If the US Government was directing a ton of money to a space based internet system run by SpaceX or Amazon, one would imagine/. community would go crazy with people yelling about unfair subsidies. But somehow if the same money gets dropped in AT&T/Verizon's lap it's ok? Despite the fact that these legacy telcos haven't done crap for rural broadband...ever. And indeed tend to fight community based providers that try and pick up the slack.
I'll just add that as someone who inhabits an area where these things are currently in the wild, and seems them all the time. The Cruze, Waymo, etc are still only 50 percent successful at navigating a basic four way stop. Especially with the ubiquitous 'California stop' methods of the other human drivers. Bicyclists, pedestrians, double parked UPS trucks. There is such a long way to go on this.
Dear Mr. Hackett. I fear your automotive start-up will never succeed unless you are able to excite 'investors' into pouring money into your scheme with outlandish self driving claims. This whole truth thing will spell doom for your small firm.
There is a very personal grudge between the current Whitehouse and associates against all things Bezos. Best AWS can hope for is to sue for time and hope there is a changing of the guard.
FTFA "The success of the project hinged on clear skies on several continents simultaneously and exquisite coordination between the eight far-flung teams."
Why are clear skies a requirement of a radio telescope? Or is this just the popular press version of a science story?
Maybe its better when both sides are at each other's throats. When both sides agree we usually end up invading somewhere or get crap like this.
Not sure if my recollection is 100% on this, but I recall a similar issue with the National Weather Service (NWS). They put up the satellites, staff professional meteorologists, run super computers, etc. But lobbyists were trying to get the NWS's weather forecast website shutdown because it challenged weather.com, and other weather sites for views. And being completely un-American, the NWS site didn't even have ads (!)
Granted this story is/. click baity-ish. But there is some value in reading between the lines. If I am involved in both business and personal finance (which I am) I want to know where things are headed in the future,. So while the typical folks that want to make every story political bash it out in -1 Score land, I would say that there are more and more dots pointing to economic slowdown later this year. That's hardly surprising news given that we've had a long economic expansion and many other pundits and experts have opined the same thing. But if I'm looking to re-balance a portfolio or make some big purchasing decisions I do want to take this into account. February jobs report was an outlier it was said, this report is an outlier its being said. But a few more of these makes a trend.
It's been said before, but worth reiterating. The operations that were 'fined', likely run out of a condo suite, will fold without paying the fine, and then re-emerge down the block under a different name and do the same thing over again.
The growing telemarketing problem can be solved by simply holding the telcos responsible. Anything else is theatrics meant to distract the public from the fact that the telcos make money through this arrangement, and have successfully bought their way into Washington and the regulators there.
I wonder how likely it is for countries to simply smuggle a nuke into their opponents capital cities. Buy a house, stick it in the basement and let it sit there forever unless you need it. So much cheaper than trying to fly and aim an ICBM. I'd be surprised if there weren't many of these in houses on K Street in DC.
"ASM-135 was estimated to cost $5.3 billion (US) up from the original $500 million (US) estimate." "In 1988, the Reagan Administration canceled the ASM-135 program because of technical problems, testing delays, and significant cost growth."
Not even red states, this is targeted strictly at Iowa, and PR stunts like this aren't restricted to any one party or candidate. It's fairly insane that Iowa and NH have such outsized influences in the American political process.
I agree about changing the packaging paradigms. Why does every bottle of of everything (salad dressing, ketchup, pickles, etc) have a plastic safety seal around it? Because of the Tylenol thing in 1982 ? Time to end superfluous plastic and yes, it's not world changing, but that includes straws, plastic wrapped single utensils at Trader Joe's, basically all the crap. Banning plastic grocery bags is a good first step, but we should move to the compostable plastic bags, the kind that compost in industrial facilities. Maybe divert some of this ethanol corn subsidy to plastics where it can be useful
In San Francisco, it turns out that not everyone is doing a good job sorting, and that ends up costing a lot of money in landfill fees. Hate to say it, but you need to do random audit of peoples recycling, trash, and compost bins with fines for egregious violations. Basically like you do with speeding on the highway. A few plastic bags and banana peels will get you a warning, but if you are trying to 'recycle' your F150 tires...gonna cost you $100 fine. That should make an immediate impact on the recycling stream.
Finally, composting is very easy and a smart thing for cities to do. We have a 1/2 gallon compost bin in the kitchen which gets filled about twice a week. Empties to the green bin outside with lawn clippings, and yard waste which the city takes it once a week. Doesn't smell at all in the house, nor outside (unless you have shrimp for dinner). They take it to a big facility, with huge piles of composting 30+ft high that they turn over with front loaders. The temps inside these piles far exceed anything you can get in the back yard and composts relatively quickly. It quickly becomes second nature to sort.
FTFA It's not about washing your recyclables, it's about putting things in your blue bin that aren't actually recyclable. That messes up the overall process.
Rent control as practiced in SF, Berkeley, etc has absolutely added to the increased price. I know of multiple apartment units on my street that are vacant or only occasionally airbnb'd because the owners are older, their property taxes are like $1000/year, and they aren't willing to risk renting their until for what could be the rest of their lives. Literally they are forgoing $36k per year in income because the rights of the renter are so absolute in SF, the risk isn't worth it. So those rent controlled units are off the market. That's repeated throughout the city.
The notion of protecting the elderly and handicap from difficult evictions is worthy. My immediate neighbors are all earning $200k and are in rent controlled units...how does that make any sense? Why not make rent control means based? Answer: SF politics.
And then the new builds, non-rent controlled units. Next time you are crossing the Bay Bridge back into SF at night, look at all the new towers in Rincon, South Beach, SOMA. Notice how many of them are dark. Sure some people might be out, but many of those are investment properties only...again, not available for rent. Why not pull a Vancouver style occupancy tax if this is such a 'crisis'. Answer: SF politics
A few other Slashdot posters have noted that the run-up in housing prices is not unique to SF, And in fairness SF has always been in the top 5 priciest places to live in the US, since about 1849. So nothing new here. What is new is that the demand for a place in a prime city like SF, Seattle, NYC, DC, etc is now global. And that means the demand is essentially infinite. SF cannot build its way out of this anymore than Hong Kong has. HK has gone full tilt, super vertical, 100,000's of new units and still twice as expensive as anywhere in the US.
Couldn't you just replace "Moderators" with "Employees" and still have a valid statement. My guess is a good fraction of that company is high and mentally distressed.
I wish they would start with regular speed rail. See if people will actually use it, and then start talking about the multi-billion dollar TGV/Shinkansen options. Granted the current state of rail, aka Amtrak is abysmal. Really terrible. So you would have to do something different.
My idea is to run express trains from SF Bay Area to LA (Union Station) to San Diego. We're talking 80-90 mph, existing tracks, and perhaps upgrades to crossings. There is existing rails used primarily for freight, but the idea is to build 'passing lanes' of track in certain areas, where the freight trains would need to pull over, letting the passenger trains go past. This can/should be all automated so you don't have to rely on a conductor looking at a signal. We might have to end up paying the freight companies for the right to do this, but that's fine. So there is money involved, bit nowhere near the $77-100 billion a new system would cost. And if people really start using this train a lot then you can start talking about the expensive version.
A smaller scale version could be done on the Oakland to Truckee route...I would love to be able to take the train to Tahoe.
Aside from the pros/cons on the environmental aspect, I see this as a clever move by the branded manufacturers (think P&G, Unilever, Nestle, etc) to get the Amazon white-label crowd to come back into the brand fold. It's basically the same crap delivered to your door, so in order to differentiate from Amazon, they are using this environmental angle to get folks to pay a few bucks more. Not a terrible marketing plan, be interesting if they can make it work.
Facebook made over $6 billion in profit this past quarter alone. The fact that the threw $100k to Snopes shows that FB doesn't give a crap about trying to fix their fake news problems. Also shows that the average user (American) also doesn't give a crap.
What I find weird is that it is all advertising. Just money taken from the old print and TV medias, re-routed to Facebook. Does this advertising even work? So while old-school CPG manufacturers are paying tons of advertising to Facebook, and simultaneously being eaten alive by Amazon and non-brand items...at what point do they start cutting back on their advertising budgets?
From time to time a cable channel will spar with a provider, think TBS vs TimeWarner or whatever. Each one thinks their customer base will forgo the other one. In this case, lets say that Apple went full nuclear on FB and just stopped their app entirely. "Dear Apple iPhone user, you have 30 days then FB app stops working" I really wonder what people would trade, their iPhone or FB.
I think FB is like cable TV, people waste an inordinate amount of time on it, think they are dependent, but just like when you 'cut the cord' for cable TV, after a few weeks you realize you miss almost nothing of the old way. I would love Apple to kill off FB just to let millions of people see that they can live without social media.
People would make fun of the fact that in Star Trek TOS they had all these toggle switches, had to insert data cards, etc. Then in TNG it was all screen displays and touch panels. Buu recall multiple times in TNG the crew got locked out of the ships computer, warp coils would go crazy, and so forth. They had to crawl through Jeffries Tubes to find a junction, but again the hatch seals were all touchpad controlled. It was madness. But if you were on TOS, just flip a switch and the circuit was cut, no problem.
Phones will eventually get a physical switch to turn stuff like cameras, microphones, GPS off. Just like you can turn off your alerts. Won't happen immediately, and design aficionados will resist. But there will be some big reveal in the future about how these things are mis-used and the switches will start appearing.
Slashdot Mirror
Time to launch the ad blocker hyper sonic missiles.
If the US Government was directing a ton of money to a space based internet system run by SpaceX or Amazon, one would imagine /. community would go crazy with people yelling about unfair subsidies. But somehow if the same money gets dropped in AT&T/Verizon's lap it's ok? Despite the fact that these legacy telcos haven't done crap for rural broadband...ever. And indeed tend to fight community based providers that try and pick up the slack.
I'm going to borrow that dinner/bathroom analogy, that's way more useful than the car analogy I was dreaming up.
The Brits don't do it all right (CCTV unleashed, Brexit, etc) but they seem eminently sane when it comes to the courts and even some campaign laws.
I'll just add that as someone who inhabits an area where these things are currently in the wild, and seems them all the time. The Cruze, Waymo, etc are still only 50 percent successful at navigating a basic four way stop. Especially with the ubiquitous 'California stop' methods of the other human drivers. Bicyclists, pedestrians, double parked UPS trucks. There is such a long way to go on this.
Dear Mr. Hackett. I fear your automotive start-up will never succeed unless you are able to excite 'investors' into pouring money into your scheme with outlandish self driving claims. This whole truth thing will spell doom for your small firm.
There is a very personal grudge between the current Whitehouse and associates against all things Bezos. Best AWS can hope for is to sue for time and hope there is a changing of the guard.
FTFA "The success of the project hinged on clear skies on several continents simultaneously and exquisite coordination between the eight far-flung teams."
Why are clear skies a requirement of a radio telescope? Or is this just the popular press version of a science story?
Maybe its better when both sides are at each other's throats. When both sides agree we usually end up invading somewhere or get crap like this.
Not sure if my recollection is 100% on this, but I recall a similar issue with the National Weather Service (NWS). They put up the satellites, staff professional meteorologists, run super computers, etc. But lobbyists were trying to get the NWS's weather forecast website shutdown because it challenged weather.com, and other weather sites for views. And being completely un-American, the NWS site didn't even have ads (!)
Granted this story is /. click baity-ish. But there is some value in reading between the lines. If I am involved in both business and personal finance (which I am) I want to know where things are headed in the future,. So while the typical folks that want to make every story political bash it out in -1 Score land, I would say that there are more and more dots pointing to economic slowdown later this year. That's hardly surprising news given that we've had a long economic expansion and many other pundits and experts have opined the same thing. But if I'm looking to re-balance a portfolio or make some big purchasing decisions I do want to take this into account. February jobs report was an outlier it was said, this report is an outlier its being said. But a few more of these makes a trend.
Same here. My limit is two streaming services and the DVD option fills in missing parts between those two. Even if it requires a little more patience.
I'd love to see what really is behind the magic 'algorithm' here. Somehow I'm betting it's something like
UPDATE table_name
SET expunge to 'yes'
WHERE conviction_type = 'misdemeanor' and substance_type = 'marijuana'
It's been said before, but worth reiterating. The operations that were 'fined', likely run out of a condo suite, will fold without paying the fine, and then re-emerge down the block under a different name and do the same thing over again.
The growing telemarketing problem can be solved by simply holding the telcos responsible. Anything else is theatrics meant to distract the public from the fact that the telcos make money through this arrangement, and have successfully bought their way into Washington and the regulators there.
I wonder how likely it is for countries to simply smuggle a nuke into their opponents capital cities. Buy a house, stick it in the basement and let it sit there forever unless you need it. So much cheaper than trying to fly and aim an ICBM. I'd be surprised if there weren't many of these in houses on K Street in DC.
A good example of military spending too
"ASM-135 was estimated to cost $5.3 billion (US) up from the original $500 million (US) estimate." "In 1988, the Reagan Administration canceled the ASM-135 program because of technical problems, testing delays, and significant cost growth."
Not even red states, this is targeted strictly at Iowa, and PR stunts like this aren't restricted to any one party or candidate. It's fairly insane that Iowa and NH have such outsized influences in the American political process.
How can I make a Beowulf cluster out of these?
I agree about changing the packaging paradigms. Why does every bottle of of everything (salad dressing, ketchup, pickles, etc) have a plastic safety seal around it? Because of the Tylenol thing in 1982 ? Time to end superfluous plastic and yes, it's not world changing, but that includes straws, plastic wrapped single utensils at Trader Joe's, basically all the crap. Banning plastic grocery bags is a good first step, but we should move to the compostable plastic bags, the kind that compost in industrial facilities. Maybe divert some of this ethanol corn subsidy to plastics where it can be useful
In San Francisco, it turns out that not everyone is doing a good job sorting, and that ends up costing a lot of money in landfill fees. Hate to say it, but you need to do random audit of peoples recycling, trash, and compost bins with fines for egregious violations. Basically like you do with speeding on the highway. A few plastic bags and banana peels will get you a warning, but if you are trying to 'recycle' your F150 tires...gonna cost you $100 fine. That should make an immediate impact on the recycling stream.
Finally, composting is very easy and a smart thing for cities to do. We have a 1/2 gallon compost bin in the kitchen which gets filled about twice a week. Empties to the green bin outside with lawn clippings, and yard waste which the city takes it once a week. Doesn't smell at all in the house, nor outside (unless you have shrimp for dinner). They take it to a big facility, with huge piles of composting 30+ft high that they turn over with front loaders. The temps inside these piles far exceed anything you can get in the back yard and composts relatively quickly. It quickly becomes second nature to sort.
FTFA It's not about washing your recyclables, it's about putting things in your blue bin that aren't actually recyclable. That messes up the overall process.
Rent control as practiced in SF, Berkeley, etc has absolutely added to the increased price. I know of multiple apartment units on my street that are vacant or only occasionally airbnb'd because the owners are older, their property taxes are like $1000/year, and they aren't willing to risk renting their until for what could be the rest of their lives. Literally they are forgoing $36k per year in income because the rights of the renter are so absolute in SF, the risk isn't worth it. So those rent controlled units are off the market. That's repeated throughout the city.
The notion of protecting the elderly and handicap from difficult evictions is worthy. My immediate neighbors are all earning $200k and are in rent controlled units...how does that make any sense? Why not make rent control means based? Answer: SF politics.
And then the new builds, non-rent controlled units. Next time you are crossing the Bay Bridge back into SF at night, look at all the new towers in Rincon, South Beach, SOMA. Notice how many of them are dark. Sure some people might be out, but many of those are investment properties only...again, not available for rent. Why not pull a Vancouver style occupancy tax if this is such a 'crisis'. Answer: SF politics
A few other Slashdot posters have noted that the run-up in housing prices is not unique to SF, And in fairness SF has always been in the top 5 priciest places to live in the US, since about 1849. So nothing new here. What is new is that the demand for a place in a prime city like SF, Seattle, NYC, DC, etc is now global. And that means the demand is essentially infinite. SF cannot build its way out of this anymore than Hong Kong has. HK has gone full tilt, super vertical, 100,000's of new units and still twice as expensive as anywhere in the US.
Couldn't you just replace "Moderators" with "Employees" and still have a valid statement. My guess is a good fraction of that company is high and mentally distressed.
I wish they would start with regular speed rail. See if people will actually use it, and then start talking about the multi-billion dollar TGV/Shinkansen options. Granted the current state of rail, aka Amtrak is abysmal. Really terrible. So you would have to do something different.
My idea is to run express trains from SF Bay Area to LA (Union Station) to San Diego. We're talking 80-90 mph, existing tracks, and perhaps upgrades to crossings. There is existing rails used primarily for freight, but the idea is to build 'passing lanes' of track in certain areas, where the freight trains would need to pull over, letting the passenger trains go past. This can/should be all automated so you don't have to rely on a conductor looking at a signal. We might have to end up paying the freight companies for the right to do this, but that's fine. So there is money involved, bit nowhere near the $77-100 billion a new system would cost. And if people really start using this train a lot then you can start talking about the expensive version.
A smaller scale version could be done on the Oakland to Truckee route...I would love to be able to take the train to Tahoe.
Aside from the pros/cons on the environmental aspect, I see this as a clever move by the branded manufacturers (think P&G, Unilever, Nestle, etc) to get the Amazon white-label crowd to come back into the brand fold. It's basically the same crap delivered to your door, so in order to differentiate from Amazon, they are using this environmental angle to get folks to pay a few bucks more. Not a terrible marketing plan, be interesting if they can make it work.
Facebook made over $6 billion in profit this past quarter alone. The fact that the threw $100k to Snopes shows that FB doesn't give a crap about trying to fix their fake news problems. Also shows that the average user (American) also doesn't give a crap.
What I find weird is that it is all advertising. Just money taken from the old print and TV medias, re-routed to Facebook. Does this advertising even work? So while old-school CPG manufacturers are paying tons of advertising to Facebook, and simultaneously being eaten alive by Amazon and non-brand items...at what point do they start cutting back on their advertising budgets?
From time to time a cable channel will spar with a provider, think TBS vs TimeWarner or whatever. Each one thinks their customer base will forgo the other one. In this case, lets say that Apple went full nuclear on FB and just stopped their app entirely. "Dear Apple iPhone user, you have 30 days then FB app stops working" I really wonder what people would trade, their iPhone or FB.
I think FB is like cable TV, people waste an inordinate amount of time on it, think they are dependent, but just like when you 'cut the cord' for cable TV, after a few weeks you realize you miss almost nothing of the old way. I would love Apple to kill off FB just to let millions of people see that they can live without social media.
People would make fun of the fact that in Star Trek TOS they had all these toggle switches, had to insert data cards, etc. Then in TNG it was all screen displays and touch panels. Buu recall multiple times in TNG the crew got locked out of the ships computer, warp coils would go crazy, and so forth. They had to crawl through Jeffries Tubes to find a junction, but again the hatch seals were all touchpad controlled. It was madness. But if you were on TOS, just flip a switch and the circuit was cut, no problem.
Phones will eventually get a physical switch to turn stuff like cameras, microphones, GPS off. Just like you can turn off your alerts. Won't happen immediately, and design aficionados will resist. But there will be some big reveal in the future about how these things are mis-used and the switches will start appearing.