I assume they get paid for serving me ads, and is that the case even when I don’t click on any ads?

EBay is not ideal, but like you said sometimes they can’t be avoided. Bah indeed.

Thanks for reminding me about them! I remember shuffling through their catalogs a long time back.

That’s my plan: consume less, support physical stores, and use more cash.

I didn’t realize Ace hardware is a co-op, I’ll have to check out the one by me. Thanks!

Yeah, plus Amazon uses dark patterns to get you to sign up for prime, and then prime isn’t even fast shipping anymore…it bothers me enough I can stand to pay a little more somewhere else.

Heh I’m sure you’re right but I’m also hoping to stay away from the cheap plastic stuff. With everything getting more expensive, I’m trying to slow down and only buy things I actually need.

I didn’t think about using amazon to search for an item to buy on another site, that could work well! Like the other user said, Costco might be my best bet as far as chains go, and for any other physical stores I’ll just have to try harder to find local ones.

Costco seems like a good option. I don’t need a ton of choices and I’m sure I can find space for the extra bulk. Thanks!

That would be neat! Text adventures are hard to find these days

Oh that’s terrible. I wouldn’t equate it to the Holocaust though.

Did something happen with the war? What is this referencing?

Maybe the open source stuff would exist, after all there will always be nerds doing this stuff for the fun of the game, and some companies would be using the open source models to build customer chat bots or in-house troubleshooting agents. Things that help them move faster or more efficiently. I don’t think the audio, video, or code generating models would be far enough along to be useful at all.

OK that’s fair.

Do you have any examples of good decisions he made? From what I remember he bought Tesla well after it was making money and not much has changed except his decision to remove lidar sensors and he keeps promising new cars or features that don’t come out for 5+ years, I don’t know what decisions he made with spacex, the hyperloop was never a feasible idea, twitter seems to have gotten worse since he bought it, and I don’t knowb if the boring company is still around honestly. Plus there’s the stuff like his Doge coin rug pull, doing an actual Nazi salute because Trump was elected, and the allegations about him helping rig the election for Trump, stealing taxpayer money and data, aiding the antagonists in the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Epstein-related claims.

I won’t try to claim he’s done nothing positive, but I actually can’t think of anything.

Hmmm maybe all the ghosts want to haunt somewhere less crowded so they can become famous.

It’s hard for me to believe AI might take care of us when its intent is to replace us, but it’s possible. If that happens humans are resilient and adaptable enough I don’t think we are going anywhere unless something causes another extinction event, like global warming. Slaves and serfs kept their will to live thousands of years ago so people today will too. If we manage to stay alive and AI sticks around for 10,000+ years then yes I think we will evolve to depend on AI somehow, but that either means humans will still be smart enough to fix and improve AI, or AI will become self-sufficient and it won’t need to keep us around. Any way I look at it is bleak.