mwsfc

https://mwunderling.com/

I'll second this. Just finished his video on landslides the other day. Not only interesting, but also good info if you ever are considering a home on or around hilly terrain.

Jerome has levers to nudge things up or down to implement policy. But he is not the final arbitor. The market is. It always is.

Your response was to the poster who said "It's a complex system, a feedback loop." That about sums it up. Your seven people operate inside this system. They don't have complete freedom to do what they want willy nilly.

For the physicists here I would greatly like to hear an opinion on what presents the greater physics challenge: keeping the ocean out at the depth of 13K feet or containing a spacecraft's atmosphere in the vacuum of space. I suspect it's the former but don't have the "mathy maths" to back it up.

In some areas of the economy, there truly were inflationary pressures that led real price increases. But there's always the human element and FOMO at play. Once "we're experiencing inflation" became a thing, it also presented an opportunity for other companies in the form of a cover or "excuse" to raise their prices simply to improve margins. "If these companies can raise their prices why can't I?" would be a component of that logic. Kingsford Charcoal* tried this but it backfired - mainly b/c there were other alternative charcoal companies that didn't raise their prices.

* https://www.businessinsider.com/kingsford-hiked-prices-too-m...

Obviously there seem to be some compelling reasons why the choice of a carbon hull was a faulty idea to begin with. The CEO would have been familiar with those critiques and proceeded anyway, presumably because of counter arguments he put more confidence in. Anyone out there familiar with what some of those counter points may have been?

They are licensed as a money transmitter like Western Union. It is a lessor form of regulation. So while they look "bank like" in some things they are not legally a bank.

I'm saying this with extreme snark, but wait until smart homes become more commonplace and you won't be able to walk past your thermostat without Amazon pitching you new filters every six weeks over the smart speakers. Yes, there's many if's there, but the point is mostly profit motive usually trumps good taste.

Re: Windows, if we're not paying for it anymore are we still the customer? Even if that's a yes, it represents a cost for msft, so they seem to be looking to extract any amount of value out of it that they can. I doubt I'll use it past Win10, the downsides just keep piling up.

I would venture a guess the logic in some of these cases has a healthy does of practical wisdom baked in. On sailing vessels they are/were? chaotic, violent, noisy, and the crew perhaps wasn't the most experienced/educated(?) so keeping things simple with fixed names was perhaps the optimal safety solution in that environment. In the medical profession it's about the Hippocratic Oath (I am not a doctor), an operating room is more controlled, and everyone (is usually) well trained, so maybe in that environment it makes more sense to make a rule that the perspective should always be the patients? Thinking out loud here more than anything...

This is exactly what I would expect them to do. Amazon (AWS) sells compute resources and generative AI may be a gold mine for that. They need to have the tools and mindshare in place early for this market.

He means human nature in general.

Not at all ragequitting and not degrading to NPR. Staying on the platform tacitly implies NPR accepts the label ...which would be degrading, from their perspective.

https://mwunderling.com https://mwunderling.com/resources/

Part blog and part resources. Blog: Home automation & some crypto & payments - Resources: Deep on payments info, home automation, and anything else that interests me.

Thanks for the reference. Spinning up individual containers has become quite easy these days, but agree networking still takes some work to get everything playing together nicely.

Yes, agree, expect would have seen more of an uproar if this was wide spread. Was trying to stay out the troubleshooting rabbit hole, thus posting the Q here in case other have observed the same. Still, with the other browsers proclaiming more privacy features and google somewhat begrudgingly trying to slow that conversation its hard to know what to expect in chrome without going deep into their roadmap.

Thanks! Had not seen this. Will look into.

Please correct me if I am wrong here regarding Ghostery functionality: In current Firefox & Vivaldi versions it behaves as you would expect....blocks ads according to your settings for every tab load. But in chrome, the default behavior (assume chrome induced) appears to be to auto disable the plugin until you manually re-enable the plugin then reload the tab....repeat process for every new tab load. Do I have a Chrome setting misconfigured or is this another example of Google's "what's best for you is what we say it is" attitude?

No, I never said Facebook is justified to do whatever they want because of their desire to reap more profits. Slight tangent: I don't disagree with your comments about regulation. Back to my earlier point, FB stands to lose more if they don't run political ads so expecting them to change their position in light Twitter's recent announcement is just not going to happen. Cloaking their position as promoting Freedom of Speech is complete rubbish.

My take? This is really a pretty simple equation for FB. Politcal ads = good business opportunity ....perhaps essential.

Since FB tends to be a self-reinforcing echo chamber on both ends of the political spectrum, political ads will keep users engaged with the platform. For a variety of reasons interest in the 2020 campaign is likely to be sky high so allowing the ads should keeps FB's DAU's & MAU's in the preferred direction. Not allowing the ads could in-turn adversely affect those metrics and subsequently pull down ALL of their advertising rates. Freedom of Speech rational of allowing adds? (scoff, scoff, snort, outburst of laughter.....)

Yes, sadly. ....b/c Comcast, ATT, and a few others have been allowed to control all the pipes (including access to the internet). Most places only have two options. Where I live it is either Comcast or ATT. So if you want to "cut-the-cord" on cable guess what...you are still going to pay one of those two companies for the internet. ...And guess what if you don't buy a bundled (tv+internet) package? then the individual price of internet only goes up ...and comes with bandwidth limits (ie overage fees). Solution? Buy the fast internet option, bundled with lowest TV package (literally emergency services level tv). Cost $70 month @100mps with unlimited bandwith (b/c you now have a bundle). Then add a SlingTV package. Couldn't be happier with this setup. The Sling package is even better than the cable package I had before. Still....all the hoops to jump through is ABSURD.

Well, given the subject here, it seems relevant to ask how everyone is organizing their libraries in Calibre. Is there such a thing as "best practices"? Would really love to hear ideas as I've found library mgmt in Calibre to be cumbersome, sluggish, and rather none intuitive compared to something like Plex for movies & TV shows.

Between this and the Samsung Fold it feels like we have entered into the netbook (form factor) era* void. We're past peak smartphone development and are in this space where manufacturers are stumbling around for the next "it" device but creating nothing that is truly revolutionary. Yes, there are "some" use cases where a larger screen on my mobile device would be useful…. But by-and-large I still want it to fit in my pocket and be comfortable navigating single handedly . Adding dual screen & doubling the device thickness is not the solution I am looking for.

*Netbooks were low-powered mobile devices (basically mini laptops) that launched in 2007 and basically disappeared (as a viable market category) after the iPad and its kind were launched in 2010.

EDIT added "form factor" for clarification

Mostly I agree with this sentiment. I'd argue it falls into the "we are doing this b/c we can" and "cheap easy marketing coverage" buckets.

So far, the government seems to not have provided any legal justification for this move. Would love to hear input from someone with legal experience that can shed some light on how the appeals process may look and the reasons why one side may prevail over the other.

Important to remember that disruption isn't always profitable: you much just nudge the established players into a higher level of competition

<Sarcastic/ironic voice> ....while someone else foots the disruption bill....

The short of it from the article (my interpretation much simplified): the Sacklers would keep the bulk of their prior gains (however that may be defined) but will give up their ownership of the manufacturer of Oxycontin, a large contributor of their potential future gains. So yeah. That certainly doesn't seem like much of a penalty, given the fortune the family has already made and doesn't seem to provide any real disincentive for others not to follow suit in the future ....just make enough money before the lawsuits start. <sarcastic tone> Feels a little like FB's recent FTC "slap on the wrist".

Turn off javascript and you'll be able to read it

Assuming this would be mainly applicable to non property owners? Can't see why any property owner would take that offer.

<edit> missing word

And if you eliminate Tesla from the category, since they aren't using LIDAR, you can also point out that a self-driving car has never killed a passenger.

Umm, this is leaving out the very relevant fact that a pedestrian WAS killed near Phoenix by a self driving Uber.