lennivelkant

Robots can be convenient if all I want is service with minimum interaction (provided the robots work well, otherwise I'll have to talk to a human and deal with the annoyance of something not working). I don't need them to be welcoming any more than I need a fast food drive-through to be welcoming. The bakery I grab my breakfast from has to look appealing, but I personally wouldn't care if the staff was curt.

It's just stupid to pretend they're being "welcoming" by curtailing individuality.

a warmer, more welcoming feeling in its stores

Ah, yes, nothing as warm as uniformity.

I'm pretty sure the stereotypical Starbucks patron doesn't mind a splash of colour, but what do I know.

We used to pretend this was a solution and now the pretend solution is being taken away

...to be replaced by an actual solution, right?

Right?

Some time ago, I read an analysis on why left-wing parties were allegedly more successful in Scandinavia than other parts of Europe. It claimed that, for all their pro-social domestic policy, they weren't as immigrant-friendly as many other left-wing parties. Supposedly, that approach helped undermined the narrative that "I have nothing, yet these immigrants come here to get stuff for free at my expense." By putting their own country's needs first, they won over voters that worried they were being screwed over.

I have no way to verify how accurate that analysis was, nor do I have any sense of how dated it might be, so I'll be sceptical, but the idea stuck with me. I can't really blame people for putting their own needs first, and I wonder how much that influences the popularity of right-wing parties all around.

Of course, health care should be a universal good anyway and the US system definitely needs fixing, but I can understand how the "freeloader immigrant" propaganda would work on people suffering from that system – misery breeds bigotry and all.

Let's put an end to the discussion

lol
lmao

Probably did -6 instead of +6

Da hab ich absolut Verständnis für. Ich bastel gerne an Skripten rum, is auch billiger und platzsparender als eine Modelleisenbahn.

Ich weiß noch nicht ob ich froh oder geknickt bin, durch einen Bot ersetzt zu werden. Klar, spart Aufwand und funktioniert schneller als ich, aber irgendwie hatte es auch was nettes, immer wieder mal deine Posts durchzuschauen.

Naja, das ist halt der Preis des Fortschritts... verdient hast du sie sowieso.

In that respect, I'm rather glad my employer is on the slow and steady side. Yeah, sure, they're very much behind on some topics and just recently started catching up on others, but their cautious scepticism towards new tech has spared us some headaches. I'd rather take the frustration of not getting all the tools I'd like to have than the stress of "ooh, look, this new shiny thing is gonna replace that other system you just got used to!"

When referencing another person's comment, it can be helpful to link to that comment or the article you mentioned.

I'd also like to point out that many Wikipedia articles, particularly those written by experts on a given scientific subject, tend to be daunting rather than helpful for people not yet familiar with that subject.

Explanations like the one you offered in this comment and the next reply can help make topics more approachable, so I very much appreciate that.

To illustrate my point:

In this case, the article first describes the principle as "pertaining to a lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of computation", which doesn't directly highlight the connection to information storage. The next sentence then mentions "irreversible change in information" and "merging two computational paths", both of which are non-trivial.

From a brief glance at the article on reversible computing linked further on, I gather that "irreversible" here doesn't mean "you can't flip the bit again" but rather something like "you can't deterministically figure out the previous calculation from its result", so the phrase boils down to "storing a piece of information" for our context. The example of "merging computational paths" probably has no particular bearing on the energy value of information either and can be ignored as well.

Figuring out the resulting logic that you so kindly laid out – again, thank you for that! – requires a degree of subject-specific understanding to know what parts of the explanation can be safely ignored.

Of course, experts want to be accurate and tend to think in terms they're familiar with, so I don't fault them for that. The unfortunate result is that their writings are often rather intransparent to laypeople and linking to Wikipedia articles isn't always the best way to convey an understanding.

I mean, they certainly didn't lose any battles that one time Phillip II of Macedon marched in... because they never offered any and just let him take what he wanted. Can't lose if you never fight, right?

Not even. There is no evidence for special training. Their battle record was average and their reputation mostly manufactured. This entry of a blog series on the myth of Sparta dissects that particular justification frequently offered for all the inhumanity laid out in the preceding posts.