iMessage works in China and is end to end encrypted. China has not stopped that.
Could that be an indication that the handsets themselves are compromised in the China market? End-to-end encryption doesn't work if one of the ends is compromised. (which could just be the simple "$5 wrench" compromise - this is China, after all)
Meanwhile, you can walk into the airport today and buy a plane ticket leaving today for the same route for $200. While some people may pay more for environmental reasons, I don't think there are many that will pay 3 times as much consistently.
For the construction costs to equal the same plane ticket, the entire route would have to be built for $2.6 billion, or 11% of the cost per mile as the California high speed rail project. While the land is cheaper and it is a much flatter route, there's no way this is a realistic goal. And again, no operational expenses included in the ticket price.
The $25 ticket some people are fantasizing about would require construction costs to be just $325,000,000, or 1.5% the costs of the California project
Also, plane/train tickets are *per person*, plus luggage (sometimes), transit to station, parking, etc. Driving to Houston is about $50 in gas one way for an entire family and all of their luggage.
As someone who lives in the Dallas area:
Houston is a short enough drive that it's almost always cheaper/faster/more convenient to make the drive and have my own car with me when I get there. Given the size and traffic of both cities, by the time I get from my house to the train station, I could be 1/4 of the way there already. You might eat up some of the air traffic between the two cities, but I doubt drivers would switch.
Now, if you built an auto-train (not even high speed) in the median of I-45, I would 100% use it every single time. For something like that, you could use a custom wide guage, which would let you park across the train cars instead of along it, meaning cars could get on and off at stations like people on a commuter train. You could do this for most interstate highways and they'd probably always be packed to capacity.
Yep. Idea: if you use a tech with a backdoor and there isn't child porn on the device, you pay the owner of the device £10,000. Lets see how critical this bill is then. Regardless, law enforcement has already found workarounds where they don't need it.
That would just incentivize them to plant things when they don't find anything in order to avoid paying.
Nile crocodiles evolved in the same place hominids did, and eventually humans, so I'm assuming they've been eating our young for all that time.
A young human is a pretty easy meal compared to almost every other animal, so maybe we're a favoured prey.
It's buried pretty deep in the article but:
Meanwhile, by focusing on universal signs of distress like staticky disharmony, the crocs consistently responded to distress across species lines.
So most baby animals have a similar crying sound and crocs are attracted to all of them.
So the croc very well could have evolved to figure out that a crying infant of any species is an easy snack. And as the researchers said it might even be that the crocs were concerned that the cry was that of a crocodile infant, which might be an easy snack regardless.
Also, you have to consider the fact that humans only survived with such vulnerable babies because you don't want to fuck with the adults that are almost always nearby. Coming after human babies preferentially doesn't seem like it would be evolutionarily advantageous - you're more likely to end up being pureed and fed to said babies.
South America and Africa are largely untapped.
I suspect the reason for that is that many places there they have people like the Wagner group, cartels, and other warlords that show up at your door with guns and armored vehicles and say, "that's a nice factory you've got there..."
Until they can improve stability, it's not going to be cheaper to manufacture stuff there.
Uber is just gouging. They've grown too big and have to gouge to support the increadible amounts of overhead.
They're also shooting themselves in the foot. Not so much for people using them sporadically, but I think they're losing tons of fares when people are somewhere on vacation for a few days because they take such a huge chunk of the fare.
What my wife and I do is request rides through the uber or lyft app until we get a driver we like. Then we just let them know, "hey, we're at X hotel for the next few days, is it OK to call/text you directly if you're normally in the area." We offer them 60-70% of the fare the uber app shows for the ride plus any tolls, which means we save a lot, and they get more than they would from uber. This is even better for stuff like getting back to the airport, when you have a specific time well in advance, and they often tack on extra surcharges for airport rides.
Other than putting an actual pox on both their houses (which would violate a whole different set of ethics), I'm honestly not sure what you can do in a situation like this. Really, the best thing is to never get INTO these sorts of situations by having a bidding system that DIDN'T go with the cheapest bid but the BEST bid. Going with cheap is always a false economy.
The solution is to never allow for-profit corporations to own physical infrastructure that is a natural monopoly (last-mile wiring, electrical transmission, roads, etc.).
It should be owned by the city like the water/sewer, or co-ops in rural areas. Then any ISP can run service to the interconnection.
The solution is simple: a bill must have a single purpose. Fund X. Buy Y. Subsidize Z. That makes it possible to vote against a bill.
This, at least partly. IMO, we could go a very long way toward fixing US politics with only three amendments to the constitution:
1 - Single-purpose bills, as you mentioned, so politicians can be held accountable for each decision individually
2 - Automatic 10-year sunset on every single piece of federal legislation (existing laws would have their text fed to a hashing algorithm that assigns a sunset between 12 and 120 months in the future). This along with #1 will force lawmakers to be too busy passing/renewing legislation that's actually essential at the federal level to meddle in stuff they shouldn't be - the states can handle the rest. Bonus if it also requires states and municipalities to do the same thing.
3 - Change the voting system to something that avoids the two-party trap (just not sure exactly what)
Don't buy shit tied to the cloud.
Appreciated, but there's no evidence anywhere that this bike was "tied to the cloud". I bet you didn't know about this either until now, and since the website specifically says it uses bluetooth unlock how would you as the consumer make an informed decision?
If it requires agreeing to any kind of ToS or EULA to use a bike, don't agree, and return it immediately.
Faults per 100 vehicles is a fundamentally flawed criteria, it penalizes features.
The more features a vehicle has the more potential and real faults. Conversely a lack of features results in a high score.
I think this is appropriate, if you're measuring reliability. More complicated stuff has more stuff to break, and you'll end up spending more money over time to keep everything working.
There might be some value in splitting it into "major" (can't drive the car or can't drive it safely) vs. "minor" (electric window won't roll down, heated seat doesn't work).
A fundamental problem is emerging where something that should be "minor" (touch screen broken) keeps you from driving the car - you need that one screen for shifting gears, climate control, windshield wipers, etc.
I wish they would start by making them honor their contracts. I signed a two year contract and the price has crept up each month. At the end of two years it's gone up over $17 per month. When I call and complain, they tell me it's "fees", and there is nothing they can do.
I bet if you actually *read* the contract, they are following it. I'm almost positive it says in there somewhere that the base rate is locked in for 2 years, but that it doesn't apply to taxes and fees.
IMO, this should be fairly easy to determine on an individual basis, and the process works for almost any non-essential "thing" available to your kids: Take it away.
If you take it away, and they're fine (move on to a different hobby, spend time with friends, whatever), it's probably not harming them. If they have a meltdown, or don't know what to do with themselves, it's probably bad for them.
Came here to say something similar: IMO, 1440p *is* the sweet spot right now. You get some extra pixels for desktop app real estate, monitors aren't crazy expensive, you can actually go up to 10ft on displayport cables at that resolution without going out of spec, and mid-range graphics cards have no trouble with it. (In fact, my old GTX 970 was fine for years with 1440p).
Going up to 4k locks you into expensive graphics cards for not too much benefit, and 1080p has always felt cramped, especially in regards to vertical space for desktop apps (1920x1200 was good, but good luck finding those any more).
This seems like a golden opportunity for western countries to strike a major blow to China without really having to do anything.
All they'd have to do is let these countries know that, "hey, if you default on loans to China specifically, and/or seize the domestic assets securing the loans, we'll look the other way and not ding your credit rating."
China would be screwed.
What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
