Even if it was law today and strictly enforced it wouldn't matter.
Just like no one can check your credit/background/etc. without your explicit consent...and many employers require that consent in the pile of pre-hire forms you're required to sign.
Such a law would only work if it required your explicit consent AND explicitly barred any company, organization, person or entity from discriminating against you if you refuse to provide it. Until they completely bar companies (be it insurance or employment) from requiring this, it would be a law completely without teeth.
For now, it's just their current user agreement which is subject to change at a whim.
Yes and no. $1/yr is actually annoying to process - any customer service around it quickly exceeds the revenue. Billing, CC processing, and similar fees take a large chunk of such small transactions as well. There's a lot of ill-will that 'free until you depend on it' generates and TBH I think their $1/yr fee was a placeholder pending acquisition.
I do agree though, I wish I had the option to opt-out of ads for a $ fee on multiple platforms. Then you'd also get an idea of what the per-user revenue is for your 'free' service. I'm guessing it's a LOT more than people suspect.
What Whatsapp *could* do is add/build a payment service (ugh, queue crypto dreams aka KIK coin) which means they owner of the payment system wouldn't incur processing fees and could easily get their $1/yr or whatever it might be. Adding functionality AND adding a means of income/payment.
If you think coding an app that's used by literally billions of clients is a weekend's work then you should probably dust off that C++ book from 20 years ago and remember what it's like to develop.
Hell, even just assuming they used Signal's protocol unmodified and only had to build the UI it's still more than a weekend's work.
Then let's not forget the server infra to support the... trillions of messages and billions of pictures sent *daily*. If someone could build that in a weekend they'd be the Steve Jobs or Bill Gates of modern day devs, and paid accordingly.
Wake me up when criminals decide it's easier to legally research and purchase all the non-regulated pieces, purchase an 80% 'blank', mill out the lower receiver, assemble the gun, oil and test it, and then go on a rampage instead of just stealing one or buying a stolen gun.
Oh, and wait! Most of the talk about homemade guns focuses on rifles which account for... what single-digit percentage of gun-related murders (and similar for overall gun crime)??? Handguns account for the large majority of gun crime - very likely because they're easier to steal, conceal, store, and use. AR-15s may look cool (to some at least) but are rather impractical for criminals in most circumstances.
This whole argument is politicians trying to "do something" to look good and win votes while being, as usual, utterly ineffective at their stated goals.
Well that's where speaking in absolutes gets people in trouble. Packaged meat does contain blood, however it contains far less blood than the meat originally did when it was part of an animal.
No, it floats apparently. But they'd rather catch it then have to fish it out of the (saltwater) ocean.
I'm sure there's economic sense to it or they wouldn't try. $6mm isn't chump change to throw away on each mission and i'm guessing saltwater refurb costs > catchers mitt operation.
So using their own graph and comparing to when countries were actively conducting nuclear testing it's somewhere around 0.1% of the Cesium from back then. Anyone drinking a bottle of wine from 2011 shouldn't care. Anyone drinking a bottle of wine from the 50s or 60s however...where is the PSA? Where I ask you?? Where???
Suborbital may be useful for things like ultrafast delivery, transportation, etc.
Scaling up suborbital for a reasonable number of people/cargo/weight is still easier than scaling up LEO launches. Assuming the launch vehicle is easily reusable - along the lines of 'preflight, launch, land, refuel, repeat' - then it may have viability even though it never puts anything into orbit.
Pricey, sure...but if you could do NY to London in an hour people would pay for it. Very rich people would pay a very large amount of money for it.
FB ads are the same despite all the "cleanup"... the other day i repeatedly got ads for a Raspberry Pi-based "SNES Classic alternative" which they bragged had every NES, SNES, etc. game. Basically your standard Pi emulator loadout of every (unlicensed) ROM for all the old systems.
Not a bad deal TBH, but very much not legal...and oddly enough FB doesn't really even have a relevant reporting 'group' for that.
In the end the platforms DGAF unless/until they're forced to act in the face of fines or lawsuits. I'm not sure if I like today's internet over the 'gritty' version of years past. Less useful info, but more interesting stuff.
Mind you, TMO has greatly expanded coverage using new (to them) spectrum in the last few years. Older phones that don't support those bands won't see the coverage changes.
For one, you need a CLEAN mirror - otherwise dirt on the face of it will absorb energy, heat up, etc. and be quickly defeat the mirror...and clean (as in spotless) on the battlefield doesn't happen
Then you need a highly efficient mirror. Even if you reflect most of the energy, what's left will heat up and distort the mirror which greatly reduces it's selectivity...and then you don't have a mirror anymore.
And then...you need it to be flexible enough to WEAR which doesn't generally go with high efficiency.
So pretty much nope nope nope. Any laser powerful enough to for use for the battle field will defeat mirror 'armor' quickly.
The decision said it was only 5% of breakage (stamps that were not redeemed for postal service). A large portion of breakage is assumed to be collecting for which the aesthetics is a key part of the value.
Which may be a bad assumption. I buy forever stamps because I send so few letters. I don't track what the postage rate (they're "forever" - good for one first class letter regardless of the current postage rate and when you bought it).
I'm sure a lot of them are simply sitting in the stamp roll of homes and I know Costco sold them in rolls of 100. Plus, since the value of those stamps goes up over time (when has postage every decreased?) I use the regular stamps first, so I probably have a good chunk of new in package stamps
USPS sells many billions of dollars in stamps. They're somewhat of an authority on how many are used...and yes, this still includes the half-roll you have stuck in the cabinet for 5 years. They used USPS's own breakage rate to get the $70mm
Getty should be refunding the $1500, because apparently the photographer didn't have the right to sell the rights that getty presumed to have offered the USPS.
Finally... they should negotiate a REASONABLE royalty. 5% Of the postage is not a reasonable royalty, because the stamp was not sold for the picture but a SERVICE ---- the value of the picture on the stamp is decorative; So a few pennies worth of the stamp's price can be attributed to its aesthetic value, and then 5% of that few pennies' worth per stamp is a reasonable royalty: not 5% of the total postage.
This is one of those times where it helps to RTFA or at least RTS carefully. To that end, there's a portion of stamps that are kept as collectors items - i.e. they are never used thus represent pure profit. Also, the sculpture was not simply a copy, but the artists interpretation, noticeably and purposefully different, and those differences were what resulted in the images selection for the stamp.
The judgment is based almost entirely on that portion:
* USPS never pays more than $5,000 for stamp artwork. The court awarded $5,000 in respect to the USED stamps. * The portion of 'breakage' or un-redeemed stamps was about $70mm (of pure profit) and the 5% royalty rate was charged ONLY on that portion. (70 * 5% = 3.5). These stamps do not represent a service but instead are very much collectors items retained for their aesthetic.
It's actually interesting to see the court side with USPS on the $5k stamp-art licensing. Willful copyright violation allows much higher penalties, even if you assumed the whole printing run to be one 'incident' of copyright violation. Typically copyright law does not take into account what anyone 'normally' pays. They threw the USPS a bone on that if you ask me.
You're paying the full bill either way. Would you really be happier if it were just a single lump sum with no additional information? Ignorance may be bliss, but it isn't particularly useful.
Yes actually:
Your cell phone service is $62.50 a month. Bill arrives - $62.50 due.
That's greatly preferable: Your cell phone service is $49.95 a month Bill arrives - $62.50 due... WTF? It was 50 bucks, why am i being charged 25% more?! Stupid fees and taxes and shit...why didn't they just... ugh..
Also as an example how virtually EVERY SINGLE OTHER COUNTRY includes taxes/VAT/etc. in the sticker price when you buy something. If it says $62.50 then you pay exactly. fucking. that. 'murica!
TBH if you wanted to get into the weeds and argue it in court, you'd probably win even if they credited you each month.
The actual charges are going up even if they're being paid by alternate means. Probably depends on the exact wording...and how much you or ATT are willing to fight/spend over an ETF.
“Services” are distinct from “Fees” by my read of it.
Just because they separate it doesn't mean it's legal. Government fees and taxes are separate and mandated outside of your contract - basically they aren't charging them, they're just collecting them for someone else who you have a separate agreement with (i.e. the relevant laws).
However an 'administrative fee' levied by the carrier or as part of the carriers regular course of business is charged by, and paid to, them. Increasing that very represents a material increase in cost/charge by the provider and, some wrangling aside, I expect it would be sufficient to get you out of your contract. It might take a small claims court action (which they may try to force binding arbitration over) but enough cycles later you'll probably win.
In the end, they figure enough people won't see it until it's too late and they've 'default accepted' by paying their next bill or not responding with 30-60 days. And then several million people pay an extra 1$ a month and... guess who wins? It's not you or I for sure.
Also, to add insult to injury, TFS includes this nugget:
The method proposed reduces write overhead times from 9% to 1% by incorporating a checksum to the cache memory system.
That makes 0 Ohms sense.
Clue for submitter & editor: the SI unit for time is the second, last time I looked.
This makes perfect sense. Write overhead time as a function of the overall write operation is absolutely the correct measurement in this context.
It communicates three critical information points (the previous overhead, reduction, and new overhead) simply and directly without extraneous information like the write operation overall time which is tangential to the article. If I said they reduced write overhead from 9ms to 1ms you'd have no clue what that meant in relation to the overall write operation. I'd have to include additional information about the write operation time and then either do math to arrive at the same percentages in the original post or leave the reader to do so.
While it's fun to bash on editors, you're the one who needs a clue in this case.
The contracting company should have been tracking their contracts and known this was expiring soon and then expired. They should have notified the contractor (who is their employee after all).
It's not even that. Or rather it's more than that.
It's a security FEATURE, not bug, that accounts lapse automatically when someone's employment is terminated. This is absolutely within best practices and depending on your industry may be mandated for compliance reasons.
Contractors are hired for certain time periods and then renewed if needed. Also, completely normal as if you wanted a permanent hire you'd...well...hire someone. So contracts lapse after 3-6-12 months. IDs, access badges, system login, etc. being tied to that? Yes, that absolutely, 100% makes sense.
This person wasn't fired by a machine. His manager was let go and during the transition period failed to renew the contractor - irrespective of the reason, not renewing a contractor is functionally equivalent to terminating the contract. The contracting company failed to notice this. They subsequently failed to inform the contractor.
The headline is completely misleading and no better than the lame facebook 'promoted stories'. What really happened is 'Contracting company failed to properly track the end of a contract and appropriately notify their contractor. Company security measures effectively prevented terminated worker from accessing systems'
For one, sales tax is added to the price, not included in it, in the US. And since this article refers to US taxation and the US supreme court that seems pretty relevant.
Also you're confusing corporate income tax with personal income tax and then trying to compare with sales tax. At least make the comparison apples to oranges, not apples to sneakers. You need to look at the macro picture including personal tax, corporate tax, sales tax and how it all impacts spending power/corporate revenue/taxation income.
Like, forty two THOUSAND? OMG. That would take a team of 5-10 people a few WEEKS to comb through and organize. Think of all the ledge paper and pencils that will go to waste. Especially when they need to update or change something! Horrific!
Now fast forward 50 years to today when mapping apps can reliably tell you not only every street name in the country (and much of the world) but the speed limit on them as well.
Or the parking rules in NYC which vary by the time, day and even portion of the block you're on.
And so on.
And considering states have direct financial motivation to have this data accurate and available, I don't expect it would be that difficult to implement, or use.
Not only do I remember paper straws, I also remember when plastic grocery bags were replacing paper in order to 'save the environment.'
You mean, before paper recycling was available/common/mandatory? Plastic bags produced far less waste mass/volume. Granted it was short-sighted when you consider that plastic bags won't degrade in any reasonable time frame.
As usual the media and do-gooders could point to huge piles of paper bags at the time and how little space a literal million plastic bags took up in comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if it was law today and strictly enforced it wouldn't matter.
Just like no one can check your credit/background/etc. without your explicit consent...and many employers require that consent in the pile of pre-hire forms you're required to sign.
Such a law would only work if it required your explicit consent AND explicitly barred any company, organization, person or entity from discriminating against you if you refuse to provide it. Until they completely bar companies (be it insurance or employment) from requiring this, it would be a law completely without teeth.
For now, it's just their current user agreement which is subject to change at a whim.
Yes and no. $1/yr is actually annoying to process - any customer service around it quickly exceeds the revenue. Billing, CC processing, and similar fees take a large chunk of such small transactions as well. There's a lot of ill-will that 'free until you depend on it' generates and TBH I think their $1/yr fee was a placeholder pending acquisition.
I do agree though, I wish I had the option to opt-out of ads for a $ fee on multiple platforms. Then you'd also get an idea of what the per-user revenue is for your 'free' service. I'm guessing it's a LOT more than people suspect.
What Whatsapp *could* do is add/build a payment service (ugh, queue crypto dreams aka KIK coin) which means they owner of the payment system wouldn't incur processing fees and could easily get their $1/yr or whatever it might be. Adding functionality AND adding a means of income/payment.
If you think coding an app that's used by literally billions of clients is a weekend's work then you should probably dust off that C++ book from 20 years ago and remember what it's like to develop.
Hell, even just assuming they used Signal's protocol unmodified and only had to build the UI it's still more than a weekend's work.
Then let's not forget the server infra to support the ... trillions of messages and billions of pictures sent *daily*. If someone could build that in a weekend they'd be the Steve Jobs or Bill Gates of modern day devs, and paid accordingly.
Wake me up when criminals decide it's easier to legally research and purchase all the non-regulated pieces, purchase an 80% 'blank', mill out the lower receiver, assemble the gun, oil and test it, and then go on a rampage instead of just stealing one or buying a stolen gun.
Oh, and wait! Most of the talk about homemade guns focuses on rifles which account for ... what single-digit percentage of gun-related murders (and similar for overall gun crime)??? Handguns account for the large majority of gun crime - very likely because they're easier to steal, conceal, store, and use. AR-15s may look cool (to some at least) but are rather impractical for criminals in most circumstances.
This whole argument is politicians trying to "do something" to look good and win votes while being, as usual, utterly ineffective at their stated goals.
Well that's where speaking in absolutes gets people in trouble. Packaged meat does contain blood, however it contains far less blood than the meat originally did when it was part of an animal.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf...
No, it floats apparently. But they'd rather catch it then have to fish it out of the (saltwater) ocean.
I'm sure there's economic sense to it or they wouldn't try. $6mm isn't chump change to throw away on each mission and i'm guessing saltwater refurb costs > catchers mitt operation.
So using their own graph and comparing to when countries were actively conducting nuclear testing it's somewhere around 0.1% of the Cesium from back then. Anyone drinking a bottle of wine from 2011 shouldn't care. Anyone drinking a bottle of wine from the 50s or 60s however...where is the PSA? Where I ask you?? Where???
Suborbital may be useful for things like ultrafast delivery, transportation, etc.
Scaling up suborbital for a reasonable number of people/cargo/weight is still easier than scaling up LEO launches. Assuming the launch vehicle is easily reusable - along the lines of 'preflight, launch, land, refuel, repeat' - then it may have viability even though it never puts anything into orbit.
Pricey, sure...but if you could do NY to London in an hour people would pay for it. Very rich people would pay a very large amount of money for it.
No doubt.
FB ads are the same despite all the "cleanup" ... the other day i repeatedly got ads for a Raspberry Pi-based "SNES Classic alternative" which they bragged had every NES, SNES, etc. game. Basically your standard Pi emulator loadout of every (unlicensed) ROM for all the old systems.
Not a bad deal TBH, but very much not legal...and oddly enough FB doesn't really even have a relevant reporting 'group' for that.
In the end the platforms DGAF unless/until they're forced to act in the face of fines or lawsuits. I'm not sure if I like today's internet over the 'gritty' version of years past. Less useful info, but more interesting stuff.
p.s. like any good geek I built my own :)
You're the exception, not the norm.
Mind you, TMO has greatly expanded coverage using new (to them) spectrum in the last few years. Older phones that don't support those bands won't see the coverage changes.
Mirror camo won't do much.
For one, you need a CLEAN mirror - otherwise dirt on the face of it will absorb energy, heat up, etc. and be quickly defeat the mirror...and clean (as in spotless) on the battlefield doesn't happen
Then you need a highly efficient mirror. Even if you reflect most of the energy, what's left will heat up and distort the mirror which greatly reduces it's selectivity...and then you don't have a mirror anymore.
And then...you need it to be flexible enough to WEAR which doesn't generally go with high efficiency.
So pretty much nope nope nope. Any laser powerful enough to for use for the battle field will defeat mirror 'armor' quickly.
Which may be a bad assumption. I buy forever stamps because I send so few letters. I don't track what the postage rate (they're "forever" - good for one first class letter regardless of the current postage rate and when you bought it).
I'm sure a lot of them are simply sitting in the stamp roll of homes and I know Costco sold them in rolls of 100. Plus, since the value of those stamps goes up over time (when has postage every decreased?) I use the regular stamps first, so I probably have a good chunk of new in package stamps
USPS sells many billions of dollars in stamps. They're somewhat of an authority on how many are used...and yes, this still includes the half-roll you have stuck in the cabinet for 5 years. They used USPS's own breakage rate to get the $70mm
Getty should be refunding the $1500, because apparently the photographer didn't have the right to sell the rights that getty presumed to have offered the USPS.
Finally... they should negotiate a REASONABLE royalty. 5% Of the postage is not a reasonable royalty, because the stamp was not sold for the picture but a SERVICE ---- the value of the picture on the stamp is decorative; So a few pennies worth of the stamp's price can be attributed to its aesthetic value, and then 5% of that few pennies' worth per stamp is a reasonable royalty: not 5% of the total postage.
This is one of those times where it helps to RTFA or at least RTS carefully. To that end, there's a portion of stamps that are kept as collectors items - i.e. they are never used thus represent pure profit. Also, the sculpture was not simply a copy, but the artists interpretation, noticeably and purposefully different, and those differences were what resulted in the images selection for the stamp.
The judgment is based almost entirely on that portion:
* USPS never pays more than $5,000 for stamp artwork. The court awarded $5,000 in respect to the USED stamps.
* The portion of 'breakage' or un-redeemed stamps was about $70mm (of pure profit) and the 5% royalty rate was charged ONLY on that portion. (70 * 5% = 3.5). These stamps do not represent a service but instead are very much collectors items retained for their aesthetic.
It's actually interesting to see the court side with USPS on the $5k stamp-art licensing. Willful copyright violation allows much higher penalties, even if you assumed the whole printing run to be one 'incident' of copyright violation. Typically copyright law does not take into account what anyone 'normally' pays. They threw the USPS a bone on that if you ask me.
You're paying the full bill either way. Would you really be happier if it were just a single lump sum with no additional information? Ignorance may be bliss, but it isn't particularly useful.
Yes actually:
Your cell phone service is $62.50 a month.
Bill arrives - $62.50 due.
That's greatly preferable: Your cell phone service is $49.95 a month ... WTF? It was 50 bucks, why am i being charged 25% more?! Stupid fees and taxes and shit...why didn't they just ... ugh..
Bill arrives - $62.50 due
Also as an example how virtually EVERY SINGLE OTHER COUNTRY includes taxes/VAT/etc. in the sticker price when you buy something. If it says $62.50 then you pay exactly. fucking. that. 'murica!
TBH if you wanted to get into the weeds and argue it in court, you'd probably win even if they credited you each month.
The actual charges are going up even if they're being paid by alternate means. Probably depends on the exact wording...and how much you or ATT are willing to fight/spend over an ETF.
“Services” are distinct from “Fees” by my read of it.
Just because they separate it doesn't mean it's legal. Government fees and taxes are separate and mandated outside of your contract - basically they aren't charging them, they're just collecting them for someone else who you have a separate agreement with (i.e. the relevant laws).
However an 'administrative fee' levied by the carrier or as part of the carriers regular course of business is charged by, and paid to, them. Increasing that very represents a material increase in cost/charge by the provider and, some wrangling aside, I expect it would be sufficient to get you out of your contract. It might take a small claims court action (which they may try to force binding arbitration over) but enough cycles later you'll probably win.
In the end, they figure enough people won't see it until it's too late and they've 'default accepted' by paying their next bill or not responding with 30-60 days. And then several million people pay an extra 1$ a month and ... guess who wins? It's not you or I for sure.
Also, to add insult to injury, TFS includes this nugget:
That makes 0 Ohms sense.
Clue for submitter & editor: the SI unit for time is the second, last time I looked.
This makes perfect sense. Write overhead time as a function of the overall write operation is absolutely the correct measurement in this context.
It communicates three critical information points (the previous overhead, reduction, and new overhead) simply and directly without extraneous information like the write operation overall time which is tangential to the article. If I said they reduced write overhead from 9ms to 1ms you'd have no clue what that meant in relation to the overall write operation. I'd have to include additional information about the write operation time and then either do math to arrive at the same percentages in the original post or leave the reader to do so.
While it's fun to bash on editors, you're the one who needs a clue in this case.
You're missing the situations where you need to handle extremely large data sets.
It's not common, but neither is the need for a Xeon 8180 yet they certainly exist (well, for the price of a cheap car).
3d-xpoint RAM isn't going to outright replace DRAM any time soon, but it certainly can supplement it.
It wasn't even the management oversight.
The contracting company should have been tracking their contracts and known this was expiring soon and then expired. They should have notified the contractor (who is their employee after all).
It's not even that. Or rather it's more than that.
It's a security FEATURE, not bug, that accounts lapse automatically when someone's employment is terminated. This is absolutely within best practices and depending on your industry may be mandated for compliance reasons.
Contractors are hired for certain time periods and then renewed if needed. Also, completely normal as if you wanted a permanent hire you'd...well...hire someone. So contracts lapse after 3-6-12 months. IDs, access badges, system login, etc. being tied to that? Yes, that absolutely, 100% makes sense.
This person wasn't fired by a machine. His manager was let go and during the transition period failed to renew the contractor - irrespective of the reason, not renewing a contractor is functionally equivalent to terminating the contract. The contracting company failed to notice this. They subsequently failed to inform the contractor.
The headline is completely misleading and no better than the lame facebook 'promoted stories'. What really happened is 'Contracting company failed to properly track the end of a contract and appropriately notify their contractor. Company security measures effectively prevented terminated worker from accessing systems'
Your example is full of holes.
For one, sales tax is added to the price, not included in it, in the US. And since this article refers to US taxation and the US supreme court that seems pretty relevant.
Also you're confusing corporate income tax with personal income tax and then trying to compare with sales tax. At least make the comparison apples to oranges, not apples to sneakers. You need to look at the macro picture including personal tax, corporate tax, sales tax and how it all impacts spending power/corporate revenue/taxation income.
42,000?
Like, forty two THOUSAND? OMG. That would take a team of 5-10 people a few WEEKS to comb through and organize. Think of all the ledge paper and pencils that will go to waste. Especially when they need to update or change something! Horrific!
Now fast forward 50 years to today when mapping apps can reliably tell you not only every street name in the country (and much of the world) but the speed limit on them as well.
Or the parking rules in NYC which vary by the time, day and even portion of the block you're on.
And so on.
And considering states have direct financial motivation to have this data accurate and available, I don't expect it would be that difficult to implement, or use.
Awe, is there some sand stuck up in your vag there cartman?
You're skewed view and desperate need to bash tesla is adorable though. Maybe you've got a card or two in the short game as well?
Yeah, that worked wonderfully in the middle east two decades ago right? Oh, right...we've been 'fighting terror' in the area ever since.
Now, if the USA turned imperialistic and claimed these places as territories maybe.
Not only do I remember paper straws, I also remember when plastic grocery bags were replacing paper in order to 'save the environment.'
You mean, before paper recycling was available/common/mandatory? Plastic bags produced far less waste mass/volume. Granted it was short-sighted when you consider that plastic bags won't degrade in any reasonable time frame.
As usual the media and do-gooders could point to huge piles of paper bags at the time and how little space a literal million plastic bags took up in comparison.