• 12 Posts
  • 280 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: February 26th, 2024

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  • These pods are only used on rails with very low ridership. They would switch to a train if ridership increased.

    Look at it this way: you can have a train that has a capacity of 100 people, but it only runs once a day due to the low demand, and only 2 people want to ride it at that time of day…Or you can have 10 pods, which do not require as much railway maintenance, and they can carry the 10 people who actually want to use this railway, completely on demand.

    Yeah, a train is better if you want to move ten thousand people a day at peak hour. But this is a cheaper way to move ten people at different times across a day. And it’s a cheaper way of inducing the demand that would justify the more efficient kind of expansion.


  • Proud luddite here. The original luddites destroyed machinery owned by capitalists which threatened their jobs. The choice was either destroy the machines, or stand by and become unable to feed your family while a rich man gets richer.

    I have no opposition to technology which is used for good, and whose control is placed in the hands of the workers. Your self-hosted AIs are fine, although I do ask that you only use energy intensive processes if you have solar panels. After all, this planet is the only one we’ve got. At our current rate of pollution, soon the world will only be inhabitable to AI.

    But I downvote anything promoting corporate AI designed to replace people’s jobs. I am all for replacing human jobs, if the humans get to relax and live comfortable lives afterward. But I am against replacing jobs if we choose to have a society where you need a job to live. That’s not nature, it’s a choice we make as a society. The minute you automate someone’s job, you do necessarily admit that society doesn’t need that person’s work to get by. The only reason they shouldn’t get to put their feet up and take it easy is political. And politically, we have decided instead what happens is they die. That’s unacceptable, and until it changes, we can’t afford to have job replacing machines.