Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price. Unhappy with their meager profits, they meet one night in a smoke-filled tavern to discuss a secret plan: If they raise prices together instead of competing, they can both make more money. But that kind of intentional price-fixing, called collusion, has long been illegal. The widget merchants decide not to risk it, and everyone else gets to enjoy cheap widgets.

For well over a century, U.S. law has followed this basic template: Ban those backroom deals, and fair prices should be maintained. These days, it’s not so simple. Across broad swaths of the economy, sellers increasingly rely on computer programs called learning algorithms, which repeatedly adjust prices in response to new data about the state of the market. These are often much simpler than the “deep learning” algorithms that power modern artificial intelligence, but they can still be prone to unexpected behavior

What is a new thing, a new something that you have recently gotten into, or that you have been a long time participant in, that you find very entertaining and fun and time consuming and distracting?

What things would we need to purchase to get into that thing?

How did you get into that thing?

👽

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/51531114

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/51530808

German exports to China fall 13.5%, imports rise 8.3%

Exports to China fell even more sharply than those to the United States, dropping 13.5% year-on-year to 54.7 billion euros in the first eight months of 2025.

By contrast, imports from China rose 8.3% to 108.8 billion euros.

Alt title: ‘Fascist Conscripts Say Tearful Goodbye to Freedom Fighter Captors’

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/51530808

German exports to China fall 13.5%, imports rise 8.3%

Exports to China fell even more sharply than those to the United States, dropping 13.5% year-on-year to 54.7 billion euros in the first eight months of 2025.

By contrast, imports from China rose 8.3% to 108.8 billion euros.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/51530743

Worth it.

Do these fucking lazy train drivers know that I actually need them working to get to my job? Um hello? It's called public transport? Am I not the public? Do I not need transport?

Smh my head.

Sidescrolling shmup/run 'n gun/free-scrolling shmup/etc. Looks interesting, anyway!

actually not a joke. They appearently autocensor everything even vaguely nude https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghost_in_the_Shell/comments/1oaioix/originals_photograms/ and here is the picture censored, for those interested https://imgur.com/a/7G1QU12 it ... it may contain a (silicon) nipple 🫢