mayniac

Supermarkets here usually require an employee to approve backpacks. You put your bag on the scales, hit a button saying it's a bag, then an employee comes round to confirm.

In practice, it usually takes longer to get an employee's attention and have them come press the button. So I don't bother. It's usually quicker to bag everything at the end, and I tend to get fewer "unexpected item in the bagging area" issues when balacing everything on the scales.

The average weight of a mid-sized sedan is about 1,500kg, and the average weight of all American cars is closer to 1,900kg. A 4-seater close to 1,000kg is exceptionally light by modern standards. The Mazda MX-5 is a 2-seater which is famous for being lightweight, and it also weighs a few kg above a ton.

Also going off maximum human capacity isn't great in context, as the average car journey has <1.5 occupants. Not to mention if this was codified, car manufacturers would simply put folding seats in the trunk.

Another non-vegetarian here. I made a veggie hotdog last week which was close enough to the real thing that I would struggle in a blind taste test. Hot dogs are super easy to immitate, they're mostly not meat anyway.

Also ancedotally, I recently took a meat-eating friend-of-a-friend to a vegan fried chicken place. They said it was close enough that they wouldn't be able to tell the difference after a couple of beers. And they had recently worked in KFC...

I'd hazard a guess that the reason veggie hotdogs haven't appeared at US ballparks has less to do with the food itself, and more to do with cultural attitudes towards vegetarianism, especially amongst sports fans. Call it toxic masculinity if you want, or just stubbornness.

In the US people constantly quit to start small businesses, work for other businesses, or just not work at all. There is zero threat of violence if you choose not to work.

SOME people. Median savings are ~$4k, realistically the average person needs access to credit (which they may not have), a strong support network, or some other way of surviving longer than 2 months without work.

And whether or not you do have the wealth or support network needed to choose not to work is determined mostly by who your parents are. This isn't a fair system.

that comes from a line of people that had to make do with scraps.

That line is long. It only takes one generation feeding their children a diet of pre-made meals and snacks to break it.

I believe all this as well. If they wanted to, Adobe could invest heavily in DRM that would take at least a few months to crack. But it's far cheaper to stick a login wall in front of download pages and support forums, monitor for corporate email addresses, and spend the money on going after companies that pirate their software. e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7948241/forever-21-pirati...

You can set up a phpBB instance on a shared hosting provider for <$10/month. Interact with anyone who wants to interact with you. Don't even really need any technical knowlege, just a credit card.

People do it all the time, but they keep themselves to themselves and you don't find out about it.

It's definitely better than holding a hospital ransom. It's very unlikely that anyone will die if you spread ransomware in a university.

They didn't target the hospital:

"The cyberattack was not intended for the hospital, according to a report from the German news outlet RTL. The ransom note was addressed to a nearby university. The attackers stopped the attack after authorities told them it had actually shut down a hospital."

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/17/21443851/death-ransomware...

I get where you're coming from, but by phrasing it this way you draw up the image of a secret cabal of influential marxists waging a "campaign" via gullible students.

Probably because the "cultural marxism" conspiracy theory originated from the Nazi conspiracy theory of "cultural bolshevism". The idea that Marxists are subverting Western society is a delusional theory pushed by far-right lunatics.

People aren't just scared of the idea of armed police, they're afraid of police departments who have a history of getting away with murder. John Brown Gun Club and Redneck Revolt don't have that history.

There were also rumours of proud boys and other far-right groups attacking CHAZ. It's understandable that people would be more comfortable with vocally anti-fascist gun clubs defending them than the police, who often treat the far-right as friends.

"Would the response have been the same if all the heavily armored folk were black?"

There's precedent for this. In the 60s the black panthers open carried in California to protest, of course, police misconduct. Reagan signed in the Mulford Act [1], banning open carry in CA.

If BLM want stricter gun control laws (not sure if they do), all they need to do is arm themselves at protests.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

Maybe not all of them, but you only need a few people like the over-enthusiastic COD cosplayer cop [1] in management positions to kick things off.

Considering the vast, vast amount of footage of excessive force from the police in the last few days, I think it's likely the police want a riot. If they don't then they're beyond incompetent since they keep causing riots regardless.

[1] https://tuckbot.tv/#/watch/gtg2cb

How do you do this without uncomfortable levels of government surveillance?

It's also illegal to do this, so it's not a valid edge-case.

Road signs can get dirty or damaged. There definitely are edge-cases where a self-driving car might not comprehend an imperfect sign which a human would read just fine.

Maybe this test in particular isn't fair, but it does raise questions.

On top of what everyone else has said: reliability.

My record player + amp have never had any problems I couldn't fix on the spot. Only things I've had to repair/replace were needle cartridges and the belt, both of which take under five minutes to fix. My vinyl setup has outlived my smartphones and will likely continue to do so.

Streaming music can have problems I can't easily fix. It's like the difference between an old car which still uses carbs compared to a new BMW: you can tear the former apart in your garage and rebuild it, but you have to pay someone to help you for the latter.

That isn't the primary reason I use vinyl, but all of the better reasons have been covered already.

I think Google uses phone sensors to tell motorbikes apart form cars. Pretty simple tech: cars don't lean.

Which makes it all the more infuriating that Google Maps still has huge flaws when it comes to motorbike navigation.

Citymapper does this. It sometimes works in London: the app supports NYC but I don't know if either the feature is supported or if it's functional.

When you've set your start and destination scroll down and there's a section called "multimodal labs".

How do people magically get their hands on these various substances

Some people sell psychedelics in person. In my country they're incredibly rare and I've never seen anyone sell anything except mushrooms or LSD. So the fallback is the darknet.

and know that they’re authentic?

If you're buying from the darknet, user reviews. Other people make good guinnea pigs. Otherwise, there are reagents you can use to test to make sure you've got DMT. But generally people just smoke it and see what happens. DMT is very unique, if the substance you have is something else it will be noticeable very quickly.

As other people have mentioned, HTTPS without HSTS still makes MitM a problem.

And there are still other attacks possible on public wi-fi networks which don't involve MitM-ing HTTP(s) traffic. MitM DNS traffic and you can do nasty things: https://github.com/infobyte/evilgrade

"66% of the airports are exposed on the Dark Web"

What exactly does this mean?

And they all progress towards harder drugs

Massive [citation needed] here. This is absolutely untrue from my personal experiences.

I'm probably slightly younger than you, and I barely notice the CCTV cameras anymore.

Weirdly, the one time I genuinely felt uncomfortable was last week. I saw a traffic camera* swivel across a junction. Actually seeing a camera move in such a way that it was clearly being operated by a human was genuinely unnerving. I took a wrong turn so it wouldn't see me, for no real reason.

*One of these things: https://d1ix0byejyn2u7.cloudfront.net/drive/images/uploads/p...

I can't really get irritated with this. Privacy is just one thing out of many that people can care about. Maybe online privacy is just low on their list of ethical issues?

People who complain about global warming still eat meat, people who complain about right-to-repair still give Apple hundreds of dollars a year, and people who complain about working conditions in third-world countries don't research every product they purchase.

If I got irritated at everyone who complains about something but does little to remedy the problem I'd be a seething ball of rage 24/7. There isn't enough time in the day for people to make informed decisions about everything they do, the world is far too complex for that nowadays.

I bet if we talked long enough I'd find something you complain about which you could easily remedy but haven't. Similarly, I'm a hypocrite too. We all are.

Generally speaking, the type of person who uses ProtonMail is also the type of person who will trivially bypass this block.

All of these comments come down to one thing: if work was purely voluntary, would you still work?

I just wrote up and deleted a comment on why you were wrong about the gilet jaunes "[not caring] about the environment" before re-reading your comment and realising you meant Macron's government doesn't care about the environment. I think that may be why you got downvoted.

the places where population is increasing couldn't care less about personal responsibility for decreasing climate change.

I wouldn't say this is necessarily true, it's more that they have other things to care about. We can't criticise developing nations for enjoying the same luxuries we did a hundred years ago. It should be our (first world) job to ensure they get the same benefits from fossil fuels as we did, such as transport freedom and easy access to electricity, but using environmentally friendly technology. Unfortunately, we can't even get ourselves away from fossil fuels quick enough, so this is likely not going to happen.

Also, developing countries emit far fewer emissions per capita when you look at consumption-based emissions [0]. This isn't necessarily a problem with the number of people, it's a problem with the type of lifestyle people want and expect. Even if population increase stopped entirely climate change would get far worse if everyone on Earth had a 1st world lifestyle of red meat, SUVs and yearly holidays.

Population increase is obviously a problem but it's an overstated one. If everyone went vegetarian, which is going to have to happen at some point, the planet can sustain 10 billion people [1], which we're only forecasted to hit in 2100, if we even a) make it that far and b) don't see a reversal in population growth, which has been predicted.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/global-inequalities-co2-consumpti... [1] https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-suppor...

I doubt the only products you buy are cucumbers, tomatoes and gas. You've chosen your phone, laptop, car, and various other branded items. Advertising very likely played a role in your decisions there.

How can you actually be sure that advertising doesn't work on you? Of course, you don't see an ad on TV for a new smart fridge and immediately jump out of your sofa, wallet in hand, to go buy it. But the key thing is that _nobody does_. That's not the point. The idea is that six months down the line when your fridge breaks irreparably and you're deciding between different brands, those ads will have an influence, and you won't realise it.

People who think advertising doesn't work on them _are godsends to advertisers_. This article puts it quite well, although I don't agree with its conclusions[0]:

"If you don’t believe advertising works on you, you are going to be more likely to see good advertising as something else entirely and be more receptive to it and thusly more likely to take the action I want you to take."

There was a study a few months ago which found that people who think they are immune to advertising are more susceptible to it than average, but I can't find a link. It was one of the things that changed my opinion on this: I also used to think I was not susceptible to most advertising, but this is a dangerous mentality. You just don't think you're susceptible. I've come around to thinking Bill Hicks was completely right on this [1]

Also with the Metromile point, that's not bad targeting. Ads are often targeted at existing users of the ads product. The point is to keep brand loyalty and limit buyer's remorse.

[0] https://medium.com/@dahanese/advertising-works-don-t-believe... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0

Since I was fired, over 600 academics have signed a petition supporting me

He initially got fired because (almost) 600 academics signed an open letter casting doubt on his work, on top of 800 students [0].

Also, I don't really think that "read his work for yourself" is a valid argument. For one, you're talking hours, if not days or weeks of research, which isn't reasonable. And secondly, unless the person you're responding to knows sociology well, they're probably not going to be a good judge of his work.

[0] https://medium.com/@racescienceopenletter/open-letter-no-to-...