You are fake news. It was not designed for such a thing. It's designed primarily to be decentralized, and to that end there's a built-on delay between blocks, and thus a hard limit to transaction speed.
Although truly, 720p and 1080p are already indistinguishable when watching a good movie. If you're staring at pixels, you need better content.
You need better eyes. The difference between my high-end (at the time of purchase) 1080p LCD to my 4K OLED is fucking amazing.
But that said, having wifi and a bunch of insecure, unsecure, vapid, malicious apps doesn't actually increase display resolution. *boggle*
Of course not, but tapping in to my (wired) network lets me access shit easily and conveniently, in full 4K HDR glory. I also have a dedicated PC connected to it via HDMI. And I reserve the right to remove the thing from the network entirely if I stop trusting it or the apps become outdated and useless.
Yes, people "who are good at firewalls" can enjoy DLNA.
Then he's a retard. Most modern TVs already have a USB port or two you can tap into for power. Even more TVs have a fat power cable running to them. Worst case? You end up with a Y power cable feeding the TV and a small power adapter for the shitty dongle. If you're wall mounting it it'll all be invisible anyway.
But why do that when you can use the DLNA shit built in to every modern TV? If you're claiming you only buy dumb TVs, I applaud you for your dedication to security/privacy/control. But I also laugh at you for not caring one shit about image quality and not knowing how to use a firewall.
if you want to get it down to what CC companies do today (sub-1 second for a large merchant, 10-15 for a mom and pop with an ancient terminal)? The question is are the competitive with what guys like Square can get you?
Also, the currency needs to stabilize if it's going to go mainstream. Several folks stopped taking it because you could sell something for $50 worth of BTC today and have $30 worth of BTC tomorrow. Now, if I can instantly (and cheaply) turn my BTC into cash that's not a problem, but I'm guessing more fees.
Bitcoin will -n-e-v-e-r- be a replacement for credit cards. It was never designed to. In fact, it was designed explicitly against such volume and frequency in order to prevent manipulation and ensure all nodes can sync the full block chain.
"If there's one thing the Bitcoin community hates, its fucking clowns and hucksters"
What's it like, being born without a sense of irony?
I wouldn't know. Irony doesn't mean what you think it means, by the way. And when I refer to "the Bitcoin community", I'm not talking about the spazoids who are into gambling / speculating, but the people who actually use and support Bitcoin as a currency and network.
They're just running a separate ledger on top of Bitcoin, and transactions are only committed at the start and end. The whole thing is a mess, and will only benefit people who are willing to keep a balance of BTC out of their control in order to process multiple transactions before having anything committed to the actual block chain.
It's like someone saw the ICO scams in Ethereum and decided they had to have it on Bitcoin as well.
Bitcoin supporters believe that the network has the potential to help the cryptocurrency achieve mass adoption.
No one with a brain believes this "Lightning Network" shit has potential, will help, or that Bitcoin even needs help.
Bitcoin has struggled in recent months with slow and high-fee transactions, which make it harder for bitcoin to achieve mainstream popularity.
Bitcoin isn't struggling. Blocks are mined just as quickly/slowly as they were before. Transactions are only slow if you don't want to pay fees. Fees are only high if you want to speed up the transaction. This is by design. This isn't preventing mainstream popularity, rather mainstream popularity is causing cheap/free transactions to slow down. If you want to use the network, support the network. Pay a fee or wait, it's your choice. Or mine yourself.
Lightning Labs, the company behind the network,
Keep in mind this company is not behind Bitcoin in anyway. They're behind their own bullshit and nothing else.
also announced on Thursday that it has received investments from major financial technology players, including Square chief executive and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and PayPal chief operating officer David Sacks.
They think this is a good thing? If there's one thing the Bitcoin community hates, its fucking clowns and hucksters from the obsolete establishment trying to wedge themselves in.
I don't know what Lightning Labs actually is (and neither does Lightning Labs), but I know it's bullshit!
What the head-in-sand crowd doesn't realize is that all these spring snows on the east coast that have become frequent over the past ~20 years are caused by the southward loop in the jet stream shifting eastward from its traditional position, sucking down cold arctic air at the Atlantic coast. But while you're saying "What happened to global warming???", those of us out west are saying "What happened to winter???".
There is some speculation that what this article is talking about is the cause of the shift in the jet stream, but AFAIK it isn't certain yet.
"all these spring snows"? Please cite them.
Changes in the amount and duration of daylight received in any day (rotational period) on the Earth are due to the Earth wobbling back and forth on its axis. This is what causes seasons. In the Norther hemisphere, seasons work like this:
Summer Solstice - the longest day Autumnal Equinox - equal day and night Winter Solstice - the shortest day Vernal Equinox - equal day and night
The Vernal Equinox typically aligns with the start of Spring in terms of temperature, plant growth, etc. The Equinox is on March 20th this year for the Northern hemisphere. We've got 6 days before Spring starts, and then another 6.5 weeks before we're in the middle of Spring. Neither the weather nor the climate have ever stuck to your schedule.
The fact that most people consider the Equinox the start of Spring, and not the middle of Spring, should clue you in. Astronomically, the peak of Summer should be the Summer Solstice. But in terms of weather, we consider it to be the start of Summer. This is because there's a lag between the tilting of the planet and warming. In a perfect and unchanging system it would align nicely with even spacing, and the peak of a Season in terms of temperature would be approximately 6.5 weeks after the Solstice/Equinox.
But the Earth is not such a system, nor has it ever been. So I ask you. Do you also complain when "April showers" extend into May? Or when "June Gloom" extends past the Summer Solstice?
We don't care. It's a small data point in a MUCH larger problem.
Back in 1996 we had extreme snowstorms
So what? Weather != Climate. The point is that "extreme" events become MORE COMMON, not that they didn't happen before. The point is that the the average is moving.
Really, this "global " scaremongering is getting tiresome.
Right because New Jersey = all of Earth. (Insert eyeroll here)
I like how you use "Weather != Climate" and then immediately state that weather is climate because "extreme" events are more common. I particularly like it because "extreme" events are not more common, the poster you're replying to pointed this out, and the story itself is a classic example of the "weather = climate (when it suits us)" argument from climatards like yourself.
BB refused to take back an item 25 years ago. I would usually drop 15-20k per year in that store. Have not been back. A 40 dollar item cost them MUCH MUCH more.
That is how I treat stores that refuse to take broken things back.
If you were spending $15,000 - $20,000 annual in Best Buy in the 1990s, you're retarded. I'm going to guess the $40 item saved them the hassle of dealing with a jerk who only occasionally bought something.
Pretty much ANYTHING is a valid reason for a chargeback, as long as you've made an attempt to resolve the issue, the CC company has a list and refusal to refund IS specifically listed.
A reason to open one, sure. A reason to prevail? Nope. Your credit card issuer will contact the payment processor on record and get in touch with an actual human at the retailer and tell them about the dispute and they have X days to respond and contest. If they contest, the credit card company won't willy-nilly side with the buyer. They look at the details of the transaction and the dispute and if it's too messy they'll wash their hands of it and you'll have to go to court. If it's not too messy, they'll pick a side and it may not be the one you want.
Depends on what constitutes abuse. If I buy a camera and test drive it for a week, then decide I want to return it, is that fraud? The way this article reads, the retailer wants the sale to stand regardless of how I may feel. If they are willing to go to court to go around their policy, it just makes me not want to but from there.
The system tracks patterns to find serial abusers who buy things with the intention of returning them later. For example, someone will buy one in store and one online (Amazon, eBay) for a cheaper price, then return the online item to Best Buy once it's delivered to them. Or scalpers who buy a ton of X item and resell it at inflated prices, then once the market for that item dies they return their unsold stock to the retailer.
When you get flagged by TRE as being a serial returner, you are told by the merchant that this will be the last return they accept from you, and you're given a number to look up on TRE's site to check your history of returns, dispute any errors, etc.
When you get flagged by TRE, the retailer tells you this is the last return they'll accept from you for X amount of time, and you're given a number to check on the TRE site that lists your returns and your status in the system. If you have beef with any of it, you can bitch at TRE (and they'll ignore you / laugh at you).
Future returns will not be covered by policy, you'd have to get lucky and get a manager to approve and override. (They can't actually override the TRE piece, but they can initiate a separate transaction that gets you your money back and takes the item back.)
You would NOT be eligible for a return or a charge back after being flagged by TRE. In many cases your credit card may side with you, but in many cases they won't. And it certainly won't work again after that. The whole system is designed to target repeat offenders. It was a big deal amongst a shitty group of gamers a few years back.
People would buy a game from Amazon to get it slightly cheaper, get a preorder bonus, get Amazon exclusive DLC, skip paying tax, earn points on their Amazon credit card, etc. Buy the game from Best Buy on release day or preorder (with pickup in store on release day) to get the bonus, DLC, etc.. Open and play the game. When the Amazon package arrives, take that game and return it to Best Buy.
I've had my share of returns at Best Buy over the last year or two, but nothing fraudulent. I can recall returning 3 games (unopened) for various reasons (Best Buy missed the delivery date on one so I bought it digitally to play with my friends on launch day, reviews for another showed it was shit and I couldn't cancel the order, I secured a special edition of another and didn't want to risk altering my orders and losing anything as their system had been messing up). I've also returned a router (opened) because it was obnoxiously large and not much better than my current one anyway. With the opened router they opened it up on the counter and inspected it before accepting the return.
I don't know what the exact thresholds are, and I'd be pissed if I got flagged. But I absolutely agree with Best Buy doing this to stop people who abuse their policies to commit fraud.
I'm sure most people buy Amazon Basics because Amazon would've vetted their suppliers. You can go to Ali Express, but you're taking a crapshoot on stuff like power banks that are so shoddily made they are time bombs.
Basically it's Ali Express with the dodginess removed. And a modicum of support, because US company after all.
Except Amazon doesn't vet the suppliers for shit, just like they don't vet the 3rd parties they allow onto their storefront and take stock from. (The "Fulfilled by Amazon" program allows a 3rd party seller to dump fake/bad/whatever stock of an item into Amazon's warehouse so Amazon can handle the logistics of picking, packaging, and shipping the item. Amazon commingles stock though, so even if your item is "shipped and sold by Amazon.com", it could in fact come from the pile of fakes/defectives from a shady 3rd party.)
And even if Amazon did strongly vet the suppliers, that's not enough. Chinese manufacturing is such that you have to sample and check from every single shipment, lest they try to pull some bullshit on you 3 months down the line. Or you can just ship it all and have a generous return policy, but that doesn't prevent battery packs from exploding on people, does it Jeff?
Amazon Basics came about because Amazon got jealous of all the fly by night companies that were creating storefronts on Amazon and eBay for dropshipping from aliexpress. The bigger players in this space actually get the Chinese manufacturers to slap their logo on the product / box. Other than that, the item you get from any of the dozen companies (including Amazon) is identical.
It's true for everything from portable battery packs, to USB power adapters, to primary cell batteries, to "hover" boards, to solar lights, to RGB light strips, to mandolin slicers, to slow cookers, to beard trimmers, to everything else made in China.
The only reason to buy the Amazon Basics brand is if it is somehow cheaper after considering tax and shipping (occasionally even Amazon needs to clear stock), or if you expect it to fail soon and want the more generous return/refund policy of a "shipped and sold by Amazon" item.
Slashdot Mirror
You are fake news. It was not designed for such a thing. It's designed primarily to be decentralized, and to that end there's a built-on delay between blocks, and thus a hard limit to transaction speed.
That's the joke.
Also, they used to, back in the NTSC days.
Although truly, 720p and 1080p are already indistinguishable when watching a good movie. If you're staring at pixels, you need better content.
You need better eyes. The difference between my high-end (at the time of purchase) 1080p LCD to my 4K OLED is fucking amazing.
But that said, having wifi and a bunch of insecure, unsecure, vapid, malicious apps doesn't actually increase display resolution. *boggle*
Of course not, but tapping in to my (wired) network lets me access shit easily and conveniently, in full 4K HDR glory. I also have a dedicated PC connected to it via HDMI. And I reserve the right to remove the thing from the network entirely if I stop trusting it or the apps become outdated and useless.
Yes, people "who are good at firewalls" can enjoy DLNA.
the privilege of buying a firearm
Owning and using guns is a right, not a privilege.
With rights comes responsibility. Just as the right to free speech doesn't allow you to yell "fire" in a theater
Stop right there. You absolutely can do that. Go back to the drawing board and come back when you're not fundamentally wrong.
Then he's a retard. Most modern TVs already have a USB port or two you can tap into for power. Even more TVs have a fat power cable running to them.
Worst case? You end up with a Y power cable feeding the TV and a small power adapter for the shitty dongle. If you're wall mounting it it'll all be invisible anyway.
But why do that when you can use the DLNA shit built in to every modern TV? If you're claiming you only buy dumb TVs, I applaud you for your dedication to security/privacy/control. But I also laugh at you for not caring one shit about image quality and not knowing how to use a firewall.
Ding ding ding!
Stop trying to make smart watches happen. They're not going to happen.
violent crime committed by kids is way up
No it isn't.
correlated almost exactly with the rise in popularity of video games
You mean it started in the 70s, crashed, then went nuts in the 80s?
and it's leading to school shootings
No it isn't.
the privilege of buying a firearm
Owning and using guns is a right, not a privilege.
if you want to get it down to what CC companies do today (sub-1 second for a large merchant, 10-15 for a mom and pop with an ancient terminal)? The question is are the competitive with what guys like Square can get you?
Also, the currency needs to stabilize if it's going to go mainstream. Several folks stopped taking it because you could sell something for $50 worth of BTC today and have $30 worth of BTC tomorrow. Now, if I can instantly (and cheaply) turn my BTC into cash that's not a problem, but I'm guessing more fees.
Bitcoin will -n-e-v-e-r- be a replacement for credit cards. It was never designed to. In fact, it was designed explicitly against such volume and frequency in order to prevent manipulation and ensure all nodes can sync the full block chain.
"If there's one thing the Bitcoin community hates, its fucking clowns and hucksters"
What's it like, being born without a sense of irony?
I wouldn't know. Irony doesn't mean what you think it means, by the way. And when I refer to "the Bitcoin community", I'm not talking about the spazoids who are into gambling / speculating, but the people who actually use and support Bitcoin as a currency and network.
I looked it up, and yup it's bullshit.
They're just running a separate ledger on top of Bitcoin, and transactions are only committed at the start and end. The whole thing is a mess, and will only benefit people who are willing to keep a balance of BTC out of their control in order to process multiple transactions before having anything committed to the actual block chain.
It's like someone saw the ICO scams in Ethereum and decided they had to have it on Bitcoin as well.
Bitcoin supporters believe that the network has the potential to help the cryptocurrency achieve mass adoption.
No one with a brain believes this "Lightning Network" shit has potential, will help, or that Bitcoin even needs help.
Bitcoin has struggled in recent months with slow and high-fee transactions, which make it harder for bitcoin to achieve mainstream popularity.
Bitcoin isn't struggling. Blocks are mined just as quickly/slowly as they were before. Transactions are only slow if you don't want to pay fees. Fees are only high if you want to speed up the transaction. This is by design. This isn't preventing mainstream popularity, rather mainstream popularity is causing cheap/free transactions to slow down. If you want to use the network, support the network. Pay a fee or wait, it's your choice. Or mine yourself.
Lightning Labs, the company behind the network,
Keep in mind this company is not behind Bitcoin in anyway. They're behind their own bullshit and nothing else.
also announced on Thursday that it has received investments from major financial technology players, including Square chief executive and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and PayPal chief operating officer David Sacks.
They think this is a good thing? If there's one thing the Bitcoin community hates, its fucking clowns and hucksters from the obsolete establishment trying to wedge themselves in.
I don't know what Lightning Labs actually is (and neither does Lightning Labs), but I know it's bullshit!
You work for Oracle?
Sure? But is it happening more often, and in a more dramatic fashion with more extreme results, than it has historically?
No it isn't.
What the head-in-sand crowd doesn't realize is that all these spring snows on the east coast that have become frequent over the past ~20 years are caused by the southward loop in the jet stream shifting eastward from its traditional position, sucking down cold arctic air at the Atlantic coast. But while you're saying "What happened to global warming???", those of us out west are saying "What happened to winter???".
There is some speculation that what this article is talking about is the cause of the shift in the jet stream, but AFAIK it isn't certain yet.
"all these spring snows"? Please cite them.
Changes in the amount and duration of daylight received in any day (rotational period) on the Earth are due to the Earth wobbling back and forth on its axis.
This is what causes seasons. In the Norther hemisphere, seasons work like this:
Summer Solstice - the longest day
Autumnal Equinox - equal day and night
Winter Solstice - the shortest day
Vernal Equinox - equal day and night
The Vernal Equinox typically aligns with the start of Spring in terms of temperature, plant growth, etc. The Equinox is on March 20th this year for the Northern hemisphere. We've got 6 days before Spring starts, and then another 6.5 weeks before we're in the middle of Spring. Neither the weather nor the climate have ever stuck to your schedule.
The fact that most people consider the Equinox the start of Spring, and not the middle of Spring, should clue you in. Astronomically, the peak of Summer should be the Summer Solstice. But in terms of weather, we consider it to be the start of Summer. This is because there's a lag between the tilting of the planet and warming. In a perfect and unchanging system it would align nicely with even spacing, and the peak of a Season in terms of temperature would be approximately 6.5 weeks after the Solstice/Equinox.
But the Earth is not such a system, nor has it ever been. So I ask you. Do you also complain when "April showers" extend into May? Or when "June Gloom" extends past the Summer Solstice?
Here in NJ we had temperature-wise....
We don't care. It's a small data point in a MUCH larger problem.
Back in 1996 we had extreme snowstorms
So what? Weather != Climate. The point is that "extreme" events become MORE COMMON, not that they didn't happen before. The point is that the the average is moving.
Really, this "global " scaremongering is getting tiresome.
Right because New Jersey = all of Earth. (Insert eyeroll here)
I like how you use "Weather != Climate" and then immediately state that weather is climate because "extreme" events are more common. I particularly like it because "extreme" events are not more common, the poster you're replying to pointed this out, and the story itself is a classic example of the "weather = climate (when it suits us)" argument from climatards like yourself.
Soros? Pizzagate? Gamergate? Fucking LOL, this is like a guaranteed alt-right bingo.
You're even linking to a site that was delisted from Google for hosting child pornography, that's your respectable source?
I swear you conspiratards get nuttier every day.
Uh, everything that AC posted is 100% correct. Can you actually dispute anything? Or do you live on blind faith in your adopted narrative?
Sounds like you wasted your own time more than anything.
BB refused to take back an item 25 years ago. I would usually drop 15-20k per year in that store. Have not been back. A 40 dollar item cost them MUCH MUCH more.
That is how I treat stores that refuse to take broken things back.
If you were spending $15,000 - $20,000 annual in Best Buy in the 1990s, you're retarded.
I'm going to guess the $40 item saved them the hassle of dealing with a jerk who only occasionally bought something.
Returns are a cost of doing business - and consumer protection laws in civilized countries.
Ah, a millennial who has never run a business or sold a product.
Pretty much ANYTHING is a valid reason for a chargeback, as long as you've made an attempt to resolve the issue, the CC company has a list and refusal to refund IS specifically listed.
A reason to open one, sure. A reason to prevail? Nope. Your credit card issuer will contact the payment processor on record and get in touch with an actual human at the retailer and tell them about the dispute and they have X days to respond and contest. If they contest, the credit card company won't willy-nilly side with the buyer. They look at the details of the transaction and the dispute and if it's too messy they'll wash their hands of it and you'll have to go to court. If it's not too messy, they'll pick a side and it may not be the one you want.
Depends on what constitutes abuse. If I buy a camera and test drive it for a week, then decide I want to return it, is that fraud? The way this article reads, the retailer wants the sale to stand regardless of how I may feel. If they are willing to go to court to go around their policy, it just makes me not want to but from there.
The system tracks patterns to find serial abusers who buy things with the intention of returning them later. For example, someone will buy one in store and one online (Amazon, eBay) for a cheaper price, then return the online item to Best Buy once it's delivered to them. Or scalpers who buy a ton of X item and resell it at inflated prices, then once the market for that item dies they return their unsold stock to the retailer.
When you get flagged by TRE as being a serial returner, you are told by the merchant that this will be the last return they accept from you, and you're given a number to look up on TRE's site to check your history of returns, dispute any errors, etc.
Except that doesn't happen.
When you get flagged by TRE, the retailer tells you this is the last return they'll accept from you for X amount of time, and you're given a number to check on the TRE site that lists your returns and your status in the system. If you have beef with any of it, you can bitch at TRE (and they'll ignore you / laugh at you).
Future returns will not be covered by policy, you'd have to get lucky and get a manager to approve and override. (They can't actually override the TRE piece, but they can initiate a separate transaction that gets you your money back and takes the item back.)
You would NOT be eligible for a return or a charge back after being flagged by TRE. In many cases your credit card may side with you, but in many cases they won't. And it certainly won't work again after that. The whole system is designed to target repeat offenders. It was a big deal amongst a shitty group of gamers a few years back.
People would buy a game from Amazon to get it slightly cheaper, get a preorder bonus, get Amazon exclusive DLC, skip paying tax, earn points on their Amazon credit card, etc.
Buy the game from Best Buy on release day or preorder (with pickup in store on release day) to get the bonus, DLC, etc..
Open and play the game.
When the Amazon package arrives, take that game and return it to Best Buy.
I've had my share of returns at Best Buy over the last year or two, but nothing fraudulent. I can recall returning 3 games (unopened) for various reasons (Best Buy missed the delivery date on one so I bought it digitally to play with my friends on launch day, reviews for another showed it was shit and I couldn't cancel the order, I secured a special edition of another and didn't want to risk altering my orders and losing anything as their system had been messing up). I've also returned a router (opened) because it was obnoxiously large and not much better than my current one anyway. With the opened router they opened it up on the counter and inspected it before accepting the return.
I don't know what the exact thresholds are, and I'd be pissed if I got flagged. But I absolutely agree with Best Buy doing this to stop people who abuse their policies to commit fraud.
I'm sure most people buy Amazon Basics because Amazon would've vetted their suppliers. You can go to Ali Express, but you're taking a crapshoot on stuff like power banks that are so shoddily made they are time bombs.
Basically it's Ali Express with the dodginess removed. And a modicum of support, because US company after all.
Except Amazon doesn't vet the suppliers for shit, just like they don't vet the 3rd parties they allow onto their storefront and take stock from. (The "Fulfilled by Amazon" program allows a 3rd party seller to dump fake/bad/whatever stock of an item into Amazon's warehouse so Amazon can handle the logistics of picking, packaging, and shipping the item. Amazon commingles stock though, so even if your item is "shipped and sold by Amazon.com", it could in fact come from the pile of fakes/defectives from a shady 3rd party.)
And even if Amazon did strongly vet the suppliers, that's not enough. Chinese manufacturing is such that you have to sample and check from every single shipment, lest they try to pull some bullshit on you 3 months down the line. Or you can just ship it all and have a generous return policy, but that doesn't prevent battery packs from exploding on people, does it Jeff?
Amazon Basics came about because Amazon got jealous of all the fly by night companies that were creating storefronts on Amazon and eBay for dropshipping from aliexpress. The bigger players in this space actually get the Chinese manufacturers to slap their logo on the product / box. Other than that, the item you get from any of the dozen companies (including Amazon) is identical.
It's true for everything from portable battery packs, to USB power adapters, to primary cell batteries, to "hover" boards, to solar lights, to RGB light strips, to mandolin slicers, to slow cookers, to beard trimmers, to everything else made in China.
The only reason to buy the Amazon Basics brand is if it is somehow cheaper after considering tax and shipping (occasionally even Amazon needs to clear stock), or if you expect it to fail soon and want the more generous return/refund policy of a "shipped and sold by Amazon" item.