The law of entropy appears true of TikToks and Shorts. It would make sense to take advantage of this. That is to say, the content becomes so generic that it merges into one.

Hardly. I was an M&A banker for a decade in New York and we used `M` for millions across the board. A few people would use `MM` but on every deck I signed off we used `M` for millions, `B` for billions

Some people do use `MM` but it's far from a standard.

Mostly Europeans.

I think being programmers we'd expect K and M. Save the mm for your financial report.

Humanity has moved on from roman numerals 1000+ years ago. Talk about tech debt.

> In accounting

Only in America.

America largely uses K,M,B

Either OP is incorrect, or not American

Please stop watching, andd being a pawn of, paid and party propoganda on tiktok et al.

Watching Iryna Zarutska get stabbed in the neck and a bunch of people do fuck-all to help her wasn't anyone's propaganda. Though it was radicalising.

The woman who got gasoline poured on her and lit on fire in Chicago last week isn't helping either. It doesn't make people like my wife, for example, excited about the idea of going and riding public transportation alone.

We did this in the seventies too. I get that it’s infuriating but I don’t get how the solution is to charge $3.00. I’ve seen guys on street corners get more in one handout. Meanwhile we’re letting one guy ruin it like Bin Laden did air travel.

It's all probability distributions. A bus driver will usually stop the bus and refuse to move if someone refuses to pay the fair. People who skip fairs are more likely to commit other crimes. If you put these together, you improve the probability that a subhuman doesn't get to commit acts of violence on public transit.

s/fair/fare/g;

SharePoint was, as I remember it, one big unnormalised table. Everything else was views on that.

That 46 million could be spent on education, transportation, aid for low-income families, the homeless, jobs programs, small business tax breaks, infrastructure renewal, public works, etc. According to the report, not only are they largely not used for anything productive, there's potential harms to both people and the environment. And as many have pointed out, the same work can be done with drones.

To drive this point further: The one stable causal relastionship relevant here is the one between inequality and crime. Reduce inequality in ways 0xbadcafebee suggested would reduce inequality - though probably not in sizes measureable after a few years.

Do you really need 17 helicopters and 90 employees for the occasional car chase? This feels wildly over the top. They could do that just fine with one third the resources.

Just LA city police service an area about half the size of Rhode Island. If you count all the surrounding areas LA has mutual aid agreements with, it would be the 6th largest state by population.

LA Sheriffs are responsible for an area larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

They also assist in rescue operations, transporting SWAT and crisis negotiators to scenes, flying snake venom antidotes from the airport to the hospital, and dozens of other things.

I'd say 17 helicopters and 90 employees is pretty lean given that they have a crew ready to go within 5 minutes 24/7.

On top of that, police car chases are wildly harmful and usually started from things like minor traffic violations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8

Helicopters avoid car chases by allowing them to follow the car until it gets to a destination or runs out of gas.

Even if they "usually" start from a minor traffic violation (which they do not), the majority of individuals who run have outstanding felony warrants or are engaged in committing another crime.

> Helicopters avoid car chases by allowing them to follow the car until it gets to a destination or runs out of gas.

So, the thing that we could do cheaper and easier with drones, we should continue to do with vastly more expensive helicopters.... why?

> Even if they "usually" start from a minor traffic violation (which they do not),

Except that both independent journalists, and every major law enforcement agency, has been saying they do, for 30 years.

  - San Francisco Chronicle "Fast and Fatal" Investigation reported that 82% of car chases that resulted in a death started as a pursuit over a traffic stop or a non-violent offense. (https://github.com/sfchronicle/police_pursuits) (https://journalistsresource.org/media/police-chases-how-they-did-it-san-francisco-chronicle/)
  - A 2025 NY State Attorney General's Office report on improving policing and public safety cited data suggesting that many chases are for minor reasons and highlighted data on the high risk of negative outcomes. (https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/reports/improvingpolicingandpublicsafety.pdf)
  - A 2020 California Highway Patrol report detailed that half of all police pursuits in California during 2019 were initiated for four non-violent reasons: speeding (20.7%), stolen vehicles (13.6%), license/registration violations (8.8%), and red light violations (7.5%). (https://www.chp.ca.gov/siteassets/files/police_pursuits_sb_719_-2020.pdf)
  - A 2010 article from an FBI bulletin noted that "the majority of police pursuits involve a stop for a traffic violation". (https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/evidence-based-decisions-on-police-pursuits-the-officers-perspective)
  - A 1998 Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis of over 952 pursuits in Dade County found that 512 (over 50%) were initiated for a traffic violation. (https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/police-vehicle-pursuits-2012-2013)

> the majority of individuals who run have outstanding felony warrants or are engaged in committing another crime

So what? That doesn't justify vehicular homicide, either of bystanders or the perpetrators, not to mention property damage.

You could stop a suspect from running by firing a rocket launcher. But there's a substantial risk associated with what that rocket is going to hit, so we don't do that! A car is a 2-ton missile, and you have multiple of them careening wildly through the street. The risk is insanely out of balance with the objective. There are much less dangerous methods to find and apprehend suspects, and law enforcement agencies have said the same.

If you haven't watched the John Oliver episode that I linked above (YouTube link), I highly recommend it, because it goes over all this in detail.

You literally just made the case for helicopters.

I don't believe you are very familiar with LA airspace, but it will be one of the last places drones ever make sense.

So, you think a drone is harder to fly in protected airspace than a helicopter, and somehow you've taken my evidence that police chases need to stop (de-emphasizing the need for helicopters...) as evidence that we need helicopters. Might also be worth considering that the police often don't respect airspace limits. They frequently fly where they're not supposed to, in LA.

Are you asserting that the report is lying, and that a majority of the flight hours aren't actually being used for all those mentioned low priority purposes? If so, is your assertion based on the helicopters being used a few times a night per television reports?

US Government (especially during Trump regime) has been actively defunding public schools, school lunches and libraries.

You know this is ridiculous, which is why you posted with a throwaway.

Obvious excessive spending should not be shrugged off by dividing the expense by the population of the area.

Obvious excessive costs need to be reined in. Tax money needs to be spent on the highest priorities, which this is not.

Some of us always post throwaway.

In an AI bot and troll infested world, expect quippy contrarian opinions posted with throwaways to be taken less seriously.

Every message on social media is a throwaway, unless if it has some tangible memorable impact on life.

I disagree. Accounts with a post history, sleep consistency and decency in their content and particularly older pre AI accounts can at least be trusted as human and well meaning.

I humbly disagree. Humans have inherent bias, and politics and ideologies skew their behavior, even if they themselves mistakenly think it is well intentioned when it really is not.

Social media and news media, in general, are controlled and dominated by Leftists. And that inherent bias and prejudiced ideology is very evident on social media posts, news articles and Wiki articles, especially about my country and culture. And it's because humans are being taught (and some of them are taught or indoctrinated to perpetuate) skewed and ideology driven versions of history and (mis)information for centuries.

We are talking about different things.

I am discussing the legitimacy of content from accounts that are new, and/or post low-effort contrarian content which is a signature form of trolling. I'm also talking about the ease of script kiddies all the way up to nations using AI to more intelligently troll as bots with endless questions and logical fallacies when talking about current events.

In other words, literally the difference between bots/trolls and people looking for real dialogue.

You seem to be concerned with left-wing bias in forums.

I think we are talking of the same thing, but from different perspectives.

If I understand you, you are talking of non-AI-generated social media content posted by and interacted by humans vs the AI-generated junk created by AI bots & script kiddies. You probably feel the internet is getting diluted as the authentic (human-created) content is replaced or superceded by junk stuff (AI generated or trolling content) that are more irrelevant fluff & unavoidable diversions than the real raw human-driven content and exchange of ideas spurring meaningful dialogues.

I am talking of same human created social media (and news media, and info-repository media (including wikipedia, books, journals, etc.)) content created and maintained by humans, which unfortunately tend to have inherent bias & skewed ideologies leading to bad/unwarranted behavior. But when all that online and offline content is consumed as data repository and training material for AI LLMs, then the AI bots will inherit and demonstrate those same biases, skewed ideologies and resulting bad behavior.

e.g., the main subreddit (under Reddit.com) for my nation, is operated by admins belonging to enemy nation. They use bots for such propaganda. Reddit knows this problem, but hasn't bothered to do anything about it, because that bias and malice against my country and its culture is widespread among Leftists, who own and control most of social media, news media, info-repositories (like Wikipedia, which too openly spreads such propaganda). So that subreddit is filled with hate posts and malicious misinformation about my country and culture. Last year, Google made a deal to absorb all Reddit content, in order to train it's AI LLM models. Now guess what those AI LLMs will think and say about my country and culture?

You miss the real human content and realistic online interactions, but I feel you are missing the fact that such content will always have bias and driven by ideologies or opinions. But perhaps that difference in ideas and opinions is what you seek. You are probably afraid that AI will replace such content creators and content, thus leading to boring online communities and lack of meaningful interactions.

I am afraid that such human created content and bias will inevitably percolate into AI LLMs content and behavior, and it will forever skew the world's opinion about my nation and its ancient culture.

Unfortunately , it looks like AI will reshape our online realities and interactions to make it all a worser place from which there's no return or escape (AI will become all-pervasive in our lives, whether we like it or not).

Since when does a can of soda cost less than 50¢?

Banks use test data. Dev should never see Prod.