Man, I keep getting this incredibly Mandela-effect like feeling that this entire Vegas tunnel project was something I made up.
Glad to see news that it wasn’t. The idea is just so colossally and obviously stupid compared to actual transit investment that it really FEELS like something a lefty type would’ve made up as a hypothetical to illuminate the kind of idiotic shit happens in American urban planning.
Getting the best value is frequently an economic mistake for a buyer because it does not take into account the present vs future value of money. Not to mention how it is sure to increase your waste/shrink factor and so can eat up its own savings.
Don’t deliberately overconsume just to feel like a savvy buyer. Buy a reasonable amount for your own needs and no more. I get that we all like Costco, but the business model really isn’t that good for typical consumers.
Arguably more stuff is going to be collected and sent to more people if it’s turned off. But it will be in a more piecemeal though likely more personally identifiable way. At least that’s what Google would definitely argue
I genuinely don’t know if the counterfactual is worse than the actual here. Either way bad.
But like, what’s your point?
Setting aside all the practical ways this suit could be handled affordably (e.g., her actual damages were a much smaller monetary sum compared to that invoiced amount and probably eligible for small claims)…
Having a policy around cancellations in the invoices would not materially effect anything here. While it might be helpful to ensure a good-faith customer behaves in a professional and appropriate way, such policies have little effect on a bad-faith customer.
Even without an explicit policy, this is fairly straightforward promissory estoppel, or at least something very much like it. If she had a policy, she would have a very strong case. Without, I still reckon she has a very strong case – pretty much just as strong. Either way, the recourse is the courts.
Eh, if she really wanted to take it to court I’m relatively sure her case is sound. A reasonable man knows you cannot cancel such a large order of perishable goods on short notice. She probably had her own reasons, whether lack of savvy, a belief the media campaign would serve her better, or maybe even just that she doesn’t want to go to court.
Highly recommend Volts to everyone interested.
David Roberts is EXTREMELY practical, politically. He’s very no-nonsense, but gives clear and simple reasons for why he categorizes stuff as nonsense when he does. He’s not some techno-wizard optimist, but he’s also clear about how much tech we DO have and how much is achievable on realistic timelines if we just commit. He’s also clear about what the obstacles are, and even sometimes gives useful calls to action.
His most recent episode on nuclear is an almost perfect example of this. A lot of people are VERY enthusiastic about nuclear. He had Jigar Shah from the DOE on to talk about the field extensively – the upsides and downsides, what technologies work and make sense, what technologies are just mis-advertised, what technologies are total vaporware, why it’s so hard to build nuclear in the US (hint: it’s not the anti-nuke environmental lobby), and all that. Fabulous interview.
I definitely trend towards doomerism on all this stuff, but it’s good to be reminder the tech really is there decarbonize a LOT and VERY FAST, and probably even achieve planetary net zero or even net negative within my lifetime. Just have to convince people the juice is worth the squeeze – which it undeniably is when the entire ecosystem is at stake.
In this case, they aren’t even that hard.
The changes Hoboken had to make to eliminate traffic fatalities were fairly minor. Replace lighted intersections with stop signs and restrict lane widths and reduce line-of-sight-blocking parking at crosswalks using bumpouts, bollards, etc… That basically did 99% of the job.
Pretty much ANY urban-context streets could do this. And moreover the move is fairly unlikely to affect total trip times (because urban lighted intersections actually fucking suck at reducing congestion and even all way stops can work better). Bonus points: eliminating traffic lights saves money because those fucks are expensive even just to maintain.
It goes to show how extraordinarily negligent US civil engineers are, that such small design shifts can have such a significant effect. These people will ALWAYS prioritize vehicle speed over safety because that’s what their bible tells them to do. Absolutely uncritical profession.
So really, the question is how many people should die for 4 extra parking spaces per block. My answer you can probably guess.
Sounds to me like there is a total glut of software engineers.
Which makes it really difficult to fathom why they are paid so goddamn much.
The most charitable read is that it’s an attempt to build hype among powerusers by letting them own a piece of it.
In a vacuum, that’s actually kind of nice.
A less charitable reading is that they’re targeting the users who have flukes and blowholes to try and get even more money from them as part of a media campaign to make it seem like they truly value those users.
Nah bro, you are.
It’s ALSO possible to generate virtual phone numbers for a small cost.
Using a cryptographic PoW is a different small cost.
Either way, it only takes a small cost to prevent mass bot registration.
You’re treating processing power and time as if it is 100% free just because it can be done in a VM. But it doesn’t matter if it is a VM. It is still going to require at least some certain threshold of processor time, and that processor time has a real cost. For the kind of place that can just spin up thousands of VMs and use it to do massive bot registration… they could just be mining bitcoins instead.
It’s not just whether you can do this. It’s how much value it has vs what ELSE you could be doing with the time and energy. A Signal account is already worth vanishingly little as a spam tool, they just need to give it enough of a cost to make it not worthwhile.
I still cannot comprehend their logic for why having full SMS integration would be such a disaster. It just makes no sense and I wish they’d admit that it isn’t a security concern but is just that they don’t want to do it. They just don’t want to, and don’t care that this policy makes it harder for users to adopt and use their service.
I know that SMS is a US-specific thing. But at least in the US, most people regularly interact with SMS. Having a platform that supports SMS means you can basically live in that platform – this is a major part of the success of iMessage.
The idea that it would create huge security gaps… I just don’t believe. I think the kind of user who wants to be on Signal clearly understands that SMS is not secure. All they need to do is have a clear visual indication when you are texting instead of using Signal, which isn’t that complex.
Instead, people like me who might try using it as their primary platform just see no point. None of my friends use it. So why should I even have it installed? And none of my friends see a reason to install it because I and everyone else don’t have it installed. If I could use it as my SMS app I might have it installed and lived-in, which greatly lowers that barrier.
You’re talking about a device which is a full-color high-definition surveillance camera that works at night and can be viewed from literally anywhere in the world and can be configured to send you alerts based on seeing people/animals/packages/whatever. That only costs them an inflation adjusted $13.
I don’t really think the “they wouldn’t believe this shit” argument really applies with how rapidly tech has changed.
If the data were properly encrypted and could only be decrypted by the client on their own device
Yeah, but part of Wyze’s sales pitch is their AI image recognition features, and they’d lose all training data by doing that and would force it to be processed locally, both of which would be a dead end.
I realize these might not be features you want nor care about… but those are the features they want to offer.
There’s just zero merit to these “people on the internet are saying X” stories.
Nothing of value to sourcing a few retweets, ticktock duets, instagram stories, or whatever the fuck TMTMTM version of it you get.
Actual street interviews with random schlubs are far, far more informative than this crap. The internet is huge and you can find literally any opinions on it. Sourcing these anecdotes is absolutely the trashiest tier of journalism and anyone writing one of these stories should think hard about an immediate career change.
Run a fucking poll if you want to write a story about public opinion.
The world will be a better place the day after every serious news media organization leaves twitter and tells all their journalists they cannot use it as anything other than an original source to what a specific public figure has to say.
white and ground going to the ground bar.
This is the main panel, right? If it is a sub panel, it is a meaningful shock hazard to have neutral and ground bonded together.
#14 Romex on a 15A breaker is simply not going to get meaningfully hot, even under worst-case scenario loads and even fully insulated in something entirely flammable. If you’re very nervous, size it up to #12 – it will cost slightly more but be even more totally safe. Overbuilding is (should be) the DIYer’s creed.
Man you must be fun at parties.
The guy said it was part of his job to explains things. You can chose to be bad at your job struggle, and be stressed about it. Or you can make a change to be more inclusive and make things easier for yourself while you’re at it.
But go ahead and be an asshole. Seems to come natural to you.
Are you using “picture this” literally or figuratively?
Because aphantasia is actually a lot more common than you would think – I see estimates range something like 1-5% of people.
So if it actually matters they literally picture something in their mind, I recommend strongly having a prop or sketchpad ready. Some people literally need it.
You have fundamentally misunderstood the interoperability that is being discussed re: podcasts and drawn a totally spurious conclusion.
You can connect to nearly any podcast using as little as an RSS reader. You can build your own podcast app TOMORROW and that app will be able to access pretty much any podcast from any network (with very narrow exceptions for the worst actors, e.g. Spotify exclusives, NPR One, etc).
The only purpose of the various platforms is boosting discovery. There’s nothing oligarchic happening there; for pretty much all of them listing your podcast is free. There’s also absolutely no necessity to use any particular platform’s discovery tools or to list your podcast on any platform. It’s totally fine to distribute it yourself, via a link, using whatever means pleases you. Your “podcast discovery platform” could well be your local bookclub’s email list – and while the quality of that discovery may be worse, it in no way inherently limits what you can access. Even if you use that platform’s app, it should still generally be possible to add any podcast via RSS URL (if any major apps don’t support this, they’re behaving in a deviant way).
There is absolutely nothing oligarchic in general. At least for now, so long as the fucking fuck fucks at Spotify don’t get their way.
Look up your local neighborhood / neighborhood electric vehicle / low-speed vehicle laws.
There are some places where they are allowed. There’s also a lot of places where the cops just don’t care enough to do anything about it, at least so long as you stay off arterial roads.
Though I cannot recommend a cargo ebike enough. Long-tail or bakfiets, though I personally prefer the long-tails as they ride more like bikes and the racks on the back tend to be extremely versatile for mounting weird stuff. The cheapest good ones are around $1,200 with near-0 cost of ownership. Incredibly useful vehicles.