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spditner

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The Da (Big) / Xiao (Small) prefixes are direct translations of family honorifics that in the simple case directly indicate the relative age of one family member to another. The more common use for family is with more layers of indirection -- so when referring to my mother's younger sister, I would say "Xiao Ai" (Little Aunt), and when referring to my mother's older sister, it would be "Da Ai" (Big Aunt).

In this case I imagine it was more in a professional context, so "Shi Qiang" -- family name "Shi", given name "Qiang" -- was likely elder or the superior of people around them, so would be called "Da Shi" (Big Shi / Boss Shi). If Shi Qiang were the younger, they'd likely be called "Xiao Shi" (Little Shi / Subordinate Shi).

I have found the lowest energy way to shovel snow is to stand with a bit of a bow stance and push the shovel front to back as if you were paddling a boat, pushing down on the end of the handle at the end to launch the snow. Very easy on the back.

If heavier snow, sink into it a bit to transfer more energy.

Works well up to depth of the shovel head, so for deep snow, skim first, and repeat.

For wet snow, launch earlier, but sorry, it’s still hard work.

They're still available in newer forms[1]. Its manufacturer, GlobalScale, is more an ODM for plug computers and provides reference devices.

There are also other smaller full package variants around. I used the Ionics PlugComputers for a PBX project ~8 years ago (no longer manufactured), and still have one of them running a PBX on debian under my desk[2].

[1] https://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-products.aspx [2] https://imgur.com/a/YuaLFtc

Stripe Climate 6 years ago

I am curious to know what the business case looked like to get "climate" added as a feature to the product roadmap in a for-profit company.

There are a few of things to be aware of when deploying your own instance in jitsi-meet/config.js:

Firefox simulcast is still experimental (edit: and disabled by default), so Firefox is only sending HD to the video-bridge and no LD stream. The HD is then relayed to everyone even as a thumbnail.

If you don't need to see everyone's video all the time, set channelLastN: 5 or a similar number, and only the last N speakers video will be broadcast

If you don't need 720p (1280x720), change the constraints: video section to be something like 360p (640x360)

Enable layer suspension so that HD is not sent to the server when not needed: enableLayerSuspension: true

Besides the physical activities, the number of interested parties that become involved when touching so many things drives up the bureaucracy with each party bringing their own engineering requirements and conditions for cooperation.

A long time ago now, a friend worked on a partial translation of "Where Women Have No Doctor" into Farsi with a grant from Hesperian -- and one of the dilemmas they had was whether including (they did in the end) the more graphic pictures would help or hinder their efforts in distributing it. I wonder how much of a challenge literacy is in a place where no doctor can be found. She talked about doing an audio cassette version, but again, the pictures are a challenge there as well.

What has become fairly large in our school community is a group gift / group donation coordinated through the invitation services like Echoage. The kids could care less about all the gifts, they just want to spend time running around with their friends.

I put it uncooked into the blender and use it as a flour replacement. Works well as a 1:1 replacement. You need to reduce fluids about 20%. It makes great pancakes -- it does stick more and is less binding, so be prepared if you put it in a waffle iron. Probably need to use PAM to avoid a "bad time".

I definitely prefer their product placements over traditional ads. Some of them are very jarring though, and you can feel the actors' pain reciting the lines -- like the KFC in season 2 of Stranger Things, in a dinner scene all the shots are obviously centered around a bucket of KFC. For some reason they felt that wasn't enough and drag you straight out of the scene saying "finger lick'in good!!!".

Indeed, I ran a large-ish asterisk user group for years in Toronto and know a number of people at Digium and Sangoma, and there was always a bit of animosity between them. Glad to see them finally coming together.

Most of the talent I know took a step to the right (like myself) and are working with WebRTC. It's all the same stuff! Just more signalling layers on top of RTP channel management. I quite often end up doing SIP over WebRTC with things like sip.js (still backing onto Asterisk and FreeSWITCH) and XMPP over WebRTC with jitsi-meet.

Sangoma's doing a good job of consolidating the SMB Telephony market. They bought Schmooze Com Inc.[1] (owners of FreePBX, the largest Asterisk based Linux distro), Dialogic's hardware business, and VoIP Supply[3] (where most independent VARs order phones from).

[1] https://www.freepbx.org/sangoma-completes-the-acquisition-of... [2] https://www.dialogic.com/2018-01-09-sangoma-announces-sixth-... [3] http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/sangoma-announces-t...

Maybe think of it less as a one-time transfer from one singular place to another, and more a redistribution of a workload whose larger outcome is consciousness. After a migration period, that consciousness would find it's not using the meat-resources anymore.

Well, at least Sidewalk Labs is putting some money behind it. Mentioned in the linked article, and also in The Toronto Star: Doctoroff said his company will spend $50 million on a yearlong discussion, starting at a Nov. 1 public meeting, with citizens, governments, universities and others, about what the project dubbed “Sidewalk Toronto” should be.

https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2017/10/17/google-fir...

I've attended some of the other consultations hosted by the city planning department, and I agree their timelines are epic. It was good however to engage with neighbours I wouldn't otherwise and hear differing opinions. I can understand why it can take so long when engaging with the general public, land redevelopment can be very divisive.

The town hall meeting is November 1st if you're interested in participating:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/sidewalk-toronto-community-town-...

The city and Waterfront Toronto have not abdicated anything, as reported by the CBC:

"They have no permission to build anything," said Coun. Paula Fletcher, who has been heavily-involved in plans to redevelop the nearby Port Lands.

Fletcher says she's looking forward to seeing the ideas Sidewalk comes up with following a year's work and a series of public consultations, but warns they'll be held to a high standard. "It has to be good enough for Toronto. And it has to meet certain standards as far as jobs and land use are concerned," she said.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/sidewalk-labs-toronto-...

There are a few reasons that I'm aware of that new projects typically bore larger tunnels versus a 12ft bore that would reduce construction and operational costs:

- Logistically, it is difficult to get a cement truck into a small tunnel, as each truck would need to back out of the tunnel. You end up offloading into smaller cement trucks that can turn around, which is the headache that the Eglinton LRT tunnels is dealing with now

- Need space for a level floor, conduits/tunnel infrastructure and evacuation walkways

- Air flow. The rail car is an effective cork. Small tunnels require more ventilation and draw more power to push that air being compressed around -- unless the underlying truck is going to be propelling itself via the air

Barcelona's system is apparently the new gold standard for how it should be done [1]

They were able to build it out at ~$39 million/km[2]

[1] http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1866842 [2] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...