• Amaltheamannen
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        1 year ago

        Space lasers work and are a great way to destroy other sattelites. His SDI program was way crazier though, X-ray lasers fueled by shaped charge nukes to shoot down ICBMs.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

        I wouldn’t say that nothing useful was gained. It appears to have furthered our sensor technology quite a bit. True, it was never going to work as intended, but Reagan didn’t know that. This is the same guy that was terrified by the film WarGames, so of course he wanted the SDI program. He was a shitty president for many reasons, I wouldn’t say that SDI was one of them.

        • RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          True, it was never going to work as intended, but Reagan didn’t know that.

          Sure he did. Do you really think he didn’t have any advisors or scientists telling him what a stupid idea it was? The point was never for it to work, just to funnel money weapons contractors.

          • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I don’t know how much he understood due to the Alzheimer’s. It wasn’t obvious in his first term, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was being affected.

            • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Given that he called it the Star Wars program, I’m pretty sure what happened was that he just saw Return of the Jedi at the cinema and thought it’d be great if you had his own death star.

              I wouldn’t be surprised if his crazy dementia filled ass, tried telling people the Darth Vader was going to come down from the planet Vulcan and fry his brain even further if he didn’t get his damn Death Star.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        To be fair, this was not based on science, this was based on Ronald Reagan having just seen Return of the Jedi, I’m thinking it would be cool to have his own death star. I mean he literally called it the fucking Star Wars program.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      What really pisses me off, is that directed energy weapons are real, and there are some illnesses that governments believe may be linked to the usage of such thing. Unfortunately even those these are real and you can straight up Google the fucking Wikipedia page for Direct Energy weapons, thanks to the dumbasses on the right, this will never be taken seriously because the second you start talking about them people will just go on about Jewish space lasers.

      It’s why they had to start calling ufos, uap’s, because no one could say UFO without someone else joking about Will Smith dancing with a bunch of CGI aliens.

  • Solinus 🌿@lemmy.cafe
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    1 year ago

    Pro tip: Use Amazon solely as a products directory. Once you find something you like to buy, copy the item name and search for other stores selling that item. If no other options exist it’s likely cheap amazon trash, and look for a different product (not sure how well this works since I can’t shop online rn since i don’t have a bank account yet)

    • Phuntis@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      unfortunately it’s not always cheap amazon stuff if you’re looking for computer parts it feels like amazon is sometimes your only option at least here in the UK I managed to get some of my parts last time from a different place awd-it and they were pretty good but like half the parts were only on amazon and newegg and while I hate amazon but I atleast know I’ll get my parts and in working condition and new in box like I ordered and if I don’t amazon will cover me but I know neweggs been pretty bad for quite a while and we don’t have any brick and mortar shops for computer parts like the US we used to have maplin but they shut down years ago now

        • Phuntis@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          yeah I hate it :/ unfortunately they’ve already succeeded in killing the others mostly and no government entity anywhere wants to do anything about it

      • A7thStone@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        But you don’t always know you are getting what you paid for from Amazon. I bought a pair of Knippex linesman pliers, brand new in the packaging. Their main claim to fame is they use harder steel than Klein. To test this you try to scratch the Kliens with the Knippex and you’ll get a scratch on the Kliens, but the Kleins won’t scratch the Knippex. Brand new pliers in hand I tried this test and had the opposite results. I had been shipped counterfeits, and it’s not the first time I’ve gotten a knockoff product on Amazon.

        • newIdentity@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          How is this different when using other online markets. With Amazon you at least know you get it and know you can send it back if it’s broken.

          • A7thStone@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            How about don’t use online markets, especially near monopolies. When I buy Carhartt jeans from carhatt.com I get them just as fast for the same price. I’m not worried about having to send them back because they are counterfeit, and I’m not putting any more money into Bozo’s pockets. We’ve gotten so addicted to the convenience were willingly participating in the exploitation of our fellow people for the profits of a leach. It not even as convenient as it used to be, even before you add in the number of products you have to return.

            • RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works
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              It’s pretty fucking hard not to shop at near monopolies when they have a near monopoly and buying from the manufacturer costs an extra 50% because of the extra shipping. Not many products, even brand name one, are high enough quality anymore to justify that. In fact, Carhartt is a prime example of that; for example, they stopped making their shirts out of cotton and make them out almost entirely out of trash-grade scratchy polyester now.

                • RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  And I explained why that “refutation” is horseshit. If you expect a nation full of people who can barely make ends meet to pay more for the same product and worse service, you need to compensate them for the cost difference. If you’re not willing to do that, shut the fuck up.

      • ionburger@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        maybe this is just a rural usa thing but ive had alot better luck with computer parts on ebay then amazon, ebay doesnt ship as fast but it almost always arrives or if it doesnt ebay buyer protection is no questions asked your money back. amazon often will just cancel my order 2 weeks after supposedly “shipping” it. ebays interface is also 1000% better then amazon when trying to find anything. ebay you can sort by pretty much anything and its pretty specifc. amazon will just give you keyword spammed crap and outright lie if you sort by cheapest instead giving you sponsored stuff

    • Psaldorn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      UK Amazon 3.5mm jack extension and mount: £15

      The exact same thing shipped slower through eBay: £4

      It fits in an envelope, if you asked me to pay £11 for shipping I’d nope tf out.

    • FedFer@iusearchlinux.fyi
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      1 year ago

      Sadly in Italy there are certain products (I’ve only searched tech products so it might be different depending on the product category) that I could find only on Amazon and simply aren’t available to purchase online in a safe way (no extra tax due to importing, no risk of not arrival, no “you have refund until you don’t”).

  • marco@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    When the “Amazon smile” was added in 2000, it was a very different company. I used to work there a few years after that and did not leave on good terms a decade later.

    In those early days, there was a bunch of innovation that was good for customers, for example showing critical reviews online (vendors were horrified as previously only curated good or editorial reviews were shown), or listing used items alongside the new ones, Amazon music let you upload your own mp3s, AWS majority leveled the playing field for startups, …

    But even back then everybody knew that the warehouse jobs had very bad conditions (though that was certainly not unique to Amazon).

    By 2015 I had certainly had enough. Vendors were squeezed for every cent, Amazon just copied successful products and produced them themselves in China, the management culture became more and more toxic (Managers had to find bad performers in their team, no matter if there were any), new people earned so much more than people who had some the same job for years, promotions decisions were majority influence by office politics, senior managers ran pretty much unchecked, the interview process was so hard, everybody who was involved from the Amazon side doubted they could make it through themselves, … Currently, established authors have 0 recourse of somebody sells AI-generated books under their name.

    I could go on :p

  • HiddenLayer5
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    1 year ago

    I remember watching a Canadian cartoon called Jimmy Twoshoes, where the organization of focus was called Misery Inc. in a town called Miseryville and they were kind of this ruling corporation owned by a demon that made products specifically to make people miserable, but people still bought it because they have literally no other option.

    As a dumb kid I totally missed the (now in hindsight, quite obvious) commentary on capitalism that the show was making. Anyway, how long till that becomes a documentary you think?

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    This is why I am convinced, that this cannot be the prime timeline. Not only, I repeat not only, has everything done horrifically terrible. But there are too many things that are so terribly written, that I have to be in some kind of dystopian novel.

    I mean do you know how many times Hollywood writers have been told that their scenes where the bad guys attack the capital have to be rejected, simply because it was too unrealistic for such a thing to not be met with immediate and deadly force? And yet January 6th.