The problem is facebook has the ears of a large number of users, competing against them is extremely difficult...
What's really needed is not a competitor, as any for-profit company is ultimately going to end up going the same way. What's needed is an open standard where multiple providers can interoperate and users can choose which provider to use or even host their own. That's how the internet was always supposed to work, there are literally millions of email and web servers out there all interoperating with one another.
Misinformation is free speech, the problem is not the people spreading false information, it's the people reading it and believing it rather than making the effort to do their own research to determine the truth.
The fact is all media is at least skewed to one side of any issue, and in any case the truth is usually more complicated than can be explained in the limited space of a news article.
However if people start doing their own research, they will discover that they can't trust the mainstream media any more than they can trust trolls on facebook.
HT is itself a feature designed to improve performance... If you disable it, then you lose any performance benefits it provided. Wether it provides a performance benefit depends on your workload, it allows the processor to work on another thread if your code stalls the pipeline, but if your code is properly optimized for the processor then it wont stall the pipeline...
All AV software consumes resources and reduces performance to varying degrees, this could potentially be crippling in some circumstances. AV software has to run with high privileges in order to intercept network traffic and file accesses etc... Because of this, exploitation of any bugs in the av software are likely to result in root access. AV software is also extremely complex, and designed to parse hostile data - there have been many vulnerabilities and more will be found for sure. There are also false positives to contend with, AV software has been known to trigger on legitimate files if they contain strings similar to known malware, this could result in programs breaking or loss of data etc. AV software also typically hooks into the system at a low level, often doing things the os developers never intended, which can often result in instability.
Most people won't want their cars to only provide 75% of their intended range, they will turn that feature off.
Wind may be on at night, but there's no guarantee - if it's a calm night you wont be getting any power from wind or solar. If it's too stormy wind turbines are shut down too, in order to prevent damage.
The % of EVs connected to the grid will be highly variable, just like wind and solar power. You will end up having to massively over provision capacity to cope with the worst case scenarios.
Public transportation is not economical unless you have large numbers of people travelling to/from the same locations at the same time. A bus or a train requires significantly more energy to move than car, so it needs to carry more passengers to break even - plus the expense of hiring the driver. And then the routing, a bus will travel around a route which is very inefficient at getting from point to point because it wants to collect passengers along the way, so a bus passengers will be travelling more miles than if they drove a car to the same destination.
And then there are situations where the bus does not go where you want, and you end up having to take multiple buses or trains with a period of waiting in between.
Also when you do end up with lots of people going to the same place at the same time, you end up with massive congestion and severely unpleasant travelling conditions.
Forcing everyone onto public transport doesn't help anyone, it just reduces everyone's quality of life. Instead measures need to be taken to reduce the need for travel, so provide residential areas and workplaces in close proximity and also allow remote working when possible etc... If most people can have a 5 minute walk to work, not only does their quality of life improve but the energy use decreases significantly too.
While they are less efficient than the large generators used in power plants, you are converting chemical energy directly into (mostly) kinetic energy...
For a power plant you are converting chemical energy into heat, converting the heat into kinetic energy, converting the kinetic energy into electrical energy, transmitting the electrical energy a long distance, storing it in a battery and finally converting it into kinetic energy.
Each of these steps introduces inefficiencies, so the overall difference isnt as much as people think.
The cities and towns all have gas connections, some smaller villages might not, and some apartment buildings might not have the internal pipework to support it. In a lot of rental properties the infrastructure is all in place, it's just not used because having a gas supply introduces addition liabilities for the landlord and while electric heating is usually a lot more expensive this isn't the landlord's problem as the tenant pays for heating costs.
Depends on the source of power... If a lot of solar is being used, then the grid won't have much surplus power at night - if your car is being used to offset the lack of generation from solar plants then your car could even be empty in the morning.
That results in an unreliable vehicle, that might not be charged when you expect it to be. If your gasoline car has the fuel light on in the morning it's solely because you didn't full it up - entirely within your control.
Storage is gasoline is much easier and cheaper than storage of electricity... You can gain some level of control by purchasing it in advance and holding it in containers. If the grid is using your electric vehicle for storage, then it will increase the wear on your battery and could result in the battery being depleted when you expect to use the car. If a country is using solar power for generation then not only will it generate nothing at night, the power usage will be higher due to heating in cooler countries, so the last thing you want is for your electric car to deplete its battery overnight and leave you unable to travel to work in the morning.
Just like the market for blacksmiths and horse feed dried up and became a small niche, but it won't happen overnight... Currently a lot of electricity is still produced from fossil fuel sources.
The power supply has actually gone the other way, instead of a proprietary apple power supply it now uses standard USB-C. Hopefully the days of each laptop having its own non standard power supply are numbered and i can keep several USB-C at home and office.
Surrounded by mountains yes, but those mountains are covered in roads and railway lines which are easily travelled. Plus there is very little in the way of actual border checkpoints, you can usually just drive across unchallenged. Switzerland is part of the shengen zone, where borders controls are only really enforced at the periphery of the zone.
When it comes to difficult borders in europe, you'd have to hand it to the UK which is surrounded by water and is not part of shengen. If you've already managed to enter the shengen zone then crossing to switzerland is trivial, yet entering the UK is not... Despite this, many people still try to illegally cross the border into the UK and will employ various measures to avoid detection, often hiding in the back of goods vehicles.
Exactly, copyright law was intended to benefit society as a whole by encouraging creation of works with the notion that after a while these works would fall into the public domain for the benefit of all. Copyright now has become so corrupted that the benefit to the people is lost, by the time anything reaches the public domain all those who were around when it was created will be dead. It's not surprising that people are not keen to support such a system.
Most of them do, far more than manual bikes, because there is a much higher risk of being caught.
Motorbikes have license plates attached, so they can be caught and identified by cameras, and motorbike riders have a driving license which can be sanctioned if they break the road laws. Bike riders have none of this, so it's massively easier for them to get away with breaking the law, and because they don't require a license they might not even be aware of the laws.
What are you immagining, that people go around with cash hanging out of the jaket ?
Thieves can see when you open your wallet to pay for something, they can see if you've received change from a purchase, they can see if you've just used an ATM, they can also stake out the owner of a small business who goes from his store to the bank every day carrying the days takings and coming back with change to hand out in the store.
Yes, a thief, will check the wallet in your presence and take whatever that is of value. If there is nothing to take... he/she may get angry. Happens
Depends on the crime, many robberies are opportunistic and the thief is looking to get away as quickly as possible (eg pickpockets), they don't have time to check the loot because doing so slows them down and increases the risk of being detected and/or caught.
You are confused, you use cash to pay, you get it from the bank, it is not forged.
You usually have to receive change unless you insist on counting out the exact amount every time, or refusing change.
All plastic transactions pay to the bank and you will pay even more whan cash will be "premium"
If i go into a retailer and buy $10 worth of goods my card is charged $10 or i can pay $10 in cash. The retailer will not let me pay $9 because i used cash, the charge is still $10. Wether the retailer pays a percentage of that $10 to the card processor or the cash handling service is not my concern.
ok, got it, you are just a paid drone.
Because i stated that cash is not always private? How does this make me a paid drone? Do you always check for CCTV when paying cash? Do you always use different stores where none of the staff will recognise you? do you always avoid using any loyalty schemes? do you always refuse to provide your details for warranties and other services? cash even carries serial numbers on every bill, which can also be tracked... Cash is only private if you are extremely careful with your transactions, in many cases there are still ways you can and will be tracked.
And one further issue which i hadn't thought of before, when travelling i've found the fx rates offered by various cards (especially those geared specifically towards travelling) are much better than you can exchange cash. Also you will typically end up with small change which cannot be exchanged back, and might get a poor rate on any larger bills you have to change back. You're also likely to be unfamiliar with the currency if you've not visited that country both frequently and recently so you are an easy target for fraud (ie fake bills).
For me to use cash when i travel is usually a lot more expensive than using cards, and far less convenient.
Yes cards sacrifice some level of privacy for this convenience, but in many cases it's not important and for those few cases where privacy is a concern cash (or crypto) is still an option. If anything, having a stable history the bank can see makes it easier for them to approve loans (which most people need if they ever want to buy any property). Similarly, i couldnt care less if my bank knows i just went to a restaurant, and many people will post such things to facebook telling the whole world about it.
Charging extra fees is illegal in some countries, depends where the retailer is based...
Even if a business isn't taking enough cash to justify an armored car, they still have bank fees and increases risk. The actual reason some small businesses prefer cash is tax evasion, a certain percentage of cash taken by a business will usually just disappear and never make it into the accounting system, but card payments leave a trail which is easily followed by the tax authorities.
Motorbikes do that too, but motorbikes follow the road rules... The article claims bikes were faster than motorbikes, and the lack of following rules is about the only differentiator in london - motorbikes are allowed in cycle/bus lanes, and motorbikes can generally accelerate much faster than a bike.
The annoyance with bikes at intersections is that although they filter to the front, even if they do obey the lights (often being forced to by traffic flowing in other directions) they pull away very slowly and delay all the other traffic, often causing some traffic to be caught when the lights change again. Motorbikes are usually capable of accelerating sufficiently quickly that they get away ahead of all the other traffic and therefore don't cause any delays.
Having some cash with you can also save your life if robbed, a thief will just run away happy with your cash
If a thief knows you have cash he is more likely to rob you, cards are less useful to a thief, especially less organized ones. A thief will also be happy with your phone or jewellery, and will probably take your wallet and run rather than open it and inspect it in your presence.
It is safe (no risk of card skimming)
You instead have the risks of it being lost, stolen or damaged, not to mention forged cash.
you are noot feeding the bank (2% transaction fee)
Yes you are, businesses pay a lot to banks for the ability to accept cash payments, often more than the transaction fees associated with cards. Banks charge businesses fees for processing their cash deposits, which have to be counted by both the bank and the retailer, the cash has to be transported to the bank and will usually require protection while in transit, banks charge retailers for providing large bags of small change, your insurance liability goes up if you have cash on the premises as it's an attractive theft target or could be destroyed in the event of fire or flood etc.
For the customer, the cost is the same wether paying by cash or card but many cards also offer benefits to the cardholder which they wouldn't get if using cash.
it is private (big brother does not knowwhat you buy)
It's private if your careful, and also don't have explicit surveillance being carried out against you.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of it isn't outright lies, its partial truth designed to push a specific agenda...
The problem is facebook has the ears of a large number of users, competing against them is extremely difficult...
What's really needed is not a competitor, as any for-profit company is ultimately going to end up going the same way. What's needed is an open standard where multiple providers can interoperate and users can choose which provider to use or even host their own. That's how the internet was always supposed to work, there are literally millions of email and web servers out there all interoperating with one another.
Misinformation is free speech, the problem is not the people spreading false information, it's the people reading it and believing it rather than making the effort to do their own research to determine the truth.
The fact is all media is at least skewed to one side of any issue, and in any case the truth is usually more complicated than can be explained in the limited space of a news article.
However if people start doing their own research, they will discover that they can't trust the mainstream media any more than they can trust trolls on facebook.
HT is itself a feature designed to improve performance... If you disable it, then you lose any performance benefits it provided.
Wether it provides a performance benefit depends on your workload, it allows the processor to work on another thread if your code stalls the pipeline, but if your code is properly optimized for the processor then it wont stall the pipeline...
it can't hurt to run an AV on it
Sure it can...
All AV software consumes resources and reduces performance to varying degrees, this could potentially be crippling in some circumstances.
AV software has to run with high privileges in order to intercept network traffic and file accesses etc... Because of this, exploitation of any bugs in the av software are likely to result in root access. AV software is also extremely complex, and designed to parse hostile data - there have been many vulnerabilities and more will be found for sure.
There are also false positives to contend with, AV software has been known to trigger on legitimate files if they contain strings similar to known malware, this could result in programs breaking or loss of data etc.
AV software also typically hooks into the system at a low level, often doing things the os developers never intended, which can often result in instability.
Many do the opposite, they will buy (or pirate) expensive software because "its the thing to have" but then skimp out on the hardware to run it on.
I'd rather pay nothing for a pirate version that removes drm code and thus runs faster than the paid version...
Most people won't want their cars to only provide 75% of their intended range, they will turn that feature off.
Wind may be on at night, but there's no guarantee - if it's a calm night you wont be getting any power from wind or solar. If it's too stormy wind turbines are shut down too, in order to prevent damage.
The % of EVs connected to the grid will be highly variable, just like wind and solar power. You will end up having to massively over provision capacity to cope with the worst case scenarios.
That's largely a third world problem, in civilised countries education and healthcare is provided by the government for everyone that wants it.
Public transportation is not economical unless you have large numbers of people travelling to/from the same locations at the same time. A bus or a train requires significantly more energy to move than car, so it needs to carry more passengers to break even - plus the expense of hiring the driver. And then the routing, a bus will travel around a route which is very inefficient at getting from point to point because it wants to collect passengers along the way, so a bus passengers will be travelling more miles than if they drove a car to the same destination.
And then there are situations where the bus does not go where you want, and you end up having to take multiple buses or trains with a period of waiting in between.
Also when you do end up with lots of people going to the same place at the same time, you end up with massive congestion and severely unpleasant travelling conditions.
Forcing everyone onto public transport doesn't help anyone, it just reduces everyone's quality of life. Instead measures need to be taken to reduce the need for travel, so provide residential areas and workplaces in close proximity and also allow remote working when possible etc... If most people can have a 5 minute walk to work, not only does their quality of life improve but the energy use decreases significantly too.
While they are less efficient than the large generators used in power plants, you are converting chemical energy directly into (mostly) kinetic energy...
For a power plant you are converting chemical energy into heat, converting the heat into kinetic energy, converting the kinetic energy into electrical energy, transmitting the electrical energy a long distance, storing it in a battery and finally converting it into kinetic energy.
Each of these steps introduces inefficiencies, so the overall difference isnt as much as people think.
The cities and towns all have gas connections, some smaller villages might not, and some apartment buildings might not have the internal pipework to support it.
In a lot of rental properties the infrastructure is all in place, it's just not used because having a gas supply introduces addition liabilities for the landlord and while electric heating is usually a lot more expensive this isn't the landlord's problem as the tenant pays for heating costs.
Depends on the source of power... If a lot of solar is being used, then the grid won't have much surplus power at night - if your car is being used to offset the lack of generation from solar plants then your car could even be empty in the morning.
That results in an unreliable vehicle, that might not be charged when you expect it to be. If your gasoline car has the fuel light on in the morning it's solely because you didn't full it up - entirely within your control.
Storage is gasoline is much easier and cheaper than storage of electricity... You can gain some level of control by purchasing it in advance and holding it in containers.
If the grid is using your electric vehicle for storage, then it will increase the wear on your battery and could result in the battery being depleted when you expect to use the car.
If a country is using solar power for generation then not only will it generate nothing at night, the power usage will be higher due to heating in cooler countries, so the last thing you want is for your electric car to deplete its battery overnight and leave you unable to travel to work in the morning.
Just like the market for blacksmiths and horse feed dried up and became a small niche, but it won't happen overnight... Currently a lot of electricity is still produced from fossil fuel sources.
The power supply has actually gone the other way, instead of a proprietary apple power supply it now uses standard USB-C. Hopefully the days of each laptop having its own non standard power supply are numbered and i can keep several USB-C at home and office.
Whats to stop a malicious user from acquiring the tools used by the authorized repair shop?
Surrounded by mountains yes, but those mountains are covered in roads and railway lines which are easily travelled. Plus there is very little in the way of actual border checkpoints, you can usually just drive across unchallenged. Switzerland is part of the shengen zone, where borders controls are only really enforced at the periphery of the zone.
When it comes to difficult borders in europe, you'd have to hand it to the UK which is surrounded by water and is not part of shengen. If you've already managed to enter the shengen zone then crossing to switzerland is trivial, yet entering the UK is not... Despite this, many people still try to illegally cross the border into the UK and will employ various measures to avoid detection, often hiding in the back of goods vehicles.
Exactly, copyright law was intended to benefit society as a whole by encouraging creation of works with the notion that after a while these works would fall into the public domain for the benefit of all.
Copyright now has become so corrupted that the benefit to the people is lost, by the time anything reaches the public domain all those who were around when it was created will be dead. It's not surprising that people are not keen to support such a system.
Most of them do, far more than manual bikes, because there is a much higher risk of being caught.
Motorbikes have license plates attached, so they can be caught and identified by cameras, and motorbike riders have a driving license which can be sanctioned if they break the road laws.
Bike riders have none of this, so it's massively easier for them to get away with breaking the law, and because they don't require a license they might not even be aware of the laws.
What are you immagining, that people go around with cash hanging out of the jaket ?
Thieves can see when you open your wallet to pay for something, they can see if you've received change from a purchase, they can see if you've just used an ATM, they can also stake out the owner of a small business who goes from his store to the bank every day carrying the days takings and coming back with change to hand out in the store.
Yes, a thief, will check the wallet in your presence and take whatever that is of value.
If there is nothing to take... he/she may get angry. Happens
Depends on the crime, many robberies are opportunistic and the thief is looking to get away as quickly as possible (eg pickpockets), they don't have time to check the loot because doing so slows them down and increases the risk of being detected and/or caught.
You are confused, you use cash to pay, you get it from the bank, it is not forged.
You usually have to receive change unless you insist on counting out the exact amount every time, or refusing change.
All plastic transactions pay to the bank and you will pay even more whan cash will be "premium"
If i go into a retailer and buy $10 worth of goods my card is charged $10 or i can pay $10 in cash. The retailer will not let me pay $9 because i used cash, the charge is still $10. Wether the retailer pays a percentage of that $10 to the card processor or the cash handling service is not my concern.
ok, got it, you are just a paid drone.
Because i stated that cash is not always private? How does this make me a paid drone?
Do you always check for CCTV when paying cash? Do you always use different stores where none of the staff will recognise you? do you always avoid using any loyalty schemes? do you always refuse to provide your details for warranties and other services? cash even carries serial numbers on every bill, which can also be tracked...
Cash is only private if you are extremely careful with your transactions, in many cases there are still ways you can and will be tracked.
And one further issue which i hadn't thought of before, when travelling i've found the fx rates offered by various cards (especially those geared specifically towards travelling) are much better than you can exchange cash. Also you will typically end up with small change which cannot be exchanged back, and might get a poor rate on any larger bills you have to change back. You're also likely to be unfamiliar with the currency if you've not visited that country both frequently and recently so you are an easy target for fraud (ie fake bills).
For me to use cash when i travel is usually a lot more expensive than using cards, and far less convenient.
Yes cards sacrifice some level of privacy for this convenience, but in many cases it's not important and for those few cases where privacy is a concern cash (or crypto) is still an option. If anything, having a stable history the bank can see makes it easier for them to approve loans (which most people need if they ever want to buy any property). Similarly, i couldnt care less if my bank knows i just went to a restaurant, and many people will post such things to facebook telling the whole world about it.
Charging extra fees is illegal in some countries, depends where the retailer is based...
Even if a business isn't taking enough cash to justify an armored car, they still have bank fees and increases risk. The actual reason some small businesses prefer cash is tax evasion, a certain percentage of cash taken by a business will usually just disappear and never make it into the accounting system, but card payments leave a trail which is easily followed by the tax authorities.
Faster than cars maybe, but depends on various factors like length of journey, volume of traffic, fitness of rider, weather, road gradients etc...
But faster than motorbikes, which can also filter past stopped cars is very unlikely unless the cyclists are breaking the laws.
Motorbikes do that too, but motorbikes follow the road rules...
The article claims bikes were faster than motorbikes, and the lack of following rules is about the only differentiator in london - motorbikes are allowed in cycle/bus lanes, and motorbikes can generally accelerate much faster than a bike.
The annoyance with bikes at intersections is that although they filter to the front, even if they do obey the lights (often being forced to by traffic flowing in other directions) they pull away very slowly and delay all the other traffic, often causing some traffic to be caught when the lights change again. Motorbikes are usually capable of accelerating sufficiently quickly that they get away ahead of all the other traffic and therefore don't cause any delays.
Having some cash with you can also save your life if robbed, a thief will just run away happy with your cash
If a thief knows you have cash he is more likely to rob you, cards are less useful to a thief, especially less organized ones. A thief will also be happy with your phone or jewellery, and will probably take your wallet and run rather than open it and inspect it in your presence.
It is safe (no risk of card skimming)
You instead have the risks of it being lost, stolen or damaged, not to mention forged cash.
you are noot feeding the bank (2% transaction fee)
Yes you are, businesses pay a lot to banks for the ability to accept cash payments, often more than the transaction fees associated with cards.
Banks charge businesses fees for processing their cash deposits, which have to be counted by both the bank and the retailer, the cash has to be transported to the bank and will usually require protection while in transit, banks charge retailers for providing large bags of small change, your insurance liability goes up if you have cash on the premises as it's an attractive theft target or could be destroyed in the event of fire or flood etc.
For the customer, the cost is the same wether paying by cash or card but many cards also offer benefits to the cardholder which they wouldn't get if using cash.
it is private (big brother does not knowwhat you buy)
It's private if your careful, and also don't have explicit surveillance being carried out against you.