I can’t believe people were buying into their “franchise”. They approached me in 2020 when they were trying to expand into the town I live and I had a downtown warehouse to operate out of. After they got done explaining everything, I laughed until they hung up.

You had to buy the scooters from them at around $600 each, you were responsible for all the recovery/batteries/maintenance/damage/theft caused by customers, warranty was non-existent (“call our chinese supplier and they will totally hook you up”), and after that they took 20% off the top. Some quick math put it at over 6 months before each scooter became profitable IF nothing happened to it in that time. Someone throws it in the canal just to be a dick? Sucks to be you, you’re out $600 + whatever else you’ve put into it every time it happens.

Really came off to me that they were making their money selling to suckers who thought they were going to be entrepreneurs.

Edit: They did apparently did get someone here into it because I saw them around for a few months before disappearing completely.

Suppressors do exist. And are commonly used in close quarters combat. Especially by well funded combatants like the IDF.

I doubt he’s broke. Far more likely that he’s just a bigot.

it’s interesting to see the drone’s perspective for a change.

The Russia/Ukraine conflict has really shown the drone’s place on the battlefield. It’s awesome; and terrifying.

What a convenient find.

“We are made of star stuff” -Carl Sagan

95% of VCR repair is changing belts and cleaning heads/pinch rollers. I should hit up my local library. Those are the causes I like donating my time to.

We already have the tech to let signal lights at intersections know emergency vehicles are approaching so they can direct traffic accordingly. No reason this couldn’t be adopted to autonomous vehicles.

I put my change in a jar when I empty my pockets. About once a year I’ll take it by the bank and treat myself with the couple hundred dollars it cashes out to.

Are you just throwing yours away?

I guess I’ll be the oddball that pays mostly in cash. Mostly because I’m self employed and taking cash to the bank across town is one more errand to run. So I’ll pay with cash in person until it’s gone and then switch to card. Also saves the 3-4% card markup a lot of places charge here. I’m in the US.

I’ve never used youtube music, how are the suggestions? I use spotify at work for background music. I want to be able to give it an artist or genre and get 3-4 hours of music I know and some I may not have heard of. But it needs to match my tastes close enough that I don’t have to keep stopping what I’m doing, walk over and hit skip when it plays something horrible. Spotifys daily mixes do this pretty well. Does youtube have something similar?

When I just installed it, the second or third option that came up was “Restore purchases: Restore your previous in-app purchases made in Sync”.

This is my first time using sync so I don’t have anything to test it with.

Oh I’m sure it’s some form of lactose intolerance. I should probably ask a doctor some day, but decent ones are hard to come by.

Lactase does seem to work if I remember to take it.

My brain says yes but my bowels say no.

Brain still wins every time. I can handle some discomfort in the future for a mouth full of bliss right now.

Thank you for your service. Those really were the days.

Edit: not dismissing your current work. This place is pretty nice too :)

Thinking back to those carefree days fills me with a strange sense of melancholy. It all seems to have gone wrong somewhere along the way, and not just in terms of IM apps.

Same here. And I can’t put my finger on it. I always dismissed it as coming of age and lifestyle changes.

Yeah, it’s been so long now I don’t remember why I stopped using Trillian (and Pidgin). But when it worked, it was so much nicer just to have one program running vs 5.

This looks like a modern Trillian. It’s about time.

Reading is overrated. I’d feed it to an AI so I could have somewhere to ask questions.

Bored old dudes with rifles watching over their parked vehicles in dense urban centers seems like a disproportionate response to having some tires deflated. I think your speculation about the public supporting someone being murdered over their participation in peaceful protest is pretty depressing. I hope you don’t actually think that.

Oh, absolutely. I’m not advocating for it, just commenting on the local climate. All it would take is fox news saying “AnTEEfah is coming to cut your tires so you can’t go to church and worship jesus! Why do they hate baby jesus?” and there would be people willing, if not itching, to kill over it. It is very depressing, all that rage could be put to much better use.