Some Linux diehards will say this is a backwards step because they think developers should make native games, and they worry that this will cause developers to get lazy and not bother building for anything but Windows.
But this is actually a good move by Valve. I've been tracking Linux games for a long time, and the rate of Linux game releases has flat-lined over the last two years. Initially Linux was gaining ground on Windows, in fact by mid-2016 Linux as a % of all games on Steam had reached the giddy height of 25.5% - there were 9000 Windows games and 2300 Linux games. Since then Linux has been losing ground again. The rate of new Linux games has been a virtually flat linear growth of ~100 new games a month. My conclusion from this is that the developers willing to make Linux releases are already doing so, and the rest aren't likely to. In contrast, Windows (and Mac) continued to show accelerating growth, pulling away again from Linux's linear growth. Some attribute this to the explosion of Windows gaming in China, and others attribute this to a boom in Windows shovelware. Regardless of the reason, only 20% of all games on Steam nowadays have a Linux version - next month we'll see the milestones of 5000 Linux games and 25,000 Windows games respectively
I believe Valve also noticed this trend two years ago and drew the same conclusion. I don't think it's a coincidence that all the Vulkan / Wine / DXVK work started then. It's a chicken-and-egg dilemma. They had already reached saturation in winning over developers to support Linux, and now they need to win more users. With more users will come another opportunity to win over more developers.
So yes, this is a good thing for Linux gaming.
Developers should make native Linux games.
But to get that happening you need people to be gaming on Linux. So using a stopgap measure like running Windows games through WINE or some other system is the way you get gamers to Linux. The truth is I hate Windows, we all hate Windows but I love games, I love games more than I hate Windows so I end up using Windows.
If you can get the numbers to Linux, the games will come.
News, Opinions, Paid News and Fake News... those are the options
There is no such thing as 'Fake News'.
There are Facts, Opinions and Lies.
Those are the only options.
My good sir... English is a living language and I believe "fake news" was added by the Oxford English Dictionary last year.
However in the colloquial use, "fake news" has simply become another term for "they said something I don't like and can't disprove". Whenever someone says "fake news" that is what they mean.
I still want to know why in the UK they say "in hospital" instead of "in the hospital". What's up with that? And don't get me started with "math" vs "maths".
In UK English, "in hospital" implies a state, that you are in hospital therefore sick. To say that you are "in the hospital" implies that is your current location however we'd use the name of the hospital because there are a lot of hospitals in the UK I.E. "I'm in Royal Berkshire waiting for an X-Ray".
Maths vs math... Considering the full word is "mathematics" is a plural, any shortened form of the word should also be pluralised. Using "math" is simply incorrect.
We're pretty sure but we need to wait until we have more data before we officially close the debate.
When in doubt change the sentence so that you get around the tricky bit.
Considering it's future tense it should be:
"We're pretty sure, but we need to wait until more data becomes available before we officially close the debate."
Erm, but to close the debate, English is a living language and changes with each passing year, if not each passing day so say what you want, we'll all understand what you mean. English is a mish-mash of proto-french, proto-germanic, proto-scandiwegian, latin and greek languages, a true mongrel language that borrows words wholesale from other languages so trying to defend it's purity is like trying to defend the virtue of the town bike. Pointless and annoying.
Enjoy the English language for what it is, flexible and fault tolerant.
The thing with Alex Jones is that it's fairly obvious that he's off his nut. Do we really need Facebook to protect us from him? Are you incapable of listening to people and coming to the determination as to whether or not they're full of crap? And if not, who would the appropriate party be? Facebook? The government? Some agency? All have potential for abuse. I'd rather hear and see everything and make up my own mind.
Here's the thing, the content on Facebook or any other platform reflects on that platform. Having too much content people dont like will drive away users and their precious eyeballs and succulent data... No eyeballs or data == no revenue.
Its a simple equation, ban Infowars and lose Y amount of users or not ban Infowars and lose X amount of users. X is far greater than Y, so Infowars gets banned.
However it's dangerous because its easy to boil a frog if you start with cold water, that's exactly how extremists operate. Infowars, ISIS, they all start with a non-offensive opinion such as "Israel is aggressively harming its neighbours" or "white males should stand up for themselves". Some of this many reasonable people may agree with as even though they're exaggerations, there is an element of truth. No died in the wool racist comes right out and says "I hate darkies, a-rabs and Jews, the Middle East needs to be bombed and turned into a Christian State" right off the bat because we'd all rightfully think they were barking mad.
However if they start with the small exaggerations, they can then ramp that up to larger ones. Eventually they have people believing that the entire world is out to murder the white race and those who believe absurdities also commit atrocities. Worse yet, people who dare to voice a different opinion will be harassed and even attacked by those who have bought the lies. Ordinary people end up being afraid that they'll be "come for next". That is how Fascism takes hold.
And yes, the "alt-right" is just a marketing term for neo-fascism, Nazism and white supremacists. Alex Jones is just as dangerous as ISIS, more so in fact given he can garner far more popular support and I don't hear the "Free Speech" zealots complaining that ISIS has already been banned from Facebook, Twitter, et al.
And I know from experience that speaking this risks a mod down but:
1. I don't really care.
2. The more this is modded down, the more you prove my point. You're not interested in the open discourse of unpopular ideas, you want to enforce your own groupthink.
Your Comcast analogy is highly flawed. But then, you knew that.
True... but also highly ironic that Trump is complaining that private companies are filtering information when his administration dismantled Net Neutrality so that telco's like Comcast can discriminate what traffic they permit and at what speed.
Because who needs redundancy in an Airport information system... the data isn't important enough to justify the cost!/s
As a resident in the South of England allow me to part two pieces of advice regarding travel.
1. Don't fly Iberia.
2. Don't fly to Gatwick.
1. because you want you luggage to arrive with you and 2 because you want to find which carousel your luggage went to.
Londong Gatwick is one of the worst run airports I've been to with massive queues for immigration. So much so that your flight will be taken off the board long before you actually get to the baggage claim area. This is odd because it's only a few hours drive away from London Heathrow Airport which I rate as one of the best airports I've been through. LHR is right up there with Amsterdam Schipol and Singapore Changi airports.
AMD: your market share is going to be rising with these prices.
Holy shit. Seriously, Nvidia?
I bought a 970 a bit over 2 years ago and am yet to stress it with anything, so I think I'll wait for another year for a cheap 2070 or the next gen, 2170 or whatever the plan on calling it.
Here in the UK things are going the other way, almost every household had an antenna (or aerial as we call them). Very few people had any kind of cable, although sky satellite became quite popular in the 90s. It was only with the introduction of broadband that cable started to get more popular, but still a majority get their broadband over some kind of DSL. Now there is a growing movement away from broadcast, people are now choosing what they want to watch and when they want to watch it, using on-line services.
Yep,
A lot of landlords advertise that they have Virgin Media or Sky packages, but some are starting to get rid of them as they're just an extra cost most people done use and in some cases, replaced them with Netflix.
Even the BBC is going online for a lot of content. I haven't used a TV in over 8 months and get my HIGNFY and UC fixes via the iplayer.
The guy is an engine expert with a reputation of wanting to know all the details at all times. He could probably have looked at the AdBlue numbers and immediately know what was going on. Also has a reputation as a control freak, so nobody will have dared to make these changes without checking with him first. As basically every other car maker with diesel cars (except for the the Japanese, it seems) had this fraud-device in their diesel cars, they will have coordinated on it. Makes sense, because one brand doing much better sticks out and could raise suspicion. I expect this was a coordinated decision a year or so before they started doing it and all the CEOs did sign off on it. No paper-trail, of course.
The "fraud" device is a standard part of any car, a programmable ECU (Engine Control Unit). Its due to this fantastic little device that we can use fuels of varying quality and engines can dynamically adjust timing to produce the best fuel/air mix which both reduces emissions and improves fuel efficiency. Just about every car made today will have one. The unit in question with VW's Diesels was a Bosch EDC17 ECU.
The problem wasn't hardware, every car has a programmable ECU, the problem was software. Bosch created a test mode that was not designed to be used on production cars, that was fine. However VW needing to fool tests because they didn't want to have to license technology to reduce diesel emissions used the software in production cars to change the engine characteristics when the unit detected test conditions.
Programmable ECU's are wonderful things, they've made cars cleaner, faster and easier on fuel at the same time, but like all things programmable they can be used for evil.
However it's all for nought now as diesel passenger cars are failing. The tax concessions given to diesels in Europe due to the oil crisises of the 50's-70's have almost all been repealed and operating a modern diesel is no more expensive than operating a modern petrol (the petrol is often cheaper, being less complex) and doesn't have the downside of a diesel (noisy, rattly, smelly). New diesel car sales are falling month after month here in the UK.
Why? I rarely read a book twice. Reference books are handy to own.
Then you're reading the wrong books.
There are few books that I finish and find aren't worth reading twice. Books that aren't worth re-reading aren't worth finishing. The last book I finished that wasn't worth reading twice wasn't even worth finishing but it was mandatory reading in high school (that was a long time ago, before e-books were a thing).
"the report concludes that artificial intelligence will disrupt the industry by allowing early adopters to outmaneuver competitors"
Uh, yeah. Like steam engines or telephones.
"The dynamics of machine learning create a strong incentive to network the back office"
Umm... like the same thing as using a CRM. Or email.
Don't get me wrong - AI terrifies me in a lot of ways. But I'm not worried about these kinds of risks. Seem silly.
What they really mean is that an AI is going to put all of the speculators, high frequency traders and other professional gamblers on the economy out of business by stabilising economies.
What does an electric car really need? A little OLED screen to show speedometer, battery charge, and warning messages/turn signals/light status.
Way to miss the point of a city car (supermini as you call them on the other side of the pond). They're meant to be small, simple and cheap, like the original Mini. What you need is a simple, reliable dial, many city cars have omitted the rev counter these days and just have a speedometer.
Renault tried to make a cheap, simple electric car with the Twizy but it's €7,500 which is the same price as a Dacia Sandero which can go more than 100 KM and a lot more than the scooters it competes against. The base model Twizy didn't even come with doors (considered an optional extra). Good on Renault for persisting with it, I think the concept is good but it needs to be cheaper.
They do realize that google regularly censors results in America, right?
Any urgent moral or ethical issues with say, blacklisting Alex Jones? Down ranking alt-right sites? Artificially manipulating auto-completes to prefer one political party?
I'm not sure if these people realize that the "secret" work isn't just in China.
How to be right and so incredibly wrong in 3 lines.
Yes Google censors in the US (and everywhere else) thanks to the DMCA, when searching you'll often see "X results have not been listed due to DMCA requests". This is government enforced censorship.
Alex Jones on the other hand isn't being censored, he's being ignored. He's losing page rankings because people don't like him, they don't like the crap he spouts, the lies he publishes or the people who support him. He's not being silenced, he's being told to shut up and go back to his corner because he's a horrible little scrote and we're all sick of his bullshit. Free speech does not entitle you to any platform you like, especially private ones and it does not protect you from criticism or the consequences of your speech.
The Nazis didn't start Germany's social welfare system—Bismark did that back in the 1880s, before most of those guys were even born.
This.
The Nazis cut back the social programs put in by previous governments going back to the formation of the German state. Socialism was the first declared enemy of the Nazi party, long before they started on Jews they beat up and killed known Bolsheviks.
The closest thing the Nazis came to implementing a social program was Action T4, the forced euthanasia of anyone considered a burden to the state. People like the elderly, the infirm, the feeble (mentally handicapped), the deformed, so on and so forth.
"Who wants a stylus? You have to get 'em, put 'em away, you lose 'em. Yuck! Nobody wants a stylus. So let's not use a stylus." - 2007 Macworld
"If you see a stylus, they blew it.” - 2010 iOS 4 launch event
Oh and he has opinions on large phones too:
"You can't get your hand around it, No one's going to buy that." - October earnings call 2010
Apple reminds me a lot of Ingsoc... You must always believe what you're told by the inner party even if it contradicts what they said earlier. Styluses are the future, styluses have always been the future.
For instance, Sweden, Norway, and Finland are definitely socialist countries.
Norway's Statoil is an example of socialism, but that is a special situation of a massive public resource owned by a small population. Very few other countries have that benefit.
Actually Statoil is more of an example of corporatisation. The state owns it, but the entity runs itself appointing it's own management and running it's own affairs. The government is effectively the shareholder and only has the power to elect and sack the board like a private corporation (and collects the dividends). In fact the Norwegian government only owns 67% of Equinor (formerly Statoil) so it's no more socialist than Singapore's Tamasek holding company (which is about as socialist as Ayn Rand). Tamasek and Equinor are good examples of government owned corporations.
Venuseula's attempt at nationalising the oil industry is an example of what a socialised industry is (and why it's a bad idea). When people get appointed due to political favour you end up with clowns running a circus. Not that this is a trait exclusive to Socialist despots, there are plenty of examples in any despotic government.
The system we have isn't Capitalism, it's Cronyism. Brought on because people think that Keynesian economics is somehow a good thing. Sadly this line of thinking is so prevalent on both sides of the isle, that it will never get fixed until the system collapses. Young people today have never seen Capitalism, they have only seen Cronyism and yet everybody calls it Capitalism. It isn't.
You do still see Capitalism at lower levels of society. The farmers markets, the used/antique markets etc. But those in government don't make money on these, they would rather make the big bucks working with large corporations. As a result, the large corporations get the laws passed that they want, usually at the expense of the little guy. Hence Cronyism wins the day.
Now, if we can just get young people to understand the difference...
Cronyism or crony capitalism is capitalism in a pure form... The farmers markets et al. are examples of small market economies which scale out to be mixed economies.
The problem isn't that young people don't understand the difference, it's that you have made up your own definitions.
Successful economies are always mixed economies, combining parts of capitalism, socialism, free market libertarianism and controlled markets. There's plenty of room to argue which mix is best but pure forms of these ideas are and have always been bound for failure.
Or I dunno, forget about any notion of Republican Space Rangers and just use the organisation that's been successfully doing space travel and exploration for 60 years.
But that would mean some orange retard admitting he was wrong to de-fund them in the first place.
There isn't a need for a military presence in space, in fact it would be an expensive boondoggle.
Are you really bothered by the fact that people might be doing something vaguely harmful to themselves, or is it some other stylistic aspect of "vapers" that you don't like?
I mean, I watch people consume known toxin ethyl alcohol all the time and despite their occasionally destructive and violent behavior, I don't get quite as angry as you seem to be at vapers.
I don't really care about vapers, it looks fairly silly in practice but I can't think of a reason to be mad at them. But boy, a lot of people seem to heap hate on vapers.
B-B-B-B-but Big Vape or whatever nonsense they've created.
Vape fluid MAY have some negative side effects we don't know about, lets compare that to burning tobacco. Whatever nebulous effects the fluid might have its got to be better than the confirmed highly cancerous substance it's meant to replace. I've switched two of my relatives from being life long smokers to being vapers. They can now sit inside with relatives, taste food and realise how bad other smokers smell and they now have a smaller chance of dying from a horrible cancer.
Sure some vapers are knobs but they're not as bad as regular smokers. I'd rather walk through a sickly sweet smelling cloud than acrid tobacco smoke.
I've read the entire thing as "we wanted to get our names in the paper".
Wireless speeds will exceed wired? That seems unlikely.
Are you suggesting that a telephone company may be lying in a country where lying in advertisement doesn't only go unpunished, but seems to be de rigueur?
Colour me shocked (yes, British spelling, UK resident here with 200 MB fibre for just £50 a month).
We need to forget "G" numbers as they no longer have any meaning. What I want to know is what technology they're implementing because I may be a cynical Anglo but I suspect they're just re-branding an older technology like LTE rather than putting in a technology like LTE Advanced or beyond. Not like they haven't done this before by re-branding 3G (HSPA) as 4G
I'd only recommend gas fired tank-less heaters. Electric ones are unreliable and usually undersized as you point out.
I've had some great electric heaters (in the UK, they get made for UK conditions), the downside are the electricity bills. Electric heaters that are reliable and spec'd for purpose are power hogs.
I'm still of the opinion that electric is not the way to go in tank-less water heaters.
Oh yes. Gas heating is far more cost effective and faster to heat up. I'd hate to live in a house without gas heating in the UK but if it's a choice between no heat and electric, don't dismiss electric heaters.
I'd only recommend gas fired tank-less heaters. Electric ones are unreliable and usually undersized as you point out.
I've had some great electric heaters (in the UK, they get made for UK conditions), the downside are the electricity bills. Electric heaters that are reliable and spec'd for purpose are power hogs.
They could have used their guns, not missiles (AFAIK, F15 still has a Gatling gun).
Bullets and fragments will still fall out of the sky. A round that pierces the aircraft (and MANY will) will travel miles before striking the ground, people, houses, etc. Incredibly dangerous to do so.
Not to mention a huge flaming aircraft wreck falling out of control.
Most AA missiles are not designed to destroy the aircraft, especially not disintegrate it in a huge fireball leaving no debris... That's just a waste and makes the missile more complex than it needs to be. Most AA missiles are designed to cause enough damage that the aircraft loses control and crashes, most notably on the control surfaces. An AIM-9 Sidewinder is effectively a fragmentation grenade on a guided rocket, high speed fragments are projected forward and are designed to damage engines, control surfaces and pilots. This means they can detonate in proximity and be highly effective (as opposed to detonation on contact). Ejection seats are effective because anti aircraft weapons are expected to damage ailerons, rudders or elevators making the aircraft unflyable, but leaving the pilot relatively intact.
Slashdot Mirror
Some Linux diehards will say this is a backwards step because they think developers should make native games, and they worry that this will cause developers to get lazy and not bother building for anything but Windows.
But this is actually a good move by Valve. I've been tracking Linux games for a long time, and the rate of Linux game releases has flat-lined over the last two years. Initially Linux was gaining ground on Windows, in fact by mid-2016 Linux as a % of all games on Steam had reached the giddy height of 25.5% - there were 9000 Windows games and 2300 Linux games. Since then Linux has been losing ground again. The rate of new Linux games has been a virtually flat linear growth of ~100 new games a month. My conclusion from this is that the developers willing to make Linux releases are already doing so, and the rest aren't likely to. In contrast, Windows (and Mac) continued to show accelerating growth, pulling away again from Linux's linear growth. Some attribute this to the explosion of Windows gaming in China, and others attribute this to a boom in Windows shovelware. Regardless of the reason, only 20% of all games on Steam nowadays have a Linux version - next month we'll see the milestones of 5000 Linux games and 25,000 Windows games respectively
I believe Valve also noticed this trend two years ago and drew the same conclusion. I don't think it's a coincidence that all the Vulkan / Wine / DXVK work started then. It's a chicken-and-egg dilemma. They had already reached saturation in winning over developers to support Linux, and now they need to win more users. With more users will come another opportunity to win over more developers.
So yes, this is a good thing for Linux gaming.
Developers should make native Linux games.
But to get that happening you need people to be gaming on Linux. So using a stopgap measure like running Windows games through WINE or some other system is the way you get gamers to Linux. The truth is I hate Windows, we all hate Windows but I love games, I love games more than I hate Windows so I end up using Windows.
If you can get the numbers to Linux, the games will come.
News, Opinions, Paid News and Fake News... those are the options
There is no such thing as 'Fake News'.
There are Facts, Opinions and Lies.
Those are the only options.
My good sir... English is a living language and I believe "fake news" was added by the Oxford English Dictionary last year.
However in the colloquial use, "fake news" has simply become another term for "they said something I don't like and can't disprove". Whenever someone says "fake news" that is what they mean.
I still want to know why in the UK they say "in hospital" instead of "in the hospital". What's up with that? And don't get me started with "math" vs "maths".
In UK English, "in hospital" implies a state, that you are in hospital therefore sick. To say that you are "in the hospital" implies that is your current location however we'd use the name of the hospital because there are a lot of hospitals in the UK I.E. "I'm in Royal Berkshire waiting for an X-Ray".
Maths vs math... Considering the full word is "mathematics" is a plural, any shortened form of the word should also be pluralised. Using "math" is simply incorrect.
We're pretty sure but we need to wait until we have more data before we officially close the debate.
When in doubt change the sentence so that you get around the tricky bit.
Considering it's future tense it should be:
"We're pretty sure, but we need to wait until more data becomes available before we officially close the debate."
Erm, but to close the debate, English is a living language and changes with each passing year, if not each passing day so say what you want, we'll all understand what you mean. English is a mish-mash of proto-french, proto-germanic, proto-scandiwegian, latin and greek languages, a true mongrel language that borrows words wholesale from other languages so trying to defend it's purity is like trying to defend the virtue of the town bike. Pointless and annoying.
Enjoy the English language for what it is, flexible and fault tolerant.
The thing with Alex Jones is that it's fairly obvious that he's off his nut. Do we really need Facebook to protect us from him? Are you incapable of listening to people and coming to the determination as to whether or not they're full of crap? And if not, who would the appropriate party be? Facebook? The government? Some agency? All have potential for abuse. I'd rather hear and see everything and make up my own mind.
Here's the thing, the content on Facebook or any other platform reflects on that platform. Having too much content people dont like will drive away users and their precious eyeballs and succulent data... No eyeballs or data == no revenue.
Its a simple equation, ban Infowars and lose Y amount of users or not ban Infowars and lose X amount of users. X is far greater than Y, so Infowars gets banned.
However it's dangerous because its easy to boil a frog if you start with cold water, that's exactly how extremists operate. Infowars, ISIS, they all start with a non-offensive opinion such as "Israel is aggressively harming its neighbours" or "white males should stand up for themselves". Some of this many reasonable people may agree with as even though they're exaggerations, there is an element of truth. No died in the wool racist comes right out and says "I hate darkies, a-rabs and Jews, the Middle East needs to be bombed and turned into a Christian State" right off the bat because we'd all rightfully think they were barking mad.
However if they start with the small exaggerations, they can then ramp that up to larger ones. Eventually they have people believing that the entire world is out to murder the white race and those who believe absurdities also commit atrocities. Worse yet, people who dare to voice a different opinion will be harassed and even attacked by those who have bought the lies. Ordinary people end up being afraid that they'll be "come for next". That is how Fascism takes hold.
And yes, the "alt-right" is just a marketing term for neo-fascism, Nazism and white supremacists. Alex Jones is just as dangerous as ISIS, more so in fact given he can garner far more popular support and I don't hear the "Free Speech" zealots complaining that ISIS has already been banned from Facebook, Twitter, et al.
And I know from experience that speaking this risks a mod down but:
1. I don't really care.
2. The more this is modded down, the more you prove my point. You're not interested in the open discourse of unpopular ideas, you want to enforce your own groupthink.
Your Comcast analogy is highly flawed. But then, you knew that.
True... but also highly ironic that Trump is complaining that private companies are filtering information when his administration dismantled Net Neutrality so that telco's like Comcast can discriminate what traffic they permit and at what speed.
Because who needs redundancy in an Airport information system... the data isn't important enough to justify the cost! /s
As a resident in the South of England allow me to part two pieces of advice regarding travel.
1. Don't fly Iberia.
2. Don't fly to Gatwick.
1. because you want you luggage to arrive with you and 2 because you want to find which carousel your luggage went to.
Londong Gatwick is one of the worst run airports I've been to with massive queues for immigration. So much so that your flight will be taken off the board long before you actually get to the baggage claim area. This is odd because it's only a few hours drive away from London Heathrow Airport which I rate as one of the best airports I've been through. LHR is right up there with Amsterdam Schipol and Singapore Changi airports.
AMD: your market share is going to be rising with these prices.
Holy shit. Seriously, Nvidia?
I bought a 970 a bit over 2 years ago and am yet to stress it with anything, so I think I'll wait for another year for a cheap 2070 or the next gen, 2170 or whatever the plan on calling it.
Here in the UK things are going the other way, almost every household had an antenna (or aerial as we call them). Very few people had any kind of cable, although sky satellite became quite popular in the 90s. It was only with the introduction of broadband that cable started to get more popular, but still a majority get their broadband over some kind of DSL. Now there is a growing movement away from broadcast, people are now choosing what they want to watch and when they want to watch it, using on-line services.
Yep,
A lot of landlords advertise that they have Virgin Media or Sky packages, but some are starting to get rid of them as they're just an extra cost most people done use and in some cases, replaced them with Netflix.
Even the BBC is going online for a lot of content. I haven't used a TV in over 8 months and get my HIGNFY and UC fixes via the iplayer.
The guy is an engine expert with a reputation of wanting to know all the details at all times. He could probably have looked at the AdBlue numbers and immediately know what was going on. Also has a reputation as a control freak, so nobody will have dared to make these changes without checking with him first. As basically every other car maker with diesel cars (except for the the Japanese, it seems) had this fraud-device in their diesel cars, they will have coordinated on it. Makes sense, because one brand doing much better sticks out and could raise suspicion. I expect this was a coordinated decision a year or so before they started doing it and all the CEOs did sign off on it. No paper-trail, of course.
The "fraud" device is a standard part of any car, a programmable ECU (Engine Control Unit). Its due to this fantastic little device that we can use fuels of varying quality and engines can dynamically adjust timing to produce the best fuel/air mix which both reduces emissions and improves fuel efficiency. Just about every car made today will have one. The unit in question with VW's Diesels was a Bosch EDC17 ECU.
The problem wasn't hardware, every car has a programmable ECU, the problem was software. Bosch created a test mode that was not designed to be used on production cars, that was fine. However VW needing to fool tests because they didn't want to have to license technology to reduce diesel emissions used the software in production cars to change the engine characteristics when the unit detected test conditions.
Programmable ECU's are wonderful things, they've made cars cleaner, faster and easier on fuel at the same time, but like all things programmable they can be used for evil.
However it's all for nought now as diesel passenger cars are failing. The tax concessions given to diesels in Europe due to the oil crisises of the 50's-70's have almost all been repealed and operating a modern diesel is no more expensive than operating a modern petrol (the petrol is often cheaper, being less complex) and doesn't have the downside of a diesel (noisy, rattly, smelly). New diesel car sales are falling month after month here in the UK.
Better still, reading ebooks you actually own.
Why? I rarely read a book twice. Reference books are handy to own.
Then you're reading the wrong books.
There are few books that I finish and find aren't worth reading twice. Books that aren't worth re-reading aren't worth finishing. The last book I finished that wasn't worth reading twice wasn't even worth finishing but it was mandatory reading in high school (that was a long time ago, before e-books were a thing).
"the report concludes that artificial intelligence will disrupt the industry by allowing early adopters to outmaneuver competitors" Uh, yeah. Like steam engines or telephones. "The dynamics of machine learning create a strong incentive to network the back office" Umm... like the same thing as using a CRM. Or email. Don't get me wrong - AI terrifies me in a lot of ways. But I'm not worried about these kinds of risks. Seem silly.
What they really mean is that an AI is going to put all of the speculators, high frequency traders and other professional gamblers on the economy out of business by stabilising economies.
What does an electric car really need? A little OLED screen to show speedometer, battery charge, and warning messages/turn signals/light status.
Way to miss the point of a city car (supermini as you call them on the other side of the pond). They're meant to be small, simple and cheap, like the original Mini. What you need is a simple, reliable dial, many city cars have omitted the rev counter these days and just have a speedometer.
Renault tried to make a cheap, simple electric car with the Twizy but it's €7,500 which is the same price as a Dacia Sandero which can go more than 100 KM and a lot more than the scooters it competes against. The base model Twizy didn't even come with doors (considered an optional extra). Good on Renault for persisting with it, I think the concept is good but it needs to be cheaper.
They do realize that google regularly censors results in America, right?
Any urgent moral or ethical issues with say, blacklisting Alex Jones? Down ranking alt-right sites? Artificially manipulating auto-completes to prefer one political party?
I'm not sure if these people realize that the "secret" work isn't just in China.
How to be right and so incredibly wrong in 3 lines.
Yes Google censors in the US (and everywhere else) thanks to the DMCA, when searching you'll often see "X results have not been listed due to DMCA requests". This is government enforced censorship.
Alex Jones on the other hand isn't being censored, he's being ignored. He's losing page rankings because people don't like him, they don't like the crap he spouts, the lies he publishes or the people who support him. He's not being silenced, he's being told to shut up and go back to his corner because he's a horrible little scrote and we're all sick of his bullshit. Free speech does not entitle you to any platform you like, especially private ones and it does not protect you from criticism or the consequences of your speech.
The Nazis didn't start Germany's social welfare system—Bismark did that back in the 1880s, before most of those guys were even born.
This.
The Nazis cut back the social programs put in by previous governments going back to the formation of the German state. Socialism was the first declared enemy of the Nazi party, long before they started on Jews they beat up and killed known Bolsheviks.
The closest thing the Nazis came to implementing a social program was Action T4, the forced euthanasia of anyone considered a burden to the state. People like the elderly, the infirm, the feeble (mentally handicapped), the deformed, so on and so forth.
"Who wants a stylus? You have to get 'em, put 'em away, you lose 'em. Yuck! Nobody wants a stylus. So let's not use a stylus." - 2007 Macworld
"If you see a stylus, they blew it.” - 2010 iOS 4 launch event
Oh and he has opinions on large phones too:
"You can't get your hand around it, No one's going to buy that." - October earnings call 2010
Apple reminds me a lot of Ingsoc... You must always believe what you're told by the inner party even if it contradicts what they said earlier. Styluses are the future, styluses have always been the future.
Now it's time for the 2 minutes hate on Android.
For instance, Sweden, Norway, and Finland are definitely socialist countries.
Norway's Statoil is an example of socialism, but that is a special situation of a massive public resource owned by a small population. Very few other countries have that benefit.
Actually Statoil is more of an example of corporatisation. The state owns it, but the entity runs itself appointing it's own management and running it's own affairs. The government is effectively the shareholder and only has the power to elect and sack the board like a private corporation (and collects the dividends). In fact the Norwegian government only owns 67% of Equinor (formerly Statoil) so it's no more socialist than Singapore's Tamasek holding company (which is about as socialist as Ayn Rand). Tamasek and Equinor are good examples of government owned corporations.
Venuseula's attempt at nationalising the oil industry is an example of what a socialised industry is (and why it's a bad idea). When people get appointed due to political favour you end up with clowns running a circus. Not that this is a trait exclusive to Socialist despots, there are plenty of examples in any despotic government.
Stop taking kids to the pool. Ain't nobody got time for that shit!
Look, I regularly drop the kids off at the pool, at least once a day and I'm not going to bloody stop.
The system we have isn't Capitalism, it's Cronyism. Brought on because people think that Keynesian economics is somehow a good thing. Sadly this line of thinking is so prevalent on both sides of the isle, that it will never get fixed until the system collapses. Young people today have never seen Capitalism, they have only seen Cronyism and yet everybody calls it Capitalism. It isn't.
You do still see Capitalism at lower levels of society. The farmers markets, the used/antique markets etc. But those in government don't make money on these, they would rather make the big bucks working with large corporations. As a result, the large corporations get the laws passed that they want, usually at the expense of the little guy. Hence Cronyism wins the day.
Now, if we can just get young people to understand the difference...
Cronyism or crony capitalism is capitalism in a pure form... The farmers markets et al. are examples of small market economies which scale out to be mixed economies.
The problem isn't that young people don't understand the difference, it's that you have made up your own definitions.
Successful economies are always mixed economies, combining parts of capitalism, socialism, free market libertarianism and controlled markets. There's plenty of room to argue which mix is best but pure forms of these ideas are and have always been bound for failure.
Or I dunno, forget about any notion of Republican Space Rangers and just use the organisation that's been successfully doing space travel and exploration for 60 years.
But that would mean some orange retard admitting he was wrong to de-fund them in the first place.
There isn't a need for a military presence in space, in fact it would be an expensive boondoggle.
Are you really bothered by the fact that people might be doing something vaguely harmful to themselves, or is it some other stylistic aspect of "vapers" that you don't like?
I mean, I watch people consume known toxin ethyl alcohol all the time and despite their occasionally destructive and violent behavior, I don't get quite as angry as you seem to be at vapers.
I don't really care about vapers, it looks fairly silly in practice but I can't think of a reason to be mad at them. But boy, a lot of people seem to heap hate on vapers.
B-B-B-B-but Big Vape or whatever nonsense they've created.
Vape fluid MAY have some negative side effects we don't know about, lets compare that to burning tobacco. Whatever nebulous effects the fluid might have its got to be better than the confirmed highly cancerous substance it's meant to replace. I've switched two of my relatives from being life long smokers to being vapers. They can now sit inside with relatives, taste food and realise how bad other smokers smell and they now have a smaller chance of dying from a horrible cancer.
Sure some vapers are knobs but they're not as bad as regular smokers. I'd rather walk through a sickly sweet smelling cloud than acrid tobacco smoke.
I've read the entire thing as "we wanted to get our names in the paper".
Wireless speeds will exceed wired? That seems unlikely.
Are you suggesting that a telephone company may be lying in a country where lying in advertisement doesn't only go unpunished, but seems to be de rigueur?
Colour me shocked (yes, British spelling, UK resident here with 200 MB fibre for just £50 a month).
We need to forget "G" numbers as they no longer have any meaning. What I want to know is what technology they're implementing because I may be a cynical Anglo but I suspect they're just re-branding an older technology like LTE rather than putting in a technology like LTE Advanced or beyond. Not like they haven't done this before by re-branding 3G (HSPA) as 4G
I'd only recommend gas fired tank-less heaters. Electric ones are unreliable and usually undersized as you point out.
I've had some great electric heaters (in the UK, they get made for UK conditions), the downside are the electricity bills. Electric heaters that are reliable and spec'd for purpose are power hogs.
I'm still of the opinion that electric is not the way to go in tank-less water heaters.
Oh yes. Gas heating is far more cost effective and faster to heat up. I'd hate to live in a house without gas heating in the UK but if it's a choice between no heat and electric, don't dismiss electric heaters.
I'd only recommend gas fired tank-less heaters. Electric ones are unreliable and usually undersized as you point out.
I've had some great electric heaters (in the UK, they get made for UK conditions), the downside are the electricity bills. Electric heaters that are reliable and spec'd for purpose are power hogs.
They could have used their guns, not missiles (AFAIK, F15 still has a Gatling gun).
Bullets and fragments will still fall out of the sky. A round that pierces the aircraft (and MANY will) will travel miles before striking the ground, people, houses, etc. Incredibly dangerous to do so.
Not to mention a huge flaming aircraft wreck falling out of control.
Most AA missiles are not designed to destroy the aircraft, especially not disintegrate it in a huge fireball leaving no debris... That's just a waste and makes the missile more complex than it needs to be. Most AA missiles are designed to cause enough damage that the aircraft loses control and crashes, most notably on the control surfaces. An AIM-9 Sidewinder is effectively a fragmentation grenade on a guided rocket, high speed fragments are projected forward and are designed to damage engines, control surfaces and pilots. This means they can detonate in proximity and be highly effective (as opposed to detonation on contact). Ejection seats are effective because anti aircraft weapons are expected to damage ailerons, rudders or elevators making the aircraft unflyable, but leaving the pilot relatively intact.