My Asus router has to run an older firmware version because the LTE USB modem I use for internet doesn't work with the latest firmwares. And yes I run one of the third-party firmwares which incidentally just announced they were no longer going to update this router anyway. No matter what, this Asus is a dead end even though it works just great.

My backup router is a Netgear which also happens to be on the hit list, yay, but it doesn't work with the LTE modem so it can't be a frontline device anyway.

The LTE modem is a ZTE with an internal router so it may also be vulnerable. The fun never ends.

All of this is sending me screaming out to Microcenter to find something that doesn't suck .... and whimpering back into the maw of Comcast so I can ditch the ZTE LTE modem. Dammit.

Many parts stores still have the paper catalog books in the back. Because the fancy computer systems can and do go down. I worked in the auto parts industry and still keep a toe in that water.

But there is nothing wrong with the pricing model you mention. Of course, we gave better prices to businesses and garages who brought us a lot of business. Sometimes they got huge discounts. Sometimes not. And not every jobber or shop got the best prices. It was our choice on who got what. Retail customers walking in off the street did get the highest prices most of the time. But not always. Retail customers get sale prices. Jobbers did not and sometimes paid more than a retail price on some items.

The bottom line is that the best prices usually went to the best customers. All you needed to do to get the best prices is buy a lot, ensure we knew you were also shopping our competitors, and pay your bills on time. Do that and you can buy brake pads for $12 and resell them to your customer for $70.

Something is worth what someone is willing to pay. That's all.

It sounds like Partneo has automated this and maximized it, versus leaving it up to people to estimate and update. OH WELL.

The rule remains the same.

I have worked in the auto parts industry and all of the brands mentioned are A) known for poor reliability and thus they NEED more parts more often than most cars, and B) they are all foreign to the US market which tends to make the prices higher as well, at least for the Land Rover and Jaguar models sold here.

Many Nissans are also sold as Renault. But Nissan parts in the US don't carry a premium.

Commentary: Many Jag and Land Rover vehicles have very low resale value in the US and end up reselling as used cars into poorer areas where they, along with Mercedes, Lexus, Infinity, BMW, Volvo, etc, are just obtainable to people with low to moderate income, and such cars are perceived as a status symbol and an exaggeration of the owner's weath. All is fine with this except many of these cars DO have expensive repairs and parts and some require specialized mechanics with the proper computers and tools. And nobody in these lower income areas is prepared for the sticker shock when they find out their BMW needs six new fuel injectors at $400 a pop or the water pump has failed and most ot the front of the car will need to come apart to work on it.

They figured they got a deal on a sporty import car. They did not expect the cost to own, whereas many of these cars were actually made and originally sold with the idea that the owner would simply have a mechanic to do these things and not even worry about the costs. Pockets so deep, you don't even care. You just tell your mechanic to fix it.

So when buyers like the ones in the poor areas complain about the parts costs, it's really their own fault for not taking that into consideration when they bought the stupid car. Anybody in the parts business could have also told them which brands are notorious for needing a lot of repairs and expensive parts.

Asimov's laws exist only as devices in his FICTIONAL books. They're not real.

I hate to break that to people. I know, it's hard to believe there are things called laws which nobody follows and which aren't real. But Asimov's laws are even more fake than speed limits or campaign ethics laws, in that they just don't exist.

As for implementing Asimov's ideas in real silicon, how the hell would you ever give AI the capability to look over a given situation and even make the judgement calls that the laws define? it would require some sort of God-like ability to see into the future and see all aspects of a given action to know if doing or NOT doing an action would cause harm to a human. It's impossible. Even flesh and blood humans can't do that. We just do something and occasionally the consequences bite us and kill somebody else. We dodge the deer in the road, yay, and head-on into oncoming traffic and kill everybody in a compact car.

Or a real local case lady driving too fast and not paying proper attention (compare to an AI driving system late to react) came upon a big transit bus stopped to pic up passengers. Too late to stop, the driver had three options: veer into oncoming traffic, hit the bus, or veer to the right up onto the sidewalk.

The proper action would be to hit the bus, as both the car and bus would absorb the crash and probably everybody walks away. The vehicles can be fixed. But this would trip the Asimov law about allowing harm to happen to the driver because they MIGHT get hurt. In this case, as an AI might have done, the driver instead chose to drive up on the sidewalk. The driver suffered no harm, Asimov's law was unbroken. However,. Standing on the sidewalk were all the people waiting to board that bus. The car mowed them down and obliterated the bus stop shelter next to them. It was a severe impact and several people died and others were badly injured.

So veering onto the sidewalk turned out to be a horrible choice. Had an AI made that choice, smug in the satisfaction it had protected its car driver, and then found a LOT of innocent people in the way, what do you expect it to do? it's going to be unable to avoid harming humans. There would be no option and no time. Not even for the human driver.

If we can't even manage to do this right as humans, we can't hope to create AIs smart enough to do better.

Just moved into a new apartment and we have Comcast preinstalled in the place. There's a couple of outlets. Because I am not stupid, I own my own cable modem and SHOULD be cable to connect up, agree to pay them, and off I go.

Haha not so fast. The cable isn't hot. They've disconnected it in the wiring closet downstairs, so a tech HAS to come out to do nothing more than plug in the line. All of about 30 seconds of work.

There is no reason for this. There is no analog signal on the line any more. You have to have Comcast cable box or a cable modem they recognize by MAC to get service. Or probably a cable card device. But it has to be a device they on record. You get nothing plugging in a regular TV.

So there is no functional reason to disconnect the lines like this Except. They make $60 off the installer visit that doesn't need to happen.

Why? Because they can. Because they know the only other 'option' is AT&T DSL which tops out at the BLAZING speed of 768kbits Yes. The fastest DSL I can get is 768. And AT&T has the audacity to offer DirecTV over IPTV on that POS line AND wants a lot of money for it too.

Comcast's speeds and rates are much better. But that installer has to show up. For nothing.

I am currently using an LTE hotspot in what is a very bad cell signal area. But what I can get this way is unlimited, faster than AT&T and cheaper. I'll cope.

This oversupply situation just kicks the problem into the future, when the markets finally collapse for different goods and none of it can sell. When the layoffs finally DO come, China can blame it all on foreign manipulation, rather than their own overproduction, and all those angry workers could be massaged into a force to go out and fight these horrible foreign countries and companies. Rioting, burning foreign companies, stores, factories, etc, and if a lot of those workers die in the process, it merely culls people who were a burden anyway.

Meanwhile, it will wreck all sorts of businesses that depend on China and motivate them to come begging with hat in hand for some sort of relationship that will work.

China is going to come out of it all smelling like a rose and with vastly more clout. And a lot of populace thinking they are a big patriotic force.

You cannot multiply and get a lower result. You cannot have "the atmosphere of Mars, which is 100 times thinner than Earth's"

100 times thinner is bullshit. Multiplying anything gives you a higher number, not lower. The way to say it might be "a hundredth as dense as Earth's" or some other creative wording. Not just saying 100 times thinner because it's easy to write.

Then it goes on to actually to do the math the right way here "The helicopter's two blades will spin at close to 3,000 revolutions a minute, which NASA says is about 10 times faster than a standard helicopter on Earth."

This is how it's been for real movie companies too, even when their primary intent is to do a TV movie or home video release. If they want to be considered for various awards, they have to put the goddamn thing in actual theaters enough to qualify.

This has been going on for decades.

Recently bought a TV at Walmart and had to return it because the screen was broken out of the box. They refunded that in case and took down zero notes of any kind about who I was. Paid with a card. They refunded me cash.

So I got the same model TV again and eventually returned that one because I didn't like it. Again, they just gave me back my money and took no info.

Walmart USED to ask for ID and all sorts of crap. No more.

Pacific Mall is always a stop for me when I'm north of the border. Lots of amazing stuff I want to buy but there is NO way US Customs would let me back home with half of it.

Ah thanks for that enlightenment. When I visited Vegas, my one and only time, I stayed off the strip and watched the monorail going back and forth behind Bally's and wondered WHY it was behind everything like that.

And then I wondered why it was there at all. Everything I wanted to see and do was walking distance from my hotel and that's what I did: walk. Only took the monorail one time going back to my hotel, because my feet were tired. It had no other use for me as a visitor.

Impossible for now. If we manage to survive long enough, we may eventually come up with a really fast method of space travel and chasing down this thing would be a good use for it, as it will probably be closer than the nearest stars for a very long time to come.

Even if it takes 100 years, it will still be "only" 0.02 light years away if it maintains its speed of 210,000kph. It will take around 400 years to reach the inner edge of the Oort cloud.

This thing is going to be in the Sol system for a long time. We can go see it. Well, probably not we. But descendants of ours could.

I used to listen to a police scanner a lot. I mean, a LOT lot. Had radios at home, in my car, and even a handheld to keep me tuned in even on the toilet. No I didn't have a girlfriend at the time, how did you possibly guess? Geez. Mindreaders.

Anyway, the thing with scanners is you know what the hell is happening, to an extent, as soon as the police do. It can drive spikes in blood pressure listening to a traffic stop turn into a shootout, etc etc. And I had issues with that and the fact the the number one rule, as such, about listening to scanner stuff is never ever never ever never go to the scenes of what you hear. Stay the hell out of it.

Eventually, the local PD moved to a trunked radio system and none of my radios could hear them. A girlfriend model was acquired and it didn't like listening to police radios either. So I quit. I have no clue what my local PD is doing and I don't care.

I do not need or want shit alerts showing up to tell me they ran out of dougnuts or some bullshit deemed a police emergency. If they have an emergency, fuck it, they have mutual aid agreements with ALL the adjacent police agencies. They can call up those folks and get trained, real cops to come help. Do that thing. Don't try to get amateurs into the act. The Pros are bad enough,

The amount spent is a rounding error in comparison to other Pentagon spending, while the questions is asks are valid and important and deserve an impartial and fair investigation where the results lead the conclusions rather than looking for answers that fit predetermined desires.

Why is this shit important?

One one hand, we may have unknown machines operating in our airspaces and potentially posing a threat to civilian travel as well as our military and various no-fly-zone targets of interest all over the ground. This makes the investigation a matter of utmost national security.

On the other hand, we have highly trained and vetted members of the military, operating our best technology and entrusted with things like securing, carrying and deploying nuclear weapons. These are the men and women we trust the most. And if they think they are seeing these phenomena, then investigating THAT is also a matter of utmost national security.

There is no way this is not important.
   

Since I haven't found a job in my former and varied IT field, I am currently working in a retail store. It's as bad as they say but it beats unemployment.

One of my duties is identifying where we need to restock. It's a major PIA and takes a long time. In theory, we know what we had at last inventory and we know what we have sold, and this should tell us what we need to restock. And our district warehouse tries to send us what we need to keep pace with sales.

BUT this doesn't help us with products picked up from one shelf and put down somewhere else, or tell us anything about pilfered items. We recently discovered one of our shelves HAS been nearly entirely stolen, because we haven't sold much from that area. We do check it but we have a whole store to check. So nobody noticed everything was vanishing until I blew the whistle a few days ago. All that did was make my boss mad at me for finding it. Like it was my fault.

We have a huge problem in my store of not having items inventory says we should have. It's so bad, customers calling to see if we have something generally ask us to go put hands on it.

So it would be amazing if a robot could come into our store even once a week and do as much checking as possible. We workers would rather have a list of stuff to go fetch and move back to proper locations than trying to do both the find part and replace part. We would also LOVE having an idea of what we need to restock. We don't like not having stuff to sell.