The person being called must be recorded to be analyzed. That is illegal without consent in most states
Most states are one-party-consent states. Google knows they're recording, so they have their consent.
Also, IANAL, but I don't believe ephemeral recordings (like an Echo sending the voice to AWS for analysis, which discards it as soon as it's processed) have been litigated yet. There's also devices currently used by deaf people which do speech-to-text and text-to-speech, so there may be something already in the recording laws to cover this kind of use. (It used to be a human relaying the conversation, but most of the time they don't need a human anymore).
Finally, I don't think the receptionist taking appointment calls has much of an expectation of privacy.
The fact that they don't want to use something obviously non-human because the person might hang up says it all.
They don't want to do that because there's a very large number of robocallers that call businesses, attempting to sell them stuff. If you make it too obvious that you're a computer, the person answering the phone will assume "robocall" and hang up. They're not going to hang up in revulsion from a caller that says "Hi, I'd like to make an appointment on Thursday" in an artificial-sounding voice.
the first parameter is called @fiscal_year and right at the top when I'm explaining the parameters, the comment for that one says "Duh!"
Yeah, those are great until 5 years later when someone like me comes along and has to look through the code to see if you used a 2-digit or 4-digit year before calling the procedure.
In theory, Y2K made everyone start using 4-digit years. In practice, notsomuch.
You've got zero experience with the building code.
Mandates are not applied wholesale to old houses. If you've got knob-and-tube wiring in your house in California, it can stay knob-and-tube despite that being forbidden many, many decades ago. Your only mandate to upgrade it is if you are replacing/adding a chunk of the electrical system, the new parts you install must comply with the new code.
Same with insulation, paint, wall construction, foundation construction, roofing materials, plumbing, and every other part of a house. A 1920-built house complies with building code on none of these systems. And is not forced to update any of them.
They have been cited, because they do. But the effect is currently small.
A much larger effect is the highway fund has been underfunded since the 1980s, and has been supplemented from the general fund since then. And there weren't a lot of hybrid, electric or high-efficiency ICE vehicles in the 1980s.
The California government did not want to create the warning in your parody. Because they correctly understood that the warning was stupid and would have to be applied to nearly everything.
The law was passed as a ballot initiative. Because fear-mongering about cancer is very effective, especially in the relatively short time-frame when a ballot initiative is up for "debate". Even the backers of the initiative didn't realize just how many things would have to get a warning due to their law.
If a new initiative came up to invalidate the old one, it would probably pass. But Californians just ignore the warnings anyway, so no one is all that interested in putting up the effort to repeal it. The recent Starbucks case may change that though.
How this parallels hybrid and electric vehicles, is this: substitute 'highway infrastructure maintenance' for 'the electric grid', and 'State gas tax revenues' for 'cost per kWh'. Less fuel used has meant less tax revenues which has meant less money in the State funds to maintain and repair highways. So they raise the gas tax to compensate.
Hybrid and electric cars are currently a very small effect on gas taxes. The primary issue is gas taxes have been too low to cover road maintenance for more than 30 years. Politicians do not want to raise gas taxes, so they don't.
In the future, hybrid and electric cars will have a large effect on gas taxes, but our decades of failing to raise gas taxes actually makes that a smoother transition. We're already using general fund money for road maintenance, so setting us up for a gradual shift to more and more general fund would be easier than a quick cut-off.
The supply is kept down for natural and artificial reasons is my point.
No, the supply is kept down for entirely artificial reasons: Zoning.
Vast swaths of the crowded parts of California won't let you build taller than 3 stories. And won't allow multi-family construction (ie you literally can not install a 2nd kitchen on the same property in some cities). And a host of other limitations that prevent denser housing.
Those zoning laws did not appear magically. They were put in place by Californians. The people who already own houses benefit massively from limited housing supply, and those are the people who can actually vote in the elections for zoning boards and city councils. The people who do not yet live in that city (because of limited housing supply) can not vote for positions in that city.
In other words, Californians who don't want housing created this issue out of personal self-interest.
Californians who do not share that view can not change the status quo because they can not vote where the status quo needs changing (or the incumbent homeowners out-vote them).
You could have just answered, "I don't actually know what the maintenance tasks are" instead of changing the subject in a terrible attempt to cover your ass.
New home construction doesn't vary _that_ much across the state. Materials costs would be approximately the same. Labor's going to cost a bit more in the bay area, but not enormously so.
About $75k-$300k. And that $75k can only really be done by the Walmart-like tract house construction companies building their bottom-of-the-barrel house. $100k is probably a more realistic lower price for normal situations.
(And before someone points to $1.5M houses, those are expensive because of the land.)
Because setting up another company to re-sell the products to Iran is so incredibly difficult.
Oh wait! It isn't!
The only way the sanctions worked before is the EU enforced them. That prevented EU companies from creating work-arounds like this. If the EU doesn't want to do the sanctions, then EU companies will easily create intermediates to actually do the trading with Iran while the main company plays dumb.
Unless you have a time machine, it's going to be unfair. Complaining about it being unfair doesn't do anything besides take up effort better used at fixing it.
If it is then, regretfully sure, the EU at least will end up restoring sanctions
That's one option.
Another option is the EU says "OK, you wan't a trade war? Then we'll have a trade war".
Bolton believes he can conquer Iran by 2019, and that we will be "greeted as liberators". Just like Iraq. I do not recommend trusting his advice on anything regarding international relations.
A good start would be not entering into international agreements that intentionally circumvent congressional approval because they could never be ratified by representatives of voters.
The error in this theory is that those representatives would be motivated by "what's best for my constituents and/or the US". We haven't had that for a very long time now. Instead, those representatives are primarily motivated by the letter after someone's name.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for calling Bill's Hair Salon, this is Mike.
That's all that's needed in a lot of cases to identify people in a small business environment
Why does Mike have an expectation of privacy when answering the business phone line and taking appointments?
And how does the fact that Duplex is calling materially differ from me calling with a tape recorder held up to the phone?
The person being called must be recorded to be analyzed. That is illegal without consent in most states
Most states are one-party-consent states. Google knows they're recording, so they have their consent.
Also, IANAL, but I don't believe ephemeral recordings (like an Echo sending the voice to AWS for analysis, which discards it as soon as it's processed) have been litigated yet. There's also devices currently used by deaf people which do speech-to-text and text-to-speech, so there may be something already in the recording laws to cover this kind of use. (It used to be a human relaying the conversation, but most of the time they don't need a human anymore).
Finally, I don't think the receptionist taking appointment calls has much of an expectation of privacy.
The fact that they don't want to use something obviously non-human because the person might hang up says it all.
They don't want to do that because there's a very large number of robocallers that call businesses, attempting to sell them stuff. If you make it too obvious that you're a computer, the person answering the phone will assume "robocall" and hang up. They're not going to hang up in revulsion from a caller that says "Hi, I'd like to make an appointment on Thursday" in an artificial-sounding voice.
the first parameter is called @fiscal_year and right at the top when I'm explaining the parameters, the comment for that one says "Duh!"
Yeah, those are great until 5 years later when someone like me comes along and has to look through the code to see if you used a 2-digit or 4-digit year before calling the procedure.
In theory, Y2K made everyone start using 4-digit years. In practice, notsomuch.
You've got zero experience with the building code.
Mandates are not applied wholesale to old houses. If you've got knob-and-tube wiring in your house in California, it can stay knob-and-tube despite that being forbidden many, many decades ago. Your only mandate to upgrade it is if you are replacing/adding a chunk of the electrical system, the new parts you install must comply with the new code.
Same with insulation, paint, wall construction, foundation construction, roofing materials, plumbing, and every other part of a house. A 1920-built house complies with building code on none of these systems. And is not forced to update any of them.
They have been cited, because they do. But the effect is currently small.
A much larger effect is the highway fund has been underfunded since the 1980s, and has been supplemented from the general fund since then. And there weren't a lot of hybrid, electric or high-efficiency ICE vehicles in the 1980s.
So...you completely missed the part about the panels being required on new home construction then?
The California government did not want to create the warning in your parody. Because they correctly understood that the warning was stupid and would have to be applied to nearly everything.
The law was passed as a ballot initiative. Because fear-mongering about cancer is very effective, especially in the relatively short time-frame when a ballot initiative is up for "debate". Even the backers of the initiative didn't realize just how many things would have to get a warning due to their law.
If a new initiative came up to invalidate the old one, it would probably pass. But Californians just ignore the warnings anyway, so no one is all that interested in putting up the effort to repeal it. The recent Starbucks case may change that though.
How this parallels hybrid and electric vehicles, is this: substitute 'highway infrastructure maintenance' for 'the electric grid', and 'State gas tax revenues' for 'cost per kWh'. Less fuel used has meant less tax revenues which has meant less money in the State funds to maintain and repair highways. So they raise the gas tax to compensate.
Hybrid and electric cars are currently a very small effect on gas taxes. The primary issue is gas taxes have been too low to cover road maintenance for more than 30 years. Politicians do not want to raise gas taxes, so they don't.
In the future, hybrid and electric cars will have a large effect on gas taxes, but our decades of failing to raise gas taxes actually makes that a smoother transition. We're already using general fund money for road maintenance, so setting us up for a gradual shift to more and more general fund would be easier than a quick cut-off.
Not all homes have the facing to take advantage of solar
Good thing this is about new home construction then. 'Cause you'd get to design the house such that facing isn't a problem.
The supply is kept down for natural and artificial reasons is my point.
No, the supply is kept down for entirely artificial reasons: Zoning.
Vast swaths of the crowded parts of California won't let you build taller than 3 stories. And won't allow multi-family construction (ie you literally can not install a 2nd kitchen on the same property in some cities). And a host of other limitations that prevent denser housing.
Those zoning laws did not appear magically. They were put in place by Californians. The people who already own houses benefit massively from limited housing supply, and those are the people who can actually vote in the elections for zoning boards and city councils. The people who do not yet live in that city (because of limited housing supply) can not vote for positions in that city.
In other words, Californians who don't want housing created this issue out of personal self-interest.
Californians who do not share that view can not change the status quo because they can not vote where the status quo needs changing (or the incumbent homeowners out-vote them).
You could have just answered, "I don't actually know what the maintenance tasks are" instead of changing the subject in a terrible attempt to cover your ass.
New home construction doesn't vary _that_ much across the state. Materials costs would be approximately the same. Labor's going to cost a bit more in the bay area, but not enormously so.
Because marginal cost is a thing.
About $75k-$300k. And that $75k can only really be done by the Walmart-like tract house construction companies building their bottom-of-the-barrel house. $100k is probably a more realistic lower price for normal situations.
(And before someone points to $1.5M houses, those are expensive because of the land.)
Because setting up another company to re-sell the products to Iran is so incredibly difficult.
Oh wait! It isn't!
The only way the sanctions worked before is the EU enforced them. That prevented EU companies from creating work-arounds like this. If the EU doesn't want to do the sanctions, then EU companies will easily create intermediates to actually do the trading with Iran while the main company plays dumb.
Because it would be utterly impossible for that EU company to sell products to an "independent" company that then re-sells them to Iran.
It's like the MAGA hats cut off all circulation to your brains.
My gut (which isn't science) says putting people in situations where they have to communicate with other people helps them learn to communicate.
Putting people in situations does. When they are ready and willing to do so.
Forcing people into situations does not. Instead, it triggers the recoil effect and drives them away from further communication.
Your gut is a terrible psychologist.
No, it's undemocratic to value your party above your constituents.
Unless you have a time machine, it's going to be unfair. Complaining about it being unfair doesn't do anything besides take up effort better used at fixing it.
Yet you can't quite manage to articulate that succinct option.....
Except the variations we see now are larger than have ever occurred. Which means it can't be a periodic "wobble" that happens every so often.
Trump wants to things.
First, he wants to dismantle anything with Obama's name on it. This is his primary motivation and roughly 80% of the reason he did it.
Second, he has a bunch of neocons feeding his ego. And they want to finish their Project for a New American Century. That requires conquering Iran.
Because what the EU decides to do will determine what happens now. The US just made itself irrelevant.
If it is then, regretfully sure, the EU at least will end up restoring sanctions
That's one option.
Another option is the EU says "OK, you wan't a trade war? Then we'll have a trade war".
Bolton believes he can conquer Iran by 2019, and that we will be "greeted as liberators". Just like Iraq. I do not recommend trusting his advice on anything regarding international relations.
A good start would be not entering into international agreements that intentionally circumvent congressional approval because they could never be ratified by representatives of voters.
The error in this theory is that those representatives would be motivated by "what's best for my constituents and/or the US". We haven't had that for a very long time now. Instead, those representatives are primarily motivated by the letter after someone's name.