“You see, I need cocaine to accelerate my thought process and unleash the full potential of my mind. I’m not sure what you would get out of it, but I’m sure it would be a waste, by comparison.”

No. Sherlock has cocaine, but he doesn’t share cocaine.

The controller was weird, but they didn’t have a template yet for what a joystick controller should look like. Also, it makes a lot more sense if you understand that you’re never supposed to the D-Pad/Joystick at the same time. Left hand goes on the D-Pad handle for 2D games, Joystick handle for 3D (some third-party developers didn’t understand this though).

Whenever I get junk mail with prepaid envelopes I send them back with a note that says, “Thanks for supporting the Post Office, now fuck off.” I doubt this post is real, but if that’s actually how prepaid envelopes work, I’d love to waste even more of, “Auto-Warrenty Department’s,” money.

OK, so then pedantic. Because the first guy made a joke about cops uniforms having skulls on them, and I pointed out that the punisher logo is often used by cops, and you’re reaction is, “show me that this cop has one!” So, either you’re being pedantic, you don’t get how jokes work, or you just don’t want to admit that cops using the punisher logo is a thing. A very common thing. That’s very widespread. And sometimes officially sanctioned.

I can’t tell if you’re being pedantic or just stanning cops.

It may not technically be part of the uniform, but most of them are usually wearing a Skull.

This is definitely the car of a crazy person, but they’ve given me a pretext to once again point out that the man who discovered Gluten Sensitivity in 2011 retracted his own findings two years later, and there is probably no such thing as non-celiac gluten sensitivity.

The thumbnail for my next reccomended video is perfect.

Oh, interesting, I didn’t consider that it could actually be cheaper than building an user-intake system, but that makes sense. I’m not sure how much more efficient AI will make the drive-thru experience though; it will free up a cashier a bit, but generally cashiers are already doing something else when they’re not busy, and when they are busy most of the slowdown is on food prep, not ordering. I know McDonald’s is experimenting with fully automated kitchen, so maybe that’s around the corner, but that’s a whole other can of worms in terms of quality and safety.

Yeah, my understanding is that they’re integrated right now, with drive-thru attendants jumping in when the AI fails. That’s why I think the tech won’t actually change things fundamentally for the industry; if someone that has to be able to drop what they’re doing and jump on the intercom at a moments notice, it’s not like that job can be eliminated. When self-checkout lanes were introduced, people thought they would take over super markets and eliminate hundreds of jobs, but very few companies fully committed to them, and they’ve become a supplement, not a substitute.

What you’re describing with claim emails seems much more feasible than replacing real-time human interactions, but I wonder how many companies would prefer to have AI parse through emails. It seems like that would be more efficient and accurate (at least for the company) to just force customers to manually enter their claim details into an online portal, and call me cynical, but I can’t see insurance companies being all that motivated to make filing claims easier and faster for consumers. I bet that kind of tech would be very desirable in sales though, where a customer could just send an email and receive an AI generated quote.

I’m still skeptical. I’m willing to bet that these systems work well in vaccum, but I suspect that they will struggle with things like accent recognition, order changes, and novel questions. Even if the tech really does work well in the field, they’re all working on brand new hardware, and I’m curious to see how well they take orders on a microphone that’s been exposed to the elements and car exhaust for a few years. I suspect that these will wind up like the self-checkout lane; more efficient when it’s working well, but requiring too much human supervision to be a real replacement for anything.

I mean…apparently, yeah.

A lot of you guys sharing pictures of your whole country as a 15 hour drive are missing the point here.

It’s amazing how Google thinks giving you the content you actually want to see is some kind of punishment, especially when 90% of the other content is sweaty needs whining about how woke Hollywood is.

Interesting! According to this, plasma phasers were a proposed weapon against the Borg in Best of Both Worlds. I’ll have to rewatch it to be sure, but I think that adds weight to the idea that Borg shields are only really effective against phaser weapons.

So, I don’t think that’s true. We’ve only ever seen them adapt their shields and weapons to phaser frequencies, and the rotating-frequency strategy was pretty effective throughout TNG and First Contact. It seems more like that adapting to phaser frequencies just piece of technology that assimilated rather than an having an innate ability to adapt to any attack.

I don’t know, Borg shields seem highly selective in how they work. The ships shields seem like they function like every other starship shields, which would mean deflecting solid objects/phaser fire. The only difference is that they adapt to phaser frequencies, but that’s not entirely helpful since phasers are distinct from lasers and exclusive to Star Trek.

But the Borg also have personal sheilds that seem to only deflect phasers, since the crew are able to physically touch the borg when they’re shielded like this. Does this mean that the Borg’s ships shields actually can’t deflect physical objects?

Here’s another one; the personal borg shields can’t seem to stop Picard’s holodeck bullets in First Contact. Does that mean they can’t stop any physical objects, or does it mean they can’t stop hard light constructs? If they can’t stop hard light, can they even stop true laser fire?

Are you talking about the time Beverly Crusher flew into a star? Because she did that specifically because the Borg didn’t have the right shielding to survive the sun’s corona.

So, here’s a thought; the Death Star’s superlaser is the only real laser weapon in Star Wars, while basically every other ranged weapon (blaster) is a plasma weapon. The main strength of the borg’s shields is that they’re able to adapt to phaser frequency, and while phasers are a completely fictional technology, they’re definitely not plasma. Do we know how well a borg cube’s shields would hold up against plasma? Is it possible that they’d go down to a barrage of Tie Fighter and Blaster Cannon fire, without the need to even use the superlaser?

Edit: OK, so I went down a rabbit hole on this, and this is what I learned about the Borg’s Adaptive Shield Matrix:

All phasers are generated on a particular subspace phase compression pulse frequency, whilst torpedo warheads all possess their own shielding which also possesses its own subspace phase compression pulse frequency. Adaptive Shielding works by remodulating the shields to the identical subspace compression pulse frequency of torpedos and phasers…

So, it seems like the Borg’s sheilds adapt to the subspace pulse frequencies of phasers and torpedos. Phasers are a type particle weapon that Gene Roddenberry made up when he realized lasers didn’t work the way he thought they did, and they don’t really have much basis in the real world like lasers or plasma weapons do.

Since the Adaptive Shield Matrix specifically works by adapting to subspace frequencies, there’s really no reason to think that their shields would have a distinct advantage over lasers or plasma bolts the way they do phasers. The fact the Picard was able to easily kill some Borg with hard-light bullets seems to back this up.

So, if the Borg shields don’t nullify the Death Star’s weapons like they do Star Trek starships, this just comes down firepower. The superlaser should be able to destroy any Borg cube multiple times, and even without the superlaser, they’re massively outgunned. This is 3000 meter ship against a 75 mile wide battle station. Even if the 10,000 turbolaser, 2,500 laser cannons, 2,500 ion cannons can’t overpower them (and by the way, it sounds like at least some of those, “lasers,” are actually plasma weapons based on wookiepedia, because of course Star Wars can’t be consistent), and the 768 tractor beam projectors can’t immobilize the cube, the 7,000 individual tie fighters would probably overwhelm the it. Hell, if the Death Star is faster, they could probably just smash into them and still survive the damage.

I think the Death Star has this by a mile. I hate to admit it, but I don’t see a win condition for the Borg here.