neither_color

I had an interesting experience with my Revolut card. I only top it up when traveling, and the rest of the time it sits nearly empty, with like $3-4. At some point I started getting occasional notifications about transactions declining. Stuff like video game points and random little online shops. Clearly my card's been skimmed or otherwise leaked somehow. Bummer.

Since Im months away from my next trip I didnt immediately cancel the card and just left it on out of curiosity. I started blocking every attempted merchant. At some point, I started getting Netflix subscription attempts, and when I tried to block it, it said "We can't block payments to Netflix. If you have a subscription with them, you can cancel it directly." Makes me wonder what kind of rube goldberg machine their backend runs on.

That's been my observation of AI customer support. They're pretty much all glorified FAQ reciters unable to handle any unusual or uncommon situation not in the FAQs.

If we're going to have self-censorship due to everything we say online tied to our real identity can we at least get some shiny buildings and high speed trains out of the deal too? I've been online since early 2000s internet and for all the soapboxing about freedom of speech over the years it seems a foregone conclusion that we'll get the same surveillance state as those other "less free" countries else without anything to show for it.

There's too much demand for their labor. You'd have to go after the businesses that hire them in a way that would hurt certain constituents. TPTB have given themselves the Sisyphean task of rounding up enough of them to appease a nativist base that's been riled up with conspiracies about people invading them, but not so many that it would make economic number go down.

It's not an ideal outcome it's a very non-enviable multi-decade process working menial jobs and being at risk of something benign like a traffic stop escalating to imprisonment at any time. This fantasy that illegals are living in luxury is how they boiled the frog on people who "did it the right way." They want to get rid of everyone.

Breaker size =/= charging speed. Breakers are oversized for safety reasons. The Wall Connector is on a 60A breaker and charges at 48A. NEMA 14-50 outlets are on 50A breakers but can't charge your car at 48A. 40 iirc, and the mobile connector that comes with the car maxes out at 32A.

I've had both setups and whether the full amperage charger is worth it or not depends on your use case. If you're just going to plug it in overnight, it doesn't matter. It's about an hour's difference for a top up. If you're going to wait for your car to charge and unplug it because you share the charger or have to run an extension over a public sidewalk, then the faster speed is worth it.

This is why Im glad I learned to code before vibecoding. I tell codex exactly what tools and platforms to use instead of letting it default to whatever is the most popular, and I guard my .env and api keys carefully. I still build things page by page or feature by feature instead of attempting to one shot everything. This should be vibe-coding 101.

It's not exactly a linguistics discussion, it's a discussion about attracting talent to live/work somewhere. Im not saying whether it's good or bad on China's part, that's a separate issue. Im saying that the possibility of integration is harder than just learning the language.

It's not just about language. There's no common practical path to becoming "Chinese", either in a legal or cultural sense. Save for a few rare exceptions, you cannot move there, join the culture, become a citizen, etc even if you're fluent. The western systems arent perfect but they allow a greater number of people who really want to assimilate do so regardless of background.

What kind of rooms are you lighting up? I like LED strips enough to use them as a main light source a lot of the time, but if you really want to make a room "pop" you still need floor lamps, recessed lights, hanging, and wall lights to highlight/accent certain things and make a cozy atmosphere for guests.

For longer runs, like along all the undercabinet + above cabinet spaces in a large kitchen, I just run the jumpers as 120V and put the transformer/drivers somewhere hidden at the start of each segment, so if I have 3 segments I prefer to have 3 separate drivers all controlled by the same switch.

Have you tried COB strips? They largely get rid of the need for diffusers if the goal is to simply not see dots. Diffusers are still useful if you want to change the "texture" of the light.

Run one wireguard server in your home and one client instance on this router and now all of your devices can share the same residential VPN connection. No fraud blocks or extra verifications from your banking apps, no million suspicious login detected from all your social accounts, use your home netflix account, etc. All without your individual devices running a VPN app.

The unpaid version of cruise control/autopilot is actually a different software from the one that comes bundled with FSD. I actually think the semi-smart autopilot that comes bundled with FSD is better than FSD itself.

I tried to get into FSD but I felt that it made me an obnoxious driver. Chill is too slow and makes unnecessary lane changes. Hurry makes too many unnecessary lane changes while speeding beyond the flow of traffic. When you encounter a "mormon roadblock", e.g two cars going the speed limit on a two lane road, FSD goes into a loop changing lanes back and forth hoping for an overtake that never comes. If you're the type of driver who picks his exit lane early because you know they're prone to jamming and drivers blocking each other later, FSD will still try to get out of the merge lane to pass, ditto for busy intersection queues.

Removing the human driver makes one things SPECIFICALLY worse, and that is the ability to correct navigation errors and override sub-optimal routing. For example: there is one block on my commute where you can take either an uncontrolled left turn, or go up to a light. The difference is one block and the light is usually faster during rush hour because the uncontrolled turn takes forever to get a safe gap. Navigation always chooses the uncontrolled left to the point that you have to disengage. There's other quality of life issues too like wanting to approach your destination from the left or the right because you know the parking situation ahead of time. These can be communicated to a human driver. You can't explain that to Tesla FSD though. It's tapped into the car-machine-god hivemind and can't be bothered with instructions from mere mortals.

But I digress, I think the paid, semi-smart autopilot is their best product. I can set an objective speed limit. It stops at stop signs and red lights automatically. It stays in its lane until I tap the blinker so it changes lane. It can autopark. These things actually augment my driving and reduce cognitive strain while driving, while keeping me just alert enough. FSD is all or nothing while requiring full non-interactive attention like a sentinel.

From the article:

>The statement was consistent with earlier remarks by South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, who, after traveling to Washington to negotiate the workers’ release, said that U.S. officials had agreed to allow them to return later to complete their work.

You dont suddenly allow to return someone who was justifiably deported, regardless of what the agent in charge said in the immediate aftermath at a press conference.

Different populists have different ideal numbers for how many people they want to purge. Some want 10 million, some want 20-50 million going decades back and reversing whatever laws allowed the "wrong kind" of even legal immigrants to come here in the first place.

I think more governments around the world are catching on to the idea that your majority population can excuse a large amount of economic mismanagement and bad geopolitical strategy if you blame foreigners who arrived after your decline started.

If a satisfactory amount of foreigners are removed, the technology will still be there and the defense contractors will still need contracts. If there are no viable foreign adversaries at that point, then another domestic target will be needed.