I can see that it's only compatible with Windows 7 and up (although the way they say it's not customizable with Windows 10S is pretty awkward) so why would I buy it? I suspect that "compatibility" means "customizable" in terms of buttons and dots per inch and, somewhat ironically, it will work like the original Intellimouse on other systems.
Personally, I demand that I go between systems with a minimum of mechanical transition; that means I use the same keyboard and mouse whenever possible for all my systems. OSX is always going to be problematic, but I think it's reasonable to expect to be able to have identical human interfaces on my Windows Linux systems.
Windows 7 is the LOWEST version of Windows Microsoft currently supports. Support for Windows Vista and XP, the two previous versions of Windows, ended years ago.
It doesn't mean it won't work elsewhere as a standard USB mouse, it just means that since Vista and XP are dead, Microsoft won't bother listing those OSes as supported.
The app to customize it, which really means remapping buttons, was probably only tested on machines running Windows 7 as well. Microsoft wouldn't have tested on older machines.
Linux and macOS users will see it a s a multi-button mouse and I'm pretty certain plenty of utilities for either OS will let you remap buttons as well. Given my Mac has an old IntelliMouse on it which I mapped the extra buttons to the windows and desktop management functions it wasn't hard to do.
And looking around, it seems I've bought a lot of them over the years, only transitioning to Logitech wireless ones when I couldn't get those. There's probably a couple more at work.
Or we could imagine a day where people's lives aren't dictated by whether they have a f'ing internet connection or not. Somehow humans have managed just fine for the past 10,000 years without Facebook.
Except the Interinet, like cellphones, have transformed our lives enough that it's impossible to go back. Life without a cellphone is tough - sure you have landlines still, but you don't have payphones. If you're in the middle of nowhere, you now have to rely on the kindness of strangers to let you use their phone. Where there were plenty of payphones everywhere, there are none now. And now, sometimes you can't even get a landline - either the local telco gave up and let them rot and says if you want a home phone, here's a plan and a cellphone.
Likewise, not having an internet connection today is a huge setback. There are just things you can no longer do. Applying for jobs is now much harder because most companies expect you email them your resume and cover letter, few even require an online application process. And the more menial the job,. the more this is a requirement
Hell, a lot of libraries got rid of their reference materials because the Internet is available, and shelves that formerly hold books often now only have "media areas" where patrons can look up information themselves, or rent usage of equipment
Face it, the Internet has become a basic utility these days. Alongside water, electricity, garbage collection, roads, etc.
Older Dell laptops like the Latitudes can accept an SD card so that it doesn't stick out, but newer laptops, including Apples, they stick out about a 1/3 of the size of the card so they constantly get damaged and/or damage the slot. How about making damn cards that fit before changing standards to support cards that don't exist yet?
Because you're not suppose to use those slots for permanent extended storage. They're not usually on a good interface ( USB3 typically) or dreadfully slow.
They're a convenience slot - you use it to take the card from your camera and copying the photos off it, then putting the card back on it.
Though some people make shortened SD cards that do fit flush for those who really want to use them as a full time storage slot.
In a similar way, Facebook is just as harmful. Although the fact that it's now widely understood that it can kill your privacy, a frightening number of users remain in either ignorance or denial of the way that it can harm their lives.
Here are some [known, established examples] of the way that your Facebook profile can harm you:-
- If you apply for a job today, many employers will search your FB profile to get an idea of your "maturity" and behaviours.
- If you apply for health insurance or similar, companies will search your profile for evidence of you smoking, drinking to excess, participating in high-risk sports, etc.
- If you apply for a credit card or loan, banks will search your network of friends for any with bad credit histories, criminal convictions or other "red flags".
- If you "pull a 'sickie'" and call in to work sick, companies will search your social media profiles for activity on those days
- on and on and on...
1. I don't display my immaturity on FB. There, I'm respectable, downright boring guy.
2. I don't smoke, drink, or take dangerous chances. My only health vice is I drink too much Coke.
3. None of my current FB friends have any known "red flags". A previous friend had issues, but he lost his FB account years ago due to pwnage.
4. Unless I'm unconscious, or in a hospital, there's nothing odd about posting on FB while sick at home. Unless I'm stupid enough to post pics of the beach or whereever I'm really at.
I'm not saying FB is good. It's not. But it's not that hard to be on it without having any problems. Just assume that whatever you do there is potentially public, regardless of your settings.
Problem is, that's showing a level of maturity that I don't think a lot of Facebook users have. Far too many people treat social media as a bragging medium - they feel like they must post something amazing on it and not appear "boring". Thus all those incidents of photos while drunk, taking a sick day to hit the beach (and SELFIES!), etc.
I too lead a boring life, and I don't feel the need to post every minute of it. I like to keep to myself so I prefer not to share at all.
Because you have to remember everything you post online IS public. "Privacy settings" are marketing tools meant to get people to spill their guts - if Facebook offered no privacy controls, no one would post half the stuff they do. But because they do, everyone posts all the crap online. Thus giving Facebook the information they so crave.
If you're driving around with their branding and they set your hours, they're your boss. The pretence that the drivers are independent contractors is just an end run around labour regulations.
Exactly. Except here Amazon tries to do it not by calling people "independent contractors", but "independent small business".
Thus, every interaction Amazon has would be between business to business, and it's up to your new small business to pay you and your taxes properly.
What about not not using "simplified recycling"? They introduced that braindamage over here a year or so back despite there being exactly zero evidence that people had problems distinguishing the three categories of plastic, paper, and everything else (glass, metal, etc). As a result, the unified recycling bins are now used as general trash bins because there's no need for people to think about what's recyclable and what isn't.
So the solution to a problem created by going with a really dumb idea isn't to throw tech at it, it's to undo the dumb idea.
Actually there is evidence to show it works - the single stream method increases diversions of recyclables from the landfill to actual recycling. And not only that, but they went away from the old "plastic number" method of determining if you could recycle it and simply name the items - instead of saying "plastics 1, 2, 4, 5 only", you say "plastic food and juice containers that are not styrofoam".
Granted, it does increase the contamination a bit, but plastic contamination is easily cleaned - a little soap and water gets rid of most of it. And that is important because plastic lasts a long time. Plastic doesn't break down, it breaks up - turning into microplastics. It's what the scary part of the great pacific plastic patch is about.
Contaminated paper you send to the compost stream - paper bioderades within days, so even though you didn't recycle it, it still doesn't pollute the environment as badly.
And yes, current systems ARE automated. They use a vision camera and air jets to divert recycling into various streams. (There's also a manual component). This is a field where everyone is throwing everything at automation - enhanced sensors, multi spectral cameras, etc.
If China won't take contaminated paper, it doesn't really matter. Heck, if it ends up in the water it'll break down quickly as well.
It turns out it's far better to chop down easily renewable trees than to toss fossils away - trees for paper are easily farmed and most replanting efforts have regenerated forests all the time. Even in forest-heavy places, you rarely hear much about tree huggers and saving the forests - industry has already developed and practice conservation to the point where it's renewable.
Heck, even the quality of the recycled paper has gone way up - it used to be trivially easy to tell the difference because recycled paper had a very nasty gritty feel to it. Now it's hard to tell. About the only paper product still using virgin fiber is... toilet paper, and that's because it's hard to make TP with the right properties of softness and strength using recycled fiber. You can get fully recycled TP, but yeah, it's nasty stuff still.
be it the ability to charge (albeit slowly) on USB-C for beefier laptops, allowing for multiple USB chargers to charge a battery at the same time
A number of laptops already support charging by USB-C - some in fact don't have an AC adapter port anymore - they change exclusively by USB-C using USB-PD. And by many, I'm not saying Apple - but Lenovos and Dells too. Also, not slower - USB-PD supports up to 100W, and most adapters easily do 60W which is more than sufficient to charge and run the laptop.
Another idea would be to have better support for external GPU breakout boxes. That way, one can go from running command line stuff to Crysis fairly easily, as well as providing fast access to additional storage.
Already done. It's called Thunderbolt and many laptops have a Thunderbolt 3 port with the USB-C port. And yes, external GPUs (eGPU) are supported as well. If you're talking about gaming, you'd be running Windows 10 which has great support for this sort of thing. In fact, they make nice Thunderbolt docking stations too with USB-PD, so a single port docking system is available for laptops.
This seems like a good idea but what you actually get is no company will sign such a big contract with so many risks. The threats to the company are simply too large. If something goes wrong -- something not always under the control of the contractor -- it can easily bankrupt the company when billions of dollars are on the line. Then NASA gets left with a half-completed project, a bankrupt company that can't finish it, and all the money spent up to that point was wasted.
What's really needed here is realistic estimates on what it will take to complete the project from whatever companies that bid on it. It should also include a rigorous non-partisan review of the bids to make sure someone isn't lowballing it hoping to get the contract and add fees on later.
What isn't this being done already? Politics. The only thing politicians care about is the money getting spent in their districts. They don't care if things like the JWST actually fly and do good science so there's zero incentive for them to be efficient. After all, it's not their money being spent, is it? It's ours. I've never met a politician who didn't think they could spend my money better than I could and that will probably never change.
The problem is, a lot of contracts ARE fixed price. However, if you know how it works, it's fixed price as long as whole list of conditions are met - if any of them are violated, the price starts rising.
This can include stuff like "the work will be done in XX state" and some politician wants it done in their state. So now the company tacks on the costs of moving the workforce over to the price of the bill.
I've written a few fixed price contracts - you cover as much ass as possible, so when the customer comes up and changes something, you soak them. This includes stuff like requirements as well, plus contingency and other amounts. We always warn them when something else they want causes a change request, as that adds to the cost they will have to pay.
Fixed price contracts are generally the rule, which is why everyone covers their ass because they know there will be changes, and those changes will add time and cost to the project so they get billed for.
And yes, you build in things like start/stop costs - if the customer causes a stop work for any reason (e.g., fail to deliver required deliverables on time, the stopping and starting of the project incurs costs that have to be recouped as well. Any time there's a "changing of the guard" all of a sudden can cause all this as the outgoing guy simply walks away and the incoming guy has to step in and pick everything up.
Cost Plus (or Time and Materials) isn't always more expensive than Fixed Price - careful contract writing ensures that Fixed Price contracts have sufficient bloat to factor in risk, as well as sufficient CYA to ensure if the user wants a change, they will pay for it.
If those are 1990 dollars then Hubble actually cost around $9 billion in today's dollars.
Does that include the $1B or so it cost to fix Hubble? You have to remember when they launched Hubble, the mirror distorted a tiny amount causing it to produce blurry images (basically the mirror was distorted by less than the thickness of a sheet of paper).
Hubble was the great white elephant that threatened science in the early years until they fixed it.
Is the idea that flight routes aren't already optimally planned? That existing weather systems that might impact a specific flight aren't built into the flight plan, with fine adjustments made by pilots to alter course based on actual flight path conditions?
The summary makes it sound like planes aren't already flying the shortest possible path already. I mean, airspace over the open ocean is pretty goddamn empty, it's not like they're trying to avoid a jam-up on the 405.
Flights over the Atlantic are coordinated between Canada and the UK. There is a set of 10 "routes" each way and the air traffic agency responsible (Canada for east to west, UK for west to east) sets up the routes (which vary daily) and the scheduling of aircraft on the routes.
This is done so while aircraft are over the middle of the Atlantic where there is no radar coverage, they won't encounter traffic - either because they're running into slower traffic ahead, traffic going the other way, or traffic beside them.
It's not the most efficient, but it's the safest route - and very little deviation is allowed.
And yes, there are traffic jams, which is why there are 10 different "lanes" going both ways.
The thing is, ADS-B (yes, ADS-B) is being implemented worldwide. Unlike the US system though, most countries are going with a space-based satellite system, so your ADS-B transponder will talk to the satellites. (The US went with ground based systems because there is so much airplane traffic that it would overload the satellites). With this it means the location of all aircraft will be known, so it will be possible to control aircraft beyond radar coverage (just because they are beyond radar coverage doesn't mean they are beyond radio range - satellite messaging and HF radio allow all aircraft to still be in communication).
What the hell is wrong with people? "Someone's wrong on the internet / in life and it's my duty / job / addiction to permanently correct them? Get over yourself and come up with a better argument. Make them come over to your side instead. Hell, maybe you'll even learn something yourself.
Winston Churchill: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
You should've seen the s#!tstorm EA created when they announced their latest Call of Duty or whatever was going to feature... female avatars. The internet practically blew up with people arguing right or wrong on that. (And the rest of the world goes "meh, so what?"). But the rhetoric among gamers over an addition was just amazing. It's optional folks, if you don't want it, don't pick it. So what if there are more avatars to choose from.
Heck, an indie game I played asked a simple question - do you want to be referred to as a "he", "she" or "it". The number of people who took offense at even being given the option was amazing.
Then again, religion must be some sacred cow. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled law societies are not required to certify a law school at a conservative university that requires all its students to not engage in homosexual behavior, only marry the opposite sex, etc. The conservative press called it an assault on the freedom of religion by the LGBTQ community (who saw it as an assault on their basic right to equality). Not surprisingly, a few days later, a rainbow crosswalk was defaced with white paint.
It amazes me that so many who fall for that kind of scam are not utterly embarrassed to report it to the police
Most of the scammed ARE embarrassed to go to the police, actually. For every one you hear in the news, there are probably dozens of people who simply walked away after losing thousands of dollars in one of the many scams.
Yes, people fall for the tax scam all the time. It'a annoying enough to receive the calls almost daily at times. Though this time, they used Bitcoin instead of iTunes cards (or other gift card) - perhaps because large iTunes card purchases are flagged by most retailers - there is very few legitimate reasons to buy 100 $50 iTunes cards so most retailers will ask if they're paying a tax bill or something.
Chances are, the public is going to be so reinforced into "the taxman does not accept gift cards and Bitcoin" that any mention of Bitcoin will trigger scam alerts. (And I found out there's apparently a bitcoin "ATM" near me).
The scammed people are too embarrassed most of the time to admit they've been scammed. Usually because they usually believe they can't be scammed. The only way to be sure is to take two life lessons to heart - first, nothing is easy in life - so if someone promises a lot of money to you quickly, it's a scam, and two - question everything.
My mom was the best at it - she literally would question everything - she'd get a scam email and delete it. If she wasn't sure, she'd ask me and we'd talk about it. At which point she'd realize it was still a scam - either some tell tale sign she missed, or if we weren't sure, we'd assume it was a scam. Any important business is never done through just email - your bank, a government agency, etc., they'd send letters or call you in addition to email. I think out of this only once did we treat something as a scam that wasn't, which happened because they sent a letter the next day.
Anyway, it's interesting to see how different establishments respond when she mentions she's lactose intolerant. She'll usually try to avoid the topic by simply asking if a dish contains milk or cream, rather than trying to explain things. If they ask why and she has to say the words "lactose intolerance", half of them react as if she had said she could die at any moment, at which point she needs to clarify that, no, she doesn't have an allergy and they don't need to scrub the kitchen down. The other half reacts dismissively, at which point she rattles off this line about loving milk and cream even though they don't love her, which usually convinces the wait staff that she isn't one of those people falsely claiming an intolerance for ideological/nutritional reasons.
I think the problem is that people think "lactose intolerant" is akin to "lactose allergy", along the lines of "peanut allergy" or "soy allergy" or "shellfish allergy".,
Because after all, a big reason people ask is they are allergic and there's a chance of a reaction.
Whereas lactose intolerance isn't an allergy, it's a failure to produce lactase (enzyme to process lactose sugars) and no, it will not lead to an allergic reaction. However, the unprocessed lactose sugar does a number with the gut flora (typically the same ones that process bean fibers - they're the last in line of the bacteria that help process what you eat into nutrients)
Problem is, most people don't realize that and think any food avoidance is caused by an allergy. Same goes for those with Celiac disease and thus have to avoid gluten.
The difference is that I wouldn't worry about mysteriously disappearing in Canada for using a VPN. In China you might find yourself "working" in a North Korea mine. To be fair, I have no evidence that China or North Korea would do this. I just have my suspensions.
Yes, and John Oliver can mock Justin Trudeau as much as he wants and it'll be perfectly allowed. Our PM won't even have the audacity to call it fake news. He'd just take it like a Canadian and probably laugh. To be honest, most Canadians will probably laugh as well - we recognize attempts at humor, as long as it is in good taste (i.e., nothing about minorities, race, religion, sexual orientation or the like).
(Yes, Trump's definition of "fake news" is basically "anything that does not show Donald in a positive light". If you're not ass-kissing, you're fake news. I think it's probably easier to say those outlets that Trump doesn't call Fake News are, and those he calls fake news aren't.)
John Oliver's segments are often reposted officially on YouTube. Sometimes those videos are geolocked to not include Canada. Most of them aren't so you can watch them freely.
It is actually a little stressful. You can only 'check in' to get a ticket within an hour of the showtime, and within 100 yards of the theater, and you then have to use their card in person at a kiosk (usually; depending on the theater). So this means for a popular movie I have to keep an eye out in case the theater is filling up, especially if I'm coordinating with friends. How many seats are left? Are those acceptable seats? Is it filling up so quickly that we should think of another showing? Etc. Definitely white whine territory, but it's a tradeoff of simplicity for cash when compared to my old style. Luckily, I like sitting very close (rows 1-3 have a greater angle of view taking full advantage of the theatric experience) and those are the seats typically available.
That's the intent. Because if you really wanted to see a movie and use MoviePass, they make it inconvenient enough to see a new release. 1 hour and 100 yards is nothing if you're doing it on a Tuesday afternoon, but a Friday night opener? Good luck.
Maybe if you waited 3-4 weeks so the crowds die down (and the ticket split more favorable so MoviePass may get a discounted ticket) it would work, which I think is the whole point - it's not to get you a ticket to a movie, but to encourage you to see movies later after opening week.
And maybe, MAYBE if MoviePass did it that way, they'd have moire support. First, the ticket revenue split would allow for MoviePass to buy discounted tickets, second, they could go to the studios and get some money for them by being able to drive an audience to see a movie on the third or fourth week of its run, raising the movie revenues (at a time when most movies plummet in revenue takes - usually after the first week, most movies drop 30-60%, and from there it drops even more).
And of course, they should've worked out a deal with concessions - getting theatres to discount them could result in a larger profit from concessions - if one person in a group gets popcorn, well, it's likely others would want one too, even if they didn't originally intend to buy any. Which means buying a drink too...
WebAssembly is a much safer interface than Javascript. The summary makes it sound like it's some kind of x86 code, but it's not. The fact that it is well thought out, and carefully designed to have a small attack surface means there is a smaller chance of finding exploits there.
WebAssembly is an evolution of asm.js from Mozilla.It's actually JavaScript, but a small subset of it.
Asm.js came about as some Javascript engine writers for Mozilla were playing around (and ended up with a C to Javascript compiler) and discovered there were operations that the engine ran really fast. So asm.js was created to provide a turing-complete subset of Javascript that ran really fast in Mozilla.
I think the challenge was to run a game engine like Unity or Unreal in the browser without a plugin, which was why the C to Javascript compiler was created.
It became WebAssembly when Mozilla and other browser manufacturers got together to standardize the interface. It's not another language, but a controlled restricted subset of Javascript that ends up executing extremely quickly because they were simple and by restricting what Javascript you could use, the optimizers could make optimizations they could not in regular Javascript. End result is the Javascript JIT in the browser made fast and efficient code.
This also lead to the standardization of the C to WebAssembly compiler, which is why you now have even large projects like DOSBox compiled into WebAssembly, so you have the ability to run retro programs right in the browser (see the Internet Archive)..
It's likely what happened is the optimizations to WebAssembly bypass the mitigations - the restricted Javascript subset exists to be really fast and what happened is browser manufacturers may have forgot about the fast path.
PCs have a common bus (or at least can outsource the job), the modern one being PCIe. Honestly, this is still just another beefed up smartphone chip.
You realize the SnapDragon chips, since at least the 820, has had PCIe onboard? Heck, the iPhone has had PCIe-connected SSD storage for a couple of years now (yes, it uses PCIe SSD controller, it's why it gets such high flash memory access scores - they're topping out around 1GB/sec, which while slower than a modern NVMe drive for a PC, is still faster than SATA3 and is pretty decent, after all, it's just an iPhone).
PCIe on a smartphone chip isn't unusual - it's designed for the higher speed interconnects.
This chip will certainly continue having PCIe on it. Though I wonder if Qualcomm has fixed several issues with it. It was pretty lame last time I tried to use it.
I bet Apple halfway wishes they could just do away with laptops and desktops.
It's not just a wish, it is effectively what they are doing! The Mac Pro model they sell as new is now 4-5 years old and the mac mini has half the computing power of a laptop and their laptops are slowly morphing into tablets having already lost the function keys and all but one port.
Well, the Mac Pro and Mac MIni are Apple's worst selling Macs. Apple invests as much R&D into a product as they make from the product - thus low selling products like the Mac Mini and Mac Pro get very little love. And this has historically been true - it's not something that a model doesn't sell and Apple abandons it, but historically, the Mac Pro and Mini never sold well. They only continue to exist for two reasons - one, Tim Cook, unlike Jobs, will keep making a product if it still sells and they can continue making it (explaining the rather delayed death of the old traditional iPods), and two, there's a very vocal community that demands those models.
The iMac and laptop line sell far better, which is why they aren't as outdated. Problem is, everyone has crept into Apple's territory of premium laptops - the era of PC makers racing to the bottom is pretty much over - there's still $500 and under laptops, but it's not an area manufacturers are putting much effort in. With Ultrabooks and the like offering premium materials, high res screens, quality construction and consumers generally realizing that the $500 laptops are there to meet a price, while the higher end machines are much nicer and spending money there, most manufacturers are competing with Apple.
I did not even consider buying a non-name brand CO detector. Who are these people that care enough about their lives to buy CO detectors, but so little that they buy one from someone with no accountability?
Easy, people who are told they need to install a hundred of them, usually landlords or building owners who are renovating and need to bring it up to current code.
When you're dealing with that many of them, there's a real savings to be had buying a $5 alarm versus a $50 one. This is especially so if the building is older and thus never actually had CO detectors at all.
Likewise, the devices do expire, so you do have to replace them periodically (10 years or so) and again, if you're a building owner, you'll again shop for the cheapest.
Another group might be builders - if you're building a subdivision of 50 houses, each of which may have 2-3 detectors, you're going to order them in bulk as well. Quality builders will hire a proper contractor to wire them up who will likely use quality name brand detectors (yes, you want to network the detectors so if it goes off on one floor, it will trigger ALL the detectors). But cheap contractors might just buy a bulk load of them and self-install them.
Baseball balls and strikes may be harder than you think. The strike zone is NOT a fixed item but varies as it's technically based over the plate and between the knees to around the arm pits. Each batter based on height and stance style has quite a varied strike zone height.
No, technology to identify that area exists today. It's even consumer level technology (costing around $150) - Kinect could easily do skeletal analysis of the captured 3D image, so knees to armpits is trivially easy to identify. It's a solved problem, and the systems the MLB can afford to get will be even better at it.
The problem is the fuzziness of the area - batters squat a bit trying to minimize the area - at what point do you sample the player for defining the strike zone? Knowing this, the batter will move after the pitch.
The hard part is not the calls in the obvious strike zone - the hard part is making the call when the player has moved and thus either enlarged or shrunk the strike zone AND the ball happens to be in the disputed area.
In fact, given baseball's remarkable ability to boil things down to numbers, I'm surprised they haven't tried to analyze this change in area and how many pitches ended up in the disputed area. Not only this, but knowing the outcome would be interesting.
, I read the other day that many systems also only let servers keep a portion of the tip they get and the rest goes into a pool for all servers. At this point I don't understand the system at all
The reason for this is simple - your tip isn't just for the waiter, but eh support staff that enables the waiter to do their job. You know, all the busboys that take the food to your table when the waiter's busy taking orders, the cooks at the back who actually made the food you're eating, the greeters and seaters that greet you when you come in, find you a table and get you seated with menus and alerting the waiter to your presence, etc.
And often times, other waiters may help out - if your waiter is particularly busy, you may find other waiters are customer oriented enough to help service your needs (refill your drinks, clear plates, get you extra cutlery, etc) - the goal being that if you have a good time, you'll return and thus keep the place in business (and them having a job).
Anyhow, I've had bad service at a restaurant I frequented - they were slammed, so I understood that the waiter may have been a bit busy and food coming out slower, but how slow it was pretty much appalled me, and with no apologies either. It was so bad, it took me 40 minutes to pay! I asked for my bill, and 20 minutes later, the waiter comes around asking if I needed anything else. I again asked for my bill (and since I was starting to run late, to hurry up a bit). Disappears for another 20 minutes, then appears with my bill which I paid and left, by the time of which I was horrendously late. The server seemed genuinely annoyed that she had to service me, a group of 1 person, when it was obvious she was trying to give preferential treatment to the group of 10 that was seated in her section for a much larger tip.
Of course, the bill came with a survey on it (which I religiously did since they gave you a coupon and experienced the "bad experience" side of the survey. I remember it asking about what part of the experience I didn't like, and I said it took too long, and then it asked which part, to which I had to say the payment. But it did ask me to elaborate so it wasn't just all ratings, I detailed why I gave those ratings.
Students take exams in the U.S.A. as well, and I don't think the American government has ever shut down the entire Internet to prevent cheating. Why does Algeria have so much more trouble dealing with cheating than America? Can Algeria learn anything from the American model?
That's probably because these educational systems are based on the British model, where you have literally a Mother of All Exams to take, and how you do on those exams dictates your path in life. Basically every student will write the exam at the same time on the same day (heaven forbid you get ill or sick, though I'm sure you can take an alternate if you really are sick). But these exams are it - do well, you can look forward to an overseas scholarship to some prestigious college or university anywhere - the UK, US, etc. Do really well and it'll be a full meal deal. Do less well and it'll be a local college or university, then trade school, then well, whatever else.
Honestly, it's a rather disgusting system, and in Asia, from China to India and Singapore and others, it leads to some seriously messed up kids - suicides become the #1 reason for death. Doesn't help that parents generally insist on the foreign scholarship or kicked out of the house. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the death rate among teens due to suicides will start to approach that of the US from guns.
Thus, it's no big surprise that the alternative to killing yourself is to cheat. And cheating devices have grown in sophistication and complexity (and generally are under $200), from smartwatches that hold gigabytes of text and images, micro radio transmitters and receivers, ultra tiny cellphones, etc.
The American system generally has a lot more compassion and in general, you don't have one big exam to determine your future, you may have the SATs and ACTs and other standardized tests, but in general, the kids figure out their path in life - if they want to study overseas, they work for it, else they have to go local. Or some just go trade school and be done with it.
There's still an incentive to cheat, but honestly, the push and motivation to cheat is a lot less - cheating on your SATs and ACTs may get you in the door at your dream university, but in general, you probably wouldn't hack it. You're not trying to compete for your parent's (and relatives!) love, a roof over your head, etc. Not surprisingly, the teenage suicide rate is far lower.
For all its faults, the American system at least lets the kids choose their path and gives them opportunity to succeed, rather than boil down their entire learning into a single number that decides their fate.
In the US, you cheat to get better grades. Elsewhere, you cheat just to survive, live, or avoid getting kicked out of the house.
What happened to the competitive advantage of one system over another; isn't it bad to mix players from different systems? I remember PC players having a huge advantage over console players in the past. I haven't played fortnite, it's not my type of game, so why is it different?
Well, I suspect the rounds are so short that in the end the advantage gets pretty small. Plus, platform differences mustn't be a huge deal, because you apparently can play with just a touchscreen on mobile. So I suspect on a lot of modern games, it really doesn't matter. Plus I'm sure Microsoft and even Nintendo will allow mouse and keyboard soon enough if they need to.
However, this cross marketing could be very interesting - Microsoft never really had a portable system, and Nintendo was generally lacking on the home console department. I suspect this could lead to interesting developments since Microsoft and Nintendo have a system the other lacks. If it succeeds, I still thing we'll have two separate companies, but we may get some interesting intermingling of games and services - Microsoft providing the home console and online network Nintendo never could build (Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Mario Party on Microsoft, anyone? Online play and cross play with Switch). And likewise, we'd probably see a bunch of interesting portable gaming - Halo on Switch would be fairly intriguing, with cross play to home console users.
According to the summary, his (human) manager failed to renew his contract in the new system, during their changeover.
So a machine did not fire him. A human failed to renew his contract, and the machine obediently carried out the steps that it should carry out when that happened.
The narrative about an evil AI here is far more interesting than what actually happened.
While technically correct, it shows a severe shortcoming of the automation. An oversight like this is mild with amusing results, but in safety-related situations, it results in failure - often resulting in lives lost.
It's why there are failsafes built in - because even though everything SHOULD work out, sometimes crap happens. And it has resulted in the loss of life.
The problem is the automation - it does not take human factors into account. Humans screw up. They make mistakes. They forget important steps. They rush. And when it happens, crap happens. And that crap can include loss of life, especially if you're talking about aircraft or other vehicles.
Here, it leads to an amusing story. But the same thing done elsewhere could kill dozens to hundreds of lives.
This is especially so when it's so simple to fix - alarms, lockouts, alerts, etc. If a user pushes a lever at the wrong time, at the very least something should alert the user that they're doing it at the wrong time, or better yet, a lock prevents movement while displaying an alert (but is overridable in case of lock failure).
Here, it could be something as simple as sending a few emails out - perhaps a month before the contract ends, give a warning, then a week before it ends, and then everyday from 3 days down to zero. Then if you attempt to log in, it simply says your contract has expired with the only option left to log out. (But don't auto-log-out - sometimes you have to show the message to someone higher up to fix a mistake).
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Windows 7 is the LOWEST version of Windows Microsoft currently supports. Support for Windows Vista and XP, the two previous versions of Windows, ended years ago.
It doesn't mean it won't work elsewhere as a standard USB mouse, it just means that since Vista and XP are dead, Microsoft won't bother listing those OSes as supported.
The app to customize it, which really means remapping buttons, was probably only tested on machines running Windows 7 as well. Microsoft wouldn't have tested on older machines.
Linux and macOS users will see it a s a multi-button mouse and I'm pretty certain plenty of utilities for either OS will let you remap buttons as well. Given my Mac has an old IntelliMouse on it which I mapped the extra buttons to the windows and desktop management functions it wasn't hard to do.
And looking around, it seems I've bought a lot of them over the years, only transitioning to Logitech wireless ones when I couldn't get those. There's probably a couple more at work.
Guess I'll have to buy this mouse now.
Except the Interinet, like cellphones, have transformed our lives enough that it's impossible to go back. Life without a cellphone is tough - sure you have landlines still, but you don't have payphones. If you're in the middle of nowhere, you now have to rely on the kindness of strangers to let you use their phone. Where there were plenty of payphones everywhere, there are none now. And now, sometimes you can't even get a landline - either the local telco gave up and let them rot and says if you want a home phone, here's a plan and a cellphone.
Likewise, not having an internet connection today is a huge setback. There are just things you can no longer do. Applying for jobs is now much harder because most companies expect you email them your resume and cover letter, few even require an online application process. And the more menial the job,. the more this is a requirement
Hell, a lot of libraries got rid of their reference materials because the Internet is available, and shelves that formerly hold books often now only have "media areas" where patrons can look up information themselves, or rent usage of equipment
Face it, the Internet has become a basic utility these days. Alongside water, electricity, garbage collection, roads, etc.
Because you're not suppose to use those slots for permanent extended storage. They're not usually on a good interface ( USB3 typically) or dreadfully slow.
They're a convenience slot - you use it to take the card from your camera and copying the photos off it, then putting the card back on it.
Though some people make shortened SD cards that do fit flush for those who really want to use them as a full time storage slot.
1. I don't display my immaturity on FB. There, I'm respectable, downright boring guy.
2. I don't smoke, drink, or take dangerous chances. My only health vice is I drink too much Coke.
3. None of my current FB friends have any known "red flags". A previous friend had issues, but he lost his FB account years ago due to pwnage.
4. Unless I'm unconscious, or in a hospital, there's nothing odd about posting on FB while sick at home. Unless I'm stupid enough to post pics of the beach or whereever I'm really at.
I'm not saying FB is good. It's not. But it's not that hard to be on it without having any problems. Just assume that whatever you do there is potentially public, regardless of your settings.
Problem is, that's showing a level of maturity that I don't think a lot of Facebook users have. Far too many people treat social media as a bragging medium - they feel like they must post something amazing on it and not appear "boring". Thus all those incidents of photos while drunk, taking a sick day to hit the beach (and SELFIES!), etc.
I too lead a boring life, and I don't feel the need to post every minute of it. I like to keep to myself so I prefer not to share at all.
Because you have to remember everything you post online IS public. "Privacy settings" are marketing tools meant to get people to spill their guts - if Facebook offered no privacy controls, no one would post half the stuff they do. But because they do, everyone posts all the crap online. Thus giving Facebook the information they so crave.
Exactly. Except here Amazon tries to do it not by calling people "independent contractors", but "independent small business".
Thus, every interaction Amazon has would be between business to business, and it's up to your new small business to pay you and your taxes properly.
It's a clever workaround...
Actually there is evidence to show it works - the single stream method increases diversions of recyclables from the landfill to actual recycling. And not only that, but they went away from the old "plastic number" method of determining if you could recycle it and simply name the items - instead of saying "plastics 1, 2, 4, 5 only", you say "plastic food and juice containers that are not styrofoam".
Granted, it does increase the contamination a bit, but plastic contamination is easily cleaned - a little soap and water gets rid of most of it. And that is important because plastic lasts a long time. Plastic doesn't break down, it breaks up - turning into microplastics. It's what the scary part of the great pacific plastic patch is about.
Contaminated paper you send to the compost stream - paper bioderades within days, so even though you didn't recycle it, it still doesn't pollute the environment as badly.
And yes, current systems ARE automated. They use a vision camera and air jets to divert recycling into various streams. (There's also a manual component). This is a field where everyone is throwing everything at automation - enhanced sensors, multi spectral cameras, etc.
If China won't take contaminated paper, it doesn't really matter. Heck, if it ends up in the water it'll break down quickly as well.
It turns out it's far better to chop down easily renewable trees than to toss fossils away - trees for paper are easily farmed and most replanting efforts have regenerated forests all the time. Even in forest-heavy places, you rarely hear much about tree huggers and saving the forests - industry has already developed and practice conservation to the point where it's renewable.
Heck, even the quality of the recycled paper has gone way up - it used to be trivially easy to tell the difference because recycled paper had a very nasty gritty feel to it. Now it's hard to tell. About the only paper product still using virgin fiber is... toilet paper, and that's because it's hard to make TP with the right properties of softness and strength using recycled fiber. You can get fully recycled TP, but yeah, it's nasty stuff still.
A number of laptops already support charging by USB-C - some in fact don't have an AC adapter port anymore - they change exclusively by USB-C using USB-PD. And by many, I'm not saying Apple - but Lenovos and Dells too. Also, not slower - USB-PD supports up to 100W, and most adapters easily do 60W which is more than sufficient to charge and run the laptop.
Already done. It's called Thunderbolt and many laptops have a Thunderbolt 3 port with the USB-C port. And yes, external GPUs (eGPU) are supported as well. If you're talking about gaming, you'd be running Windows 10 which has great support for this sort of thing. In fact, they make nice Thunderbolt docking stations too with USB-PD, so a single port docking system is available for laptops.
The problem is, a lot of contracts ARE fixed price. However, if you know how it works, it's fixed price as long as whole list of conditions are met - if any of them are violated, the price starts rising.
This can include stuff like "the work will be done in XX state" and some politician wants it done in their state. So now the company tacks on the costs of moving the workforce over to the price of the bill.
I've written a few fixed price contracts - you cover as much ass as possible, so when the customer comes up and changes something, you soak them. This includes stuff like requirements as well, plus contingency and other amounts. We always warn them when something else they want causes a change request, as that adds to the cost they will have to pay.
Fixed price contracts are generally the rule, which is why everyone covers their ass because they know there will be changes, and those changes will add time and cost to the project so they get billed for.
And yes, you build in things like start/stop costs - if the customer causes a stop work for any reason (e.g., fail to deliver required deliverables on time, the stopping and starting of the project incurs costs that have to be recouped as well. Any time there's a "changing of the guard" all of a sudden can cause all this as the outgoing guy simply walks away and the incoming guy has to step in and pick everything up.
Cost Plus (or Time and Materials) isn't always more expensive than Fixed Price - careful contract writing ensures that Fixed Price contracts have sufficient bloat to factor in risk, as well as sufficient CYA to ensure if the user wants a change, they will pay for it.
Does that include the $1B or so it cost to fix Hubble? You have to remember when they launched Hubble, the mirror distorted a tiny amount causing it to produce blurry images (basically the mirror was distorted by less than the thickness of a sheet of paper).
Hubble was the great white elephant that threatened science in the early years until they fixed it.
Flights over the Atlantic are coordinated between Canada and the UK. There is a set of 10 "routes" each way and the air traffic agency responsible (Canada for east to west, UK for west to east) sets up the routes (which vary daily) and the scheduling of aircraft on the routes.
This is done so while aircraft are over the middle of the Atlantic where there is no radar coverage, they won't encounter traffic - either because they're running into slower traffic ahead, traffic going the other way, or traffic beside them.
It's not the most efficient, but it's the safest route - and very little deviation is allowed.
And yes, there are traffic jams, which is why there are 10 different "lanes" going both ways.
The thing is, ADS-B (yes, ADS-B) is being implemented worldwide. Unlike the US system though, most countries are going with a space-based satellite system, so your ADS-B transponder will talk to the satellites. (The US went with ground based systems because there is so much airplane traffic that it would overload the satellites). With this it means the location of all aircraft will be known, so it will be possible to control aircraft beyond radar coverage (just because they are beyond radar coverage doesn't mean they are beyond radio range - satellite messaging and HF radio allow all aircraft to still be in communication).
You should've seen the s#!tstorm EA created when they announced their latest Call of Duty or whatever was going to feature... female avatars. The internet practically blew up with people arguing right or wrong on that. (And the rest of the world goes "meh, so what?"). But the rhetoric among gamers over an addition was just amazing. It's optional folks, if you don't want it, don't pick it. So what if there are more avatars to choose from.
Heck, an indie game I played asked a simple question - do you want to be referred to as a "he", "she" or "it". The number of people who took offense at even being given the option was amazing.
Then again, religion must be some sacred cow. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled law societies are not required to certify a law school at a conservative university that requires all its students to not engage in homosexual behavior, only marry the opposite sex, etc. The conservative press called it an assault on the freedom of religion by the LGBTQ community (who saw it as an assault on their basic right to equality). Not surprisingly, a few days later, a rainbow crosswalk was defaced with white paint.
Too many idiots have really lost a grip on life.
Most of the scammed ARE embarrassed to go to the police, actually. For every one you hear in the news, there are probably dozens of people who simply walked away after losing thousands of dollars in one of the many scams.
Heck, some of them who go to the police make up a story to go along with it. Just last week, a woman claimed to receive a call from the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency, aka the Canadian IRS) who then had fake police "arrest" her and force her to withdraw money.
Yes, people fall for the tax scam all the time. It'a annoying enough to receive the calls almost daily at times. Though this time, they used Bitcoin instead of iTunes cards (or other gift card) - perhaps because large iTunes card purchases are flagged by most retailers - there is very few legitimate reasons to buy 100 $50 iTunes cards so most retailers will ask if they're paying a tax bill or something.
Chances are, the public is going to be so reinforced into "the taxman does not accept gift cards and Bitcoin" that any mention of Bitcoin will trigger scam alerts. (And I found out there's apparently a bitcoin "ATM" near me).
The scammed people are too embarrassed most of the time to admit they've been scammed. Usually because they usually believe they can't be scammed. The only way to be sure is to take two life lessons to heart - first, nothing is easy in life - so if someone promises a lot of money to you quickly, it's a scam, and two - question everything.
My mom was the best at it - she literally would question everything - she'd get a scam email and delete it. If she wasn't sure, she'd ask me and we'd talk about it. At which point she'd realize it was still a scam - either some tell tale sign she missed, or if we weren't sure, we'd assume it was a scam. Any important business is never done through just email - your bank, a government agency, etc., they'd send letters or call you in addition to email. I think out of this only once did we treat something as a scam that wasn't, which happened because they sent a letter the next day.
Hah. I didn't expect this reference here...
(for those wondering, ti's a Dr. Demento show song - Star Trekkin'. I think I found a copy off the Internet Archive.
I think the problem is that people think "lactose intolerant" is akin to "lactose allergy", along the lines of "peanut allergy" or "soy allergy" or "shellfish allergy".,
Because after all, a big reason people ask is they are allergic and there's a chance of a reaction.
Whereas lactose intolerance isn't an allergy, it's a failure to produce lactase (enzyme to process lactose sugars) and no, it will not lead to an allergic reaction. However, the unprocessed lactose sugar does a number with the gut flora (typically the same ones that process bean fibers - they're the last in line of the bacteria that help process what you eat into nutrients)
Problem is, most people don't realize that and think any food avoidance is caused by an allergy. Same goes for those with Celiac disease and thus have to avoid gluten.
Yes, and John Oliver can mock Justin Trudeau as much as he wants and it'll be perfectly allowed. Our PM won't even have the audacity to call it fake news. He'd just take it like a Canadian and probably laugh. To be honest, most Canadians will probably laugh as well - we recognize attempts at humor, as long as it is in good taste (i.e., nothing about minorities, race, religion, sexual orientation or the like).
(Yes, Trump's definition of "fake news" is basically "anything that does not show Donald in a positive light". If you're not ass-kissing, you're fake news. I think it's probably easier to say those outlets that Trump doesn't call Fake News are, and those he calls fake news aren't.)
John Oliver's segments are often reposted officially on YouTube. Sometimes those videos are geolocked to not include Canada. Most of them aren't so you can watch them freely.
That's the intent. Because if you really wanted to see a movie and use MoviePass, they make it inconvenient enough to see a new release. 1 hour and 100 yards is nothing if you're doing it on a Tuesday afternoon, but a Friday night opener? Good luck.
Maybe if you waited 3-4 weeks so the crowds die down (and the ticket split more favorable so MoviePass may get a discounted ticket) it would work, which I think is the whole point - it's not to get you a ticket to a movie, but to encourage you to see movies later after opening week.
And maybe, MAYBE if MoviePass did it that way, they'd have moire support. First, the ticket revenue split would allow for MoviePass to buy discounted tickets, second, they could go to the studios and get some money for them by being able to drive an audience to see a movie on the third or fourth week of its run, raising the movie revenues (at a time when most movies plummet in revenue takes - usually after the first week, most movies drop 30-60%, and from there it drops even more).
And of course, they should've worked out a deal with concessions - getting theatres to discount them could result in a larger profit from concessions - if one person in a group gets popcorn, well, it's likely others would want one too, even if they didn't originally intend to buy any. Which means buying a drink too...
WebAssembly is an evolution of asm.js from Mozilla.It's actually JavaScript, but a small subset of it.
Asm.js came about as some Javascript engine writers for Mozilla were playing around (and ended up with a C to Javascript compiler) and discovered there were operations that the engine ran really fast. So asm.js was created to provide a turing-complete subset of Javascript that ran really fast in Mozilla.
I think the challenge was to run a game engine like Unity or Unreal in the browser without a plugin, which was why the C to Javascript compiler was created.
It became WebAssembly when Mozilla and other browser manufacturers got together to standardize the interface. It's not another language, but a controlled restricted subset of Javascript that ends up executing extremely quickly because they were simple and by restricting what Javascript you could use, the optimizers could make optimizations they could not in regular Javascript. End result is the Javascript JIT in the browser made fast and efficient code.
This also lead to the standardization of the C to WebAssembly compiler, which is why you now have even large projects like DOSBox compiled into WebAssembly, so you have the ability to run retro programs right in the browser (see the Internet Archive)..
It's likely what happened is the optimizations to WebAssembly bypass the mitigations - the restricted Javascript subset exists to be really fast and what happened is browser manufacturers may have forgot about the fast path.
You realize the SnapDragon chips, since at least the 820, has had PCIe onboard? Heck, the iPhone has had PCIe-connected SSD storage for a couple of years now (yes, it uses PCIe SSD controller, it's why it gets such high flash memory access scores - they're topping out around 1GB/sec, which while slower than a modern NVMe drive for a PC, is still faster than SATA3 and is pretty decent, after all, it's just an iPhone).
PCIe on a smartphone chip isn't unusual - it's designed for the higher speed interconnects.
This chip will certainly continue having PCIe on it. Though I wonder if Qualcomm has fixed several issues with it. It was pretty lame last time I tried to use it.
Well, the Mac Pro and Mac MIni are Apple's worst selling Macs. Apple invests as much R&D into a product as they make from the product - thus low selling products like the Mac Mini and Mac Pro get very little love. And this has historically been true - it's not something that a model doesn't sell and Apple abandons it, but historically, the Mac Pro and Mini never sold well. They only continue to exist for two reasons - one, Tim Cook, unlike Jobs, will keep making a product if it still sells and they can continue making it (explaining the rather delayed death of the old traditional iPods), and two, there's a very vocal community that demands those models.
The iMac and laptop line sell far better, which is why they aren't as outdated. Problem is, everyone has crept into Apple's territory of premium laptops - the era of PC makers racing to the bottom is pretty much over - there's still $500 and under laptops, but it's not an area manufacturers are putting much effort in. With Ultrabooks and the like offering premium materials, high res screens, quality construction and consumers generally realizing that the $500 laptops are there to meet a price, while the higher end machines are much nicer and spending money there, most manufacturers are competing with Apple.
Easy, people who are told they need to install a hundred of them, usually landlords or building owners who are renovating and need to bring it up to current code.
When you're dealing with that many of them, there's a real savings to be had buying a $5 alarm versus a $50 one. This is especially so if the building is older and thus never actually had CO detectors at all.
Likewise, the devices do expire, so you do have to replace them periodically (10 years or so) and again, if you're a building owner, you'll again shop for the cheapest.
Another group might be builders - if you're building a subdivision of 50 houses, each of which may have 2-3 detectors, you're going to order them in bulk as well. Quality builders will hire a proper contractor to wire them up who will likely use quality name brand detectors (yes, you want to network the detectors so if it goes off on one floor, it will trigger ALL the detectors). But cheap contractors might just buy a bulk load of them and self-install them.
No, technology to identify that area exists today. It's even consumer level technology (costing around $150) - Kinect could easily do skeletal analysis of the captured 3D image, so knees to armpits is trivially easy to identify. It's a solved problem, and the systems the MLB can afford to get will be even better at it.
The problem is the fuzziness of the area - batters squat a bit trying to minimize the area - at what point do you sample the player for defining the strike zone? Knowing this, the batter will move after the pitch.
The hard part is not the calls in the obvious strike zone - the hard part is making the call when the player has moved and thus either enlarged or shrunk the strike zone AND the ball happens to be in the disputed area.
In fact, given baseball's remarkable ability to boil things down to numbers, I'm surprised they haven't tried to analyze this change in area and how many pitches ended up in the disputed area. Not only this, but knowing the outcome would be interesting.
The reason for this is simple - your tip isn't just for the waiter, but eh support staff that enables the waiter to do their job. You know, all the busboys that take the food to your table when the waiter's busy taking orders, the cooks at the back who actually made the food you're eating, the greeters and seaters that greet you when you come in, find you a table and get you seated with menus and alerting the waiter to your presence, etc.
And often times, other waiters may help out - if your waiter is particularly busy, you may find other waiters are customer oriented enough to help service your needs (refill your drinks, clear plates, get you extra cutlery, etc) - the goal being that if you have a good time, you'll return and thus keep the place in business (and them having a job).
Anyhow, I've had bad service at a restaurant I frequented - they were slammed, so I understood that the waiter may have been a bit busy and food coming out slower, but how slow it was pretty much appalled me, and with no apologies either. It was so bad, it took me 40 minutes to pay! I asked for my bill, and 20 minutes later, the waiter comes around asking if I needed anything else. I again asked for my bill (and since I was starting to run late, to hurry up a bit). Disappears for another 20 minutes, then appears with my bill which I paid and left, by the time of which I was horrendously late. The server seemed genuinely annoyed that she had to service me, a group of 1 person, when it was obvious she was trying to give preferential treatment to the group of 10 that was seated in her section for a much larger tip.
Of course, the bill came with a survey on it (which I religiously did since they gave you a coupon and experienced the "bad experience" side of the survey. I remember it asking about what part of the experience I didn't like, and I said it took too long, and then it asked which part, to which I had to say the payment. But it did ask me to elaborate so it wasn't just all ratings, I detailed why I gave those ratings.
That's probably because these educational systems are based on the British model, where you have literally a Mother of All Exams to take, and how you do on those exams dictates your path in life. Basically every student will write the exam at the same time on the same day (heaven forbid you get ill or sick, though I'm sure you can take an alternate if you really are sick). But these exams are it - do well, you can look forward to an overseas scholarship to some prestigious college or university anywhere - the UK, US, etc. Do really well and it'll be a full meal deal. Do less well and it'll be a local college or university, then trade school, then well, whatever else.
Honestly, it's a rather disgusting system, and in Asia, from China to India and Singapore and others, it leads to some seriously messed up kids - suicides become the #1 reason for death. Doesn't help that parents generally insist on the foreign scholarship or kicked out of the house. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the death rate among teens due to suicides will start to approach that of the US from guns.
Thus, it's no big surprise that the alternative to killing yourself is to cheat. And cheating devices have grown in sophistication and complexity (and generally are under $200), from smartwatches that hold gigabytes of text and images, micro radio transmitters and receivers, ultra tiny cellphones, etc.
The American system generally has a lot more compassion and in general, you don't have one big exam to determine your future, you may have the SATs and ACTs and other standardized tests, but in general, the kids figure out their path in life - if they want to study overseas, they work for it, else they have to go local. Or some just go trade school and be done with it.
There's still an incentive to cheat, but honestly, the push and motivation to cheat is a lot less - cheating on your SATs and ACTs may get you in the door at your dream university, but in general, you probably wouldn't hack it. You're not trying to compete for your parent's (and relatives!) love, a roof over your head, etc. Not surprisingly, the teenage suicide rate is far lower.
For all its faults, the American system at least lets the kids choose their path and gives them opportunity to succeed, rather than boil down their entire learning into a single number that decides their fate.
In the US, you cheat to get better grades. Elsewhere, you cheat just to survive, live, or avoid getting kicked out of the house.
Well, I suspect the rounds are so short that in the end the advantage gets pretty small. Plus, platform differences mustn't be a huge deal, because you apparently can play with just a touchscreen on mobile. So I suspect on a lot of modern games, it really doesn't matter. Plus I'm sure Microsoft and even Nintendo will allow mouse and keyboard soon enough if they need to.
However, this cross marketing could be very interesting - Microsoft never really had a portable system, and Nintendo was generally lacking on the home console department. I suspect this could lead to interesting developments since Microsoft and Nintendo have a system the other lacks. If it succeeds, I still thing we'll have two separate companies, but we may get some interesting intermingling of games and services - Microsoft providing the home console and online network Nintendo never could build (Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Mario Party on Microsoft, anyone? Online play and cross play with Switch). And likewise, we'd probably see a bunch of interesting portable gaming - Halo on Switch would be fairly intriguing, with cross play to home console users.
While technically correct, it shows a severe shortcoming of the automation. An oversight like this is mild with amusing results, but in safety-related situations, it results in failure - often resulting in lives lost.
It's why there are failsafes built in - because even though everything SHOULD work out, sometimes crap happens. And it has resulted in the loss of life.
The problem is the automation - it does not take human factors into account. Humans screw up. They make mistakes. They forget important steps. They rush. And when it happens, crap happens. And that crap can include loss of life, especially if you're talking about aircraft or other vehicles.
Here, it leads to an amusing story. But the same thing done elsewhere could kill dozens to hundreds of lives.
This is especially so when it's so simple to fix - alarms, lockouts, alerts, etc. If a user pushes a lever at the wrong time, at the very least something should alert the user that they're doing it at the wrong time, or better yet, a lock prevents movement while displaying an alert (but is overridable in case of lock failure).
Here, it could be something as simple as sending a few emails out - perhaps a month before the contract ends, give a warning, then a week before it ends, and then everyday from 3 days down to zero. Then if you attempt to log in, it simply says your contract has expired with the only option left to log out. (But don't auto-log-out - sometimes you have to show the message to someone higher up to fix a mistake).