"Its pretty common to put your life savings with one bank or brokerage firm."
And there's a good reason people trust banks. They are pretty heavily regulated and insured, and they don't go belly up with everyones money gone when someone in management turns into a crook or corpse.
"The crypto would have been better off in a personal hardware wallet: providing he took proper precautions"
Really it would not. The proper precautions are pretty involved. You need to contend with everyhting from a power supply failure to a mugging to the possibility you have cryptocurrency stealing malware on your device to your own poorly timed heart attack. (not so much for yourself on that last one but for your family).
And you'd STILL need to break up the transaction into a bunch of smaller ones and use multiple wallets because you can't easily avoid single points of failure and the only reasonable mitigation is to do it in $10k chunks or something so if something goes horribly wrong at just the wrong time you are only out $10k.
" I'm sure someone who is a software developer could easily figure out how to manage that."
Right, because robust backups AND private key management are both easy, and software developers rarely fuck these up. Thanks for the lulz.
". It won't go down to zero as then the conditions will change and people will change their behavior again."
I think that's the 'trigger' here. The headline is absolutely ABSURD to suggest that the world is going to 'run out of people'. LONG before that happens, as you said, the future population would act to prevent that in some way.
From subsidies to encourage childbirth up to the desired steady-state, or perhaps new family unit structures will evolve to change the way child rearing responsibilities are distributed... vat babies raised by robots... its the future... who knows.
Maybe some sort of singularity happens but instead of retaining our identities we all just all merge into one global consciousness supported by an internet of electronics and vat-brains maintained by robots... so population: 1 or 0 or ??... plus the Amish.
"Anything can happen in the world, but you can easily see how in one or two generation we could be facing population stabilization or even decline. It doesn't sound implausible at all."
so in the middle of a bad storm, where someones shed has floated into the middle of the road during the flash flooding, and there are cars backed up behind it, it'll improvise a u-turn on the sidewalk, and drive the wrong way down short one way street into a convenience store parking lot and back onto the road to take an alternate route.
instead of just sitting there until the following day, running out the battery in the heater, while the occupants freeze...
"Whatever you think about macbooks, they didn't compromise on the keyboard placement."
From what I've seen at work, a LOT of people want a number pad more than they care about the keyboard being centered.
Me, i couldn't care less about a number pad... if i need one ill use an external keyboard. But lots of people at work are specifically requesting units with number pads.
Who knows what their methodology was? Did they disclose it? They could have just summed up the employment figures of all the suppliers they do business with for all I know.
And then maybe added in the knock on employment as well.
For example, a mill or a mine can effectively 'create' a whole town. The mine just pays the mine workers, the mine workers in turn use their salaries for everything from kitchen renovation contractors to haircuts from mcdonalds burgers to daycare for their kids... and the mine takes "credit" for the entire job market of the town. And its not even 'wrong'... because we've all seen a mine close and the town die.
Suppose also that an ore refinery in the next town over has a contract to buy all the ore from that mine for $1 billion a year. It *can* claim that $1 billion is creating all the jobs in the town. And its not "wrong" because its supporting the mine... But you obviously can't just take a dollar amount and divide it by people to figure out an average salary in a calculation like this. A big chunk of that money was paying for the output of the mine itself... the actual ore to refine. And this is of course a super simplistic example.
But the point is there are economic 'models' one can use, and methodologies one can use for estimating how many 'jobs' you create with an investment of size X in an industry Y.
And all kinds of ways of stretching and abusing and oversimplifying those estimates if you just want a good PR puff piece and only care about 'somewhat plausible' vs 'accurate'.
Refusing to do business directly or indirectly (where possible) with a company you dislike for any reason is a perfectly reasonable and rational thing to do. What difference does the reason she wants to block patronizing amazon really make?
I don't eat at certain restaurants, or purchase goods from certain companies (e.g. sony) myself out of that principle. I likewise block facebook in my browsers, and refuse to use their various apps and services. I avoid indirectly patronizing them as well but realistically... its pretty limited what you can do on that front. But I wouldn't walk out of a friends wedding because the photographer they hired uses sony cameras... because that's basically nuts.
And likewise she's being a bit of a nutter trying to go so far as to block amazon as a 3rd party host to services and companies. That's like getting into a tiff with Verizon and refusing to deal with any business that uses Verizon mobile or has verizon internet services... or refusing to walk into a government office lit with philips lightbulbs. Its absurd.
"It sounds like Van Lynden doesn't know how the internet works. Google can't "take down" anything. All it can do is remove references from its search results."
And in 2019, getting google to remove references is pretty effective at removing something from the internet. Sure its there, but instead of being 3 clicks away from anyone who can spell your name its now in a disused lavatory in the basement with a sign on the door saying 'beware of the leopard'... or bing... but i repeat myself.:p
There's just too much handwaving going on here. You are right, the format in the 20s sure, was limited by the 78.
But everything since then? How do LPs, CDs, or FM radio affect track length? Radio programming is radio programming regardless of band and the push for ads over time has just grown stronger if anything; so there's simply no reason for the market to push to longer tracks. Radio wants ad breaks, and lots of tracks per hour so the audience stays enaged.
Video's rise and fall with the rise and fall of MTV; sure that happened but again not seeing why that must pushed song length up. There isn't even a 1:1 correspondence between the video and the recorded song -- the videos often had lead-in/out that the song didn't have; so the video and single didn't even have to be identical... and often weren't.
And the video medium is just as ad centric, so there would have been no market pressure on longer videos... and lots of 3 minute videos exist.
Streaming likewise, is going to put a downward pressure on track length; studios will want shorter songs to get more individual streams per month, more ad breaks etc, etc. Lower bandwidth per ad delivery opportunity etc.
I mean, in an alternate universe where they'd always been 2-3 minutes, and never got any longer we could have EASILY rationalized that too.
Long term trend is actually the reverse; although it might well be starting to turn around now for reasons that may or may not be related to streaming economics... but my grandparents and parents generations both lived with most hit music being sub-3 minutes. While my generation and my kids saw it climb to 4+ so its hardly a big deal its down a bit.
People don't have a choice between flagship phones with replaceable batteries and flagship phones without; people have a choice between high spec phones without and low spec phones with. And for most people, the replaceable battery isn't the single and only consideration when they buy a phone.
For apple users especially... they pretty much need to give up their entire investment in the ecosystem. But even for androids -- you really limit what you can get, and exclude yourself from getting the best cameras, fastest processors, nicest screens... and that's not a tradeoff a lot of people want to make.
Yeah, good point, as you and the other responder point out... training the delivery companies/postal companies to actually use such boxes, or even other natural cover like pillars or planters etc so that the package isn't in full view of the street also needs to happen.
Of course, just getting the package to the right address in the first place is proving enough of a challenge for them in some cases.:)
"Hey retard, what does starting your sentence with "Hell" accomplish."
It's a short form of 'To hell with that", meaning to express a dismissal of something. In this case, I'm dismissing the idea it really needs a lock, as the box alone would make a sufficient difference.
Person A: I'm going to hire a moving company to move my couch. Person B: Hell, just borrow your dad's pickup and I'll help you load it.
Here, for example, the 'hell' dismisses the need for a moving company.
Hell, even an unlocked mail 'box' would make big difference. Packages out of sight are packages out of mind. Now the thief has to actually come up to the door and check if there is something to steal instead of just walking down the street seeing packages just sitting there for the taking.
A basic lock would be even better, but I think you'd curb most of the problem just by getting the packages out of sight.
'readability of text on the HTPC/TV setup I use for gaming'
Kodi was never a problem.
But for *gaming* the bigger + 4k made a big difference. As I've got my old 660Ti in the PC, I still usually run games at 1920x1080.
I've mostly switched video watching from the HTPC from Kodi to Plex on a Roku. (I got the Roku mostly because I was sick of the shitty Netflix experience on the PC and the netflix app on the smartTV was flaky too. The roku has been virtually perfect.)
"Nah, he's right. Mental illnesses do actually exist, but deciding where to draw boundaries on them depends on the society in which they occur, and is related to the consensus over what's considered acceptable - which is a means to control who is listened to politically."
The fool claimed it was justifiable to murder people who blocked an entrance to telsa charger, because he felt that amounted to a threat to his life.
I don't think where we settle in a nuanced discussion on where to draw the line between bona fide mental illness and the politicization of mental illness is the issue.
Maybe not for THX specs or something, but for a normal human being / normal living room it is.
That said, I noticed an immense difference in the readability of text on the HTPC/TV setup I use for gaming, when i went from 48" 1080p to 70" 4k. I used to have to frequently move closer to the TV from the couch to read something. Now its crystal clear from the couch. Obviously the larger size is helping a lot with that, but I do think the 4k is a lot crisper too. For video... meh... a good 1080p stream looks perfectly fine to me, and I rarely notice or care that video content is 4k. At least with a 70" set and ~8-10ft away.
I have a Tesla and own several guns. If this was happening to me, I would construe it as a threat upon my being and I wouldn't hesitate to put the assailant(s) to death.
This is why a mental health assessment should be required for both gun ownership and a drivers license. You should have neither.
"Stardock also didn't include IP from first two games. "
They are splitting a hair their. I mean they have their 'own' Arilou, and their 'own' Melnorme... like writing "Star Wars" fan fiction in an alternate Star Wars universe where Wookies were shorter and Gungans had 4 arms. So totally not infringement of any IP right? That's definitely lawyer territory if you ask me.:)
"Paul/Fred had claimed they couldn't do it because of employment and to busy, but after Stardock had a release date they magically had started something"
Seeing someone else start a project you've always had a passion for is often motivation to finally do it yourself. I agree this could have been handled better, but its hard to
And yes, Paul/Fred shouldn't have to make compromises, but they are the ones being causing all the strife.
But it's arguably theirs. And Stardock has escalated it... they basically said they were appropriating SC1/2 IP as 'payment' for 'damages'. No matter what Paul and Fred did... you CAN'T just do THAT.
Slashdot Mirror
"Its pretty common to put your life savings with one bank or brokerage firm."
And there's a good reason people trust banks. They are pretty heavily regulated and insured, and they don't go belly up with everyones money gone when someone in management turns into a crook or corpse.
"The crypto would have been better off in a personal hardware wallet: providing he took proper precautions"
Really it would not. The proper precautions are pretty involved. You need to contend with everyhting from a power supply failure to a mugging to the possibility you have cryptocurrency stealing malware on your device to your own poorly timed heart attack. (not so much for yourself on that last one but for your family).
And you'd STILL need to break up the transaction into a bunch of smaller ones and use multiple wallets because you can't easily avoid single points of failure and the only reasonable mitigation is to do it in $10k chunks or something so if something goes horribly wrong at just the wrong time you are only out $10k.
" I'm sure someone who is a software developer could easily figure out how to manage that."
Right, because robust backups AND private key management are both easy, and software developers rarely fuck these up. Thanks for the lulz.
soil mites ...
termites
ants
wasps
"So, show me where that hypothesis falls down."
South America.
"You want more joblessness, you give out rewards (in the form of cash payment) for being jobless."
And the best part is that the solution is in your post:
"You want people to smoke less, you put higher taxes on cigarettes"
We need to put higher taxes on people who are unemployed. That'll solve unemployment. It's so obvious I wonder why its not in every school textbook.
". It won't go down to zero as then the conditions will change and people will change their behavior again."
I think that's the 'trigger' here. The headline is absolutely ABSURD to suggest that the world is going to 'run out of people'. LONG before that happens, as you said, the future population would act to prevent that in some way.
From subsidies to encourage childbirth up to the desired steady-state, or perhaps new family unit structures will evolve to change the way child rearing responsibilities are distributed... vat babies raised by robots... its the future... who knows.
Maybe some sort of singularity happens but instead of retaining our identities we all just all merge into one global consciousness supported by an internet of electronics and vat-brains maintained by robots... so population: 1 or 0 or ??... plus the Amish.
"Anything can happen in the world, but you can easily see how in one or two generation we could be facing population stabilization or even decline. It doesn't sound implausible at all."
It sounds inevitable.
so in the middle of a bad storm, where someones shed has floated into the middle of the road during the flash flooding, and there are cars backed up behind it, it'll improvise a u-turn on the sidewalk, and drive the wrong way down short one way street into a convenience store parking lot and back onto the road to take an alternate route.
instead of just sitting there until the following day, running out the battery in the heater, while the occupants freeze...
-shrug- I'd buy the galago pro myself anyway, which doesn't have a numeric keypad -- and i like the smaller form factor.
https://system76.com/laptops/g...
"Whatever you think about macbooks, they didn't compromise on the keyboard placement."
From what I've seen at work, a LOT of people want a number pad more than they care about the keyboard being centered.
Me, i couldn't care less about a number pad... if i need one ill use an external keyboard. But lots of people at work are specifically requesting units with number pads.
Who knows what their methodology was? Did they disclose it? They could have just summed up the employment figures of all the suppliers they do business with for all I know.
And then maybe added in the knock on employment as well.
For example, a mill or a mine can effectively 'create' a whole town. The mine just pays the mine workers, the mine workers in turn use their salaries for everything from kitchen renovation contractors to haircuts from mcdonalds burgers to daycare for their kids... and the mine takes "credit" for the entire job market of the town. And its not even 'wrong'... because we've all seen a mine close and the town die.
Suppose also that an ore refinery in the next town over has a contract to buy all the ore from that mine for $1 billion a year. It *can* claim that $1 billion is creating all the jobs in the town. And its not "wrong" because its supporting the mine... But you obviously can't just take a dollar amount and divide it by people to figure out an average salary in a calculation like this. A big chunk of that money was paying for the output of the mine itself... the actual ore to refine. And this is of course a super simplistic example.
But the point is there are economic 'models' one can use, and methodologies one can use for estimating how many 'jobs' you create with an investment of size X in an industry Y.
And all kinds of ways of stretching and abusing and oversimplifying those estimates if you just want a good PR puff piece and only care about 'somewhat plausible' vs 'accurate'.
I saw an article that noted that Trump's use of language had deteriorated substantially compared to when he was younger.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/...
"What I woulkd primarily ask, is, well, why?"
Refusing to do business directly or indirectly (where possible) with a company you dislike for any reason is a perfectly reasonable and rational thing to do. What difference does the reason she wants to block patronizing amazon really make?
I don't eat at certain restaurants, or purchase goods from certain companies (e.g. sony) myself out of that principle. I likewise block facebook in my browsers, and refuse to use their various apps and services. I avoid indirectly patronizing them as well but realistically... its pretty limited what you can do on that front. But I wouldn't walk out of a friends wedding because the photographer they hired uses sony cameras... because that's basically nuts.
And likewise she's being a bit of a nutter trying to go so far as to block amazon as a 3rd party host to services and companies. That's like getting into a tiff with Verizon and refusing to deal with any business that uses Verizon mobile or has verizon internet services... or refusing to walk into a government office lit with philips lightbulbs. Its absurd.
"It sounds like Van Lynden doesn't know how the internet works. Google can't "take down" anything. All it can do is remove references from its search results."
And in 2019, getting google to remove references is pretty effective at removing something from the internet. Sure its there, but instead of being 3 clicks away from anyone who can spell your name its now in a disused lavatory in the basement with a sign on the door saying 'beware of the leopard'... or bing... but i repeat myself. :p
There's just too much handwaving going on here. You are right, the format in the 20s sure, was limited by the 78.
But everything since then? How do LPs, CDs, or FM radio affect track length? Radio programming is radio programming regardless of band and the push for ads over time has just grown stronger if anything; so there's simply no reason for the market to push to longer tracks. Radio wants ad breaks, and lots of tracks per hour so the audience stays enaged.
Video's rise and fall with the rise and fall of MTV; sure that happened but again not seeing why that must pushed song length up. There isn't even a 1:1 correspondence between the video and the recorded song -- the videos often had lead-in/out that the song didn't have; so the video and single didn't even have to be identical... and often weren't.
And the video medium is just as ad centric, so there would have been no market pressure on longer videos... and lots of 3 minute videos exist.
Streaming likewise, is going to put a downward pressure on track length; studios will want shorter songs to get more individual streams per month, more ad breaks etc, etc. Lower bandwidth per ad delivery opportunity etc.
I mean, in an alternate universe where they'd always been 2-3 minutes, and never got any longer we could have EASILY rationalized that too.
Long term trend is actually the reverse; although it might well be starting to turn around now for reasons that may or may not be related to streaming economics... but my grandparents and parents generations both lived with most hit music being sub-3 minutes. While my generation and my kids saw it climb to 4+ so its hardly a big deal its down a bit.
2010's: 4'26"
2000's: 4'10"
1990's: 4'14"
1980's: 4'08"
1970's: 3'55"
1960's: 2'59"
1950's: 2'36"
1940's: 2'41"
https://thelister.blogspot.com...
How did you get her to ASK? I'd take being given a choice again as a step in the right direction!
Because of the tradeoffs.
People don't have a choice between flagship phones with replaceable batteries and flagship phones without; people have a choice between high spec phones without and low spec phones with. And for most people, the replaceable battery isn't the single and only consideration when they buy a phone.
For apple users especially... they pretty much need to give up their entire investment in the ecosystem. But even for androids -- you really limit what you can get, and exclude yourself from getting the best cameras, fastest processors, nicest screens... and that's not a tradeoff a lot of people want to make.
Yeah, good point, as you and the other responder point out... training the delivery companies/postal companies to actually use such boxes, or even other natural cover like pillars or planters etc so that the package isn't in full view of the street also needs to happen.
Of course, just getting the package to the right address in the first place is proving enough of a challenge for them in some cases. :)
"Hey retard, what does starting your sentence with "Hell" accomplish."
It's a short form of 'To hell with that", meaning to express a dismissal of something. In this case, I'm dismissing the idea it really needs a lock, as the box alone would make a sufficient difference.
Person A: I'm going to hire a moving company to move my couch.
Person B: Hell, just borrow your dad's pickup and I'll help you load it.
Here, for example, the 'hell' dismisses the need for a moving company.
Hell, even an unlocked mail 'box' would make big difference. Packages out of sight are packages out of mind. Now the thief has to actually come up to the door and check if there is something to steal instead of just walking down the street seeing packages just sitting there for the taking.
A basic lock would be even better, but I think you'd curb most of the problem just by getting the packages out of sight.
'readability of text on the HTPC/TV setup I use for gaming '
Kodi was never a problem.
But for *gaming* the bigger + 4k made a big difference. As I've got my old 660Ti in the PC, I still usually run games at 1920x1080.
I've mostly switched video watching from the HTPC from Kodi to Plex on a Roku. (I got the Roku mostly because I was sick of the shitty Netflix experience on the PC and the netflix app on the smartTV was flaky too. The roku has been virtually perfect.)
"Nah, he's right. Mental illnesses do actually exist, but deciding where to draw boundaries on them depends on the society in which they occur, and is related to the consensus over what's considered acceptable - which is a means to control who is listened to politically."
The fool claimed it was justifiable to murder people who blocked an entrance to telsa charger, because he felt that amounted to a threat to his life.
I don't think where we settle in a nuanced discussion on where to draw the line between bona fide mental illness and the politicization of mental illness is the issue.
"If you have a 65" TV sitting 5-6 feet away"
Then you are sitting too close? :)
Maybe not for THX specs or something, but for a normal human being / normal living room it is.
That said, I noticed an immense difference in the readability of text on the HTPC/TV setup I use for gaming, when i went from 48" 1080p to 70" 4k. I used to have to frequently move closer to the TV from the couch to read something. Now its crystal clear from the couch. Obviously the larger size is helping a lot with that, but I do think the 4k is a lot crisper too. For video... meh... a good 1080p stream looks perfectly fine to me, and I rarely notice or care that video content is 4k. At least with a 70" set and ~8-10ft away.
"the definition of "mental health" is inherently political"
I guess we can just make stuff up, and declare it is a fact.
"diagnosis of "mental illness" has been used to suppress political dissent by many different tyrannical regimes."
Some people are dangerous, unstable, and crazy regardless of who is in charge.
I have a Tesla and own several guns. If this was happening to me, I would construe it as a threat upon my being and I wouldn't hesitate to put the assailant(s) to death.
This is why a mental health assessment should be required for both gun ownership and a drivers license. You should have neither.
"Stardock also didn't include IP from first two games. "
They are splitting a hair their. I mean they have their 'own' Arilou, and their 'own' Melnorme... like writing "Star Wars" fan fiction in an alternate Star Wars universe where Wookies were shorter and Gungans had 4 arms. So totally not infringement of any IP right? That's definitely lawyer territory if you ask me. :)
"Paul/Fred had claimed they couldn't do it because of employment and to busy, but after Stardock had a release date they magically had started something"
Seeing someone else start a project you've always had a passion for is often motivation to finally do it yourself. I agree this could have been handled better, but its hard to
And yes, Paul/Fred shouldn't have to make compromises, but they are the ones being causing all the strife.
But it's arguably theirs. And Stardock has escalated it... they basically said they were appropriating SC1/2 IP as 'payment' for 'damages'. No matter what Paul and Fred did... you CAN'T just do THAT.