My city is in the middle of the worst drought in recorded history. My showers are typically under 2 minutes and I have to shower with a bucket to catch otherwise wasted water to use to flush the toilet. I also shut the water down when I am wet enough so I can scrub myself without having unneeded water flowing then start it...
We've been getting tons of rain here, but we are still in an outdoor water ban.
Between 8-5, no lawn watering (except golf courses and businesses), no washing your car (except at a car wash), no watering your ornamental plants (except for farms and garden stores). No filling your pool (even a kiddie pool) or running through the sprinkler (except at the water park).
It's not because of drought, but because one of our water sources is offline due to elevated PFAS, so they are blending water from other reservoirs, and those sources combined can't make up the extra demand.
And also protecting businesses by making sure we can't wash our own cars or lollygag through our own sprinklers. Gotta pay for that privilege.
We have to pay...for the privilege...of lollygagging through our sprinklers.
I get the lawn part. I hate lawns. But my yard is also a barren mud pit. I gotta put something down. Trying for mostly clover and other plants that don't need a ton of water, but they still need to stay moist to germinate and start off, and that's real tough to do if you can't water it during the hottest parts of the day. I don't really care what grows as long as it holds the dirt together and it's comfortable to walk on barefoot.
Libby is an app that allows you to use your library card to check out ebooks, audiobooks, and digitized magazines. Free to anyone with a library card (at a participating library).
That's one of several resources that a lot of libraries provide. Hoopla, as well, for shows and movies. And some have maker spaces, or 3d printers, or loan tools. And they usually have discount passes for local edutainment attractions (museums, aquariums, zoos, etc).
Some give you a month subscription to genealogy sites. Lots of stuff for little kids and families, usually activities or story times or craft classes. Classes for grownups too.
Tons of stuff at/from your local library. More than just books.
They aren't getting beaten up for their money. They are gleefully handing it over to the bully for protection from the real bullies...trans women playing highschool basketball.
I remember getting sent to the principals office for "hacking" (pinging the computer in the next room) in like 8th grade.
Back in 4th/5th I actually was hacking, modifying our user menu to add Windows 3.1 and a password (copying config from a teacher's profile). Also brute-forced at least two teachers passwords.
The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU....
Either Apple does the bare minimum to implement RCS, continuing to make interoperability a pain in the ass. Meanwhile, keep making improvements to iMessage.
Or Apple does it right, fully implements RCS, contributes back to the standard, and abandons iMessage as maintaining two separate platforms for the same function is a waste of resources.
I'll take a guess as to which it'll be.
Alternatively Americans just accept using 3rd party messengers. But that field is huge with big and small names competing, and ultimately anything that displaces FB messenger or WhatsApp will just get bought by Meta (or some other FAANG) and we're back at square-one.
Everybody just remember that Apple is the stubborn ones here, reluctantly adopting the standard that every other OEM has been using for a decade, and the reason they've been doing this was as a means to keep people in Apple's walled garden by "othering" people who don't have iMessage.
They knew exactly what they were doing. I got rid of my iPhone to go back to Android literally a week after the original announcement. Exchanging multimedia with my wife was literally the only thing holding me to iOS. The alternative, using third party messengers, is just plain cumbersome for one user (and likely means selling your soul to Meta nowadays, anyway).
I doubt I'm alone.
And RCS is a neutral standard, belonging to GSMA. Even though Google is a key player, they aren't the only ones. Any phone OS or OEM could always have implemented RCS. Apple has historically chosen not to, while also not reciprocating the openness with iMessage.
I guess there is one other possibility...Apple embraces RCS and, being keenly aware of its limitations and with Apple and Android cooperating, they collaborate to develop a new open standard that fully replaces both. That's probably the best outcome but also least likely to happen.
I don't think any programmer would be dumb enough to take that bait.
They would be held personally liable for any business decision that costs the stockholders (while, of course, not being given anything extra when a business decision nets stockholders a fortune).
It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a...
A big biometric security company in the UK, Facewatch, is in hot water after their facial recognition system caused a major snafu - the system wrongly identified a 19-year-old girl as a shoplifter.
This is really closer to it. I'm listening to a non-fiction audiobook right now (The Hidden Life of Trees) and it's crazy how much cooperation and communication happens between trees.
Some are good boys that need a home. We adopted a dog of unknown breed, they had his mom (who looked like a black mouth cur), who came in from a kill shelter pregnant.
I still don't know what breed he is, really don't care to find out. But he has a lot of bully features. Big puffy chest. Blocky head. Strong jaw. Smart. Highly emotional.
And he's a fucking marshmallow. An 80lb slobbery marshmallow.
I used to go to a laundromat that used something like a smartcard to keep your balance. You'd refill it at the kiosk and swipe it at the washer/dryer.
I had a reader/writer around somewhere from a few years prior, when I was messing around with old Echostar boxes.
Wish I could have found it. Those machines didn't look to be connected to anything. I didn't see any wireless networks in the area and the equipment didn't have any data lines.
I'm almost willing to bet the balance was stored as an value on the card and gets read/rewritten with every swipe, and essentially just security-through-obscurity. Meaning I could either back up and rewrite a $20 card forever, or rewrite the balance to having FF credits or whatever.
The Internet is a perfect example of why we can't have nice things, or rather, why anarchy could never work.
That's what the Internet used to be, and what it largely is. And it worked quite well, until people realized the Internet could be monetized beyond just being an extension of your brand.
Now it's quite obvious that regulation is necessary. People are idiots and they can't be trusted with a dopamine-injection-button run by greedy corporations. That gives those companies really unprecedented power.
Unless the saga continues, they didn't "hide" the competition, they paywalled their access.
There's nothing wrong, per se, with charging access to the API. Where they went wrong was setting an exorbitant price. That was clearly anti-competitive. They knew the pricing they set wouldn't be sustainable to any third party developers. Then he started shit talking the Apollo developer...
Early days of television was the wild west. They didn't know what to do so they basically took stage and radio concepts and adapted them to TV. That's why so much early TV was vaudeville-esque variety shows.
But they didn't even have a means to record if they wanted to. Everything was live. Not even a delay.
There was a podcast episode about this recently, and Howdy Doody...I think it was 99PI.
Wasn't that a bit in a movie? Maybe the one where the family got locked in a nuclear bunker and thought the apocalypse happened? The dad comes out and says something like "look son! A <Spanish word for the color "black">"?
Or maybe it was the other way. Yeah...I think it was the adult-child, who lived his whole life in the bunker, that said that.
Man...my BIL with his baby-mama/ex-fiance. I used to work with her (that's where they met, we all worked together at the time).
She's so nice and bubbly on the surface but holy shit there's a demon under that veneer and I've met it. That manipulative demon is how she became baby-mama after she became ex-fiance. But he puts up with it so he can keep seeing his kid and hopefully shield him from it ~half the time.
I know most people that were on reddit at the time are fully aware of this and won't be surprised but don't dismiss the findings out of hand. It's important that studies are being conducted and the fact that the finding match our lived experience is still noteworthy.
I really wonder if the nouveau rich tech startup boys look around and realize that their greed is directly responsible for the 2016 election and by extension, the state of US domestic politics today, and feel even a tiny bit of guilt over it.
See, I don't think that. I think they are power hungry, sure. But I don't think they ever realized the power that their product would grant them. It's totally unprecedented. They get right into our brain and tickle our dopamine receptors while they mess with everything else.
I don't think they expected or were prepared to yield that type of power, at all. I really feel like Zuck et al accidentally stumbled into being a supervillain. Like some sick Mr. Bean skit.
Everyone talks about how shitty the environment is and that we're going to get burned alive in our lifetime...but at the same time, fuck the environment if it means cheap goods.
Here's some fun math. Burning a gallon of gas emits 8,887g of CO2. Let's call it 8.9kg. 1000kgs in a tonne. That means 112 gallons emits a tonne of CO2.
With me so far?
It costs around $500 to remove a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere.
People act like $3/gal for gas is too much. I say, it's nowhere near high enough. Gas has to cost $4.46/gal just to cover cleaning up the CO2 emitted from it. That's just cleanup.
Maybe if we had to pay the cost for our lifestyle, we'd readdress what we actually need. Instead, we have government subsidized global destruction. All of the EV/renewable tax rebates are great (as long as you can use them)...but it's nothing compared to what oil gets.
Volvo EX30 compact EV SUV comes out this year with a base price of 35k. I consider that exceptionally reasonable (esp. for a Volvo). I'd buy one myself, but getting my house setup for EVs is a huge can of worms. My electric main is buried, I only have 100a service and my panel is full to the brim.
Isn't 100A considered inside for an all electric home?
Most homes nowadays are 200A. I could probably make it work, or get a smart panel to not have to worry about it...but upgrading service is practically impossible unless I can get someone else to pay for it. We'd have to remove a bunch of trees to trench to where the junction box is, and then trench across our driveway, too. Unless I lucked out and there oversized conduit there already, but I highly doubt it. As much as I've been told, the neighborhood was built with direct-bury service entrances.
That makes sense...if the charger is aware of its own load and the load of the whole house, it can slow down or stop charging to let the other stuff catch up.
I don't know where you are but 3-Phase is rather uncommon in US Residential. We use split-phase, where we have two 120v lines that use a common neutral, and we get 240v across the two 120v hots (with no neutral...but some 240V outlets do have a neutral leg for parts of the appliance needing 120V.
A while ago, the YouTuber Technology Connections did a segment on the Span smart panel...and I think there's a handful of others...that measures the load of each circuit and can triage circuits if there's too much demand. This is really where smart appliances should be heading. It's cool that my dryer can tell me how many KWh are consumed by a load, but I'd much rather it be able to cooperate with all my other loads and maybe turn off the heating element for a bit.
Shower thoughts are wasting water.
My city is in the middle of the worst drought in recorded history. My showers are typically under 2 minutes and I have to shower with a bucket to catch otherwise wasted water to use to flush the toilet. I also shut the water down when I am wet enough so I can scrub myself without having unneeded water flowing then start it...
Five Men Convicted of Operating Massive, Illegal Streaming Service That Allegedly Had More Content Than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Prime Video Combined ( variety.com )
Dell said return to the office or else—nearly half of workers chose “or else” ( arstechnica.com )
The dying gasps of NY Public Library Social Media ( lemmy.world )
I don't have such weakness ( lemmy.world )
Vermont Republican secretly poured water into colleague’s bag over months ( www.theguardian.com )
Mary Morrissey apologizes after being filmed dumping liquid into backpack of Democratic legislator Jim Carroll
Start ups when that VC funding kicks in
Cupholder.exe
Can you read the ancient glyphs ( lemmy.world )
Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone in iOS 18 | The new standard will replace SMS as the default communication protocol between Android and iOS devices ( www.theverge.com )
The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU....
Dial Tone
Sometime, probably close to 20 years ago, but perhaps more recently, you heard a dial tone for the last time and you didn’t even realize it would be.
What a time to be alive
Naming is hard ( sh.itjust.works )
A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back ( www.windowscentral.com )
It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a...
I am 1pm friend ( lemmy.world )
Was this considered 'piracy' back in the day? ( lemmy.zip )
Back when we would record onto VHS, is that considered piracy? Found a super bowl XXXI tape from my Uncle circa 1997. I'm curious lol....
UK Woman Mistaken As Shoplifter By Facewatch, Now She's Banned From All Stores With Facial Recognition Tech ( www.ibtimes.co.uk )
A big biometric security company in the UK, Facewatch, is in hot water after their facial recognition system caused a major snafu - the system wrongly identified a 19-year-old girl as a shoplifter.
Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search ( www.theverge.com )
iFixit is breaking up with Samsung. ‘Samsung’s approach to repairability does not align with our mission,’ says iFixit’s CEO. ( www.theverge.com )
iFixit and Samsung are ending their partnership on a direct-to-consumer phone repair program....
A jungle is technically just a crowd of plants
Woman killed by her two XL bully dogs at home in east London ( www.theguardian.com )
Two students find security bug that could let millions do laundry for free ( www.theverge.com )
Masahiro Sakurai refused to add Dolby Surround to a Kirby game because players had to sit through the logo ( www.videogameschronicle.com )
Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead" ( www.eff.org )
TIL one of the oldest TV shows was simply called "Sea Stories" on the BBC, featuring Royal Navy Commander A.B. Campbell describing the personalities and places he had seen. No known footage exists. ( en.wikipedia.org )
aired from 1936-1937. if anyone has a copy pls lemme know
Golden retriever are the Volvo of dogs
Louisiana becomes 1st state to require the Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms ( www.nola.com )
Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news ( english.elpais.com )
JK Rowling slammed for asking if she can be Black if she likes “Motown & fancy myself in cornrows” ( www.lgbtqnation.com )
nuanceposting ( lemmy.cafe )
Important clarification/FAQI am not calling to coddle or excuse the behavior of bigoted men in any way!...
Am I supposed to ask stupid questions here, or *not* ask stupid questions?
It’s kinda how you read the name, innit?
r/The_Donald helped radicalize users into far-right identities and discourse – Active users on r/The_Donald increasingly used white nationalist vocabularies in their comments within three months. ( journals.sagepub.com )
I know most people that were on reddit at the time are fully aware of this and won't be surprised but don't dismiss the findings out of hand. It's important that studies are being conducted and the fact that the finding match our lived experience is still noteworthy.
US to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs next week ( www.arenaev.com )
Polyamorule ( files.catbox.moe )
Gonna need to be a full on poly commune at this rate if prices keep going up.