I mean, yah, there’s no libs to trigger on right wing sites. And what’s the point of spouting right wing rhetoric if you’re not making someone visibly angry about it?
Also, twitter and Facebook let them all back in, so why go to the shitty knock offs?
I think the easiest solution to this is just not to have all the ”smart” features in the first place.
In regards to reducing emissions, I get that these smart features can increase efficiency, but, does that offset the emissions of manufacturing the additional hardware needed? most people won’t set up things like load shifting, or live in areas where variable priced power just isn’t a thing, so that efficiency is only really realized by a fraction of the units.
Things like heat pump heaters are incredibly efficient systems, even without the smart features. I think we would be better served by focusing on getting these made as efficiently, repairably, and cheaply as possible. And then getting them in to as many hands as possible. Packing them full of smart features will just diminish the longevity of the equipment, increase the cost per unit, and make them less accessible to the average person.
The problem is, this isn’t really up to consumers or even companies, as alluded to in blog post. Investors push for the inclusion of such features because they’re ether convinced it’s what must be done to compete, opens avenues for future subscription fees, or just because they’re invested in the company that makes the parts that enable the features.
It’s a structural issue in how investment and funding is done, and regulation will only do so much to counter the natural tendencies of the business world. We need different ways to get investment in to the production of these kinds of products.
Electric vehicles that can take off and land vertically, but then fly like a plane, are already being sold and used by hospitals and shipping companies. These vehicles have 5 batteries that give it a range of over 350 miles using current battery technology, though the batteries are intended to be swapped over the life of the...
Flying cars exist, you just need a pilot license to operate one, that is not something that will go away any time soon, and for good reason.
Everyone driving at 60MPH in 2D is dangerous enough as it is, 160MPH in 3D is way more dangerous. It’s not an issue of technology, it is an issue of the fundamental impracticality of the concept.
I see a lot of potential for electric aircraft for short haul flights between regional airports, or for distribution of cargo between hubs, but not in any sort of dispersed capacity. Hub to warehouse cargo? Sure! Delivery to doorsteps or air taxi? hell no.
Anything that isn’t flying along a designate air route between already establish large volume facilities is just fundamentally impractical due to the safety issues with aircraft. No amount of new tech will solve how fundamentally dangerous a 4 ton hunk of metal going at 160MPH going anywhere but a designated route away from populated areas is.
News outlets make a fraction of the money they did 3 decades ago, people having previously payed directly for a newspaper. Now they basically have to rely on web page ad revenue and subscriptions which most people won’t sign up for since they can get the news for free somewhere else.
So news outlets understaff to cut costs, leading to more mistakes and less due diligence. journalists get under paid, so independently wealthy people have an easier time taking the positions and pushing personal agendas. And news outlets need outside funding to stay afloat, making them beholden to the interests of those outside interests.
So yah, the quality is worse, objectivity is down, sensationalism is up to drive clicks, and they’re pushing agendas and world views way harder than they used to.
Does anyone know, or can anyone guess, the business case for predictive text? On phone apps, it is often incredibly difficult to turn off. Why is that, do you think? (The examples I have recent experience with are Facebook and Outlook mobile apps.)...
Might be that information about when you do and don’t use the output is helpful for training. Like, if you use the output, good sign the output is good.
See, it isn’t new and it isn’t AI, but it’s the same line of development as modern LLMs. They’ve just rebranded existing projects and lines of development as “AI technology” to be marketable.
some are talking about this like it’s going to be the straw that breaks the camels back and suddenly everyone will flock to a Linux distro, but, realistically, most market share is based on what companies use for work stations, and companies ain’t gonna change unless it starts to seriously impact productivity or it cost them more.
For personal/freelance-work computers, some people will just suck it up because of inertia. Of those who just can’t stand it… most will probably buy a mac next time they get a computer. There will probably be an increase in Linux usership, but it’s probably gonna be a 5-1% change in market share, depending on how fucked 11 ends up being as time goes on.
Probably the biggest increase in market share will be from schools adopting chrome books or the like.
Now I’m wondering if the point of the ads is not to make revenue, but to get people used to paying a subscription fee for their OS by way of a “removing ads” fee, maybe they start bundling other things into the subscription version like game pass or office to sweeten the deal, then slowly transition to a purely subscription model.
The website formally known as twitter runs face first in to the results of chasing another tech hype train built on sound technology being applied way too broadly, and operating in unsustainable and dubiously legal ways.
The most space efficient parking space is one outside the urban center at a bus stop or train station. Having parking inside urban areas just creates more traffic by making it possible for more personal cars to enter the city. The issue of parking and traffic in cities can only be solved by a paradigm shift away from trying to accommodate cars in dense urban environments.
the problem with flying cars is that most people can barely be trusted to operate a 60MPH vehicle in 2 dimensions, 100MPH vehicles in 3 dimensions is a recipe for a disaster. Pilots licenses are difficult to get for a very good reason.
We should be trying to get large personal vehicles out of cities and towns as much as practical, not introducing new types that are even more dangerous.
People who make the information fed in to the automatic plagiarism machine suing the automatic plagiarism machine company.
Wild to me how far this has gotten before some institutional actors realized that this “amazing new technology” is only financially viable if they don’t have to pay a fair price for the training data.
I mean, maybe not the mini disk specifically, but yah, a cartridge system for CDs would have been better.
Mini disks are super cool but they’re a lot more materially demanding than a CD, CDs being just aluminum and plastic, where as a minidisc has some truly wacky elements in it’s make up to get the magneto optical and curie point to work.
The mini disk was a truly weird system. Half way between a cassette and a CD. CD used a laser to to reflect off bumps(or dyes in some varieties) on the disk to get a signal, and a cassette would use a metal head to detect magnetization along the tape to get a signal.
The mini disk used a laser to read the magnetization around the disk. Essentially the magnetism would change the polarity of the light as it bounced off, and by measuring what the polarity of the reflected light is, the device got the signal.
Writing to the disk was also wild, as unlike the cassette, the magnetic field of the disk couldn’t just be changed by putting it next to a strong magnet like. Instead, it had to be heated up before the magnetism could be changed, this heating was done with the laser, and was very precise compared to a cassette’s method. This meaning way more information could be squeezed on to the disk than on a cassette.
'Traffic tailspin': Far-right websites seeing as much as 95% decline in visitors since 2020 ( www.alternet.org )
Cleantech has an enshittification problem ( pluralistic.net )
Electric Aviation is already better than you think - Volts with David Roberts ( www.volts.wtf )
Electric vehicles that can take off and land vertically, but then fly like a plane, are already being sold and used by hospitals and shipping companies. These vehicles have 5 batteries that give it a range of over 350 miles using current battery technology, though the batteries are intended to be swapped over the life of the...
More people turning away from news, report says ( www.bbc.com )
Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week ( arstechnica.com )
Why is predictive text so hard to disable?
Does anyone know, or can anyone guess, the business case for predictive text? On phone apps, it is often incredibly difficult to turn off. Why is that, do you think? (The examples I have recent experience with are Facebook and Outlook mobile apps.)...
Windows 11 is now an ad platform--this is why we're here ( www.ghacks.net )
The writing is on the wall--I suspect the next Windows OS will be a subscription service. Gather your ISOs while ye may.
Elon Musk’s X can’t invent its own copyright law, judge says ( arstechnica.com )
Vertical Parking Systems: An Historical Perspective and Urban Innovation ( www.infoterkiniviral.com )
The storied annals of city development chronicle the evolution of parking systems as a hallmark of human creativity
Here's what one of the first flying cars looked like and what the modern version has become ( www.infoterkiniviral.com )
When it comes to new transportation ideas, the thought of flying cars is one of the most interesting
Major U.S. newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft for copyright infringement ( www.axios.com )
It’s the End of the Web as We Know It ( www.theatlantic.com )