Hacker News Reader

Erudite_Geniuson Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM

Content piracy has long been about the exorbitant cost of acquiring content.

If you look at the cost of downloading a full, original quality Blu-Ray rip, then burning that to a dual-layer BD-R disc, you're looking at an hour to torrent plus up to $10 for a dual-layer recordable disc. Compare that to a store-bought copy that's $7.88 and comes with both Blu-Ray and DVD copies, and it's no contest.

Make that store-bought copy $49.95 (thanks, Marvel) and it makes piracy attractive. Add terrible DRM on top and you GUARANTEE piracy, because you're being hostile to people that have actually bought your movie.

If DRM had never been invented, piracy would only be about 5% worse, and your paying customers wouldn't be cursing your existence... but the media companies are too stupid to realize that.

Erudite_Geniuson The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars

Right now, electric cars are a stupid choice. Half the range, 50x the refuel time, and triple the cost of any gasoline-powered alternative.

The day you can buy a $15,000 car that gets 1,000 miles of range that takes 5 minutes to charge at every currently existing gas station will be the day the gasoline-powered car goes extinct.

Erudite_Geniuson Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

The title of this article literally reads "Why do those with unlimited power not take steps to limit their power?".

Also, name ONE company with INFINITE resources.

Erudite_Geniuson What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?

Never see a job as a career.

The ONLY PATH for wealth is to work for yourself by starting and building your own business.

Make no mistake... You are always building a business, and if you're not building YOURS, you are building THEIRS.

Erudite_Geniuson Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

There are at least 5 better alternatives to wind and solar, but we don't teach science any more in public schools.

If we did, there wouldn't even BE climate change alarmist hysteria poised to destroy entire economies.

Erudite_Geniuson 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

The fact that bitcoin even HAS a "dollar value" attached to it is a testament to the FAILURE of bitcoin's original sole objective.

Erudite_Geniuson The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure

Solar roadways failed for the same reason Tesla will NEVER outsell gasoline cars: bad technology that's orders of magnitude worse than existing solutions.

That being said, a huge leap forward in technology would make BOTH viable.

A better road-based electricity generation plan would have been to use piezoelectric panels instead of photovoltaic ones.