Posts by rcxb 549 posts • joined 22 Aug 2018
makes people who don't live in those places, complacent.
There's a corollary, however, that people who engage in token actions are less likely to take substantive actions to actually resolve the problem.
Reducing plastic pollution in the oceans can be most effectively done by spending money at the source of most of the plastic, not trying to prevent that last 1% from relative non-polluters.
I wonder who DOES dump all of that plastic?
As of 2019, "Asia accounts for 81% of global plastic inputs to the ocean." * They frequently lack the sanitation infrastructure the western world has, as well as environmental laws. Dumping trash into rivers, where it gets flushed out to sea, is not just an occasional happening but the standard method of disposal.
* source: ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics
It doesn't need to be all in the browser. I've put together Linux systems with locked-down Kiosk desktops, and also had no problems at all.
One of those icons is a web browser, but native programs are better where available. Much less bandwidth used, and performs very well on even old slow hardware. Still a locked-down, unprivileged user experience with no way to install programs, or even run anything they haven't been given access to.
Of course it's easier to get started when someone did the work for you, but more difficult when you find you need to do something more than the lowest-common-denominator use-case.
"And if you do bring your own commerce engine, you keep 100 per cent of your revenue, we keep zero."
24th June, 2021. Keep the date. This is the kind of promise that will get slowly watered down a bit at a time, until nobody makes a fuss when it is reversed entirely. At least, assuming they're successful in driving more developers to use their "Store". This sounds like Microsoft from the old days, promising vendors everything, then doing the opposite.
One has to wonder if the sauna-like temperatures Google and Facebook are increasingly running their datacenters at, is contributing to the increased rate of CPU-core glitches.
They may be monitoring CPU temperatures to ensure they don't exceed the spec sheet maximums, but any real-world device doesn't have a vertical cliff dropoff, and the more extreme conditions it operates in, the sooner some kind of failure can be expected. The speedometer in my car goes significantly into the tripple-digits, but I wouldn't be shocked if driving it like a race car would result in mechanical problems rather sooner in its life-cycle.
Similarly, high temperatures are frequently used to simulate years of ageing with various equipment.
worst-case rely on character recognition techniques to scrape the text into an easier format.
Well that's not a fair comparison. Somebody could scan a piece of paper and insert it as an image into an DOCX file just as easily. PDFs (that aren't just images of scanned pages) are trivially easy to extract to images and text.
I am also getting bored with everything depending on evermore outrageous CGI
It was the improving technology of special effects which gave us the blockbuster (and predominantly sci-fi) film boom of the 80s & 90s.
CGI has the potential to make it cheaper and easier to make better, more imaginative films. That reality hasn't worked out that ways is not the fault of the technology, but unrelated studio issues.
State income tax is fairly insignificant next to federal income taxes (and related federal withholdings).
A quick lookup seems to show New York state income tax rate at 5.99%, while Colorado is 4.63%. Not a huge difference. Worth paying if you can negotiate a 2% higher salary out of it (higher cost of living area).
Plus you could move shortly after getting the job. You'd probably have to pay income taxes in both states for the period that you are faking your mailing address, to ensure neither state can arrest you for tax fraud... They NEVER object to getting MORE in taxes than they're owed.
Those other identities / personas won't be "trusted" by the kernel developers, so there's no reason to worry about them. They were only successful because they were associated with a group that has been reliable and trustworthy in the past. Unless they have similar connections to other organizations, it's a non-issue.
If you gave Linux to your typical office desktop users, you'd have as many, if not more, of the same security breaches.
We have an office full of Linux systems, and never had a single breach. A big part of that is that users are just that. Locked-down user, no privileges to install anything.
With Windows, you can't even set-up two users on the local system to be able to access the same set of files, without making them administrators. Search for "unable to take ownership". You'll see lots of resolutions options like disabling UAC, which is both a terrible idea, and still doesn't work. You can set all the ACLs on the files and folders correctly to allow two users full access to them, but Windows only recognizes one owner, and won't let you open and modify those files until you're the owner, which you can't make happen unless you're also an administrator...
Linux is designed to be a sane, multi-user operating system. Windows has only just the basics of multi-user operation tacked-on, poorly.
And if users were allowed to install software, they would only be doing it from the repos... Careful use of sudo can allow them to do that, without giving them full root permissions. And those Linux software repos are still curated and extremely, without being locked-down with onerous restrictions and fee demands like Apple does with their store. Whereas the very model for Windows software installation has for decades been "download binaries from websites on the internet and run them, and say yes when asked if they should be allowed to do absolutely anything to your system" which is the real security nightmare.
Linux doesn't let you run exe's or other binaries from files attached to e-mails with a click. Linux doesn't hide (crucially important on Windows) file extensions from you, allowing attackers to mask executable code as innocuous images or other documents.
And should we talk about auto-run?
This is just scratching the surface. The list of ways in which Windows is inherently insecure is legion.
Converting an analog medium into a digital representation and then back to analog again is, to put it mildly, less than ideal
On the contrary, converting to digital is the only way to ensure you can perfectly reproduce the analogue signal.
If you are doing digital sampling above the Nyquist rate (right about double the sound's highest frequency), the digitizing process is provably perfect. What the ADC input picks up will be the exact same waveform the CD spits back out. It's math.
Digital media formats have error checking and correcting codes, which are not possible in the analogue realm. Analogue media just wears out imperceptible until it progressively becomes impossible to ignore.
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But in practice, the reason you weren't developing it yourself in the first place is likely because you lack the ability to actually do so.
Unlikely. The #1 reason is because somebody is doing it (for free) for you already, so why put any time/effort/money into it when it needs none? When the project dies, that calculus changes.
Also, if you can't afford to fund a few modifications to an open source project, what are the chances you could have afforded the license cost for the proprietary version in the first place?
I know of MANY small companies that have gone out of business when a proprietary piece of software (which they relied on) changed its license terms or greatly increased the price. I can't think of ANY cases where an open source project being abandoned resulted in the same... When its open source you have so many options, where with proprietary software you have just the one choice.
Schools typically issue student IDs to everyone, which are rather universally accepted as valid ID for minors.
Adults (old enough to drive) can get a cheap state photo ID without the driving test, typically through the same process, if desired.
So a keyboard is now two accessories?
No, that's just one. But if you're not holding the iPad, you probably need something to stand it up, too.
if you're going to be doing serious typing then a real keyboard is required, but that's the same on all devices.
Which is why all other devices include a keyboard.
as for the dumb terminal... what exactly are you connecting to?
Local/offline mode. Just echoes what you type to screen. Hit the Print Screen button to output it to the connected printer.
The idea is to have a low distraction environment. The WiFi was often switched off
That works well on a laptop, too. Also see typewriter and dumb terminal comment above.
“Verizon Media has done an incredible job turning the business around over the past two and a half years and the growth potential is enormous,” Hans Vestberg said in a statement.
When Verizon bought Yahoo in 2016, it had a search market share of about 3%. Now they're around 1.5%. That's an impressive turnaround, no question. Source: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/worldwide/2016
With low numbers like that, there is certainly growth potential, but also death-spiral potential.
The ISS doesn't have long left, it's likely to be decommissioned within 10 years
Perhaps China can get a good price on it... They certainly don't mind making copies. I know they won't take our used electronics any more, but maybe they can make an exception.
Maybe the next ISS will be made by Foxcomm.
After a few 1TB venv's for a bunch of simple apps, you might start to question the logic of this deployment method. Not to mention the logistics of updating package X in every venv when you find out there's a vulnerability that needs patching.
I guess it's better than a docker container for /bin/true, but it's still pretty inefficient.
Where would one place any kind of rocket to move the Earth to a higher orbit?
A gravity tractor may be the better way to go.
Either that or having everyone in Asia climb up on a chair and jump down all at the same time.
Could just shoot out a laser in the direction you want a boost.
But if you're determined to make it big rocket, near the equator is a good spot. Turn it on for 1/4 of the days when it'll push in roughly the correct direction, and stay off the rest of the time. Could put it on a huge barge and let it propel itself across the ocean to stay in the right orientation for much more of the day.
Being inside of the star's envelope might be a bigger problem
Last I heard, Earth's orbit orbit will expand, keeping it just beyond being consumed. That said, a hot rock stripped of all atmosphere and water won't be a place you'd enjoy going on holiday.
However, the only way we won't be able to figure out a gravity tractor to tow the Earth out to a wider orbit in a billion years is if we're gone by then... whether all turned to dust, or having found more enticing rocks to live on.
Buyouts are strange.
Stockholders will only accept if they get a premium price above what the company already earns.
Companies also tout a buyout by a bigger company as being a fresh cash infusion that will allow them to "grow" quickly.
But buyers almost always make such purchase at least partially with loans. Saddling themselves with debt, unable to put the promised extra resources into the company. In fact, it usually goes the opposite way, with company assets sold off to try and reduce the debt load they've created.
Buyers are also on the hook with their stock-holders to show value from the merger. Both lead to aggressively cutting staff and spending on things like research that typically is what made the company viable over the long-term.
It seems like buyouts are a bad idea all around. But everybody goes into the deal thinking like a gambler who just has to keep raising the stakes, and is sure they're going to be the one to beat the odds.
Or else, the buyout is consolidation of market power, and just results in higher prices for customers to no benefit.
I can only imagine a boiling water tap being useful for the physically disabled. For the rest of us, being able to get up for a moment at a short break-point in the middle of whatever task is a bonus. Too easy to get stuck to your chair as it is.
Perhaps you can't do that during video calls, but seeing a conference participant reaching across, then steeping and mixing and stirring, doesn't look very professional, either. Perhaps it'll make for interesting Zoom videos on youtube, as we get to watch people bump the lever by accident and scald themselves.
And there's no tap for the milk, so does it really count as tea?
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I'm quite fond of Slackware.
It seems to be the only Linux distro out there which includes the devel headers in every package. And why not, they're tiny? Yet all other Linux distros insist on keeping the devel headers away from users, imposing a massive barrier to entry on users who first decide to try compiling some software from source. No idea why that's so novel in the Linux world... All the BSDs include devel headers like Slackware.
And no dependency nonsense. If I compile some library from source, I can still install binaries that depend on it, without a ration of crap from the packaging system's dependency tracking. And the worst part? Those packaging systems won't bother to check and tell you when the contents of an installed package have been removed/corrupted/etc. They can find out with a single command, but they don't really care to keep track of your system, just a database that says X is installed, so you can go on your way. Bah!
I don't use Slackware anymore, just because if I've got to use Linux_X at work, it saves my brain so many cycles to use Linux_X at home, too. Slackware may be less of a hassle for me, but if I've got to put up with a set of hassles anyhow, I might as well limit myself to the one single set of them.
Slackware's style comes with some downsides, too, but it's a great system to learn Linux on, and I don't mean just install and blindly use it (ala Ubuntu), but to actually learn the gritty details of how Linux works.
But it has never been working harder/faster/longer/cheaper that put the US on top. It's typically been that US workers find ways to continually make their own jobs more efficient, instead of continuing to do everything the hard way. That kind of individual free-thinking isn't as a common or as strong of a trait in labourers from oppressive totalitarian nations.
There is almost nothing that the US Gubbermint can do to stop China (or their representatives) from buying a few dozen of the NPE's (lawyers mostly) and holding the world to ransom.
Yours is a very strange suggestion, as:
1) It is the government that makes those patent laws in the first place, and which can make exceptions or rewrite the law wholesale when it stops suiting their interests.
2) If government representatives get on the boards of standards bodies as intended, they can start to introduce some anti-patent-troll rules, steering standardized technologies away from problematic/riskier methods.
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