Do you really want to see it all shriveled up? You'll be measuring the size that won't matter with your suggestion. April 1st it will definitely be too cold to have an erection in those cir...cum...stances...
Mod parent up. "" work for me every time, up to the point I get back NO results when the encapsulated string isn't found at all. The '+' has been phased out years ago (just to be able to phase it out once again with the shutdown of their social media platform;) )
I'm the first one who likes the idea of recycling and reuse - My production of 'other' garbage is about three bags a year (40 liter of garbage each when closed, something like that?), one bag every three-four weeks of recyclable plastics and tins, one container of old paper every four-six months and concerning glass, many bottles I save to put my home brewed/self made beer/wine in. For the other glass, we have a system recycling over 80% of glass used.
However, before you use something heavy like glass, please research the environmental impact first. I know of experience, transporting liquids in glass can be very expensive (the postage to send a bottle of whisky half around the world is prohibitive - more than the import taxes). They add up to about half the transport weight, not even counting the need of sturdier crates. If (and that's a big if) transporting filled glass bottles and re-using them is more environmentally friendly than transporting filled plastic bottles, charging a return fee and recycling them when collected, I'm all for it. However, I want to know for sure that's the case.
The advantage of using stainless steel containers instead of glass, stainless steel can bend and thus needs to be less sturdy and bulky and therefor weighs a LOT less for the same volume than glass. Still more than plastic 'though. So, I see a better use case for stainless steel than for glass.
Of course when the car detects you opening the trunk and removing the jack and spare, it will put the tow service on stand by until it detects a working tire again... with a timer for those that may be too clumsy, even if they have the tools in hand. It should detect lifting the side of the broken tire as well for extra insurance.. Simply add three extra states to the software and one or two sensors to detect a removed jack/spare. The trunk and tilt sensors should be already present:P Maybe it can even detect the weight loss of you leaving the car and then removing the jack and spare. No extra sensors needed, only code \o/
Because else, tomorrow your 'neighbor' will buy a gun, shoot you dead and take your land. That's why. Especially if he thinks he can gain more than he has to loose. Civilization is a thin veneer, held in check by people paying taxes. At least, that's what the skeptic in me whispers. The optimist tells me one day we'll reach that federation of planets-like state of civilization science fiction writers dream about. The realist? That one tells me with moderate prosperity for as large a group of people as possible (which includes all those member-states the EU is comprised of) we stand a chance, not hurtling towards world war three. That's why I'm quite upset about the English so hell bent upon impoverishing themselves. Poor neighbors may do crazy things.
De-hydrogensulphatized battery acid. Make sure you use the pristine stuff, unless you live in an area with lead piping; you won't notice a difference with your ordinary tap water then anyway.
Answer seems to be 'yes' if history is to be believed. I haven't heard about my fellow countrymen wiping out mosquitoes, which they certainly would have done if they were more disgusting than those birds. --;)
As supposedly a great French princess once said, 'Then, let them eat cake".
In other words, yes... for about a third of the human population. Other food sources of crucial importance are various other cereals (especially wheat, rye and maize), various species of bean/legumes and some root vegetables, like potatoes. If any of them are magically waved away, major continental-scale famine (as GP said) would ensue. They aren't called 'staple foods' for nothing.
The article states otherwise. You change the 'password' by changing the stimulus (use a different photograph, for example).
Fingerprints can't be changed reliably (without surgery or self mutilation), that's true. And as such you could see them as a kind of username. And they should be used as such if the biometric sensor can't differentiate between the real you and a copy. But when brain waves are used as described in the article, you can use them as a password, where your brain is the 'hasher' of your 'plain text' picture, and the 'hash' (brain waves) is compared to the recorded 'hash' in the database.
Wow... never expected to see a reference to that (by the way, wonderful) anime:)
In the Netherlands we do know small talk but usually not to 'the random stranger waiting at the bus stop', unless the weather is truly atrocious. And in business relations only as a brief introduction of one or two sentences before the actual contents of the meeting. I'm not entirely sure about small talk in personal relations... in that regard I associate that primarily with elderly at their monthly bingo meeting. In other words, only engaged in when having too much time on your hands...
Small talk is not really something I'm good at. I do smile a lot, just because I'm content being alive and that means 'I'm fine' usually should be a truthful response, even if not -everything- is. However, often I will try to fit in some actual information relevant to relationship I have with the person asking me that particular question. If you really want small talk with me, you're safer making a remark about the weather, because in the Netherlands you can talk a lot about that without running out of subject:P However, it may stop being small talk than and become a discussion about, at least seemingly, more chaotic weather patterns in the last decades and if that could be the effects of a changing climate caused by global warming.
Not true... I'm a member of the Dutch radio amateur association, VERON. Most I see are around 55-65, not 70-80. There are quite a few 40-ish and at the main (national) level there is an active youth commission. Locally many departments help out with JOTA activities and we do see some new members coming from that source. I'm 42 myself, as software developer volunteering for the VERON ICT commission and a board member of the local departement (A35). Of course, there is constant talk about how to recruit new members.... numbers have been slightly declining for a few decades now. As more and more 'interest groups' come into existence (including digital ones), every single one of them get a smaller piece of then membership pie. Especially finding members that not only 'consume' but also volunteer is hard as everyone seems to be too busy with work, family care, etc. But that's not only true for HAMs, many organizations have those problems. One recent development is the PR commission started using social media, which brought in a remarkable number of members in a relatively short time. Seems obscurity is a larger problem than a dusty image.
Unless the bridge was already built less strong than specified and the extra 20% was just the tipping point, or there were other factors involved that made the bridge collapse... Another example: In Italy, many things are built outside specification due to mafia involvement... because taking shortcuts made it possible to pocket construction money. I'm not saying it happened here but it's just to give you another possibly 'far fetched' explanation.
You shouldn't put the blame on someone specific (also named: scapegoating) unless research into this catastrophe has a chance to finish and hopefully will find out what really happened... And lets pray that can be done without politics involved because this collapse already seems to be a highly laden subject in that regard.
As if the Linux kernel is the only kernel out there running on Spectre / Rowhammer vulnerable architectures. Beside, how do you know the implementation is needed on the kernel level? Have you read the paper to get to that conclusion? I haven't (yet) but I can easily imagine practical applications are only needed at the application level, for applications that actually could be attack vectors. Why drag down your whole operating system with an all encompassing solution when you only need to be careful with, say, a web browser or what else?
Research papers are to publish research made by researchers. Software developers that think the research is relevant to their project should read the papers and implement the methods in them. That's how the world works. Theoretical computer scientists are in knowledge more like mathematicians than software developers. I know, I've studied computer science at university level for almost a year and then decided I'd be better off studying at the high vocational education level, which is far more practical and better suited to my way of thinking. When I see a piece of pseudo-code I do know how to implement that algorithm in a few dozen programming languages 'though, including ones that use different coding paradigms than used in the pseudo-code... and make it fit in even a larger number of coding frameworks / platforms, if needed. You shouldn't ask a theoretical computer scientist that. They should focus on mathematical proof / code correctness, algorithmic scalability, and theoretical effectiveness calculations.
Capitalism has nothing to do with societal values of persons.
But then again, our economies (I'm Dutch, I suppose you're from the U.S.) are not capitalist - too much regulation for that, for better or worse, and too many (near) monopolies. And in both our societies, the people that work the most are definitely not the ones considered most valuable. Quite the opposite. It seems those that are valued the most produce the least or are sometimes even counter-productive. They often have the most wealth 'though...
Then he still has a 100 years to make up for it, doesn't he?
I jest. No-one will deny Musk isn't stubbornly trying to partly redo what the big car manufacturers already can do while sleeping. It's the other parts those big boys, also stubbornly, refuse to do that he tries to make a viable business from. Most EVs from other manufacturers are either 'show productions' with limited numbers or have known horrible flaws baked in (especially in battery degradation) from the start. I'd thank Musk for his tries to do it right (not saying he does already, but he's damned well trying) and I admire him for doing it in grand style.
If I had a drivers license* and enough money to spare for a car, I'd buy a Tesla. Like I bought a Ryzen the moment they were released. I like to put my money in the camp that tries and manages to make at least a decent product over those that sit on their butts and make money while sleeping.
(*By the way, I don't have a drivers license because I never had the need to - my job is a decent bike ride away - the exercise keeps me healthy, and we have proper public transport where I live.)
You are mixing up long-term success (visionary) with short-term success (being a huge idiot sometimes). But you probably did that on purpose and are just trolling. Well, I like to feed sometimes;) I have karma to burn.
If you can't be a huge fucking idiot sometimes you will not accomplish anything in life. It's when we naively make our greatest mistakes, we grow the most as a human being. The point is, learning and not making the same mistake again.
Do you know anyone that can operate an automatic assembly-line from birth, like it's in their DNA, other than its own digestive tract? No? Indeed, didn't think so. Eating and shitting all over the place comes naturally, as we see often enough here in the comments. The rest we have to learn. Sometimes we can learn from others, but if we want to do something innovative, we have to learn the hard way. That means being huge idiots until you know how to do it right.
If you think you can do better than Musk, prove it to the world, or forever hold your peace.
An average consumer only needs 'good enough'. That's the point I'm making. I'm not talking about people that actually work with digital video. Those can make an educated decision and take a 'lesser' codec while investing in more storage, for example. Or pay for licensing... And, yes, I have recorded, captured and edited video in the past, though that's a bit ago... mostly MJPEG and MPEG-2 stuff in 576i and some 720p... and used XVid for final compression... HVEC wasn't even developed by then. I don't do it any more because I find other things more interesting and it isn't my job. But I know that raw material can eat storage and the choke points in hardware at that time were plenty for a hobbyist digital video editor. But I did manage to get work done... on pure consumer hardware and no hardware accelerated de/encoding (My system at that time had a Athlon XP processor and a Matrox G400 if I remember correctly). However, generic hardware has had time to evolve for another 15 years. There may be bottlenecks for content producers. For average consumers I still stand by 'good enough'. And for the AC below, a Raspberry Pi 3B CAN soft-decode 1080p with ease if you're not going to use h265 to save a few MB. That was another point I tried to make... Ow... and it can ALSO soft-decode most 1080p h265 by now... or with a slight overclock. There have been some 'recent' (as in over a year ago) algorithmic optimizations that make it possible.
Why not? There is a reason why MPEG 1 layer 3 still is used today, even 'though there are far better audio codex in existence.
An average consumer only needs 'good enough'. 'Exceptional' and a pain in the a** to use freely (beer) will always lose out. This applies to AV codex, UHD Blu-rays, etc. Content creators and distributors will only pay for licenses if the bandwidth they save, really save them that much more money. And the largest content distributors use their 'patent unencumbered' 'free' codex, whether patent holders like it or not. Also, don't forget, software patents are still not valid and/or not enforced in large parts of the world (including a number of very large modern economies). Then, what's left is hardware support. But generic processors and other re-programmable hardware nowadays is fast enough for most real-time video decoding. A truly dedicated ASIC style hardware decoder often is not needed at all. So, you're left with consumers that either pirate - so they don't care about patent fees at all, use less efficient codex because they have bandwidth to spare anyway, use 'free (beer) patent unencumbered' codex because their main streaming site 'tells them to', use the patented codex because the patents don't apply in their jurisdiction...
MPEG-LA et al are dinosaurs and will die out soon. At least for AV de/encoding.
(I'm assuming here you're from the U.S.. If not, please specify)
As if the U.S. federal political bodies such shining examples? The president isn't directly elected, but by some shady electors instead, that can vote entirely contrary to their given mandate. The government is solely selected by the president, so no direct representation there. Senate doesn't represent the populace, but the states as every state sends two representatives, whether the population of said state is '3' or 'almost everyone'. And each congressional district (which at least is made up of an equal divide of the population) can only elect one representative, which almost begs for a two-party system and is patently the most false form of democracy ever invented.
Now, compare this with the EU. The EU presidents (every political body has one) are mostly chairmen. They preside over the debates in their respective bodies but have little more power. There are tree bodies. The European Commission is the executive branch. It has one member of each state, that each minister a department. They are bound by oath to not act in national interest. If a single member needs to be dismissed, the president can do so. However, the EU parliament can order a vote of no-confidence which dismisses the entire European Commission. The EU parliament could be somewhat compared to your house of representatives. Every country can vote for its proportionate number of representatives which ARE directly elected by the entire populace of said countries. EU political parties can campaign in every member state if they want to and after elections, representatives are (supposed to be) loyal to their political associations, not their nationality. The fact even the smallest country has 6 representatives, makes it a much better representation of the entire populace (it easily prevents a two-party system). The European Council has one representative of each country. Its political head of state. In that regard it's much like your senate. It's up to the countries how they elect their heads of state. Some are directly elected, some are not. The heads of state safeguard at the national interests of the member states within the EU. They are particularly expected to. That's why decisions are taken in different ways (sometimes consensus, sometimes majority, sometimes unanimity) because different problems require different approaches. When that was deemed important, the way to vote on a certain type of problem was documented in the treaties that every member nation had to sign when joining the EU. No EU without treaties. Every member knew what it was getting into. If you don't like that, blame your parents (or grandparents). Now, getting out is an entirely different matter. Currently one member is trying to, but that story is going off topic too much.
To be fair, this is about inaudible commands who I doubt have a matching voice print with an existing human voice. Your 'problem' already was a 'problem'.
Why do I have Pixar in mind? "Toy Story 5 - Electronic Warfare" featuring such lovely side-characters as baking assistant Aunt Alexa, Siri the drama queen and of course the gardener, Google Gnome.
Only if you WANT to become the government. I guess if you are rich enough you may like the influence but not the hassle and a decent puppet works better than potentially your head under a guillotine (it's France we're talking about;) ).
What I read on my 'local' tech website (page in Dutch) is they arrested several admins in various countries, and a former admin in the Netherlands. Also, it wasn't a Europol lead operation. Law enforcement agencies of eleven nations were involved from Europe, North America and Hong Kong (Asia), 'in corporation with Europol'.
The site is seized by the US DoD. In the coordinated effort the agencies hunted down various admins. The hunt for other personnel and users of the services is ongoing.
Depends on the amount of Pu you can scrounge up - It's quite rate in nature so I guess you have to deconstruct some nukes for it first, raid a few nuclear waste sites, or make a reactor capable of fertilizing U238 to Pu239. Then again, I think you'll need several tonnes of the stuff if you want to both spread it evenly and letting it have a decently noticeable effect, let alone really screw us up. Getting your hands on such an amount is improbable, but possible... there is in the order of several hundred of tonnes of the stuff 'manufactured' on this planet in total in variety of wastes, concentrations and uses. Be careful with the distribution, 'though. Only about 10 kilos of the stuff in too close proximity of itself will have very interesting consequences and may spontaneously decrease your supply with an inappreciable amount. Also, Pu is a metallic element and it's therefore very hard to 'grate' into 'mono molecular bits'...
If you truly want it in plain English. That would be:
'If you don't sleep enough, you'll die early. So either start working later, or start sleeping earlier. If the latter one is feasible for you is not yet determined and target of further research.'
If you want the nowadays popular 'angry world' version, it goes something like this:
'If you usually sleep in around 3 AM and your pointy haired boss expects you at the office at 9 AM, you can sue him for attempt of murder. You probably won't win 'though, 'cause there are not that many SJWs concerned about the 'Night owl' demographic.'
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really want to see it all shriveled up? You'll be measuring the size that won't matter with your suggestion. April 1st it will definitely be too cold to have an erection in those cir...cum...stances...
Mod parent up. "" work for me every time, up to the point I get back NO results when the encapsulated string isn't found at all. The '+' has been phased out years ago (just to be able to phase it out once again with the shutdown of their social media platform ;) )
I'm the first one who likes the idea of recycling and reuse - My production of 'other' garbage is about three bags a year (40 liter of garbage each when closed, something like that?), one bag every three-four weeks of recyclable plastics and tins, one container of old paper every four-six months and concerning glass, many bottles I save to put my home brewed/self made beer/wine in. For the other glass, we have a system recycling over 80% of glass used.
However, before you use something heavy like glass, please research the environmental impact first. I know of experience, transporting liquids in glass can be very expensive (the postage to send a bottle of whisky half around the world is prohibitive - more than the import taxes). They add up to about half the transport weight, not even counting the need of sturdier crates. If (and that's a big if) transporting filled glass bottles and re-using them is more environmentally friendly than transporting filled plastic bottles, charging a return fee and recycling them when collected, I'm all for it. However, I want to know for sure that's the case.
The advantage of using stainless steel containers instead of glass, stainless steel can bend and thus needs to be less sturdy and bulky and therefor weighs a LOT less for the same volume than glass. Still more than plastic 'though. So, I see a better use case for stainless steel than for glass.
Of course when the car detects you opening the trunk and removing the jack and spare, it will put the tow service on stand by until it detects a working tire again... with a timer for those that may be too clumsy, even if they have the tools in hand. It should detect lifting the side of the broken tire as well for extra insurance.. Simply add three extra states to the software and one or two sensors to detect a removed jack/spare. The trunk and tilt sensors should be already present :P Maybe it can even detect the weight loss of you leaving the car and then removing the jack and spare. No extra sensors needed, only code \o/
Because else, tomorrow your 'neighbor' will buy a gun, shoot you dead and take your land. That's why. Especially if he thinks he can gain more than he has to loose. Civilization is a thin veneer, held in check by people paying taxes. At least, that's what the skeptic in me whispers.
The optimist tells me one day we'll reach that federation of planets-like state of civilization science fiction writers dream about. The realist? That one tells me with moderate prosperity for as large a group of people as possible (which includes all those member-states the EU is comprised of) we stand a chance, not hurtling towards world war three. That's why I'm quite upset about the English so hell bent upon impoverishing themselves. Poor neighbors may do crazy things.
De-hydrogensulphatized battery acid. Make sure you use the pristine stuff, unless you live in an area with lead piping; you won't notice a difference with your ordinary tap water then anyway.
Disclaimer: IANAWWE.
Answer seems to be 'yes' if history is to be believed. I haven't heard about my fellow countrymen wiping out mosquitoes, which they certainly would have done if they were more disgusting than those birds. ;)
--
As supposedly a great French princess once said, 'Then, let them eat cake".
In other words, yes... for about a third of the human population. Other food sources of crucial importance are various other cereals (especially wheat, rye and maize), various species of bean/legumes and some root vegetables, like potatoes. If any of them are magically waved away, major continental-scale famine (as GP said) would ensue. They aren't called 'staple foods' for nothing.
The article states otherwise. You change the 'password' by changing the stimulus (use a different photograph, for example).
Fingerprints can't be changed reliably (without surgery or self mutilation), that's true. And as such you could see them as a kind of username. And they should be used as such if the biometric sensor can't differentiate between the real you and a copy.
But when brain waves are used as described in the article, you can use them as a password, where your brain is the 'hasher' of your 'plain text' picture, and the 'hash' (brain waves) is compared to the recorded 'hash' in the database.
Wow... never expected to see a reference to that (by the way, wonderful) anime :)
In the Netherlands we do know small talk but usually not to 'the random stranger waiting at the bus stop', unless the weather is truly atrocious. And in business relations only as a brief introduction of one or two sentences before the actual contents of the meeting. I'm not entirely sure about small talk in personal relations... in that regard I associate that primarily with elderly at their monthly bingo meeting. In other words, only engaged in when having too much time on your hands...
Small talk is not really something I'm good at. I do smile a lot, just because I'm content being alive and that means 'I'm fine' usually should be a truthful response, even if not -everything- is. However, often I will try to fit in some actual information relevant to relationship I have with the person asking me that particular question. If you really want small talk with me, you're safer making a remark about the weather, because in the Netherlands you can talk a lot about that without running out of subject :P However, it may stop being small talk than and become a discussion about, at least seemingly, more chaotic weather patterns in the last decades and if that could be the effects of a changing climate caused by global warming.
Not true... I'm a member of the Dutch radio amateur association, VERON. Most I see are around 55-65, not 70-80. There are quite a few 40-ish and at the main (national) level there is an active youth commission. Locally many departments help out with JOTA activities and we do see some new members coming from that source. I'm 42 myself, as software developer volunteering for the VERON ICT commission and a board member of the local departement (A35).
Of course, there is constant talk about how to recruit new members.... numbers have been slightly declining for a few decades now. As more and more 'interest groups' come into existence (including digital ones), every single one of them get a smaller piece of then membership pie. Especially finding members that not only 'consume' but also volunteer is hard as everyone seems to be too busy with work, family care, etc. But that's not only true for HAMs, many organizations have those problems. One recent development is the PR commission started using social media, which brought in a remarkable number of members in a relatively short time. Seems obscurity is a larger problem than a dusty image.
Unless the bridge was already built less strong than specified and the extra 20% was just the tipping point, or there were other factors involved that made the bridge collapse...
Another example: In Italy, many things are built outside specification due to mafia involvement... because taking shortcuts made it possible to pocket construction money. I'm not saying it happened here but it's just to give you another possibly 'far fetched' explanation.
You shouldn't put the blame on someone specific (also named: scapegoating) unless research into this catastrophe has a chance to finish and hopefully will find out what really happened... And lets pray that can be done without politics involved because this collapse already seems to be a highly laden subject in that regard.
As if the Linux kernel is the only kernel out there running on Spectre / Rowhammer vulnerable architectures. Beside, how do you know the implementation is needed on the kernel level? Have you read the paper to get to that conclusion? I haven't (yet) but I can easily imagine practical applications are only needed at the application level, for applications that actually could be attack vectors. Why drag down your whole operating system with an all encompassing solution when you only need to be careful with, say, a web browser or what else?
Research papers are to publish research made by researchers. Software developers that think the research is relevant to their project should read the papers and implement the methods in them. That's how the world works. Theoretical computer scientists are in knowledge more like mathematicians than software developers. I know, I've studied computer science at university level for almost a year and then decided I'd be better off studying at the high vocational education level, which is far more practical and better suited to my way of thinking. When I see a piece of pseudo-code I do know how to implement that algorithm in a few dozen programming languages 'though, including ones that use different coding paradigms than used in the pseudo-code... and make it fit in even a larger number of coding frameworks / platforms, if needed. You shouldn't ask a theoretical computer scientist that. They should focus on mathematical proof / code correctness, algorithmic scalability, and theoretical effectiveness calculations.
Capitalism has nothing to do with societal values of persons.
But then again, our economies (I'm Dutch, I suppose you're from the U.S.) are not capitalist - too much regulation for that, for better or worse, and too many (near) monopolies. And in both our societies, the people that work the most are definitely not the ones considered most valuable. Quite the opposite. It seems those that are valued the most produce the least or are sometimes even counter-productive. They often have the most wealth 'though...
Then he still has a 100 years to make up for it, doesn't he?
I jest. No-one will deny Musk isn't stubbornly trying to partly redo what the big car manufacturers already can do while sleeping. It's the other parts those big boys, also stubbornly, refuse to do that he tries to make a viable business from. Most EVs from other manufacturers are either 'show productions' with limited numbers or have known horrible flaws baked in (especially in battery degradation) from the start. I'd thank Musk for his tries to do it right (not saying he does already, but he's damned well trying) and I admire him for doing it in grand style.
If I had a drivers license* and enough money to spare for a car, I'd buy a Tesla. Like I bought a Ryzen the moment they were released. I like to put my money in the camp that tries and manages to make at least a decent product over those that sit on their butts and make money while sleeping.
(*By the way, I don't have a drivers license because I never had the need to - my job is a decent bike ride away - the exercise keeps me healthy, and we have proper public transport where I live.)
You are mixing up long-term success (visionary) with short-term success (being a huge idiot sometimes). But you probably did that on purpose and are just trolling. Well, I like to feed sometimes ;) I have karma to burn.
If you can't be a huge fucking idiot sometimes you will not accomplish anything in life. It's when we naively make our greatest mistakes, we grow the most as a human being. The point is, learning and not making the same mistake again.
Do you know anyone that can operate an automatic assembly-line from birth, like it's in their DNA, other than its own digestive tract? No? Indeed, didn't think so. Eating and shitting all over the place comes naturally, as we see often enough here in the comments. The rest we have to learn. Sometimes we can learn from others, but if we want to do something innovative, we have to learn the hard way. That means being huge idiots until you know how to do it right.
If you think you can do better than Musk, prove it to the world, or forever hold your peace.
An average consumer only needs 'good enough'. That's the point I'm making. I'm not talking about people that actually work with digital video. Those can make an educated decision and take a 'lesser' codec while investing in more storage, for example. Or pay for licensing... ... and used XVid for final compression... HVEC wasn't even developed by then. I don't do it any more because I find other things more interesting and it isn't my job. But I know that raw material can eat storage and the choke points in hardware at that time were plenty for a hobbyist digital video editor. But I did manage to get work done... on pure consumer hardware and no hardware accelerated de/encoding (My system at that time had a Athlon XP processor and a Matrox G400 if I remember correctly).
And, yes, I have recorded, captured and edited video in the past, though that's a bit ago... mostly MJPEG and MPEG-2 stuff in 576i and some 720p
However, generic hardware has had time to evolve for another 15 years. There may be bottlenecks for content producers. For average consumers I still stand by 'good enough'. And for the AC below, a Raspberry Pi 3B CAN soft-decode 1080p with ease if you're not going to use h265 to save a few MB. That was another point I tried to make... Ow... and it can ALSO soft-decode most 1080p h265 by now... or with a slight overclock. There have been some 'recent' (as in over a year ago) algorithmic optimizations that make it possible.
Why not? There is a reason why MPEG 1 layer 3 still is used today, even 'though there are far better audio codex in existence.
An average consumer only needs 'good enough'. 'Exceptional' and a pain in the a** to use freely (beer) will always lose out. This applies to AV codex, UHD Blu-rays, etc. Content creators and distributors will only pay for licenses if the bandwidth they save, really save them that much more money. And the largest content distributors use their 'patent unencumbered' 'free' codex, whether patent holders like it or not. Also, don't forget, software patents are still not valid and/or not enforced in large parts of the world (including a number of very large modern economies). Then, what's left is hardware support. But generic processors and other re-programmable hardware nowadays is fast enough for most real-time video decoding. A truly dedicated ASIC style hardware decoder often is not needed at all.
So, you're left with consumers that either pirate - so they don't care about patent fees at all, use less efficient codex because they have bandwidth to spare anyway, use 'free (beer) patent unencumbered' codex because their main streaming site 'tells them to', use the patented codex because the patents don't apply in their jurisdiction...
MPEG-LA et al are dinosaurs and will die out soon. At least for AV de/encoding.
(I'm assuming here you're from the U.S.. If not, please specify)
As if the U.S. federal political bodies such shining examples? The president isn't directly elected, but by some shady electors instead, that can vote entirely contrary to their given mandate. The government is solely selected by the president, so no direct representation there. Senate doesn't represent the populace, but the states as every state sends two representatives, whether the population of said state is '3' or 'almost everyone'. And each congressional district (which at least is made up of an equal divide of the population) can only elect one representative, which almost begs for a two-party system and is patently the most false form of democracy ever invented.
Now, compare this with the EU.
The EU presidents (every political body has one) are mostly chairmen. They preside over the debates in their respective bodies but have little more power. There are tree bodies.
The European Commission is the executive branch. It has one member of each state, that each minister a department. They are bound by oath to not act in national interest. If a single member needs to be dismissed, the president can do so. However, the EU parliament can order a vote of no-confidence which dismisses the entire European Commission.
The EU parliament could be somewhat compared to your house of representatives. Every country can vote for its proportionate number of representatives which ARE directly elected by the entire populace of said countries. EU political parties can campaign in every member state if they want to and after elections, representatives are (supposed to be) loyal to their political associations, not their nationality. The fact even the smallest country has 6 representatives, makes it a much better representation of the entire populace (it easily prevents a two-party system).
The European Council has one representative of each country. Its political head of state. In that regard it's much like your senate. It's up to the countries how they elect their heads of state. Some are directly elected, some are not. The heads of state safeguard at the national interests of the member states within the EU. They are particularly expected to. That's why decisions are taken in different ways (sometimes consensus, sometimes majority, sometimes unanimity) because different problems require different approaches. When that was deemed important, the way to vote on a certain type of problem was documented in the treaties that every member nation had to sign when joining the EU. No EU without treaties. Every member knew what it was getting into. If you don't like that, blame your parents (or grandparents). Now, getting out is an entirely different matter. Currently one member is trying to, but that story is going off topic too much.
To be fair, this is about inaudible commands who I doubt have a matching voice print with an existing human voice. Your 'problem' already was a 'problem'.
Why do I have Pixar in mind? "Toy Story 5 - Electronic Warfare" featuring such lovely side-characters as baking assistant Aunt Alexa, Siri the drama queen and of course the gardener, Google Gnome.
Only if you WANT to become the government. I guess if you are rich enough you may like the influence but not the hassle and a decent puppet works better than potentially your head under a guillotine (it's France we're talking about ;) ).
What I read on my 'local' tech website (page in Dutch) is they arrested several admins in various countries, and a former admin in the Netherlands. Also, it wasn't a Europol lead operation. Law enforcement agencies of eleven nations were involved from Europe, North America and Hong Kong (Asia), 'in corporation with Europol'.
The site is seized by the US DoD. In the coordinated effort the agencies hunted down various admins. The hunt for other personnel and users of the services is ongoing.
Dutch police is answering questions about the case here on Reddit (in English).
Depends on the amount of Pu you can scrounge up - It's quite rate in nature so I guess you have to deconstruct some nukes for it first, raid a few nuclear waste sites, or make a reactor capable of fertilizing U238 to Pu239. ... there is in the order of several hundred of tonnes of the stuff 'manufactured' on this planet in total in variety of wastes, concentrations and uses.
Then again, I think you'll need several tonnes of the stuff if you want to both spread it evenly and letting it have a decently noticeable effect, let alone really screw us up. Getting your hands on such an amount is improbable, but possible
Be careful with the distribution, 'though. Only about 10 kilos of the stuff in too close proximity of itself will have very interesting consequences and may spontaneously decrease your supply with an inappreciable amount.
Also, Pu is a metallic element and it's therefore very hard to 'grate' into 'mono molecular bits'...
Give it to me in pain English.
If you truly want it in plain English. That would be:
'If you don't sleep enough, you'll die early. So either start working later, or start sleeping earlier. If the latter one is feasible for you is not yet determined and target of further research.'
If you want the nowadays popular 'angry world' version, it goes something like this:
'If you usually sleep in around 3 AM and your pointy haired boss expects you at the office at 9 AM, you can sue him for attempt of murder. You probably won't win 'though, 'cause there are not that many SJWs concerned about the 'Night owl' demographic.'