Temu is the current loss leader. You have to be careful as there are some items more expense than the Amazon or Aliexpress options, but many are 1/2-2/3 of the Amazon price with free shipping. Most items are 7-10 days shipping, but Amazon (to a rural address) is barely a couple days better with prime and about on par without.
Shipping has pretty much killed Aliexpress for me. I’m not willing to buy anything expensive as it’s effectively impossible to return and most sellers have an Amazon sellers account that is the same price or less once intl shipping is added.
As if it doesn’t when you input it for other sources? I haven’t had a single issue I can trace to Temu specifically. I get my Thai slave-mill “found your number in my phone” or “are you available for dinner” scam text once every other day regardless. Xfinity has probably sold, or lost, my information to dark web resellers more times than I can count. Heck, I get an email every couple of weeks from one of the “free” credit monitoring subscriptions I’ve been given thanks to breaches at Equifax, OPM, Chase, etc. that my email - the one I’ve had for 30 years come this spring - has been “found” on the dark web. No fucking shit; I’ll bet the have my password from 1995, too. I’d worry about it but I have far more pressing things in my life - like making sure I’m not overheating the queso I just put in the microwave.
You get used to them, and in a way look very cool because of their use and what they represent. Although I wouldn’t like to see them in a natural reserve.
I have another neat use for them. Since I can see some out of my window and use this sight to check wind direction and plan my bike route to have tail wind on the end of the route!
Aliexpress is basically amazon with longer shipping time in my experience. Each seller has their own store rating similar to ebay so as long as you exercise judgement ie. Dont buy from brand new stores with 0 feedback or things that are too good to be true and avoid certain things like batteries and storage media unless you know exactly what you’re buying you should be fine. I’ve bought a lot of stuff from there (mostly electronics) and haven’t had bad experiences
This has been my experience as well with Aliexpress. I know there’s a huge caveat emptor going on, but it’s like you said about batteries and storage, be careful unless you know exactly what you’re buying. Like a 64TB SSD for $15.99 proooobably not the real thing. But I have gotten a lot of SBCs, some stuffed animals, and cheap costume jewelry for my wife (who knows it’s cheap, but doesn’t care). Weirdest “quality” purchase? My “gold colored” tungsten wedding ring was $10, comfort fit, and in 6 years still looks like the real thing. But didn’t dent like my original wedding ring (which is why I needed a replacement, got smashed in a door accident). I’d never buy anything that I knew might cause a fire (like batteries) or possibly poison me (like pills).
Wish and Temu ripped me off in some of my first purchases. I was only out $30, and I know it was possible, so I just deleted my account and the apps.
AliExpress is not even close to Amazon except for the fact that it does a great job at providing a wide selection of Chinese products, but cheaper and with longer lead times.
What makes Amazon, Amazon, is its customer service. Without that, it’s like eBay. But even eBay has significantly better customer service than AliExpress.
Speaking as someone who has used AliExpress a lot, it’s pretty good, but only if you understand that all sales are final. Best cast scenario, the seller makes you pay for shipping which generally costs anywhere from 50% to 250% of your original purchase price.
Their customer service always defers to sellers in my experience, and even if they approve a return, what’s the point if you lose money by shipping it back?
I have had three Aliexpress orders go bad, and two of them I was refunded. One of them I was not, despite the fact their own shipping still showed it as on it’s way to New Jersey. They kept insisting I “pick it up at the local post office.” I pointed out Virginia was not near New Jersey. I was denied, but only out $8. As far as Amazon vs. Aliexpress, I will agree with you about Amazon customer service being better. But I have had “AliExpress shipping times” on some Amazon products, which led me to believe that the particular store was outside their local jurisdiction.
AGI lead government that is written like a constitution and bill of rights. The infinite persistence factor without human needs or motivations is a major improvement over anything that has ever existed.
The idea of AGI lead government sounds quite interesting. However, there are many concerns that would need to be addressed and prevented in the structuring of such a system. Safeguards of physical assets, hardware, and software entry points. Does the AGI have any access to the internet or networks of any kind? How do we interact with such a system by state/providence? What do you do when bad actors get a hold of it or are feeding it incorrect information?
AGI is orders of magnitude more advanced than what we currently have available. It is a self aware system. Most of the issues must be addressed internally, but ultimately it is self regulating in every respect. There would be redundancy, and an element of design trust built in. It would not be corruptible like humans where we must be skeptical of our governments. In some respects, it is the hacker, it is the internet, and it is Orwellian in scope, but it is not authoritarian, or ideological. It would be direct and openly available for everyone to consult at any time. It would be capable of explaining anything in easily understood language according to the capabilities of the end user. The primary way it shapes policy and changes for the betterment of the majority is through rewards and amenable compromise. Ultimately, I think this is the only way to manage a real post scarcity society.
Apart from the alignment problem*, having unchangeable laws can be really bad. The bill of rights shows that for tye US constitution, now what if a ‘new’ need arises for the law shows it self.
the alignment problem is the still unsolved problem of getting even simple machine learning models/AIs to do what we want.
I flunked out of college. I was undiagnosed ADHD and my major was something that I genuinely have a passion for. But wasn’t able to discipline myself to go to classes regularly. I don’t think I would have done well in that field anyway.
It didn’t really hurt me though, I ended up in a job that underpaid for too long until I got proper medical treatment for my ADHD and depression. Now I make a decent salary in a field that works well for me.
I love what I learned and would love to learn more, but the structure of college was something that was extremely tough to work through.
Hey, this is my exact story, including the undiagnosed ADHD, dropping out of college, the dead-end wage slavery for way too long, and now having a decent paying job that isn’t what I went to school for, but that also doesn’t kill my soul.
Except: I have an epilogue!
I still don’t have a degree, but I never stopped practicing my art because I am simply incapable of stopping. It’s what I do. I recently got a side gig that was my absolute unrealistic pie-in-the-sky dream job when I was in college, working for the very creators that inspired me to choose my major in the first place. College wasn’t what got me there. It was passion for the artform, introspection/therapy to develop a more forgiving and accepting attitude toward myself, and sheer perseverance. I spent the first 18 years of my adult life thinking failure and dead ends were all the universe had to offer, but I kept trying anyway (mostly to spite that hostile universe in a ‘fuck you, kill me yourself’ kind of way).
It’s not over until it’s over. You don’t know how your story ends. Keep trying. If someone says you missed your chance, fuck 'em. They can’t see the future any more clearly than you.
Im not sure I even agree that visual pollution should be a real thing. People like to pretend that there is a divide between man-made structures and “nature” but humans are animals and we construct our environment out of natural materials. Humans ARE natural and the things we make are not separate from nature. Obviously that doesn’t remove our responsibility to avoid causing overall harm with toxic chemicals that pollute or structures that destabilize equilibriums, but that being said I dont think we should have this mentality about our structures being an inherent detriment to the area we make them in, and wind farms seem like a good example of good structures in a good environment to me. End rant.
On my desktop I have browser tabs for WhatsApp, messenger, Skype, gMailChatTalkHangouts and slack. I know slack’s app was ass but I miss the rest.
I want a discrete app that doesn’t crash with chrome and which sits in my tooltray so I don’t have to fucking search for it whenever something makes a noise (ctrl-alt-a). I want to see it from the blink in the corner and not by scanning 31 windows of 7 groups of 12 tabs each.
Often times I just give up and hope it also makes my phone spork too so I can grab it there.
Progressive Web Apps were supposed to marry these schools of thought, but maybe we hoped for too much because it’s still garbage Chromium under the hood.
Just make everything for maximum interoperability I guess? I recently saw and forgot the name of a system for creating and displaying Github-like pull requests and associated discussions that are sent in via email. A very simple web interface displaying plain-text that could reasonably have been extended any way you like. I am beginning to see the appeal of the plain-text revolution.
It’s such a far fetched idea it sits in the same camp as teleporting but we all have to have dreams, and napping on the train on the way to work sounds so pleasant
If it looks too good and has no reviews avoid it like the plague. I never understood why they need video or photo proof of an item not arriving. How do you take a photo of something you do not have???
Just wanted to point out that Etsy isn’t really in the same category as the other shops you listed. Think handmade crafts and souvenir store compared to Walmart.
Edit: I’m apparently reminiscing on the Etsy of yesteryear. I guess it’s shit now.
It’s such a shame really, because there are really cool independent sellers with some awesome handmade / hard to find vintage stuff, but they’re drowned out by drop shippers (who wouldn’t even be able to sell anything on there if people knew that same item was available through aliexpress without the 100x markup)
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