Talk given at U of C Santa Cruz (in Murka)

Discussion in 'Off Topic International' started by hezzey, Oct 13, 2021.

  1. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I sensed an uncanny resemblance to RMS (edited)



    just ignore that aspect…. They are cousins after all….
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2021
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  2. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    Very interesting, and I only had time for the first 5 mins.
    Gonna watch it all. Didn't know the man.
     
  3. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Please note I edited the first message I miss typed RMS initials…
     
  4. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    I don't know who RMS refferes to
     
  5. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Yeah I made the correction knowing or hoping that a reader would do a dictionary check to see what RMS is.

    (It doesn’t mean root mean squared…)
     
  6. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    (Richard M Stallman)
     
  7. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    LOL. That's a good one, Hezzey! And BTW, everyone should leave Stallman (and Lanier) alone. My mom was working where he got a lot of his early education back at Rockefeller in NYC. Now it's a uni, but it wasn't back in the '50s. It was a research institution.

    And he asks: who here has read Norbert Wiener? These days, who the fuck knows who he is?

    Recent developments in the USA and the cultural West in general have tried to cast out persons such as Stallman, Minsky, etc., etc. That's stupid, dangerous, and anti-intellectual. It's not quite the 1960s era Maoist China, nor the Soviet trials of the 1930s, but the hint of the smell is in the air.

    Do you remember this TV show? Big back in the day when Jaron was big? That is, not physically as big, but a darling of the VR (virtual reality) folk at places like Wired (a now- boring magazine and bunch of online media), and VC (venture capital) types?



    It looks silly now in hindsight. But man, those were the days. People were thinking about immersive environments, haptics, etc. It was normal to say among colleagues: how can we get rid of these fucking cumbersome keyboards and ways of addressing sites and content? Typing in URLs and stuff is so stupid.

    Ah, but t'was a long time ago.

    Now we're hearing that Faisbuch wants to go there; they want to offer up a Second Life-type world. I'm experiencing flashbacks. If those dummies with all of their cash can't convincingly make me feel as if I'm back in my favorite Chinese restaurant of 1993 -- Giant Eggroll -- then they suck.

    And let's be honest: has anyone ever heard of a better restaurant name than Giant Eggroll?
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2021
  8. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    I know my robot weeder will one day turn against me.
    Maybe it will be just by messing up my tomatoes.
    But I'll keep an eye on the fucker.
     
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  9. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    Lol, that is wise, Vasco. And even if you're not worried about a machine's on-board "AI" (cough), don't let it network. The most effective machines are the simplest sometimes.

    But if you do have a weeding machine that is not a scythe or set of human hands, post the specs :) Scythes in the hands of Scythians...
     
  10. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    No, I don't have one yet, but I'm planning about it.
    I hope there will be many open source plans soon enough.
    Anyway I'll start toying with it in a year or two.

    And yes, I would fear mass produced home appliances connected to the network.
    I still have a 20 years old fridge and washing machine that work extremely well. I know they don't make them like this, they make them so you throw them to the garbage after several years.
    I wanted to buy some new appliance and a repair guy I know advised me to buy second hand, because the quality nowadays is very poor.

    I don't know about the US, but in Europe you find stuff from the same brand, which has been assembled in more than one of their factories, on various lines, using parts of various qualities.
    And they direct the better ones to the richer european markets. So the same model might have a better version in Germany and a worse one in the east, while looking exactly the same. And the same is true even for food products like italian made pasta. The govts of the eastern EU countries took position, some years ago, against this practice, but I haven't heard anything about it since. It's not xenophobic or anti western propaganda, it's fucking real. Even coca cola has different tastes depending on the country - the romanian one is utter piss.
    And the people in the repair shops can check, by the serial number of an appliance, where it's been made and what parts they contain, so they find out their quality. It's insane.
    At the same time, the quality went lower all over. Even on the german market, I hear. And it's simply out of greed, because they want you to buy more often.
     
  11. Flk

    Flk Well-Known Member

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    It turns out that you have the same problems with household appliances that we faced 10 years ago.
    It is now clear why sanctions are being imposed on China. Their equipment is much more maintainable than European ones. Repair often comes down to a simple replacement of a failed unit.
    PS: Sorry for machine translation.
     
  12. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I have the same problem also. There are lots of times I will use the machine translator and it makes a balls of what I was trying to say and I am sick and tired of it fuck you (see what I mean? ).
     
  13. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    I'm curious: keep us posted. I've had a few Roombas, and know about the Tertill. There's the effective but creepy thing that the Tertill does, which is to stop over a target and spin around like a T-34 over a German infantry trench in WW2. If it went wrong we'd need a Panzerfaust and magnetic anti-tank grenades to stop it from destroying a crop of potatoes ;)

    Hmm, interesting. It's funny you mention this, because I have a very old washing machine (~ 1985). It works fine, and I now dry my washing by air, the way my grandparents did (parents had fancy machines). It's such a good feeling to hang laundry in the sun. If times get tough (and I always expect tough times, based on my family history), I'm happy to wash clothes in a bucket or a clean river. Twenty (20) years ago my grandmother was washing her clothes in the bathtub in New York. And she was always very elegantly dressed. My friends (or enemies) at university thought that my grandma was wealthy, LOL.

    In 1990 or so a West German industrialist, a steel specialist, was telling me how happy he was about the German reunification. "Why are you so happy? Won't the East need a lot of economic aid," I asked. "Yes," he replied. "But they will buy my washing machines."

    Even pasta and Coca Cola? It's true that Coca Cola is different in different countries. The big difference is the sugar used. Well, I'm old but I remember tasting the difference years ago in Western Europe, where cane sugar was used. Here in the USA normal Coke tastes like shit (processed, not cane sugar).

    I didn't imagine they would try to cheat everyone with pasta, but I guess it's to be expected. If anyone here wants to visit my region they can have some of the local sugar-sweetened cold tea that's made fresh daily in most restaurants. Better for one's health is the half-and-half option, has less sugars. (Hmmm, that would be an interesting analysis: are they really 50% of the fully sweetened teas? Now I'm going to obsess about that, damn it.)
     
  14. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    Are any household appliances manufactured inside Russia today? I buy some Russian products often (gre4ka, patrony, i t.d.).

    It's "funny" but the USA is buying more oil from Russia now, and our government is asking for more from OPEC+. Here in the United States we really have a lot of oil producing capacity, and there's so much up north in Canada (our allies), but the current US government is discouraging North American oil production.
     
  15. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    1985, that's cool! What model is it?

    Drying clothes on string here is the common way. The appartements here aren't that large so most people either don't have the space or the money for an electric dryer. When I was a small kid my parents didn't even own a washing machine. Then they bought a "semi automatic" one - it was only a small plastic tank with a motor and a propeller that spun the clothes. That was in the 80's!
     
  16. Flk

    Flk Well-Known Member

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    Yes
     
  17. Flk

    Flk Well-Known Member

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    I think that mainly the assembly of household appliances is manufactured under a license.
    Это называется "заначка" :) (reserve).
     
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  18. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    I'm not a fan of internal or external chinese politics , but they seem to be a good example when it comes to electric cars: much cheaper than anywhere else! It maybe has to do to the fact that they consume much more oil than they produce and that their car market is much out of the influence of the western oligopoly.
     
  19. Flk

    Flk Well-Known Member

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    In the Russian part of the forum, all this has been discussed for a long time. The rise of China is a fait accompli.
    They produce a lot of not expensive, but enough high-quality electronics (and spare parts), clothing and accessories for export.
     
  20. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    The brand is Maytag, not sure of the particular model. Surely it was not expensive ~1985. I think a professor from Japan lived in my little place at the time, and she likely purchased it. She probably also air-dried her clothing, too.

    I was going to take a quick picture of the washing machine with my phone, but I then realized that I am not a very good housekeeper, and it's kind of dirty on the outside. If I was married, it would be spotless and I would clean that room more often. As it is, I don't allow ladies to visit the washing area ;) Maybe they cheat, I don't know. But the beast still works fine and will be used until it dies.

    Wow, yes. I must confess that I was lucky to be raised in a family that had more conveniences. I make a choice to live without as many conveniences as my family had in my youth. Although if a woman moved into my home, I would quickly become more of a materialist. Priorities ;0