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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Why would Amazon want to hinder the accuracy of the price tracking in that way?

    Accurate price tracking leads to people saying “Oh well it was 50% less a year ago. I’ll wait on a sale, not paying full price on that” and waiting on a sale, leading to less conversions. Amazon has pressured Camelcamelcamel into agreeing to not track specific low prices (i.e., Prime Day, if that actually had any good sales). I’m unsure if they track coupons or not, they were not clear about what the criteria for not tracking a price are.

    Camelcamelcamel is unfortunately compromised by Amazon, it’s probably mostly accurate but there are price points they do not accurately log at Amazon’s request.


  • I’m not arguing one way or another but I want to clear up some very common misconceptions about US gun laws.

    in some states, you can get semi-automatic weapons (which are completely banned in Austria) in a shop in just minutes. And that without any background checks, psychological reports, justifications, approval required, without anything like that

    This is just blatantly untrue and I wish people would stop parroting it. If you go to any shop you need to pass a federal background check to buy any non-vintage firearm (pre-1899…not exactly a ton of those floating around). The exception here is private firearm sales, i.e. I go to Craigslist and sell a rifle or handgun. The law states the seller has to have no reasonable cause to believe they would be an unlawful possessor (weak, yes). With that said, almost half of the states (22 per Wikipedia) have implemented state-level laws requiring a background check for private sales.

    In many states even convicted criminals can get guns like that.

    Again, objectively untrue. You are not buying a firearm from any legal, licensed dealer in the US without going through a background check. And a violent criminal offense will get you barred from purchasing. For the 28 states without laws around private sales, the seller can be federally legally liable if they sell to someone that is not legally allowed to have a gun and they use it to commit crimes.

    In the US, guns are sometimes a presents for kids which they can just…own and use (while in Austria everything is obviously 18+).

    No, a child cannot legally own a firearm. The parent can purchase and own a firearm that they are allowed to use, but they do not own it. In many states if the child hurts themselves or others with such a firearm the parents will be held liable, many states have laws around safely storing firearms when children are around.

    While in the US (in many states), you can just carry any gun around in public whatsoever. So even if the police sees you having weapons in public, they can’t / don’t do anything about that

    In most states if you don’t have a license to conceal carry and you do you are breaking the law and can be charged. I’ll say this one isn’t entirely false but heavily depends on your state.

    A large part of why this issue gets nowhere is that neither side can even agree on what is true today, rather than what should be true to bring down the issue of violent crime. If one side says “They’re totally unregulated you can just buy one off Amazon and start blasting. We have to do something!” The other side is gonna think “Well they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about, no point in listening to what they have to say”


  • pokemaster787@ani.socialtomemes@lemmy.worldBurgernomics Δ
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    7 months ago

    Even if it started out that way, where “surge” pricing is current pricing and “off-surge” pricing is cheaper, leading to consumers paying less overall, it won’t stay that way. It would only be that way to prime consumers mentally to accept that dynamic pricing. After which they’ll slowly increase prices, 10 cents or whatever every month. Soon enough it’ll cost more and the corporation can brag about how it increased profits again this quarter. Remember publicly traded companies are legally obligated to maximize profit - the only time they aren’t doing so is when they’re burning money to prime consumers to accept bullshit or building a captive base, in order to eventually maximize profits.





  • They can be or they can be paid through “escrow” and your mortgage servicer will pay them.

    Usually sites like these want to show total monthly cost though, so they tend to include estimates for property taxes and insurance in the monthly payments. Whether it gets paid through your mortgage servicer or directly by you doesn’t change much.




  • You’d think those giant loop videos would be taking up far more space

    Someone above posted an article saying they aren’t actually. But you’d be surprised at how little space those 10 hour videos can actually take. They’re highly compressible since they’re just the same still image and the same audio on repeat. A good compression algorithm (which Google certainly is using) would basically compress it into one instance of the song and how many times to repeat it (more complex than that, but that’s the idea)





  • I have not researched these specific cases, so may be wrong about them.

    You’re not obligated to do research on every individual bill the political parties push and what rider clauses they slip into unrelated bills. That’s fine.

    You, however, should have research and examples to back it up if you’re gonna “both sides” this. The Democratic party is far far far from perfect or what I would want, but at the very least most of them seem to be campaigning in good faith or at the least not inciting actual violence and treason.

    Saying “so may be wrong about them” isn’t a free pass. Know that people read what you say, and we have a huge problem of political apathy (circa 2016) due to the constant repetition of “but both sides are the same.” Let’s please not exacerbate it unless we’re bringing facts and evidence to the table.


  • 12V sealed lead-acid batteries are a standard size and chemistry… They are absolutely not comparable to a BEV battery. The lithium ion 12V batteries are built to the emissions standards and regulations of the 12V lead acid, that’s a known quantity and a hell of a lot less energy. BEV batteries contain kwH of energy, they are significantly larger, are a nonstandard size on every single vehicle. Even if Toyota made it the same size and shape, the energy density might be enough to fail EMC regulations (without having to change the size and shape)

    I don’t know what else to tell you man, I work on electric vehicles for my job. Literally an engineer. You can choose to not believe me but it just isn’t anywhere near as simple as you’re acting like it is. Just because you think it’s like swapping an alkaline AA for a NiZn AA doesn’t make it true.


  • Different battery chemistries do not behave identically in terms of failure modes, EMC emissions and interference response, and tons of other things. Just swapping one battery for another has a huge effect even before you consider auxiliary components like charging circuitry.

    My assumptions as to why you can just drop in an aftermarket battery and crate motor into an existing ICE vehicle (also, far from any vehicle, it is a relatively niche product) are that A. The batteries are way smaller and aren’t structural to the frame the way they are in BEV-first designs (but this is how we get good range out of them). B. The companies selling these probably aren’t held to the same emissions standards that an automaker is.

    Again, these are assumptions, I don’t work in conversions but in BEV designs primarily. I know there’s a ton of red tape for us to even think about changing battery chemistry, and we 100% would have to get all new certifications for it.


  • What certification does it need other than be certified by Toyota for use?

    Engineer in the automotive industry here. Vehicles need a ton of certification by tons of different governments and face very strict regulation.

    Just a battery alone is going to be subject to lots of EMC emissions and interference tests. Then you have the capability to survive crashes, fail operational requirements, how does the battery fail (does it explode or just disconnect itself?), etc. etc. These are all dependent on the chassis the battery is in, so they can’t just swap it into an existing chassis and say “Oh it worked with battery A, it’ll work with battery B.” Unfortunately the requirements are just way too strict for that.

    Additionally I can’t go into details but the sentiment others are echoing of “If it’s coming in 2028 they should have a functioning prototype” are true in my experience. It takes several years to design and release a car, and when you’re introducing a new battery tech or drive train or similar changes it takes even longer.