Posts by Andy the ex-Brit 143 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Feb 2012
One of my (US) credit cards has a limit significantly higher than that. They kept raising my limit, without my ever asking them to. Consumer protections are good enough over here that it's no risk to me to leave it like that, and hey, I may just want to buy a monster truck with it one day.
I've never had it anywhere near the limit, and pay it off 100% every month so I pay no interest.
I logged onto my home PC this morning to find that it had rebooted overnight.
Edge was open, full screen, asking me to copy my settings over from Chrome and make Edge "Built for Windows 10" my default browser.
Edge shortcut pinned to the taskbar.
Edge shortcut on the desktop, that I had to use admin privileges to delete.
Anyone else?
Reminds me of cost saving projects I was on that were totally fake. Assume that we would choose the most expensive solution, then compare all solutions and choose a perfectly normal middle-range one. Instant, huge savings to be claimed by management.
One time I said in a meeting for such a project, "I saved $2000 today by cycling to work!"
"You mean per year?"
"No, I got a quote on chartering a helicopter ride, then cycled here instead. Savings!"
I grew up loathing Brussels sprouts. I was forced to eat one every time they were served. I didn't plan on eating them as an adult.
Then I discovered that they can be cooked in bacon. This is a game changer. Now I am the guy who makes them, and they go over pretty well.
That only works if you start from the assumption that Polaris is essentially infinitely far away. If instead you assume it's a bright dot a mere few thousand or million kilometers directly over the north pole, of course its angle relative to you will change as you travel away from the pole.
Note: not a flat-earther. This is just an example of how you can wrestle with evidence until it matches your assumptions.
"At least you've spotted the trend."
Yes. I suspect it's somewhat inherent in packing so much tech into a watch-sized package. I've had other sub-$200 tech work well and be at least nominally supported for a decade or more:
Garmin GPS (since stolen)
Coby MP3 player
DVD player
Canon, Sony P&S cameras
DSLR lenses
Thanks. Unfortunately, Strava stopped support, so one of my two use cases is no longer there. I used to be able to start, stop, pause, and perhaps most importantly monitor that it was still recording (sometimes the phone app crashes,) all from my wrist. Then this:
https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216919327-Strava-ends-support-for-Pebble-Smartwatch
So dumb. Like the manufacturer closing its doors means everyone stopped using their watches. Note, they didn't just stop developing the Pebble support--they removed the feature from the app.
I like having one for when I'm cycling, both to see who's calling/texting me, so I can decide whether to stop or not, and to start/stop Strava.
In three years, I've been through:
Pebble - screen died
Another Pebble - stopped using when Strava stopped supporting it
Moto 360 2nd gen - screen died
I have no desire to keep spending $80-$150 every year to have a working one.
"As can be seen from the example above, last year's transformation of stands out as odd.
The researchers' revised approach reads better. This particular sample may only feature only minor variations on the original text, but if it can defy stylometric analysis, it has accomplished its job."
Was the article run through the tool it describes?
The Fahrenheit conversions are ridiculous. He wisely dropped the 0.33 degrees at the end, but better to just put 90,000,000 and 27,000,000. No way was the temperature measured with seven or eight digits of precision, and then reported as 50,000,000 K.
Living in the Midwest USA, I have enjoyed using almost every bus, subway, or train service I've used outside of where I live. London is one of my favorites. Paris is probably better. Dublin is okay, but hard for visitors to use. Washington DC was a bit of a pain to figure out, but useable. I'm warming up to Chicago.
Where I live, they recently improved some of our bus stops with actual shelters from the elements, where before there was just a Bus Stop sign nailed to a telephone pole. Things that most bus stops here don't have:
Rubbish bins (and therefore are surrounded by a sea of scattered litter)
Benches
Indication of what bus routes they are on
Indication of when the next bus is coming
Indication of when the last bus of the day runs
Information about connections and destinations
Printed timetables of any kind
"...there are people for whom being able to get a bus to go 200 yards down the road is the difference between making that journal or not, i.e the elderly and disabled."
So give those who genuinely need it a pass that gives them nearly door-to-door service. Something electronic that lets them flag a passing bus for pickup at a non-standard location, or stop a bus they're on to be let off where they need to be. Place the normal stops at least a half mile apart.
I recently registered for a special interest jobs site, and minutes later got a Thanks for Registering email with my username and password in plaintext.
Boggles the mind. I should have guessed when the password entry fields weren't even obfuscated.
They got a pretty stern response back from me.
I do use Facebook, and get some value out of it (or I wouldn't use it.) But Zuckerberg hopefully realizes that Facebook can become the next Myspace in less than a year if its annoyance factor gets higher than its usefulness factor.
Almost everything that I use Facebook for can be done in other ways, but Facebook has put a lot of it in one place.
"But theft is still theft, even if it's dressed up as some sort of digital Robin Hood act. You're not just interfering with pixels, you're interfering with business."
Yes, in the same sense that it was theft when I used to pull all the ad supplements out of my Sunday paper and recycle them without looking at them.
Or, if I were pay one of my sons to put stickers over all the advertisements in my magazines before I started reading them. Yup, theft.
I bought an original Pebble (used, $60 on Amazon.) My main use was so I could quickly see who was calling or texting me whilst I bicycled, then I could stop and respond if needed. The phone stays put away in a bag. This worked really well for me.
Just this week, the screen died after about four months of my use. Even at $60 that's an expensive "rental" for what it was. Hopefully they've got the quality issues worked out. Unfortunately I have no warranty.
At $200, the new one is not something I'll look at. I paid less for my phone. I'm considering instead a used Pebble Steel for ~$100. If that doesn't last a couple of years, I'm done with them.
I wish. We currently have three in our house (all previous generation Kindle Paperwhites,) but we've paid for five. We cracked the screens on two of them.
I would pay more for one that was a lot more durable. As it is, they're quite vulnerable unless you put them in a case that triples their weight and volume. And even then, they're not particularly water resistant.
Should be a simple task for someone with the programming skills to convert an obsolete tablet to that purpose.
Use the camera to read the lighting level and color temperature in the room. Adjust the display brightness and color temperature to match. This would automatically make it dark at night.
You could potentially save more power by having it use a combination of camera and microphone to determine if anyone is around to look at it.
Bastiat has been rolling over in his grave for a very long time, but his angular velocity just increased by 3%. See "A PETITION From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting."
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