You'd think the other cities in the area would have learned from this vulnerability and fixed the problem.
Believe it or not, it's not at all unlikely that word of the problem never got to the right people. And even if they were aware of it it's not axiomatic that they would be able to fix the problem. They might not have the budget or it might require coordination with (possibly uncooperative) other municipalities or it might be technologically impossible to "fix" the problem with existing equipment and budget. Stuff like this usually requires budgeting and possibly even taxpayer approval and doesn't tend to happen overnight.
Although that would require local governments to be competent.
Sigh... Just because not everything happens perfectly all the time does not imply local government is incompetent. Did it occur to you that the tech involved might be old and that the taxpayers haven't approved the money to replace the equipment? It's entirely plausible they don't have the resources to deal with the problem even if they are aware of it.
The meme that government is incompetent is really tired. No institution does everything perfectly, public or private. Just because they have a failure in one task it does not follow that they are generally incompetent. There are lots of things you don't do well either. Should we declare you to be incompetent every time you overlook something or don't handle it perfectly?
From the photon point of view, there is no time, all path are instantaneous, short (human size) or astronomical (accross the observable universe), for the photon it ages exactly a perfectly zero seconds.
I accept this as apparently factual. What I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around is the relationship between the statement above and how photons travel through spacetime if they do not experience time. Speed = distance / time and photons have the constant speed = c. But if time for them = 0 then that fundamental mathematical relationship breaks down and is undefined. (cannot divide by zero but we are essentially saying c=dist/0) My confusion is, how does a photon travel a distance through spacetime non-instantly (which it clearly does) if it does not experience time? Photons travel at a fixed rate through spacetime which is demonstrably not infinite and has time in the definition of that rate.
I expect the answer to be some non-intuitive reference frame of the observer sort of answer or something about velocities in spacetime (as opposed to space) being constant but I can't seem to puzzle it out.
Light scatters in all directions (for the most part) from the origin of a single point of event.
No, a photon will travel in a straight line from it's point of origin unless acted upon by an outside force. You are describing what happens to the innumerable photons that are emitted from a typical light source which is not the same thing. The photons that we see from these distant sources have traveled a long distance in a straight line (*) to get to us.
(* straight in this context is not the same Euclidean geometry straight line you might have learned about in high school)
So if it happened 13 billions year ago, how is it still observable?
Because the universe expanded faster than the speed of light. Space itself is expanding to this day and so some light that was emitted a long time ago is just now reaching us. Some light that was emitted a long time ago will never reach us because it's too far away and space is expanding too fast for it to ever get to us.
The cops are overworked people who get rewarded (promotions, more pay, peer respect) by results. Therefore they will take a two-dimensional view through a three-dimensional person, say "this 2D line fits this image", and stitch you up.
Sometimes that is true and there is evidence to support that point of view in many places. But I happen to be personal friends with a number of cops and that description is not one size fits all. Not even close. A lot of them really are genuine public servants trying to do a good job. Their incentives have been unfortunately warped in an unfortunate direction sometimes but most of them that I've interacted with are aware of this fact and try their best to not be influenced by it when it happens. They aren't robots with no awareness of the social implications of what they are asked to do. It's actually because of that fact that when they do step over the line and start violating civil rights that it becomes that much more inexcusable because in most cases they know what they are doing is wrong.
Yes, and it would appear that being a man of the cloth provides you absolutely zero credibility these days with regards to that as well.
Why on earth should being a "man of the cloth" provide any special credibility? If anything it should be a strike against them given that they are in most cases literally selling a false and/or unverifiable claims of the supernatural. (those churches get built with real money that came from someone and someone pays the pastor's salary) They get away with it mostly because of social tradition but it's not difficult to make the case that what they are doing fits the description of fraud or at the very least a hoax. I'm not saying this guy is (intentionally) doing anything reprehensible but he doesn't deserve any special trust or credibility just because he preaches on Sunday.
Sadly some bank employees often do not even attempt to analyse anything. They spend the smallest amount of time/effort to finish the task, for example forward some data without validating it.
That would make them exactly like some percent of employees in literally every other job you could possibly mention. I have yet to see a company without some percent of employees that fit exactly your description.
You'd think a pastor would be able to trust that his word would be taken seriously and in good faith, but not even our pillars of the community get the benefit of the doubt anymore.
Why should being a pastor give anyone a pass? Someone who makes their living telling people that they should believe in an invisible man in the sky and a special book and give the church money or they will burn can easily be interpreted as a con man. No I don't really think that this person is a con artist (not intentionally anyway) but I'm puzzled by people who think being a religious leader somehow makes a person automatically trustworthy or a "pillar of the community". If anything I regard religious leaders as more suspect than most because they are selling hope on a false (or at least unverifiable) premise. Many religious leaders abuse the trust placed in them - see how the Catholic church continues to employ and protect pedophiles for a prominent example.
I fully agree that this case was handled extremely badly and that this guy probably is a good and decent person. I'm fully aware that Wells Fargo is a company run by untrustworthy asshats with plenty of evidence to back that up. I don't agree that his choice of vocation should grant him any special privileges any more than you or me. That's how abuses of position and power happen.
The police are not on your side, unfortunately. Don't talk to them without a lawyer, you will get burned.
You are correct that they are not on your side and that you should be very careful in your dealings with them. However it is no axiomatic that you will get burned. Most of the time the cops are decent people trying their best to do the right thing. The problem is you can't tell when they aren't so you have to defend yourself by being careful in your dealings with them because it can backfire horribly if you aren't careful.
It added that the App Store has generated $120 billion for developers while offering users a secure platform, and that Spotify is seeking to side to sidestep the rules that every other app follows.
I always laugh when they quote revenue figures instead of profit. It doesn't matter how much revenue they generated if it isn't making any profit. As a professor of mine once said, you can make a LOT of revenue selling $2 bills for $1 - you just won't be in business very long doing it. You see this all the time in entrepreneurial magazines. They'll quote how much revenue some new business is doing and leave out the fact they are losing money hand over fist.
I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't use Spotify so I don't really care what they do. My initial impulse is that if Spotify wants to use Apple's platform then Apple gets to charge whatever they want. If Spotify doesn't like it then that isn't Apple's problem. I doubt Spotify would do Apple a solid if the roles were reversed. Trying to compete head to head with Apple on Apple's platform doesn't seem like a recipe for success.
If people like journalism a lot they will pay for it.
Why do you think that? They never have. Most journalism in the last 100 years was not primarily paid for by the end consumer but by advertisements. Most journalism that has tried to bill the end reader directly hasn't worked out because the economic model doesn't work very well.
Think about it for a second. How do you assign a value to information you don't have yet? That's what selling stories It's impossible both for buyer and seller. I don't know what a piece of information is worth until I actually have that information and at that point you can't sell it to me. But a journalist has no way to know what value I assign to a particular bit of information or story. Any price they charge is a pure guess. Newspapers get around this by bundling a wide variety of data in the hopes that I will trust that some of it will be valuable to me. They do not and cannot know what value I will place on any given story so price setting is basically impossible. Advertising works because the advertiser doesn't really care about the value of the information, they just want eyeballs for a given demographic. So the newspapers basically give away the information and make their money from people who don't actually care about the story content.
Why should a new tax have to look after any normal "job"?
Lots of important and necessary jobs are supported by tax dollars including but not limited to police, fire fighters, road construction workers, teachers, soldiers, and many many more. Journalism is unquestionably important and necessary in a free society. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't have tax supported journalism but it's not like we don't support LOTS of "normal" jobs with tax dollars already. Some of our best quality journalism (NPR and PBS) is already supported by tax dollars.
Your workaround won't work, the same federal law gives the feds sole authority to decide where the timezone boundaries are. No state can move to another timezone without congress writing a bill to allow it.
It does require federal approval for a state to change time zones but importantly changing time zones explicitly does NOT require an act of congress. It merely requires petitioning the Department of Transportation for a change which is obviously a much easier hurdle.
Not nearly as useful as having exposure to at least *some* sunlight in the morning before a person start's their work day.
Disagree. It is FAR more useful to me to have the extra hour of daylight in the evening and I think most others
Exposure to even just 15 minutes of sunlight in the morning boosts seratonin levels, which in turn boosts melatonin production in the evening and is vital for having healthy and restful sleep...
That's fine but DST doesn't really impact this. Sunrise where I live on Dec 21 last year was 8:01am. Most people are already at work by that point of the day. Speaking locally, our school district starts their day before the sun rises for a sizable chunk of the school year when standard time is in effect. DST would not change this at all.
Furthermore any improvements from the cycle you mention are typically drowned out by other effects including but not limited to electronic device exposure, social schedules, indoor lighting, and a host of other factors. The extremely modest improvement in sleep by some people from a few minutes of morning daylight is not nearly enough justification.
You're talking about a "nice to have", but comparing it to something that we are biologically adapted to, which is to function primarily during the day.... well, as I've said before on this subject, evolution is not a democracy.
No YOU are talking about a "nice to have". The adaptation you are talking about is an extremely mild one that we can and do routinely ignore.
Because that's the way the laws were written a few decades back when they implemented the current system. Not saying it is good or bad, just that that's what happened. Canada evidently wrote their laws differently which is neither better nor worse - just a different solution to the same problem. For whatever reason the federal law in the US allows states to opt out of DST permanently but does not permit opting in permanently. Not sure why but that's what happened. Since this is a federal law it requires congress to change it.
There is evidently a workaround that at least one state is considering which is to move their time zone to the next one over (which states evidently can do) and then opt out of DST. Same effect on a technicality in the law.
For the record I'm STRONGLY in favor of DST all year round. More daylight in the evening is a good thing.
The rest mass of an electron is pretty much a single value... in fact it's a fundamental constant you could say.
Not what I'm talking about. PBS Space Time has a very good video which explains what I'm talking about far more eloquently than I probably could. Totally worth watching.
Wouldn't this then imply that sound should be able to pass, at least in part, through a vacuum?
No. By definition sound cannot pass through a vacuum. Oversimplifying here but sound is defined as a pressure wave through a medium. No medium = no sound.
If sound itself has mass, then sound itself isn't a vacuum..
Probably an imprecise statement. It's not that sound has mass so much as that it carries energy which has an effect on mass of the medium through which it travels. I've never really thought about it explicitly but it makes some sense that sound and mass would have some relationship. (E=mc^2 and all that)
If you get into the weeds of it, mass doesn't actually mean what your intuition probably tells you. Particles don't actually have a mass that is a single value. What we think of as mass is really just the expected value but at any given time it can vary according to a probability distribution. Also there is the fact that if you add up the weight of the particles in a molecule it's common for the weight of the molecule to be different from the weight of it's constituent particles. Energy into our out of a system can often affect mass in some subtle and not so subtle ways.
Seriously, why? CSS is meant to make pages prettier. Does it need math functions? Are they going to make turing complete?
You do realize that EVERYTHING on a computer is a math function sooner or later, right? Any why not have math functions? Just because you can't think of a use for it doesn't mean nobody else can. SVG and MathML make use of CSS and the utility there seems fairly straightforward. Can you not imagine CSS math functions being used to display math data better than it is now?
Who in their right mind would get on one of these after two accidents in six months?
I would. Seriously, two accidents compared to how many tens of thousands of trips and passenger miles? I take bigger risks every day on my morning commute to work and I'm FAR more likely to die in my car on any given trip even adjusting to make the trips statistically comparable.
Sure, the individual chance of the plane deciding to give up on takeoff despite the best efforts of well trained pilots is very low. But it's clearly not low enough.
I'm rather confident the appropriate regulators will conduct an appropriate investigation and figure the problem out. In the mean time the actual risk is remarkably low and not worthy of panicking over. We don't know the details about what caused the Ethiopian crash so it's highly premature to declare this aircraft to be dangerous.
"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham, adding "Why bother? We're now living in what's quickly becoming a cashless society, where credit cards or electronic payments on your phone rule."
That's because he is rich or at least relatively so and clueless about how lots of people actually live. Poor people don't get this option. Credit cards don't work well in remote areas without network connections. Good luck doing a Venmo in the middle of Alaska. Something like 15% of Americans don't have bank accounts or credit cards or debit cards and many cannot get them under reasonable terms even if they wanted to. Cash isn't going away any time soon and this guy is an idiot if he really believes it will.
"Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world," Warren wrote in a post on the blogging platform Medium. "It's a great story -- but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets."
Except none of them is actually a monopoly. Facebook might come closest with social networking but even then to call it a monopoly is something of a stretch. Amazon and Google aren't monopolies in any serious sense of the word. Yes they are 800lb gorillas in their respective space but not monopolies unless you define the market so narrowly as to make the term lose meaning.
Believe me, I'm all for breaking up and regulating companies if/when they become problems but this isn't it. The companies that need to be broken up are the large banks. THEY are a threat to the financial stability of the country. Look to the events of 2008 if you need evidence. The big tech companies are not even close to being a serious systemic threat.
Update: In a statement, Warren's team said that the proposal would also apply to Apple. "They would have to structurally separate -- choosing between, for example, running the App Store or offering their own apps," a spokesperson said.
Umm, Apple doesn't really sell much of their own software through the App store. They aren't Microsoft where they have some dominating application like Office. I think these people have no clue how Apple's business actually works or how they make money.
"Activists" Investors is a loaded term that leads you to think of SJW idiots wanting some kind of SJW actions.
Sometimes but most of the time the term simply refers to some greedy corporate raider trying to squeeze the company in such a way that it pumps up the stock price regardless of the long term benefit to the company.
What it appears to be is simply investors suggesting that eBay focus on its core business and ditch distractions.
Possible but doubtful. Usually the argument goes something like saying the company would be worth more split up than it is as a single unit. Frequently this argument is used against conglomerates. This argument is sometimes correct but it tends to get over used and it's not at all clear if it applies here. Wouldn't surprise me either way.
Ebay is also adding two directors to its board, including Jesse Cohn of Elliott Management, a hedge fund that disclosed a 4% stake in the company in January and began agitating for change.
This is typical of how these things go. Some rich hedge fund guy sees a chance to squeeze a company by threatening a proxy fight or other forms of pressure on management after buying a significant but still single digit percent stake in the company. Usually happens in companies whose stock price is depressed somewhat.
The eBay site is old, out dated, confusing and cluttered.
Yes and eBay is a pain in the ass to use. But you know what? They can do that because there is nobody well positioned to threaten them. They have lots of buyers and lots of sellers with no sign of that changing. Their growth prospects might not be great but they're going to be hard to displace. They are the closest think there is to monopsony for selling used and surplus stuff online.
I imagine the nanoparticles could be used on a digital camera sensor to simulate the effect.
Most digital camera sensors already can see in the infrared spectrum. They just add filters to limit what is recorded to the visual spectrum. Your smartphone can probably do it. Here's how to show it. Turn on your smartphone camera and grab your TV remote control. Point the remote at the camera and start pushing buttons. You should see the (normally invisible) light from your remote on screen.
Fun fact, you can get a modification to your DSLR camera to remove the IR and UV spectrum filters (called a full spectrum conversion. You can do some really cool photography this way.
Because requirements change with society. Because other software changes. Because machines improve and can do a better job. Because software has advanced a LOT in the last 30 years. Because computer hardware has improved a LOT in the last 30 years. Because the design of the original system was based in the limitations of the hardware of the day and a lot of compromises were made that hurt efficiency. Because it's expensive to maintain legacy systems. Because if it fails it might be really hard to restore. Because worker efficiency and morale can be improved. Because it serves the customers/taxpayers better. The list goes on and on. Just because something works as designed doesn't mean that design remains relevant or sufficiently capable. A Model T can still be driven on today's roads but I don't think you'd want one as a daily driver.
Are they using bits of leather and bird wings dipped in soot? The term "pickup truck" predates computers.
One might be forgiven for wondering that. No, they have a shitty computer system which barely works but there is no budget provided by our legislature to update. Just guessing but the original software designers probably programmed in a limited number of types of vehicles and the cost to update the system or all the records is prohibitive. Think of it as sort of a Y2K style problem that never got resolved so people figured out workarounds out of necessity.
If it fulfils the requirements the state of the art can go fuck itself.
I'm not saying upgrade for no reason. My company has several industrial presses we use daily which are older than I am and they work great. They're not state of the art but they do the job and their efficiency isn't too far down the performance curve. But they are the exception that proves the rule. Computer systems have advanced dramatically in the last 30 years. Presses not so much. It's a VERY rare piece of software that wouldn't benefit from some of the last 40 years of software development.
This is because they budget for the acquisition of the equipment and software but somehow it never occurs to anyone to budget for future improvements and upgrades to keep the technology modern on an ongoing basis. So they end up with systems that work as originally designed but fail to keep pace with improvement in technology. There are a lot of these sorts of systems in the military. The military to this day still uses 8" floppy disks which have been obsolete technology for 40 years. My car is a pickup truck but my state's outdated registration system lists it as a station wagon because it relies on old and hard to fix technology and that was the best it could do.
Now you'll hear some idiots saying "ain't broke don't fix it" which is is a poor argument for technology that clearly so far behind the state of the art. While it might still do its original task as designed, it no longer does so efficiently nor can it take advantage of improvements in the state of the art. It also ends up depending on hardware that often cannot be easily replaced should it fail. It also becomes hard/expensive to train people to use/fix/maintain it. Databases (and the people depending on them) routinely benefit from being able to efficiently talk to one another and systems that haven't been updated in 30 years tend to be remarkably bad at doing this.
People who think superhero films are the height of film making.
Judging by the amount of money people are paying to see them you could make a good argument that they are, at least by some metrics. Maybe not to art house snobs but they are good movies and many people rate them as their favorites. Ranking movies by the sum of the enjoyment they provide is not a silly metric. I have to admit I've watched The Avengers and Star Wars many more times and gotten far more enjoyment from them than Casablanca or Citizen Kane or whatever art house movie you think should be put on a pedestal.
According to RT, these are the top 100 movies OF ALL TIME (their words): Who can take this site seriously?
I take it as seriously as any other list which is to say not very. It's just a list based on their metric of aggregated subjective opinions. You can have your own list based on whatever metrics make you happy and it won't be one bit more or less valid. There is no objectively "correct" list of best movies. Obviously you don't agree with their list but that doesn't make it or you wrong. Your opinion is yours and none of us are required to share it. Clearly to many people Black Panther legitimately is the best move of all time. Whose to say they are wrong? Certainly not you and definitely not me. I don't think Citizen Kane is the best movie ever either but I don't think people who do are crazy.
The only usecase I've seen for blockchain that makes sense is the original usecase, a currency, and even then, only for some transactions, not for buying coffee at your local shop.
Blockchain conceivably is useful any time you might use a ledger or a chain of custody. I'm an accountant and there is active discussion among the accounting community if some version of blockchain might have utility over double entry bookkeeping in some circumstances. (spoiler: not sure yet but good chance) This isn't to say that blockchain is some magic bullet that will solve every problem and is useful in every case. But it seems likely that the technology will find some utility and the most interesting use cases are probably not as a currency.
Blockchain is only useful when you need a (very slow) public database and no one trusts anyone.
Correct and there are a non-trivial number of use cases like that. And your statement refutes your earlier argument. The slowness of the blockchain database along with cost is a big part of the reason why blockchain and currency don't make much sense for significant transaction volume. (There are other problems too but those are the biggies)
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You'd think the other cities in the area would have learned from this vulnerability and fixed the problem.
Believe it or not, it's not at all unlikely that word of the problem never got to the right people. And even if they were aware of it it's not axiomatic that they would be able to fix the problem. They might not have the budget or it might require coordination with (possibly uncooperative) other municipalities or it might be technologically impossible to "fix" the problem with existing equipment and budget. Stuff like this usually requires budgeting and possibly even taxpayer approval and doesn't tend to happen overnight.
Although that would require local governments to be competent.
Sigh... Just because not everything happens perfectly all the time does not imply local government is incompetent. Did it occur to you that the tech involved might be old and that the taxpayers haven't approved the money to replace the equipment? It's entirely plausible they don't have the resources to deal with the problem even if they are aware of it.
The meme that government is incompetent is really tired. No institution does everything perfectly, public or private. Just because they have a failure in one task it does not follow that they are generally incompetent. There are lots of things you don't do well either. Should we declare you to be incompetent every time you overlook something or don't handle it perfectly?
From the photon point of view, there is no time, all path are instantaneous, short (human size) or astronomical (accross the observable universe), for the photon it ages exactly a perfectly zero seconds.
I accept this as apparently factual. What I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around is the relationship between the statement above and how photons travel through spacetime if they do not experience time. Speed = distance / time and photons have the constant speed = c. But if time for them = 0 then that fundamental mathematical relationship breaks down and is undefined. (cannot divide by zero but we are essentially saying c=dist/0) My confusion is, how does a photon travel a distance through spacetime non-instantly (which it clearly does) if it does not experience time? Photons travel at a fixed rate through spacetime which is demonstrably not infinite and has time in the definition of that rate.
I expect the answer to be some non-intuitive reference frame of the observer sort of answer or something about velocities in spacetime (as opposed to space) being constant but I can't seem to puzzle it out.
Light scatters in all directions (for the most part) from the origin of a single point of event.
No, a photon will travel in a straight line from it's point of origin unless acted upon by an outside force. You are describing what happens to the innumerable photons that are emitted from a typical light source which is not the same thing. The photons that we see from these distant sources have traveled a long distance in a straight line (*) to get to us.
(* straight in this context is not the same Euclidean geometry straight line you might have learned about in high school)
So if it happened 13 billions year ago, how is it still observable?
Because the universe expanded faster than the speed of light. Space itself is expanding to this day and so some light that was emitted a long time ago is just now reaching us. Some light that was emitted a long time ago will never reach us because it's too far away and space is expanding too fast for it to ever get to us.
The cops are overworked people who get rewarded (promotions, more pay, peer respect) by results. Therefore they will take a two-dimensional view through a three-dimensional person, say "this 2D line fits this image", and stitch you up.
Sometimes that is true and there is evidence to support that point of view in many places. But I happen to be personal friends with a number of cops and that description is not one size fits all. Not even close. A lot of them really are genuine public servants trying to do a good job. Their incentives have been unfortunately warped in an unfortunate direction sometimes but most of them that I've interacted with are aware of this fact and try their best to not be influenced by it when it happens. They aren't robots with no awareness of the social implications of what they are asked to do. It's actually because of that fact that when they do step over the line and start violating civil rights that it becomes that much more inexcusable because in most cases they know what they are doing is wrong.
Yes, and it would appear that being a man of the cloth provides you absolutely zero credibility these days with regards to that as well.
Why on earth should being a "man of the cloth" provide any special credibility? If anything it should be a strike against them given that they are in most cases literally selling a false and/or unverifiable claims of the supernatural. (those churches get built with real money that came from someone and someone pays the pastor's salary) They get away with it mostly because of social tradition but it's not difficult to make the case that what they are doing fits the description of fraud or at the very least a hoax. I'm not saying this guy is (intentionally) doing anything reprehensible but he doesn't deserve any special trust or credibility just because he preaches on Sunday.
Sadly some bank employees often do not even attempt to analyse anything. They spend the smallest amount of time/effort to finish the task, for example forward some data without validating it.
That would make them exactly like some percent of employees in literally every other job you could possibly mention. I have yet to see a company without some percent of employees that fit exactly your description.
You'd think a pastor would be able to trust that his word would be taken seriously and in good faith, but not even our pillars of the community get the benefit of the doubt anymore.
Why should being a pastor give anyone a pass? Someone who makes their living telling people that they should believe in an invisible man in the sky and a special book and give the church money or they will burn can easily be interpreted as a con man. No I don't really think that this person is a con artist (not intentionally anyway) but I'm puzzled by people who think being a religious leader somehow makes a person automatically trustworthy or a "pillar of the community". If anything I regard religious leaders as more suspect than most because they are selling hope on a false (or at least unverifiable) premise. Many religious leaders abuse the trust placed in them - see how the Catholic church continues to employ and protect pedophiles for a prominent example.
I fully agree that this case was handled extremely badly and that this guy probably is a good and decent person. I'm fully aware that Wells Fargo is a company run by untrustworthy asshats with plenty of evidence to back that up. I don't agree that his choice of vocation should grant him any special privileges any more than you or me. That's how abuses of position and power happen.
The police are not on your side, unfortunately. Don't talk to them without a lawyer, you will get burned.
You are correct that they are not on your side and that you should be very careful in your dealings with them. However it is no axiomatic that you will get burned. Most of the time the cops are decent people trying their best to do the right thing. The problem is you can't tell when they aren't so you have to defend yourself by being careful in your dealings with them because it can backfire horribly if you aren't careful.
It added that the App Store has generated $120 billion for developers while offering users a secure platform, and that Spotify is seeking to side to sidestep the rules that every other app follows.
I always laugh when they quote revenue figures instead of profit. It doesn't matter how much revenue they generated if it isn't making any profit. As a professor of mine once said, you can make a LOT of revenue selling $2 bills for $1 - you just won't be in business very long doing it. You see this all the time in entrepreneurial magazines. They'll quote how much revenue some new business is doing and leave out the fact they are losing money hand over fist.
I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't use Spotify so I don't really care what they do. My initial impulse is that if Spotify wants to use Apple's platform then Apple gets to charge whatever they want. If Spotify doesn't like it then that isn't Apple's problem. I doubt Spotify would do Apple a solid if the roles were reversed. Trying to compete head to head with Apple on Apple's platform doesn't seem like a recipe for success.
If people like journalism a lot they will pay for it.
Why do you think that? They never have. Most journalism in the last 100 years was not primarily paid for by the end consumer but by advertisements. Most journalism that has tried to bill the end reader directly hasn't worked out because the economic model doesn't work very well.
Think about it for a second. How do you assign a value to information you don't have yet? That's what selling stories It's impossible both for buyer and seller. I don't know what a piece of information is worth until I actually have that information and at that point you can't sell it to me. But a journalist has no way to know what value I assign to a particular bit of information or story. Any price they charge is a pure guess. Newspapers get around this by bundling a wide variety of data in the hopes that I will trust that some of it will be valuable to me. They do not and cannot know what value I will place on any given story so price setting is basically impossible. Advertising works because the advertiser doesn't really care about the value of the information, they just want eyeballs for a given demographic. So the newspapers basically give away the information and make their money from people who don't actually care about the story content.
Why should a new tax have to look after any normal "job"?
Lots of important and necessary jobs are supported by tax dollars including but not limited to police, fire fighters, road construction workers, teachers, soldiers, and many many more. Journalism is unquestionably important and necessary in a free society. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't have tax supported journalism but it's not like we don't support LOTS of "normal" jobs with tax dollars already. Some of our best quality journalism (NPR and PBS) is already supported by tax dollars.
Your workaround won't work, the same federal law gives the feds sole authority to decide where the timezone boundaries are. No state can move to another timezone without congress writing a bill to allow it.
It does require federal approval for a state to change time zones but importantly changing time zones explicitly does NOT require an act of congress. It merely requires petitioning the Department of Transportation for a change which is obviously a much easier hurdle.
Not nearly as useful as having exposure to at least *some* sunlight in the morning before a person start's their work day.
Disagree. It is FAR more useful to me to have the extra hour of daylight in the evening and I think most others
Exposure to even just 15 minutes of sunlight in the morning boosts seratonin levels, which in turn boosts melatonin production in the evening and is vital for having healthy and restful sleep...
That's fine but DST doesn't really impact this. Sunrise where I live on Dec 21 last year was 8:01am. Most people are already at work by that point of the day. Speaking locally, our school district starts their day before the sun rises for a sizable chunk of the school year when standard time is in effect. DST would not change this at all.
Furthermore any improvements from the cycle you mention are typically drowned out by other effects including but not limited to electronic device exposure, social schedules, indoor lighting, and a host of other factors. The extremely modest improvement in sleep by some people from a few minutes of morning daylight is not nearly enough justification.
You're talking about a "nice to have", but comparing it to something that we are biologically adapted to, which is to function primarily during the day.... well, as I've said before on this subject, evolution is not a democracy.
No YOU are talking about a "nice to have". The adaptation you are talking about is an extremely mild one that we can and do routinely ignore.
Why can't the individual States decide?
Because that's the way the laws were written a few decades back when they implemented the current system. Not saying it is good or bad, just that that's what happened. Canada evidently wrote their laws differently which is neither better nor worse - just a different solution to the same problem. For whatever reason the federal law in the US allows states to opt out of DST permanently but does not permit opting in permanently. Not sure why but that's what happened. Since this is a federal law it requires congress to change it.
There is evidently a workaround that at least one state is considering which is to move their time zone to the next one over (which states evidently can do) and then opt out of DST. Same effect on a technicality in the law.
For the record I'm STRONGLY in favor of DST all year round. More daylight in the evening is a good thing.
The rest mass of an electron is pretty much a single value... in fact it's a fundamental constant you could say.
Not what I'm talking about. PBS Space Time has a very good video which explains what I'm talking about far more eloquently than I probably could. Totally worth watching.
Wouldn't this then imply that sound should be able to pass, at least in part, through a vacuum?
No. By definition sound cannot pass through a vacuum. Oversimplifying here but sound is defined as a pressure wave through a medium. No medium = no sound.
If sound itself has mass, then sound itself isn't a vacuum..
Probably an imprecise statement. It's not that sound has mass so much as that it carries energy which has an effect on mass of the medium through which it travels. I've never really thought about it explicitly but it makes some sense that sound and mass would have some relationship. (E=mc^2 and all that)
If you get into the weeds of it, mass doesn't actually mean what your intuition probably tells you. Particles don't actually have a mass that is a single value. What we think of as mass is really just the expected value but at any given time it can vary according to a probability distribution. Also there is the fact that if you add up the weight of the particles in a molecule it's common for the weight of the molecule to be different from the weight of it's constituent particles. Energy into our out of a system can often affect mass in some subtle and not so subtle ways.
Seriously, why? CSS is meant to make pages prettier. Does it need math functions? Are they going to make turing complete?
You do realize that EVERYTHING on a computer is a math function sooner or later, right? Any why not have math functions? Just because you can't think of a use for it doesn't mean nobody else can. SVG and MathML make use of CSS and the utility there seems fairly straightforward. Can you not imagine CSS math functions being used to display math data better than it is now?
Who in their right mind would get on one of these after two accidents in six months?
I would. Seriously, two accidents compared to how many tens of thousands of trips and passenger miles? I take bigger risks every day on my morning commute to work and I'm FAR more likely to die in my car on any given trip even adjusting to make the trips statistically comparable.
Sure, the individual chance of the plane deciding to give up on takeoff despite the best efforts of well trained pilots is very low. But it's clearly not low enough.
I'm rather confident the appropriate regulators will conduct an appropriate investigation and figure the problem out. In the mean time the actual risk is remarkably low and not worthy of panicking over. We don't know the details about what caused the Ethiopian crash so it's highly premature to declare this aircraft to be dangerous.
"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham, adding "Why bother? We're now living in what's quickly becoming a cashless society, where credit cards or electronic payments on your phone rule."
That's because he is rich or at least relatively so and clueless about how lots of people actually live. Poor people don't get this option. Credit cards don't work well in remote areas without network connections. Good luck doing a Venmo in the middle of Alaska. Something like 15% of Americans don't have bank accounts or credit cards or debit cards and many cannot get them under reasonable terms even if they wanted to. Cash isn't going away any time soon and this guy is an idiot if he really believes it will.
"Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world," Warren wrote in a post on the blogging platform Medium. "It's a great story -- but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets."
Except none of them is actually a monopoly. Facebook might come closest with social networking but even then to call it a monopoly is something of a stretch. Amazon and Google aren't monopolies in any serious sense of the word. Yes they are 800lb gorillas in their respective space but not monopolies unless you define the market so narrowly as to make the term lose meaning.
Believe me, I'm all for breaking up and regulating companies if/when they become problems but this isn't it. The companies that need to be broken up are the large banks. THEY are a threat to the financial stability of the country. Look to the events of 2008 if you need evidence. The big tech companies are not even close to being a serious systemic threat.
Update: In a statement, Warren's team said that the proposal would also apply to Apple. "They would have to structurally separate -- choosing between, for example, running the App Store or offering their own apps," a spokesperson said.
Umm, Apple doesn't really sell much of their own software through the App store. They aren't Microsoft where they have some dominating application like Office. I think these people have no clue how Apple's business actually works or how they make money.
"Activists" Investors is a loaded term that leads you to think of SJW idiots wanting some kind of SJW actions.
Sometimes but most of the time the term simply refers to some greedy corporate raider trying to squeeze the company in such a way that it pumps up the stock price regardless of the long term benefit to the company.
What it appears to be is simply investors suggesting that eBay focus on its core business and ditch distractions.
Possible but doubtful. Usually the argument goes something like saying the company would be worth more split up than it is as a single unit. Frequently this argument is used against conglomerates. This argument is sometimes correct but it tends to get over used and it's not at all clear if it applies here. Wouldn't surprise me either way.
Ebay is also adding two directors to its board, including Jesse Cohn of Elliott Management, a hedge fund that disclosed a 4% stake in the company in January and began agitating for change.
This is typical of how these things go. Some rich hedge fund guy sees a chance to squeeze a company by threatening a proxy fight or other forms of pressure on management after buying a significant but still single digit percent stake in the company. Usually happens in companies whose stock price is depressed somewhat.
The eBay site is old, out dated, confusing and cluttered.
Yes and eBay is a pain in the ass to use. But you know what? They can do that because there is nobody well positioned to threaten them. They have lots of buyers and lots of sellers with no sign of that changing. Their growth prospects might not be great but they're going to be hard to displace. They are the closest think there is to monopsony for selling used and surplus stuff online.
I imagine the nanoparticles could be used on a digital camera sensor to simulate the effect.
Most digital camera sensors already can see in the infrared spectrum. They just add filters to limit what is recorded to the visual spectrum. Your smartphone can probably do it. Here's how to show it. Turn on your smartphone camera and grab your TV remote control. Point the remote at the camera and start pushing buttons. You should see the (normally invisible) light from your remote on screen.
Fun fact, you can get a modification to your DSLR camera to remove the IR and UV spectrum filters (called a full spectrum conversion. You can do some really cool photography this way.
And this matters why, exactly?
Because requirements change with society. Because other software changes. Because machines improve and can do a better job. Because software has advanced a LOT in the last 30 years. Because computer hardware has improved a LOT in the last 30 years. Because the design of the original system was based in the limitations of the hardware of the day and a lot of compromises were made that hurt efficiency. Because it's expensive to maintain legacy systems. Because if it fails it might be really hard to restore. Because worker efficiency and morale can be improved. Because it serves the customers/taxpayers better. The list goes on and on. Just because something works as designed doesn't mean that design remains relevant or sufficiently capable. A Model T can still be driven on today's roads but I don't think you'd want one as a daily driver.
Are they using bits of leather and bird wings dipped in soot? The term "pickup truck" predates computers.
One might be forgiven for wondering that. No, they have a shitty computer system which barely works but there is no budget provided by our legislature to update. Just guessing but the original software designers probably programmed in a limited number of types of vehicles and the cost to update the system or all the records is prohibitive. Think of it as sort of a Y2K style problem that never got resolved so people figured out workarounds out of necessity.
If it fulfils the requirements the state of the art can go fuck itself.
I'm not saying upgrade for no reason. My company has several industrial presses we use daily which are older than I am and they work great. They're not state of the art but they do the job and their efficiency isn't too far down the performance curve. But they are the exception that proves the rule. Computer systems have advanced dramatically in the last 30 years. Presses not so much. It's a VERY rare piece of software that wouldn't benefit from some of the last 40 years of software development.
This is because they budget for the acquisition of the equipment and software but somehow it never occurs to anyone to budget for future improvements and upgrades to keep the technology modern on an ongoing basis. So they end up with systems that work as originally designed but fail to keep pace with improvement in technology. There are a lot of these sorts of systems in the military. The military to this day still uses 8" floppy disks which have been obsolete technology for 40 years. My car is a pickup truck but my state's outdated registration system lists it as a station wagon because it relies on old and hard to fix technology and that was the best it could do.
Now you'll hear some idiots saying "ain't broke don't fix it" which is is a poor argument for technology that clearly so far behind the state of the art. While it might still do its original task as designed, it no longer does so efficiently nor can it take advantage of improvements in the state of the art. It also ends up depending on hardware that often cannot be easily replaced should it fail. It also becomes hard/expensive to train people to use/fix/maintain it. Databases (and the people depending on them) routinely benefit from being able to efficiently talk to one another and systems that haven't been updated in 30 years tend to be remarkably bad at doing this.
People who think superhero films are the height of film making.
Judging by the amount of money people are paying to see them you could make a good argument that they are, at least by some metrics. Maybe not to art house snobs but they are good movies and many people rate them as their favorites. Ranking movies by the sum of the enjoyment they provide is not a silly metric. I have to admit I've watched The Avengers and Star Wars many more times and gotten far more enjoyment from them than Casablanca or Citizen Kane or whatever art house movie you think should be put on a pedestal.
According to RT, these are the top 100 movies OF ALL TIME (their words): Who can take this site seriously?
I take it as seriously as any other list which is to say not very. It's just a list based on their metric of aggregated subjective opinions. You can have your own list based on whatever metrics make you happy and it won't be one bit more or less valid. There is no objectively "correct" list of best movies. Obviously you don't agree with their list but that doesn't make it or you wrong. Your opinion is yours and none of us are required to share it. Clearly to many people Black Panther legitimately is the best move of all time. Whose to say they are wrong? Certainly not you and definitely not me. I don't think Citizen Kane is the best movie ever either but I don't think people who do are crazy.
The only usecase I've seen for blockchain that makes sense is the original usecase, a currency, and even then, only for some transactions, not for buying coffee at your local shop.
Blockchain conceivably is useful any time you might use a ledger or a chain of custody. I'm an accountant and there is active discussion among the accounting community if some version of blockchain might have utility over double entry bookkeeping in some circumstances. (spoiler: not sure yet but good chance) This isn't to say that blockchain is some magic bullet that will solve every problem and is useful in every case. But it seems likely that the technology will find some utility and the most interesting use cases are probably not as a currency.
Blockchain is only useful when you need a (very slow) public database and no one trusts anyone.
Correct and there are a non-trivial number of use cases like that. And your statement refutes your earlier argument. The slowness of the blockchain database along with cost is a big part of the reason why blockchain and currency don't make much sense for significant transaction volume. (There are other problems too but those are the biggies)