When my CC expired late last year, Amazon Prime Video cancelled my service -- even though I updated the details online after they sent me notification that the CC had expired. Netflix however, didn't do anything and I didn't update the details on their service - but they keep billing me.

So why does Netflix have auto-update but Amazon doesn't?

Crazy world!

The more-space argument doesn't wash. They reclaimed a whole lot of space going from HDD to SSD to NVMe to eMMC. I have a 14" thin laptop whose working innards entirely fit on what amounts to a Pi board (it's about 4" by 6", and not cramped). Even counting it as a minimal unit, that's a lot of space left to work with.

Tho I can see the no-one-upgrades argument; that's almost all PCs everywhere. We DIY types who promptly max out RAM are an anomaly, a tiny sliver of the market.

Of course, they use that to say, "Base unit, $AttractivePrice. Unit with enough RAM to function as you need, add 3x the aftermarket price for that RAM."

Slashdot remains the only website I've ever read where divorced dads who lost custody and are MAD about it consistently get up-voted.

I'm actually leaving Amazon because they keep delivering our groceries to the wrong apartment and despite zillions of phone calls they still won't do anything to fix it.

Oh and they're trying to make their phone # go away so you can talk to their unhelpful AI instead.

It is weird to me that the sort of nerd that'd hang out here is somehow not the sort of nerd to understand the concept of 'best tool for the job'. "That's too big or heavy" is an understandable concept for anyone remotely left-brained.

That's right, folks: Mobile devices are only smaller and slimmer for cosmetic reasons.

Where has the FAA been in all this?

Their attitude to Boeing seems to have been "Hey, we've got far too much coffee and donuts to get through here, you guys just certify your own planes"

The FAA has also spent an inordinate amount of time, money and resource regulating the recreational drone community when it always has been and remains the safest branch of aviation *ever*. To this date, not one person, anywhere on the planet has ever died as the result of the recreational use of multirotor drones -- yet, as Boeings fall apart over our heads and disaster looms as a result of ATC failures, the FAA's response is to have #DroneSafetyDay on April 27th.

What do I mean about ATC failures?

Watch this YouTube video from Juan Browne who is a seasoned airline pilot flying for a US airline. at 20:05 in the video he clearly states:

"at this rate of mistake making on behalf of ATC here in the domestic side of the US flying a terrible tragic accident is inevitable"

When a highly respected and experienced airline pilot issues a warning like that and backs it up with irrefutable evidence, the FAA should be dropping everything and fixing this problem.

Yet what are the FAA doing? #DroneSafetyDay -- trying to improve the safest form of aviation we've ever had whilst seemingly ignoring the real problems that have already claimed hundreds of lives and threaten to claim hundreds more.

Someone needs to be fired over this.

I agree with you. I'd add that 'bundling' in general is a bad idea. For example- A company like Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable) would offer you both cable AND internet, and offer a discount for using them both. The problem with that? If your TV service suffers (like ... too many ads, for example) then you're compelled to try to weather it because you won't give up your internet and suddenly that discount is a BFD. My stress level went down a LOT when I split up my TV and internet services, cell services as well.

That said, that's not really the big issue here. Google is sucking up all your data. That is their goal as a corporation. Everything of theirs that you log into is more surface area for a potentially-damaging attack. Did I mention they trust zillions of third parties?

Bit late for that now, innit?

January 2022: https://abcnews.go.com/US/bitc...
February 2022: https://www.theguardian.com/te...
December 2023: https://www.indystar.com/story...

It's been my general impression that physical latency (as measured in ns) is roughly constant across all DDR generations. But it's interesting to note that the best latencies are seen around DDR3. The latest generations seem to want throughput at the expense of latency.

"Why people think "performace" means "throughput" is something I'll never understand. Throughput is _always_ secondary to latency, and really only becomes interesting when it becomes a latency number (ie "I need higher throughput in order to process these jobs in 4 hours instead of 8" - notice how the real issue was again about _latency_). " -- Linus Torvalds

Actually... that's not strictly true. Back in the 90's I worked at a company that worked with a vendor who could essentially motion-track a video and use those motion vectors to do a few things like upscale a video because knowing the motion of the camera means knowing what to do with the sub-pixel information you're getting. (fundamentally this is similar to how a scanner or copier works.) You can also use it to remove motion blur, especially if 3d points from the video can be intuited.

Am I saying the TV tropes are right? Nah. I'm not even sure I've seen one of those where what I'm suggesting would have been a plausible explanation. I'm just saying there ARE enhancement tools out there.

I didn't, but now I'm thinking of something like "Pack 'em, see ya!" which should go fine with these new-fangled portable computers.

Umm... why? Toxic users make advertisers leave. You're really going to dictate that social media sites MUST host people who incite violence because they're suddenly not allowed to have a bouncer at the door? Would you propose the gov't reimburse the lost revenue?

Funny thing, Montana is a big grain-producing state, and we have possibly the most unpredictable, and definitely the most absurdly-variable climate in North America.

https://montanakids.com/facts_...

Oh, and we also grow potatoes, but only in very limited areas (potatoes need more predictable conditions), whereas grain is grown here pretty much anywhere the ground is near enough to level.

Because the regulations haven't kept up with the markets. It used to be that there was idle capacity, sometimes even excess baseload (electricity generated from sources like nuclear, that are very slow to ramp up or ramp down), at night, so users were encouraged to shift their loads to the off hours.
Now, in the spring and fall (when the sun is out but it's not too hot), solar panels can go full tilt in the daytime, while demand is still low.
The fact that electricity is now cheap, or even free, during spring and fall days, and still very dear later on in the evenings, is a price signal that tells people to invest in electricity storage that can soak up cheap electricity during the solar peaks in the day, and release it after the sun is down when it's really needed.