212 karma · joined August 29, 2021
The size for 100% isn't even that big given a few iterations of storage tech.
I'm just blown away by how little Netflix really gives you. Given the push to internally-financed programming they've basically become a production company with streaming bolted onto the back end. Their market cap is kind of a joke.
Send out a new drive per year.
Do they really only have 4,000 movies in the US?
I certainly don't see that on the youtube channels I frequent, but admit that the 'news' is typically op-ed disguised as news.
An alternative theory is that they (youtube) pushes 'news' since it pays well and is quite popular. 'News' tends to come from official channels over time with a kind of network effect. Those channels are all Pravda. The fact that it's propaganda is not necessarily a youtube choice but a major news organization choice.
Once the size is there, you curate. Profit becomes the issue and the tendency is to simply become cable TV with thousands of channels.
I wonder how you could architect video access for content that gets peoples' knickers in a twist but is still legal. There's loads of single points of failures still. TV settop box access, smart TV/Roku access, the difficulties and expense in storing and serving up video, etc.
Oh well, it's the times we live in.
If people simply laughed at the results and fixed the problems they'd miss all the endorphin rush of outrage.
It would be interesting to test a bunch of midwesterners at their ability to tell Asians apart or to be able to distinguish various Asian ethnicities. My guess is that a lot of the distinguishing features that they look for are altered or missing.
I suppose you could skim through Usenet archives.
Dunno how you should measure wealth/growth/etc.
If we all plan on getting wealthy via moving money between accounts, buy low/sell high, and surveillance advertising, the sky's the limit.
I would guess that the marginal value of cleverness or technology decreases over time
Now, you start looking at vintage Marantz receivers, GE Super Radios, or an ancient Sun engine analyzer, now you're talking.
"Only if located on a natural island with an area in excess of 20,000 acres and that is within a county having a population in excess of 4,000,000"
That's a good question for any older car. I can think of a number of measures, but it would be interesting to see some real engineering go into retrofits. Besides new/proper seat belts an interesting angle would be a partial roll cage that is safe for a helmetless driver.
I'd love to a have a Kei truck purely for around town (we don't have any traffic lights to give you an idea) in snowy weather. Small = good when the streets shrink due to plowing, small = good for dragging out of a ditch, cheap = good just because it's easy to hurt a car in serious snow.
It's a tough thing to buy aside from vintage. Bummer that these aren't sold in the US (1/2 down the page). Maybe it isn't just lack of demand but also scads of DOT safety standards.
https://www.toyota.com.sa/en/vehicles/commercial/LC70
I've always thought that regular cab shortbed 1/2 tons were the sweet spot, but even those look like semis now.
If you put in high speed rail from my small town in the Sierras down to a nice beach, I'd be all over it. As you probably know, there's really not much in the way of point to point mass transit needed. Vacations are well served by air and car, commutes are everywhere to everywhere within urban and suburban areas.
In addition, there's the personal security angle. The US ain't Japan.
I figure if people wanted mass transit to be a thing, they'd start by heavily subsidizing comfortable buses. Super scalable, pretty quick, relatively cheap.
My understanding is that they can't test for NOx without rollers and the smog shops couldn't afford it.
In any case, you'd end up with cases where cars put together by show judges couldn't pass because it didn't match some book. A lot of cars used to have to have crazy gadgets that interfered with spark advance.
All for pass or not pass.
Truth is, I'll bet you could drop the whole system and not see a change in air quality at this point. Super-dirty early cars get a bye (aircooled VW) and late model are rarely modified or worn out. If you feel the need to test, do a good job and then simply charge for the amount of emissions that come out.
I have the feeling that the emissions industry has metastasized into a political power. Not unlike car dealerships.
regarding Kei cars/trucks, my working theory is that most of the objections are safety related. Lots of DOT standards that the rest of the world ignores. Oddly, motorcycles are perfectly legal.
When this first hit I quickly read every mask study I could find, typically concerning flu transmission.
My rule of thumb immediately became that it's pretty much useless outside of N95 masks...which luckily I already had a case of for use in my shop. Most people appear to wear the functional equivalent of a sock, oft times with their nose showing.
Actually I'm seeing a few, but they suffer from the typical lack of statistical rigor that I've come to expect in medical studies and fall into the 'further studies are needed' bin.
As a side note, I'm always blown away by the poor quality of many medical papers. Publish or perish? Dunno.
I figure that if a physician wants to go off-label on a prescription they should go ahead. Plenty of warnings of course.
Buying it at the feed store along with fish antibiotics is sketchy, but remember that it's your body after all. People forget that. God knows how many people are harmed by Tylenol overdoses.
No doubt the Apple Internal Affairs Department would be all over that. It would be a good test for Apple Privacy(tm).
Exactly.
I remember in the DMV regulations that there's a special dispensation for Kei cars that essentially defines Catalina. 'An island over xxx square miles in size' sort of thing.
It used to be big fun here (before they went to 1975 and earlier gasoline engined cars going to not being inspected) if you had a car that was incapable of passing even when new.
I'm actually quite surprised that they don't check date codes on tires and require new seat belts every so many years.
Oooh, I think I'm going to steal that.
To be fair, maybe it's just another mechanism for culture transfer. Hours per day on a phone filled with highly evolved addiction algorithms are proving their value, God knows what the future will bring.
If kids never absorbed silly things, we'd never have had bellbottoms.
It's a shame. I'd own one in a minute set up for snow days.
Just exactly why is Apple doing this? I doubt that it was due to some huge upsurge in demand from it's customers.
The arguments against are easy enough. This kind of tech is not ethically different from adding an all-seeing AI to your home that looks for illegal behavior. If something sketchy occurs, it calls the cops.
'It's for the children' is mockable, but isn't an unreasonable talking point.
...but what is the real driver and who is behind it? Merely guessing the cause is not particularly useful.
Even though surveillance has always been a thing, the ability to both collect and parse the data is unparalleled. No need for Walsingham's secret police, or at least not so much anymore. The loose coalition that actually runs matters will do whatever it takes.
I'd say that a lot of what drives this at the mass level is the need for revenge, that's a lot more fun than being for something. 9/11 occurs, lets get the bastids. The forces of the State are now arrayed at the evil TrumpWhiteSupremacistGuysWithFlags regardless of the lack of their actual presence on the street. You enemies need to be ground to dust.
I doubt that boycotting Apple will make a lick of difference. In a time of turmoil your optimal solution is to cut dependencies on the system. It's a battle that should be watched from a distance and the soul-rot that comes through computer screens and cell phones is best kept to a minimum.