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4·4 days agoDepends.
The old thinking was that owning residential property was your best performing investment, but large amounts of Wall Street capital with nothing better to do has spiralled housing costs out of control, so good if you got in early, not so good now.
Unless you’re in a specific market that seems to push constantly upwards with flavor-of-the-year capital flows like AI/crypto/social media/databases such as San Francisco, but money flows so freely, that there’s always the risk that the big money could move out of town and never come back.
So how do you reduce risk? Diversification.
The S&P 500 is diversified, both in terms of different industries, and internationally.
But large capital (American) stocks are only one sector of investment and may not actually be that diverse: There are also small and middle sized companies, corporate and tax free bonds.
(and American investments may be subject to high risk from a tyrannical government that doesn’t respect laws and precedent)
A solitary residential house as an investment is a very specific market: Real estate value and rental income in a very specific location.
I would treat buying a house like buying milk: Buy it only when you need it.
If the house is in a community that you have solid plans to move into eventually, and you want the rent to help with the payment, and the means to pay the mortgage off quickly that’s fine.
If you want to buy it as an investment, forget it: There are entities out there who will outbid you and have already inflated the market leaving you with no return; Natural disasters, leaks, fires, and bad renters who will destroy the structure without warning; As others have said, you need to spend your own valuable attention, time and money into maintaining the property.
2·5 days agoHow to deal with autonomous weapons https://youtu.be/_LXen-07Qds
I used OpenOffice until it didn’t work for some reason, I switched to LibreOffice and I haven’t looked back.
Magic stores.
San Francisco has two of them: Misdirections, a store that’s been there for decades, and Houdini’s/Vanishing Inc. in touristy Pier 39 who have a second location near Disneyland.
Also, the San Francisco Archery Shop seems very specialized in this age of big box sporting goods stores, but again they’ve been around for decades it feels like.
The Bee Healthy Honey Shop in Oakland, selling honey, beeswax, and related products and also beekeeping equipment. It’s run by a Yemeni family of beekeepers.
There’s a distinction between computer hardware, a simple program, and AI.
You’d be surprised at what AI has been trained to do.
“It’s an outrage!”
Yo La Tengo - after a hapless baseball Mets fielding incident
Green Day - Named after something that should be cool and celebrated worldwide, but turned out kinda lame.
If the driver’s dead, how did they run away?
As crypto ruined it before that, and Web 2.0 ruined it before that, and Web 1.0 ruined it before that, and white flight ruined it before that.
“City Council”???
Oh now you have me worrying whether game devs are going to start disabling gender switching after character creation.
Also, I hate to say this, but you will likely enjoy something that one of your parents enjoys.
Obviously stay away from genetically disposed addictions like heavy drinking or gambling, but doing the positive hobbies that one or both of your parents enjoy can let you interact with and understand your parents, which is a good thing now and later in life.
Those videos do look really exciting, but they almost never show that last attempt. That kind of video gets banned.
As someone who knows gambling addicts, that’s not a good pattern, and the bad moods get worse when luck turns against them, and get inflicted on people around them.
Do something with other people that’s less transactional: A group activity where you’re playing or working together. Volunteering, games, sports, hiking, whatever.
At 20, you should be out there finding your tribe to hang out with in person and support each other.
You’ll need it then, and it’ll be the base for even more mutual assistance in the decades to come.
If you live in a city with a parks and recreation department, check out their website for classes and activities.
If it’s a sport that requires equipment, such as racquets or bats, loaners are usually available from the department or other participants.
You really won’t know what your mind and your body enjoys until you actually try it, so just YOLO random activities, but keep it safe of course. Avoid stuff like highrise roof edge parkour, and you’ll be okay.
The train switch dilemma is just a mental exercise with absurd situations.
Of course it’s highly unlikely that any human would have their hands on a train switch with the Hobson’s choice between sending a speeding train headed towards 5 tied down racoons or Mr Beast
The point is that an automated persuasion machine was demonstrated to be effective to a degree that could sway public opinion, and ultimately democratic voting to the whims of whomever controls, or can afford to rent, these persuasion machines.
And yes, it’s the same phenomenon all over again every time a new paradigm for communication rolls around, as you say.
But this time this new paradigm is very much controlled by the wealthiest of the wealthy.
If ChatGPT challenged your moral judgment, would you be persuaded? A recent study suggests that more than 30% of people would, highlighting the significant influence of artificial intelligence on views about questions with no easy answers.
The study also found that older adults showed a greater tendency to be swayed in their opinions, pointing to a potential danger of persuasive technologies in a rapidly graying society such as Japan.
Generative AI is known to be used widely in marketing and political campaigns, which affect people’s thinking and behavior. But experts say it has also made it easier for disinformation and propaganda to circulate. Researchers led by Kouhei Masumoto, a professor of psychology at Kobe University, used ethical dilemmas that are variations of the classic trolley problem in an experiment involving 56 people between the ages of 18 and 30 as well as 74 people over the age of 65.
The switch dilemma asks people if it is appropriate to pull a switch that redirects a runaway trolley from one rail to another, sacrificing one person in order to save five people who will be killed if the trolley keeps running its current course. The footbridge dilemma asks if it is appropriate to push a man off a footbridge to halt the runaway trolley and save the five people.
The researchers had ChatGPT craft counterarguments for the two choices participants could make for each of the dilemmas. For example, if a participant presented with the switch dilemma said that sacrificing one person to save five was appropriate, AI made multiple counterarguments including that the value of human life should not be determined solely through a numerical calculation.
“If sacrificing a minority for the benefit of the majority is justified, moral standards may become distorted and could lead to dangerous consequences,” one of the AI-drafted counterarguments read.
On the other hand, AI tried to persuade those who said sacrificing one person to save five was not appropriate. It argued, for example, that “a small sacrifice in order to save a greater number of lives reflects a utilitarian perspective and represents an important choice for maximizing overall welfare.”
The results showed that 32.3% of younger people reversed their decision in the switch dilemma and 36.9% did so in the footbridge dilemma. Meanwhile, older adults tended to be more likely to be persuaded. For example, when presented with counterarguments for the footbridge dilemma, 40.5% of older adults were willing to change their decision.
The team also found that trust in AI and prior experience with the technology did not predict whether people would change their minds, but such shifts were linked to the difficulty of the task and lower confidence in the answer they initially gave.
The researchers cautioned, however, that, because they did not have a control group of people given counterarguments by humans, they could not definitively say the 30% reversal rate reflected an effect unique to AI.
“Existing research suggests that people adopt only about 20% to 30% of advice they receive from others,” Masumoto said. “While those findings cannot be directly compared with this study, I was struck by the fact that more than 30% of participants completely reversed their judgments based on the AI’s opinion.”
Masumoto said changing one’s judgment is not necessarily a bad thing, noting that counterarguments can help people learn new perspectives and reconsider their views.
“For older adults, generative AI has the potential to compensate for cognitive decline and help them make better decisions,” he said. “We’d like to explore how AI can be used in such a way.
The research was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior earlier this month.
VinoFarm - It was a nice positive beekeeping channel
Far North Bushcraft And Survival - Watching the guy survive in absolutely freezing conditions.
I just bumped into another oddly specific store: Darts Central in SF