dd_roger

People are extremely bad at estimating how many people there are in crowds (respectively in pictures of crowds). Traditional media (newspapers, TV, etc.) tend to be pretty honest about it from my experience but on social medias pictures of protests are almost always instrumented to make it appear as though something had way more support than it actually has.

And I'm not talking about sligh misjugdments, I'm talking being off by one order of magnitude. In your typical picture of a protest taken with a smartphone from a high-rise building there is at most 5 to 10k people in the shot. Yet you'll often find such pictures on social medias labeled "100s of thousands in the street protesting for [whatever]".

And for someone who's not particularily paying attention it's easy to be manipulated because we really have no frame of reference for what thousands of people look like, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands.

I'm guessing vets take advantage of the ever growing tendency to consider pets as family members to inflate the price. Especially since (from very anecdotal evidences) it seems to be mostly middle/upper class people who are so invested into their pets.

In the countryside people tend to have a more utilitarian view of animals and would simply get a new one rather than wasting money keeping a sick animal alive.

Romania isn't in Schengen so yes, they are illegitimate. But you're the only one talking about Roma here.

What should be taken into account for policy making is the interest of the country's citizens (and non-national legal residents to a lesser extent), not "begging tourists".

> Related news: European Court of Human Rights just made important ruling that decriminalizes begging. Making it criminal to be poor is against human rights.

Lol, you're taking a very ungenuine shortcut. Legal residents who also happen to be poor do not resort to begging because they receive help through the appropriate welfare programs. The the overwhelming large majority of people affected by this law are foreigners who take advantage of Schengen to come to a rich country only for begging. These people have no legitimity of being here and earn no sympathy from me.

Granted my commute is a 20 minutes walk so I don't get the The True American Commute Experience (TM) but working from home is a miserable experience as far as I'm concerned. Having the possibility to do it once in a while is nice though to make time for appointments or being done earlier to go out after work.

The major problems with EV that will keep me from buying one in the foreseeable future are:

* Low range, combined with a lackluster charging infrastructure. I think from my list this is the closest issue to being resolved, if I could consistantly get 800km range (in real world usage, not "800km in the brochure but actually 400km in real life") it would be fine because (1) with such a long range the risk of having to recharge multiple time on a single journey is fairly small, thus reducing the inconvenience [assuming one can charge at home or work, otherwise recharging will always be a pain in the butt regardless of how you look at it] (2) it's enough to cross "charging station deserts", areas where inevitably there will be little to no charging infrastructure (see the charging stations on french highways for reference, recharging is just as expensive as refueling and the charging stations don't even work reliably).

* A large segment of the EV market is made of cars that remind me more of technological gadgets than proper vehicules. I have very little patience to deal with technology and I certainly don't want my car to be basically a software platform. I shouldn't get angry before bed time but I'm still going to mention the privacy aspect of it. Having SIM cards embedded in every car is bad enough already but at least with the more traditional "analog" cars you can give the manufacturer the benefit of the doubt that the SIM card is only activated in case of accident. Most EV cars lift the doubt by collecting analytics and installing software updates remotely. One day there will be a data breach and everywhere you've ever been with your car will be free for the general public to see. Even worse, a malicious actor gets a hold of the manufacturer's private key and can push arbitrary updates to your car.

* Most charging networks (I'm tempted to say "all" because I've never seen an instance where it wasn't the case, but again let's give the benefit of the doubt) are basically spying networks that require an account and a credit card to use. Someone (everybody once there's a data breach) knows everytime/everywhere you recharge your car, how much you used since your last charge, etc. Why can't we just pay cash for, say, $10 worth of electricity just as we do with ICE cars?

I believe the first point will be solved in a relatively near future because it's mostly a matter of improving the technology a bit (or paying more for a bigger battery). For the two last points however I only see things getting worse since the current trend is to go further and further in this "everything as a digital service" direction.

> https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7598463

Wow every new person who joins that thread misses the point more than the previous one. This was painful to read.

Neither of these issues have anything to do with the license.

Either Elastic's code used by Amazon is indeed stolen proprietary code and no licensing change is needed to obtain reparation, or Amazon is making lawful use of FOSS source code and the question boils down to "if I publish code under a FOSS license, can anybody use it?", to which the answer is obviously yes. And if you'd prefer it to be "no" then don't publish FOSS.

Regarding the trademark, this indeed seems (to my non-lawyer eyes) to be an infringement (or extremely borderline at the very least) but isn't related to licensing.

I have a hard time understanding the point of the author.

If Amazon is infringing a trademark (which indeed seems to be the case in my non-expert eyes), reparation should/could be obtained before a court regardless of the license of the code.

If the author has a problem with his FOSS software being used by an entity he doesn't like then he is in disagreement with the FOSS ideal at its core, this is a perfectly respectable opinion but don't blame it on Amazon.

This is a much more likely explanation but in all non-scientific accademic fields it's usually more important to come up with a narrative that's appealing to the general public or the political class than with an accurate narrative. Hence the explanation that makes the most sense but is less "Wow"-inducing will be swept under the rug.

There are plenty of fields where we entertain "mysteries" that have perfectly rational explanations but settling the question once and for all with a rational argument would dry up the funding stream for accademicians and could have other undesirable consequences on some countries' political narrative.

> However the majority of the plastic coming out of these countries is because of goods destined for western countries.

Citation needed.

> If their friendship relies on you installing an app on your phone, that's a very shallow friendship isn't it?

This argument doesn't make sense. You can't just ignore practical aspects entirely and justify it with a cheeky "if they're truely your friends they'll accomodate ahah".

Sure if I want to send a private message to a friend I don't care whether its via SMS or whatsapp, but if I'm in a group chat with 5 of my friends I won't send a transcript of the conversation to the one person who doesn't participate.

The problem with Boston Dynamic's robots imo isn't the cost versus a human but the cost versus a simpler and cheaper yet just as capable (if not more capable) wheeled robot.

I have a very hard time coming up with applications where the walking capability is useful. On the other hand the space wasted to put all this technology could be used for more batteries, a sturdier body to carry heaviers weights, etc.