So much this. I started using it during Covid, and it’s been so great that I prefer Sams over any other shopping experience.

We had to do this in Colorado public schools in the late 80s.

30 years later I’ve got a mouth full of false teeth.

Not sure it worked out like they wanted it to.

Mostly private and home school in my area. The district is still showing a 10% loss in enrollment despite being the #1 relocation destination in the US in 2023 (according to Uhaul, so take from that what you will). We’re gaining population, and still public school enrollment is going down.

Private and charter schools are all completely full. There are so many homeschoolers that businesses that do extra-curriculars (music lessons, dance programs, sports, etc) are all offering morning and mid-day sessions to keep up with demand. The local little league is talking about having two teams limited to homeschoolers so they can practice mid-day and free up the fields during after school hours.

Meanwhile the public schools struggle to keep their teacher slots, which are allocated based on enrollment.

This. Those weekly rockets are visible from my house. It’s almost a non-event to all but the most avid space fans - people play “was that rumble a rocket or a freight train”. The county EOC is trying to get permission not to activate for Falcon 9 launches because they’re so reliable.

But yeah let’s pretend SpaceX are all idiots because they blow things up in testing.

Clearly you haven’t spent 3 minutes playing with StableDiffusion. AI has already plumbed the depths of human awfulness.

If you only do the easy part, then yes that’s infinitely replaceable. Being a pretty face is exactly that, and AI can do that all day long.

Being actually entertaining and engaging, though, is a different story, and AI is struggling to pick that up. And of course teams of corporate marketers continually fail at this.

But yes, the “job” of “being attractive on the internet” can now be outsourced to machines.

Is it “don’t use them and just keep track of your stuff”? Because that seems like the most right answer here.

That’s what I’m saying - there’s absolutely nothing about nonprofit status that demands a company not act like a total asshole. Have a look at all the really bad ones like the Komen Foundation or Red Cross if you want an example.

Best bet, barring adding more legal mechanisms to the law, is a private for-profit with careful leadership. Yeah, it can change, but companies that put values first can and often do confer those same values to future leadership. Versus, of course, publicly traded companies where rampant growth at all costs is the only legal requirement.

Most nonprofits don’t do a lot with the general public. They have the community they serve (which is getting something for nothing and therefore “customer service” is not a thing) and the community that funds them (where, of course, service is king). How the company treats you on the outside very much depends on which side of that equation you’re on.

This is necessary behavior for nonprofits, at least in the US, because of the demand for charitable giving. It’s ultimately a decent structure for a charity, but a pretty awful way to run a product or service business, since the incentives are all on the opposite side of “good product/service”. Private for-profits with strong, conscientious leadership do much better - I encourage you to read up on Patagonia and Gore-Tex as examples.

The idea that non-profits aren’t profiting-seeking is the biggest misunderstanding in the world. I work for a large one, and it’s absolutely the same rampant penny-squeezing 30%-unsustainable-growth-seeking monstrosity as anything in the Valley. The pittance that gets thrown to “charitable causes” is just another tax dodge in an otherwise profit-demanding venture. Swap “shareholders” with “the endowment” and there’s no difference at all.

Much better to be a for-profit company with a charter demanding where profits in excess of modest growth targets are spent internally.

They need to make some money - infrastructure isn’t free, employees need paid, etc. they should be self sustaining.

They don’t need to be 2009-Google profitable though. That pipe dream needs to end. 3-5% YoY growth is plenty.

I think you’re making a solid point, but I think the basic problem is a fundamental lack of the willingness to listen and digest someone else’s point of view. Sources of information are important to a debate, but they’re ultimately irrelevant if either side isn’t willing to even consider the possibility that there’s more to learn than what they already know.

Agreed. Lemmy has exactly one political opinion, and woe betide any poor soul of another persuasion.

Otherwise the community is pretty great. Lots of good conversation with intelligent commenters.

Yes, but poorly. And even then it took at least 8 years to get caught. With a little creative thinking in the software design, there’s little chance another attempt would ever be discovered.

The shocking part about this is that they installed a dedicated defeat device and expected no one to notice. Come on guys, cars are software, if you want to end run the emissions standards just write more creative code.

Maybe one day many, many years from now when there are far fewer humans and machines have taken over nearly all production. UBI isn’t feasible on this side of the coming demographic boogaloo.

Seconded, can’t imagine life without my family.

My 80 year old dad has been using a XUbuntu for years and never even noticed. The only reason he knows he’s using Linux at all is because he saw a news story about Windows tracking and asked about it. He was quite happy not to be affected.

Didn’t he do this once before, and it affected a whopping 0 people?

Very much this. Four times I’ve accidentally flown with live ammo in my carry on and gotten through the TSA checkpoint unflagged. I can also verify that the hand swab thing they do doesn’t pick up gunpowder.