[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 32 points 2 weeks ago

We will likely see the cost of goods from China go up generally speaking because of rising labor costs in China. Additional tariffs will only be half the story for why everything will get more expensive in the next 4+ years.

[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

I had a routine that I would do every other day that would hit big box stores and light industrial areas, then ebay it. Not sure it's really feasible now, stores don't throw out as much as they did.

[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 16 points 3 weeks ago

I'm 36, I'll try to list them:

  • CVS employee
  • Circuit city (geek squad equivalent)
  • Interior painter
  • Data entry
  • Autozone, front of house
  • Guy who sits in a basement to bill the government hours (temp job)
  • Light construction (moving stuff around usually)
  • Pizza delivery driver
  • Dumpster diver (made good money actually)
  • Network installer
  • Computer Technician
  • Software engineer, Ad tech
  • Software engineer, big data databases
  • CTO, founder, big data databases
[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 6 points 3 weeks ago

This state thing just doesn't seem to be working out. I'm afraid we're going to have to break up.

[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago

The initial release of the Panama Papers was very sparse on US companies and citizens, partially because some state regulations allowed legal avenues for anonymous financial structuring (looking at you Deleware). The journalists said they were going release more but after some targeted car bombings it never quite materialized.

[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 15 points 1 month ago
  • Kamala will attempt to galvanize her base by appealing to a matriarchal structure. Kalama's husband will publicly take a supportive role, emphasizing gender equality and position himself as an advocate for women's rights. However, a recent affair will come to light. He'll do damage recovery by talking about how behind every strong woman is a man who knows when to step aside. He will later release a memoir about the campaign.
  • Kalama's campaign will derive a new slogan "Rise with Her". However, it'll be revealed that key staffers quit in protest over the strategic direction of the campaign and they join the Trump campaign, with accusations of sabotage. The campaign will lose focus towards the end, with a "Families First" tour that has poor turnout.
  • In a last minute decision, Trump will call an emergency rally in DC and promises to reveal 'irrefutable proof' of election fraud. A small but unruly turnout will cause mayhem, with his voters buying fake locks of his hair. Several will be arrested for bringing large inflatable objects.
  • One state will attempt to remove Trump or Harris from the ballot sparking a full blown legal circus. Both candidates benefit from the increased attention and nothing happens.
  • On election night, Harris will be confident that she will win. However, she is pull aside to be told that one of her strongest states may be under legal challenge because of confusing ballot. She makes a speech about urging unity and patience.
  • There will be no clear victor for either candidate. Both parties will have fundraiser efforts to do voting recounts. The inauguration will still happen since the electoral college decided already and voting never mattered anyway.
[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 25 points 1 month ago

Print more money and tell everyone that the inflation is transitory, this will shock the economy to help jumpstart your new poor. Companies will lay off underperforming workers and the restriction of capital will limit new company initiatives so they won't get rehired. Limit the supply of housing everywhere except very high density near your desired factory sites and provide generous subsidies to builders. This will keep your voting body relatively stable so you can get re-elected but create a new serving underclass. Hope this helps.

[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

For immigration, market shocks of cheap labor would hurt incumbents in the short term. Most well established companies already pay a premium for labor so cheap labor would only serve to increase competition, as it will take them time to replace their current staff with cheaper labor. The middle class also doesn't want their pay to decrease, but fail to see that would be generally better off. So most capital wants status-quo, which is a strict immigration policy with slow growth. Deportations seems more like a social filter over a particular demographic, we don't see highly skilled engineers get deported for example.

[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

I don't think Microsoft is trying to reopen a power plant because theres some sort of modernist gooning wave happening, but I could be wrong.

[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 9 points 2 months ago

Where's the one for gamers. It's the same GPU after all.

[-] polpotkin@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago

I had to write some javacc parser code and javacc is sort of terrible to write so I jammed in what I wanted and o1 gave me a real and reasonable solution, as opposed to 4o which was just bad. To go a bit Ted Kaczynski, we are already seeing a huge lack of critical thinking in market decisions. I've had bad ideas thrusted upon me that were clearly chatgpt inspired, at least before chatgpt the bad ideas had a bit of novelty to them. Now they are all this homogeneous badness. Most market bets are just throw things at the wall and see what sticks and sometimes people are accidentally right, but now we have this thing where everyone is making the same bets and nothing sticks. The short term productivity gains are far out-shadowed by this larger market madness. At least now the homogeneous decisions will be a bit better now, and hopefully a bit more well reasoned, but we're still at this level of bad we can never get away from.

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polpotkin

joined 3 months ago