We have had it in the UK for at least a decade. A supermarket called Waitrose allows you to take a hand scanner and scan your stuff as you put it in your trolley. They are still doing it so the fraud must be at an acceptable level, as with self-service checkouts.
However, if we the human race are going to finally band together and solve our problems as a species, we are going to need one language.
But which one? English is popular but entirely inadequate for many cultures. There are things that simply cannot be expressed in English, at least not in any useful and economical way.
I guess we could all adopt one culture, presumably Chinese since that's the most popular... But then again, Chinese culture isn't homogeneous either. Neither is English of course.
Hmm... I guess we had better just hope that we can somehow get along without a common language. Ironically most of the EU manages it just fine, except for the British who invented the world's most common tongue. It's almost as if being monolingual has some kind of negative impact on an individual's ability to understand other cultures.
Does it really make any difference, given that your car as a unique identifier written on it and licence plat recognition systems are cheap and pervasive?
I'd still prefer a desktop though. If I don't need the portability then the desktop will have superior cooling and be able to maintain performance for longer. Plus it's easier to throw more storage in later, where as with laptops you generally have to replace what you have or go external.
Laptop screens and keyboards are not very ergonomic either...
Does every game released on Steam work with Windows 10? Are all compatibility issues resolved?
Even if upgrading is an option, it's still shitty that games you thought you bought don't come with an offline mode. I can still play games on tape I bought in the 80s, because I own them. What happens when Valve goes bust?
At the very least Valve should be clear that you are not buying a game, just a temporary licence.
That ain't gonna happen because the last mile is still way too expensive to make investing in a new network a risk investors are willing to take.
The only way to fix this is local loop unbundling with mandatory minimum speeds. Split up the companies that own the last mile, with the last mile owner offering access to any ISP who wants it and charging enough to cover the upgrades required. Also mandate that all new installations are fibre.
Due to broadband being a natural monopoly there is no other way. It has to be forced.
Part of the problem is that we have hardware acceleration for certain operations, and if codecs want to do stuff outside that then performance can become an issue for playback. Most streaming devices don't have enough CPU power in their little ARMs to handle decoding, it has to be hardware accelerated by the GPU.
Then again if anyone can argue successfully for hardware changes it's Netflix.
Actually we mostly use gas for heating, it's a lot cheaper. The old people freezing couldn't afford that either.
Also, US nuclear plants get free insurance too. The government provides basically unlimited cover because no insurance company would cover the potential trillions in losses from the worst possible accident.
There was a documentary about this on NHK World earlier this year. Nissan is really the only one that has invested much in pure EV tech. The Prius drivetrain is very complex and designed for hybrid use, e.g. the engine starts over a certain speed no matter what and performance is relatively low.
Think about where most Japanese manufacturers are now. Aside from Nissan they are all heavily invested in hybrid technology, and even throwing money at hydrogen, at a time when the world seems to have decided that BEV is the way forward and is planning to ban fossil fuel vehicles entirely within a few decades. Given how long new models take to develop, and their lack of experience with EVs, they need to catch up fast.
And many of their part suppliers are in the same boat. The people making ICE control modules need to learn about EV drivetrains and how to control them, and a lot of that stuff is already patented. When you think of all the parts that go into an ICE, the spark plugs, the pistons, the engine block, the alternator, the starter motor, the fuel injection system, the cooling system etc. there are a lot of companies involved and in need of a pivot pretty soon.
I'm actually on my second Leaf. Anyway, I don't know about the eGolf specifically. The Chinese version uses locally made parts. It's not just the parts though, it's the patents they have to licence.
The eGolf is okay I guess. I has the same issue as the Leaf with a passively cooled battery, except that it seems to be even worse in the eGolf as it limits you to two rapid charges in succession and the battery is relatively small.
Where similar measures have been tried in other countries it has been found to be effective at reducing the total amount of plastic being used for bags of one kind of another. It seems that people use more of something if it is free*.
* Obviously the cost is rolled into their shopping bill, but that's psychologically very different to being charged a few cents at the checkout.
I guess it's going to be different for every language, depending on how much time the have put into it, if they have staff who speak that language on the team etc. It seems to work okay for Spanish and French, but I don't know how different Portuguese is...
And you can still install extensions from outside the Chrome store, you just download them, enable dev mode and load them up that way.
It's sufficiently difficult enough to deter users being tricked into doing it by dodgy web sites, but easy enough that it doesn't really affect developers and nerds.
This has been a bit of a wake-up call for the Chinese, and they are pushing hard to develop domestic tech to replace the US tech they currently rely on. Maybe if ZTE survives that effort will be lessened, but no matter what a lot of money is now going into R&D that directly harms US companies.
Try using Google Translate and Bing Translate on a random story from srad.jp. Srad used to be Slashdot Japan before the name change, and the story summaries are written in an informal tone similar to Slashdot ones (but better edited!)
Google:
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Internet mail order order due to erroneous judgment of smart speaker will not be contracted
First of all, about electronic commerce using smart speakers, smart speakers have the ability to order orders to net mail orderers by voice. However, when an order occurred due to misunderstanding or misunderstanding, guidelines on how to handle that order were not shown. In this revised bill, it is clearly stated that "contract through AI speaker has not been established" for misrecognized orders, and it is said that businesses must properly deal with these problems. Also, even if the ordering party makes a mistake, if the system is such that confirmation is not made for the order, the ordering party may be able to argue the invalidity of the contract.
You can see some trivial mistakes, like how two different words in Japanese are translated into the same English word "misunderstanding", but the meaning is clear and things like the ministry name are correct and the sentences are actual English.
Bing:
Due to misjudgment of transdermal production Ministry said, smart speaker e-store purchase contract would suppose
There are features for e-commerce using the first source to speaker smart speaker audio to Internet mail order companies order allows. But the positives and say mistakes in order occurs, the order what to do of the guidelines was not shown. We're in this amendment, and describing "the agreement through the AI speakers has not been established" in probable order operators must respond properly on these issues. In addition, says is possible if the system check do not for the order if the buyer did mistakes, the officials can claim contract invalid.
It's like something out of the 90s era Bablefish. Not only is the interpretation of the original Japanese poor, but the resulting English sentences are broken too.
Okay. So we have an expensive nuclear plant that requires a supply of fuel and generates high level waste. It can at least load follow thanks to the batteries.
We also have solar and wind, which are much cleaner and cheaper and do the same thing all year round.
Why would anyone invest in nuclear? Even if it lives up to all the hype, it's still not as good as renewables + battery.
In the UK our new nuclear plant is guaranteed $130/MWh. That's about twice the cost of offshore wind + battery storage. The government also provides free, unlimited value insurance and subsidised waste disposal.
Slashdot Mirror
Your argument still boils down to having to use fuel and then reprocess it and eventually dispose of it is somehow better than no fuel.
The only thing as good as no fuel is no fuel.
We have had it in the UK for at least a decade. A supermarket called Waitrose allows you to take a hand scanner and scan your stuff as you put it in your trolley. They are still doing it so the fraud must be at an acceptable level, as with self-service checkouts.
However, if we the human race are going to finally band together and solve our problems as a species, we are going to need one language.
But which one? English is popular but entirely inadequate for many cultures. There are things that simply cannot be expressed in English, at least not in any useful and economical way.
I guess we could all adopt one culture, presumably Chinese since that's the most popular... But then again, Chinese culture isn't homogeneous either. Neither is English of course.
Hmm... I guess we had better just hope that we can somehow get along without a common language. Ironically most of the EU manages it just fine, except for the British who invented the world's most common tongue. It's almost as if being monolingual has some kind of negative impact on an individual's ability to understand other cultures.
China isn't communist. It's regulated capitalism.
Does it really make any difference, given that your car as a unique identifier written on it and licence plat recognition systems are cheap and pervasive?
Both Windows XP and Windows Vista let everyone spy on you.
The linked page says 15.2% of users have an AMD video card.
In a few years we will start to realize just how much of our culture has been lost to DRM.
I'd still prefer a desktop though. If I don't need the portability then the desktop will have superior cooling and be able to maintain performance for longer. Plus it's easier to throw more storage in later, where as with laptops you generally have to replace what you have or go external.
Laptop screens and keyboards are not very ergonomic either...
Does every game released on Steam work with Windows 10? Are all compatibility issues resolved?
Even if upgrading is an option, it's still shitty that games you thought you bought don't come with an offline mode. I can still play games on tape I bought in the 80s, because I own them. What happens when Valve goes bust?
At the very least Valve should be clear that you are not buying a game, just a temporary licence.
That ain't gonna happen because the last mile is still way too expensive to make investing in a new network a risk investors are willing to take.
The only way to fix this is local loop unbundling with mandatory minimum speeds. Split up the companies that own the last mile, with the last mile owner offering access to any ISP who wants it and charging enough to cover the upgrades required. Also mandate that all new installations are fibre.
Due to broadband being a natural monopoly there is no other way. It has to be forced.
Well, yeah... I mean what does the party have anything to do with this being the right decision?
Part of the problem is that we have hardware acceleration for certain operations, and if codecs want to do stuff outside that then performance can become an issue for playback. Most streaming devices don't have enough CPU power in their little ARMs to handle decoding, it has to be hardware accelerated by the GPU.
Then again if anyone can argue successfully for hardware changes it's Netflix.
They aren't talking about adopting anything, merely not abandoning research into it so early due to less than stellar results.
How is reprocessing fuel better than not having any fuel to start with?
Actually we mostly use gas for heating, it's a lot cheaper. The old people freezing couldn't afford that either.
Also, US nuclear plants get free insurance too. The government provides basically unlimited cover because no insurance company would cover the potential trillions in losses from the worst possible accident.
There was a documentary about this on NHK World earlier this year. Nissan is really the only one that has invested much in pure EV tech. The Prius drivetrain is very complex and designed for hybrid use, e.g. the engine starts over a certain speed no matter what and performance is relatively low.
Think about where most Japanese manufacturers are now. Aside from Nissan they are all heavily invested in hybrid technology, and even throwing money at hydrogen, at a time when the world seems to have decided that BEV is the way forward and is planning to ban fossil fuel vehicles entirely within a few decades. Given how long new models take to develop, and their lack of experience with EVs, they need to catch up fast.
And many of their part suppliers are in the same boat. The people making ICE control modules need to learn about EV drivetrains and how to control them, and a lot of that stuff is already patented. When you think of all the parts that go into an ICE, the spark plugs, the pistons, the engine block, the alternator, the starter motor, the fuel injection system, the cooling system etc. there are a lot of companies involved and in need of a pivot pretty soon.
I'm actually on my second Leaf. Anyway, I don't know about the eGolf specifically. The Chinese version uses locally made parts. It's not just the parts though, it's the patents they have to licence.
The eGolf is okay I guess. I has the same issue as the Leaf with a passively cooled battery, except that it seems to be even worse in the eGolf as it limits you to two rapid charges in succession and the battery is relatively small.
Where similar measures have been tried in other countries it has been found to be effective at reducing the total amount of plastic being used for bags of one kind of another. It seems that people use more of something if it is free*.
* Obviously the cost is rolled into their shopping bill, but that's psychologically very different to being charged a few cents at the checkout.
I guess it's going to be different for every language, depending on how much time the have put into it, if they have staff who speak that language on the team etc. It seems to work okay for Spanish and French, but I don't know how different Portuguese is...
And you can still install extensions from outside the Chrome store, you just download them, enable dev mode and load them up that way.
It's sufficiently difficult enough to deter users being tricked into doing it by dodgy web sites, but easy enough that it doesn't really affect developers and nerds.
This has been a bit of a wake-up call for the Chinese, and they are pushing hard to develop domestic tech to replace the US tech they currently rely on. Maybe if ZTE survives that effort will be lessened, but no matter what a lot of money is now going into R&D that directly harms US companies.
Try using Google Translate and Bing Translate on a random story from srad.jp. Srad used to be Slashdot Japan before the name change, and the story summaries are written in an informal tone similar to Slashdot ones (but better edited!)
Google:
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Internet mail order order due to erroneous judgment of smart speaker will not be contracted
First of all, about electronic commerce using smart speakers, smart speakers have the ability to order orders to net mail orderers by voice. However, when an order occurred due to misunderstanding or misunderstanding, guidelines on how to handle that order were not shown. In this revised bill, it is clearly stated that "contract through AI speaker has not been established" for misrecognized orders, and it is said that businesses must properly deal with these problems. Also, even if the ordering party makes a mistake, if the system is such that confirmation is not made for the order, the ordering party may be able to argue the invalidity of the contract.
You can see some trivial mistakes, like how two different words in Japanese are translated into the same English word "misunderstanding", but the meaning is clear and things like the ministry name are correct and the sentences are actual English.
Bing:
Due to misjudgment of transdermal production Ministry said, smart speaker e-store purchase contract would suppose
There are features for e-commerce using the first source to speaker smart speaker audio to Internet mail order companies order allows. But the positives and say mistakes in order occurs, the order what to do of the guidelines was not shown. We're in this amendment, and describing "the agreement through the AI speakers has not been established" in probable order operators must respond properly on these issues. In addition, says is possible if the system check do not for the order if the buyer did mistakes, the officials can claim contract invalid.
It's like something out of the 90s era Bablefish. Not only is the interpretation of the original Japanese poor, but the resulting English sentences are broken too.
Now imagine energy storage with nuclear power.
Okay. So we have an expensive nuclear plant that requires a supply of fuel and generates high level waste. It can at least load follow thanks to the batteries.
We also have solar and wind, which are much cleaner and cheaper and do the same thing all year round.
Why would anyone invest in nuclear? Even if it lives up to all the hype, it's still not as good as renewables + battery.
In the UK our new nuclear plant is guaranteed $130/MWh. That's about twice the cost of offshore wind + battery storage. The government also provides free, unlimited value insurance and subsidised waste disposal.