srmarm

This is a minor annoyance of mine across the internet. Usually on pages that are some kind of subsystem from the main site - i.e support pages, blogs etc.

I don't get they don't crack down on the product switcheroo scam [0] - it seems like a trivial problem to solve. I've reported items to them before and they don't care.

[0] this product for example, loads of the reviews are for something totally different - https://www.amazon.co.uk/WERPOWER-Windscreen-Invisible-Winds...

There is a difference in this case between 'unlimited' and 'unmetered'. The limit is on the throughput (1Gbps) rather than the total bandwidth which is itself naturally limited by the throughput x time.

That being said I could still see this being against TOS if you end up chewing up SSDs, hosting dodgy content or running at full power constantly.

I bought an NFT last year so I could understand how they worked in practice. It was an absolute ballache - it took me over an hour or so to get everything set up and I had to throw good money after bad to cover gas fees which were only revealed after I'd converted my real money into eth. In the end I think I spent a similar amount or even more on fees than the NFT itself cost. The gas fees certainly cost way more than normal card processing fees would have been for a transaction of that size.

Surely this data would have been sold with some terms of use that might allow remedy through civil action even if the data could 'technically' be used in this manner. That being said it's a clear demonstration of why privacy matters and this is only mid-tier in the list of people you wouldn't want to get this data.

The answer from Google's point of view is for the Thai restaurant to pay more for the advert so they are at the top of the rankings.

When Google stopped putting a meaningful distinction between paid results and organic results that was a line for me. It's fine to have an adverts - you have to pay the bills but when the adverts become the results it's just pay to play rentseeking by Google and the product is now untrustworthy and on a downward spiral as a result. Amazon search results have taken a similar route, you can search for something specific and get something totally unsuitable as top result now.

I think they have different apps in different countries, it used to be pretty bad but works well now here.

See this is where I think this kind of conversational AI is a bit late to the game.

If I go to McDonalds I just place the order directly on the app, it remembers my previous orders, knows where I am and has my payment details saved. It can be as little as a click or two to get ordered.

I much prefer something that gives clear quantitative choices rather than something that tries to understand natural language or intention with all the potential for confusion that entails.

Why do you say that? I've got a lot of names with them so would be keen to know if there are any issues.

Personally I've used them for years and they are by far the best of the many registrars I've used over the past 25+ years.

I've only used the switches so, but also I connect them directly to the Home Assistant box which I've got a zigbee dongle attached to (using the ZHA zigbee integration) rather than via the ikea hub. Might be something to consider?

Ikea Tradfri buttons/switches have been a gamechanger for me. They're zigbee, very well built, well supported and cheap. Have a nice solid feel with proper mounts that are magnetic, Have mounted them in place of regular switches around the house and they just work, no user training required (although I use with homeassistnat which is still very hobbish on the setup side) but my wife can use it all without needing to know whats going on in the background. Can do smart stuff in addition, i.e press the on button multiple times to cycle between scenes.

The other thing is automations, I've got a bunch of timed automations, certain lights come on at dusk, heating comes on half an hour before the alarm goes off in the morning and heats only the rooms I tend to use at the correct times, so office is heated during work hours and living room comes on for the evening/weekends - all can be overridden from my phone or voice or whatever but ideally that's the exception as I find voice clunky and phone takes quite a few steps.

If my phone was able to display the controls for the room I'm in without requiring an unlock that'd be good but for now but generally I find tactile buttons much nicer to interact with.

I'm sure in most countries you can choose to take the fine or fight it in court.

How often do you not know whose driving your car?

Many years ago I had my iPad stolen on a train. Realised what had happened while we were still between stations. In theory all I needed to do was use the find my device function on my phone and walk the train until my iPad connected to my phone.

Except the bloody thing wouldn't work on my Android phone. The page was just telling me to download the iCloud app from an Apple device.

I didn't get the iPad back and haven't purchased anything from Apple since.

Great. However the real interesting feature was that the controller connected directly to the end server. It'd be great to be able to set that end point

You also get to pay off a real-world lower amount due to inflation. However for many (most? myself included) the reality is that easy credit like this does lead to over extending in the longer term.

I like this site, shows how even 'simple' things can get complicated, in many cases you can see the logic that got them there.

The Canadian Decathlon one is here (go to the filter) - https://www.decathlon.ca/en/c/22252/sports - and you can see the train of thought that it makes sense to put a filter in as sportswear comes in male/female. Those filters probably make a bit more sense when filtering a specific category too but I can see how that would all get in without someone considering how absurd it'd look when filtering all products.

This might be a silly question, but is that a NOTAM saying that NOTAM system is down? How does it get out?

Not just manual filtering, there are many automatic/default filters like "KAM_INFOUSMEBIZ = Prevalent use of .info|.us|.me|.me.uk|.biz domains in spam/malware"

It's not a guaranteed strike but I just had a look at the last email I had from a .biz and it got 0.8 added to it's spam score because it had a biz domain. Still got through as it was otherwise legit though.

> even though everyone "knows" that the long-term benefits of the third-party solution far outweigh the financial savings of keeping the in-house solution, whether those benefits might be avoiding a national week-long service outage

Although it's also a regular occurrence that the replacement of an old 'just works' system brings about a week of downtime, mass disruption and still basic features missing.

The whole blog is laden down with an agenda. Surprised it's been upvoted here.

Well it doesn't seem that oil and gas are that reliable either at the moment either hence the need for the draft legislation.

The blog just seems to be the ramblings of a covid/climate conspiracy type. I'd take it with a pinch of salt.

There was another post[0] on here today about Amazon losing $10B on Alexa this year. The only other big player is Google who I assume must also run the division at a big loss - at least on the hardware side of things as I've got loads of their devices dotted around the house most were given to me free or at a stupidly low cost (£20 each). Even the ones like this with a full colour screen I've only paid £49 for.

It's an interesting market that I don't think either has figured out too well. Anecdotally, I've not really seen them used for shopping or even really shopping lists and the search model doesn't seem quite as lucrative as if someone used their phone or computer to search.

The one thing they do seem to do well in is as an introduction to - and hub for - the smarthome but I struggle to see how that will make these big subsides viable.

Which brings us back to this. A bit ahead of it's time perhaps but if Amazon/Google pull back their subsidies then this kind of thing might be where we have to go. I'd be happier not using Google Home and have mostly moved to zigbee switches with home assistant to control now anyway. Maybe voice control was a bit of a flash in the pan?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33700792

Does the Department of Justice not think it's worth spending half an hour making something a bit more accessible? No text, not even an alt tag on that image. Shockingly bad and surprisingly non-compliant!

In London? They're usually quite accurate - used to be tracked by roadside beacons so had less resolution but now it's all GPS I think.

Of course sudden traffic, letting an elderly passenger get etc will mean that the countdown won't be the same to the second. But that's going to be the same if you used roadside cameras too.

Generally it should be seen as more of an estimate based on how long the last bus took to arrive from the same point rather than an exact prediction but it's usually useably accurate in my experience.

I remember dropping my bag at a luggage store at the big train station in Mumbai. Bags needed to be scanned before being stored, not uncommon. Except the scanner was on the other side of the station.

So I was sent off and queued up to get my bag scanned and more importantly get my receipt stamped to say it'd been scanned walked back through the crowds where I could have done anything with the bag - to the luggage drop where the attendant checked that I had the correct stamps to say it had been checked! No seals on the bag, nothing to stop me giving them a different bag, just the essential stamp on a bit of paper!

I agree, I also remember when sim cards were credit card sized!

As EURion was introduced in 1996, it looks like only the S500 and S1,000 from 1997 got the treatment[0] so you should be good to print it (in relation to EURion, other policies/laws might still apply)

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation#Usage

I'd like to know more too. I can understand that posters vagueness as most of what I can find about it (e.g Wikipedia) is quite vague on the technicalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Radio_News#Obituar...

From what I can gather a network of radio stations has pooled news bulletins and the organisation behind it provides this 'obit light' in it's members radio studios that signify someone important has died and to prepare for a bulletin, upcoming news programming will follow a certain format and the output should be changed to suit the mood.

Looks like it's a bit of a legacy thing. They also mention a serial channel that has a 'Major Story Alarm' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Radio_News#Serial_...

It'd be interesting to see how it works/worked from tech point of view - perhaps some kind of long wave radio signal on the frequency that the news broadcast is sent from?

But yeah, doesn't look like a military thing or that it holds any authority

Although in that case isn't SIGNIFYD's 'skin in the game' that they're on the hook for fraud so they're incentivised to be overzealous in blocking?

I remember at the time hearing stories of legacy systems that were in a dreadful state and in one case still using microfiche as part of the day to day processing.

I know some time has passed since and a lot of money and effort has been spent in improving things but I'm still pretty impressed just how quick it all works. My banking app notifies me when money is sent or received from my account and it usually beats the checkout confirmation page load time or POS approved message when I make a purchase.