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Comment Re:Yawn (Score 1) 140

All that is to say central planning has historically proven to be less than efficent and continues to do so.

It is still a huge leap to suggest they are on the brink of economic collapse. For example man us cities have pretty acute housing shortage / affordability crisis, would you claim the US economy is on the brink of collapse based on that? or even those cities and regions?

As to EVs so they over produced them.. Does it matter, if the government subsides pay for it, and they don't create system problems by slowing or halting future production, which they don't have to because the government can just subsidize retolling those factories to do something else to consume the inputs, it does not have to domino or snowball the way capital destruction often does in market economies. - Sure it will be drag on the economy over all, because the inefficiency and waste will have to be made up for with taxes etc, but then our government manages to light a lot of money on fire doing stupid projects that nobody needs or cares about too, as well as fighting foreign wars.

China built a bunch of cars nobody will drive and apartment blocks few will occupy. Its not good economics but the idea it is ruinous seems farcical; at least on the surface without real numbers to back it up and the CCP will never make real numbers availible. I say all this as someone who thinks the best thing that could happen to the world would be the collapse of the CCP but hope and wishful thinking does not make it so.

Comment Re: Isn't this the idea? (Score 1) 111

It needed to be "fixed" but not necessarily on anyone's time table besides the ffmepg volunteers, or alternatively given it is an issue with specific coded and not the core of the encoder or something, it is up to people that build and ship ffmpeg with they projects to disable that codec and rebuild and push an update.

If Google is paying or providing support infrastructure, hosting, etc they don't get a say in feature / fix priority. Just because 'security' gets added to the strings that constitute a bug report in a FOSS application should not suddenly mean that it becomes the most critical task, nor should it place some obligation on the authors to provide a fix at all.

The FOSS projects really need to learn to respond with "Look this is a hobby, and as a craftsman I take pride in my work, and i am trying to write clean, secure, correct code. However my priorities features and fixes that I care most about and other contributors sending high quality pulls care about, and those might not be yours, even if you think it they impact security. If you want determine how we spend our time directly, many of us are willing accept contract work."

FOSS projects need to reject this notion that just because a cabal of mostly commercial ISVs slap a CVE on something, they owe the world a patch even if it means losing sleep or skipping their camping trip to work on hobby they did not plan to make time for that month or three!

Comment Nudge (Score 1) 112

I've noticed this kind of thing a LOT lately. Evidently this book is out called Nudge that tells its readers to annoy the shit out of their customers until they 'install the app". Because evidently running in the background and draining your battery constantly harvesting your data and monitoring your location is more profitable than actually selling the service.

I booked air tickets on a website and it was deliberately irritating, pausing for a long time between screens, showing a QR code and saying, 'tired of waiting? our app is much faster!" Hell, even Youtube is unwatchable without a Google account and giving them your real name, address, phone number for 2FA, email, backup email to cross-check databases. And once you've done all that. the jack-in-the-box pops open and it's like, let's get your social, your tax return info for last year, last three places of employment, and then upload a photo of yourself holding your ID. And your selfie cam photo wasn't clear, our facial recognition can't read it. Nice try scammer, your application has been denied. We'll be keeping the info you already entered, though.

China is like this, an entirely real-name internet. You can't so much as order food delivery without all of this. Simply entering the country requires facial scan and fingerprints.

1984 was a warning, not a role model.

Comment Re:I wouldn't care if my taxes hadn't paid for it (Score -1) 89

Savages? What? Excuse me? Racist much? Hey, could you give us your opinion on people from India? Or tasmanian aboriginies? Or the Jews? Enlighten us! Once upon a time you'd be at -1 flamebait. But I guess it's true if you don't kick out the natzees your bar becomes a natzee bar, too. And while you're at it tell us about slt right hero and Googler James Damore, too. Go read his famous anti diversity screed again, you'd love it.

Comment Google already did ayear or two ago (Score -1) 54

Adsense payments dropped off a cliff. This is why so many websites are laying off staff. Google wants all traffic to stay on its site. Gemini AI (yes, the one that, when asked to draw Scottish people, drew only Blacks and then asked to draw a group of diverse people also drew only Blacks.

What do you need to click through to a website for? Those can contain dangerous information like warning people not to take the COVID-19 vaccine. That disease is still out there and still dangerous. Get your boosters, everyone!

Comment Ok, but WHY? (Score 2) 11

Is the idea here that high frequency trading and self-dealing can be used to pump-and-dump a given proposition?

So, I find some low-traffic topic suggesting that Pigs Will Fly by the end of 2025 which has "yes" shares trading at $0.01. I buy a bunch of "yes" shares and then buy/sell a small chunk of them back and forth with myself, driving the price up to $0.50. Now I sit back and sell off my "yes" shares for something between $0.50 and $0.40 to anyone who shows up looking to get in on the rapidly-rising "Pigs Will Fly" proposition until a whole bunch of people have bought up the $0.01 shares for 40 times their actual value.

Or is there some other scam at play here?

Comment Re:Not at all creepy (Score 1) 140

Contemporary home-school does not look like it did decades ago.

We home-school and from what I can tell from the homeschooling community is that like us most of the kids participate in one or more co-ops that where groups of parents collaborate to deliver a course that are more hands on like science and music. Local YMCAs, gyms etc, offer classes during the day like Home School PE.

So homeschoolers get quite a lot of repeated and consistent interactions with other children. How 'diverse' those others are probably varies a lot by the size and makeup of where you live.

Comment Re:Why does THE STATE have to pay for all this? (Score 1) 235

Why would it?

The FAA could make the fee schedule in a way that encourages whatever behaviors congress sets out as desirable in its charters if it were made more independent. Nothing would stop them from say charging higher fees to file a flit plan for a cargo plan vs one with commercial passengers. No reason they can't do that even on a per source or destination airport basis. Want to fly cargo into LAX - $$$$$ but if you land it in some less busy airport a couple hours away in the desert its only $. Where a passenger flight plan with an LAX terminus might only be $$.

They can similarly drive more or less revenue for certification of aircraft. Maybe domestically manufactured craft get cheap certs, and AirBus gets bent over the counter and thoroughly reamed. Tons of opportunities and lots of potential stability improvements if you make it a little bit more removed from the executive branch, without an need for your basic plane fare to change a much. It would just be one hand giveth the other taketh.

Comment Re:Why does THE STATE have to pay for all this? (Score 1) 235

If that is true, and I am not saying it isn't then everyone will pay for it anyway. It will show up in the cost of products etc.

The FAA and everyone who flies, registers an aircraft, etc already interact directly. It would not even be inefficient to just make the FAA operate more like the post office, a government sponsored by not directly funded agency. It will insulate it from things like Finding Spats and shutdowns.

Actually turning the skies into a toll road seems like a pretty smart move.

Comment Re:are we winning yet? (Score -1, Troll) 235

The financial bullshit started long before 2008; it just took that long for the system to break. Bill Clinton removed a lot of the rules governing investment banking being separate from the S&L world.

Of course Republic Congress enacted the repeal; but that was bipartisan 343-86...

Hey no need to let facts get in the way of good story right, much more fun to just blame the other guy because calendar happened to roll over at the right time, that low-information-voters (also know as Democrats) will be easily suckered.

Comment Re: are we winning yet? (Score 4, Informative) 235

No but the Senate makes its own rules, and one of those rules is a tradition of unlimited debate. Until there are no objectors or a super majority agree the discussion should be terminated, legislation cannot be voted on.

For decades now minority parities have leveraged this to block the bodies business when it is doing something they don't like.

It is possible for the majority to simple 'change the rules' but nobody really wants to do that because they know the shoe will be on the other foot in another election cycle or two and don't want be railroaded when its there turn.

So the 60 vote majority requirement persists, as removing it is basically a mutually assured destruction situation, that will hold until one party feels they are certain to have a sustained comfortable majority going forward - I expect. The moment that happens and if said party has anything hovering right around that 60 mark which could become 59 or whatever the rule will be eliminated so fast your head will spin - I also expect.

Comment Re:Obamacare is for the middle class (Score 0) 235

The typical increase when the enhanced subsidies go away is like $150 a month. You act like it is apocalyptic but it is anything but..Green New Deal driven inflation cost these people more. Hell Cash for Clunckers probably drove up their annual transportation costs more then these premium supports expiring do!

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