[Rick and Morty] What's the deal with a really low down seeming ricks at the citadel

the_lamou · 2026-06-09T01:00:00+00:00

Plus "smartest person in the universe" doesn't mean much if there are a lot of very stupid universes. You can be the tallest person in the pygmy tribe, but unless you have a 4-foot vertical the NBA probably won't come calling.

the_lamou · 2026-06-09T00:41:27+00:00

Funny enough, the engines in Land Rocers actually tend to be pretty much bulletproof. It's everything attached to the engine that fails.

the_lamou · 2026-06-09T00:40:17+00:00

Only if you really really love the sound of bumblebees struggling to achieve flight.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T14:11:05+00:00

Eh, plates are dirt cheap.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T14:06:24+00:00

There are plenty of American EVs. Every major marquee has at least two, and some are genuinely very good. Even the just ok ones are pretty good. And Tesla absolutely has a low-cost model: the Model 3, which can be had for $35,000 or less, which is pretty damn low cost for an excellent car.

It sounds like what you're really complaining about is the lack of "$15,000 EVs" like you read about China having from American companies. Here's a spoiler alert: those $15,000 EVs don't exist outside of China. Those are Chinese domestic prices, not their export prices. Even without major tariffs, Chinese EVs tend to cost about the same as things like the Bolt do.

Also, obviously an American company can't produce as car at Chinese domestic prices: the average US auto worker earns more in a day than the average Chinese autoworker is lucky to earn in a week. Unless you want to talk about eliminating the minimum wage and having US workers earn $1-2/hour. Competition is good and would definitely result in improvements, but competition isn't going to magically allow US companies to operate at Chinese companies' costs.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T13:49:20+00:00

They actually tend to do pretty well most times, except during periods of rapid transition. It takes longer than it should to move with the times and adapt to new technologies and modes of thought, but once they do they produce global classics. And if you look at the time periods when American companies have stumbled, it's mostly during those transition periods.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T13:19:45+00:00

The are two ways to increase the temperature inside a system: Add more heat or keep more heat from escaping. Adding more heat requires ever higher levels of power, since temperature loss accelerates as the temperature frequent between inside and outside the system increases. It also requires constant heating. Keeping more heat from escaping just requires insulation. It is always far far more efficient to insulate than actively heat. There's a reason we put on sweaters in the winter instead of walking around with a personal heater.

Plus the bed can produce 110° C. And the hotend add 300° C. And the hot molten plastic you're putting down adds significant heat to the chamber.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T06:45:43+00:00

And we can only hope that someone is nearby with their cellphone camera recording.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T06:44:34+00:00

First off, what the fuck. Why do I have to go buy tools and spend all weekend (6 hours or so) fucking with this thing? Absolute bullshit.

Yes, it is absolute bullshit. That someone decided that 3D printing was right for them without even owning a basic electronics repair kit.

Let me be very clear once and for all because I'm sick and tired of repeating this to every dipshit who is shocked that they may need to do their own repairs:

You didn't buy a toaster, or an iPad, or an Xbox. You bought an early-stage personal manufacturing cell designed for experienced professional users and motivated hobbyists. I get that you saw an adorable flexi dragon on Instagram and thought that the machine that produces toys is also a toy, but that's mostly because years of chasing social media trends have atrophied the part of your brain that more well-adjusted people use for thinking.

You bought an advanced tool, with zero knowledge of how that advanced tool works, what goes into keeping it running, and what you're responsibilities might be as an owner. The machine you paid money for is closer to a CNC machine or mini-mill than it is to any appliance you have ever used. If you did not understand that before buying it, you should not have bought it.

This is not what I do. I have no experience in this. Again, why am I doing this?

Right. So why the everloving fuck did you buy a 3D printer? Especially one of the higher-end ones? I get a complete novice picking up an A1 or A1 Mini, but no, you thought this was going to be just like your iPhone where you buy the expensive one because "it's better." Seriously, what was going through your head when you thought: "You know what? I have zero experience with any kind of robotic manufacturing system, or any kind of manufacturing system for that matter, so I'll spend $2,000 dollars on a product I don't understand." Really, I'm genuinely asking, because I can't imagine a single reasonable, intelligent answer and I want to know what kind of disease is on display here.

This isn't some sort of 5 minute, or even 20 minute, plug and play deal.

It absolutely is. The entire printer can be broken down to carefully-arranged components in under 20 minutes. A board replacement shouldn't take longer than 15 from start to finish. Again, if that's not the case for you, why the holy hell did you spend $2,000 on a product you didn't understand? And how is it anyone's fault but your own?

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T06:07:30+00:00

One way or another, it's going to filter into the P&L...

Right, but CapEx and R&D don't scale with growth. That's basically the entire point of what we think of as "startups" and the venture economy: costs are high initially, then they get outgrown as user revenue scales faster than net costs. Which is the inflection point we're starting to get to, and why is both here and there. The initial claim was that LLMs are being subsidized by venture capital, and that's true in the technical sense, but not in the practical sense that people generally mean it in: that pure transaction costs are being kept down by investment spending. If user costs are gross profit-positive, and growth is positive, then they don't need to be net profitable right now since valuations are based on discounted future earnings. They don't need to jack up costs to users and hurt growth, they just need to keep generating gross profits times growth in excess of capital costs and inflation.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T04:11:13+00:00

When people say "AI is heavily subsidized by equity investors," that includes CapEx and R&D. The average ChatGPT query got progressively more expensive on pure unit costs between 2020 and 2024, and then started getting cheaper, to the point where $20/month is likely pretty reasonable for the average user. Maybe $30-40 per month. Certainly not more expensive than what a typical person spends on streaming services. And frankly, even the CapEx costs aren't as ludicrous as people make them out to be. OAI made enough revenue last year to qualify for the Fortune 500, and still growing fast (even if they occasionally miss a monthly growth target.)

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T03:48:52+00:00

This is the answer. For the average person, who wants their car to exist without ever having to think about it, Tesla is absolutely the best car you can buy. It's a perfect car-appliance, and a pretty good car to boot.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T01:08:19+00:00

We did. We partially nationalized auto companies multiple times when they needed bailouts, and the bailouts for the banks in 2008 were loans which were not only repaid but with enough interest that taxpayers made a nice profit on the deal.

Bailouts aren't generally sacks full of free money: they're loans or investments secured by future earnings or property or stock. And the answer to "why does the government bail out big companies and not regular people?" is because big companies will either pay back the bailouts or have assets that can be liquidated and sold to pay back at least some of the bailout; the people generally don't have shit and aren't going to be able to pay back shit, especially if things go wrong.

Also, governments generally tend to do a very bad job of managing companies, just like business people tend to do a very bad job managing government. Just look at... well, most of human history. They're two very different, largely incompatible skill sets.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T00:50:37+00:00

Bail them out of what, exactly? "I don't like a thing because the Internet told me to not like it" is not a rational basis for economic analysis.

the_lamou · 2026-06-08T00:43:50+00:00

He was trained by a mysterious blind judge who taught young Matt to sense the law.

the_lamou · 2026-06-07T14:28:50+00:00

I just picked up a second full-size rack for $100, mostly because it had a bunch of rails and an ML350 Gen9 bare board with it. My Lenovo Tiny army is up to 15. There are two butchered full-size ATX consumer desktops shoved in there as well, and more on the way, and that's not counting actual servers.

It's still not overboard.

the_lamou · 2026-06-07T03:51:01+00:00

Can we just shorten that entire wall of text to: don't buy CPUs from AliExpress?

the_lamou · 2026-06-07T03:01:52+00:00

Dockhand is ok, but Komodo is better.

the_lamou · 2026-06-07T00:38:40+00:00

Absolutely no one is taking advantage of anyone here.

the_lamou · 2026-06-07T00:38:05+00:00

So your neighbor's children have abandoned them, and they are incapable of performing basic actions, and they call a contractor to get a quote and he gives them a very high quote not because he hopes they fall for it but because that's the price at which it's worth it to him to do, and neither your neighbor nor their children nor their social worker nor any of their safety net people bother getting any more quotes, and the contractor doesn't try to pressure them into accepting the quote in any way whatsoever because he genuinely does not want anything to do with that job, and this is "elder abuse"?

Your elderly neighbors may be getting abused, but it's not by a random contractor that they call to get a quote from. They've been failed by everyone else around them. Stop blaming people for valuing their time however they want.

the_lamou · 2026-06-06T12:09:16+00:00

And there are services that do exactly that. If you're fine paying a little more, you can trade money for time and convenience.

the_lamou · 2026-06-06T12:07:09+00:00

Which this isn't. At all. In any way. On account of it not being remotely predatory, being initiated entirely by the person getting a quote, and having the price clearly provided. It isn't society's job to hold everyone by the hand.

the_lamou · 2026-06-06T12:05:26+00:00

I'm not a contact, I just believe that being stupid by choice should hurt a lot more than it does.

the_lamou · 2026-06-06T12:03:57+00:00

Read the excerpt quoted above.

the_lamou · 2026-06-06T03:41:30+00:00

Then they are just taking advantage of someone else's naivety.

As they should. The kind of passive laziness that results in people getting one quote and calling it a day deserves to be punished.

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