybe it’s not as bad but it’s still pretty fucking bad.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

Or bf! …or just f, really…

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

I concur! Heck, I’d even settle for a small lizard friend. I’m not picky.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

Haha, yes!

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

The problem is that, while it’s easily disproven, the majority of people who read his statement will take it at face value, and because his platform is so large, it would take a lot of people disproving his claim to have even a fraction of the same reach.

People with appreciably large platforms or loud microphones can spread disinformation with no recourse, and there’s really no effective way to counter it. I don’t know what the solution to this is, but it’s a huge problem and has been for quite some time.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

Not sure how that stops rich assholes from spouting lies on social media…

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

Yeah, it’d be more interesting to see this done with, for instance, an RTS. Something where smarter decisions can beat out faster gameplay some percentage of the time. Obviously high APM is important in an RTS, but in this Street Fighter example, I’m pretty sure a 5 year old who only knows how to Hadouken spam would beat any of these LLMs from what we’re seeing here; it’s not so much about how good their decision-making is, but just about which ones execute the most moves that have a chance to connect.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

The failure state and irrefutable explanation is even built right into it. Did you pray for something and it didn’t happen? It’s because God didn’t will it, it’s part of his plan, beyond your comprehension but clearly for the best.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

Parachutes require pretty specific conditions to be able to use, and they require a fair amount of know-how. Expecting random passengers to be able to operate a parachute at all is basically a losing battle, and if you had people jumping out of planes that were on their way down, you’d have a lot more people dying (speculation but I’d wager money on it) than if they just stayed in the plane. Plus it’d be a horrible look for the airline - even worse than a plane crashing and killing everyone on it - if they had dead people raining down over cities and whatnot because they jumped and didn’t properly deploy their chute, or deployed it too quickly, or didn’t jump at the right time and got hit by the plane or any number of other possible problems.

Fighter jets and the like have ejection seats that specifically propel the pilot away from the plane before deploying the chute, and recreational (or military) planes that people are jumping from are designed for that purpose, and are moving a lot slower than commercial airliners. Opening the door on a plane to let people jump would cause more problems than keeping them on the plane. (People getting sucked out the door and the like.) Getting passengers safely clear of a plane that’s going down unrecoverably would be basically impossible.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

My understanding is that this is because of the way they operate internally. They reward new initiatives but not maintaining old initiatives, so employees are heavily incentivized to sunset old apps in favor of new apps that are functional replacements, and this cycle is the result.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

Not once they walk by this display, they don’t. Immediate trip to HR, followed by immediate termination. Employees avoid the lingerie aisle at all costs.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

even if I disagree with the fact that he’s renting at all

Why do you disagree with this, out of curiosity? Having rental properties available is necessary. Not everyone can buy a home (not even taking the monetary reasons into account - think students, people on temporary work assignments, people who are in the country on a non-permanent visa, etc. - there’s plenty of reasons why someone might want to rent even if they had the money to buy.) If your grandpa is taking care of the property and his tenants, and is charging a reasonable price, what’s the problem?

Charging someone enough to pay the mortgage and give you a paycheck is well… I mean it’s demanding more money than what the property is worth from someone.

If the owner is on top of maintenance and home improvements and all that, and the difference between the mortgage and what they’re charging isn’t extreme, I’d argue that this isn’t necessarily true. If the mortgage is $1000/mo and someone is charging $3000/mo in rent, that’s excessive, but charging $1300 rent on a property with a $1000/mo mortgage isn’t unreasonable. Again, see the above reasons for why someone might choose to rent who had the means to buy.

It’s OK to expect a return on an investment, even if that investment is property. It’s not OK to take advantage of artificial scarcity to bleed people dry who have no other option, and to cut every corner that it’s possible to cut while doing so. That’s the distinction.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

With those $300 dollars difference a landlord would need to cover insurance, property taxes,

These are included in mortgage payments. They go into an escrow account and are paid by the mortgage lender.

regular maintenance like replacing roof every 30 years, unplanned maintenance like a pipe bursts or aircon breaks. On top of that someone needs to act as the property manager/handyman so either the landlord takes that phone call on a Friday evening for the pipe that is gushing, or is paying someone to do that.

Yes, that is part of owning property. Rent shouldn’t necessarily cover the mortgage plus all costs associated with owning the property. The property owner might be taking a loss during the period when they have a mortgage, but they have a property that’s probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, so they’re coming out considerably ahead. When you get people who feel they’re entitled to have all costs + the mortgage covered + be able to live on the profits in addition, that’s when you get shitty serial landlords who don’t ever meet or talk to their tenants.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

You encounter the merchant where you can buy the MTX stuff in the first few hours of the game. You can’t even use the majority of them before reaching that point.

I would honestly bet money that they’d designed the game to not have microtransactions, then some executive at the 11th hour told them to find a way to include them, and they made them inconsequential as a sort of malicious compliance. Not that I think it’s OK to have them in the first place, it really soured me on the game initially. I think it’s considerably worse for including them, but they are completely meaningless.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

The real punchline will be April 1 2025, when they actually release it.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

Yeah and I mean, I agree with you, but he can get a shitty hole in the wall apartment, he doesn’t need a multi-million dollar condo to not be homeless.

KoboldCoterie, 1 month ago

There’s very cheap cable holders for VR applications that attach to your wall or ceiling (non-destructively) and hold cables above you. I used those above my desk to hold the headphone cables, so the cable runs up the wall behind my desk, and then over my head. Keeps it off the floor and away from everything else.

KoboldCoterie, 2 months ago

If they shifted back towards the GW1 formula, I’d be at least semi excited about this. That game was great for its time and there really aren’t any other MMOs that have gameplay like that.

KoboldCoterie, 2 months ago

Reply to them with Matthew 6:5-8:

5 “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward! 6 But whenever you pray, go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. 7 When you pray, do not babble repetitiously like the Gentiles, because they think that by their many words they will be heard. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

KoboldCoterie, 2 months ago

<span style="color:#323232;">catch (Exception e) {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    Exception.autofix(e);
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span>

Done!

KoboldCoterie, 2 months ago

Sounds like a change of employer is in order.

KoboldCoterie, 2 months ago

In many states, being forced back to the office after working from home for a long period allows you to collect unemployment if you quit on those grounds. Check your state’s requirements. IIRC it has to be demonstrable to be a significant burden but it can count as constructive dismissal.

KoboldCoterie, 2 months ago

Most of them are already 13+, so really this is only extending that by 1 year. It’s performative. Also he’s going to make everyone under 14 want to create accounts now just in hopes that the company doesn’t delete it and they can sue for their $10k.

I wonder what qualifies as ‘social media’. Is a Steam account ‘social media’? Its social features tick most of the boxes.

KoboldCoterie, 2 months ago

35-year-old is a US army veteran and seventh-grade math teacher

Sounds like he’d be better than Trump by a mile.