We're nowhere near Artificial Intelligence. Machine Learning is interesting, but extremely limited technology that's not yet ready to be trusted for anything important.

The main reason Internet access lags in the US is that municipalities sell "franchises" to cablecos and telcos - one of each pays the municipality in exchange for exclusive rights to "service" the customers in the area. This means that for roughly 2/3 or Americans, we have no meaningful competition in these areas, just a government-mandated duopoly. And of course these megacorporations behave poorly - if you don't like it, tough shit. Your government sold you out (and cheaply at that - check the numbers), and then regulates things with the attention span and intelligence of a brain-damaged squirrel. The AOC- and Bernie-bots then get all cranky about corporations being corporationy. Of course they are. They need competition to make them behave. Unfortunately, your "saviors" made this impossible

I love the concept, but as has been mentioned SMS is a pretty crappy communication medium. My thinking is that there should be three modes, from most-secure to least-secure.

1) LAN / WiFi / Bluetooth-range control. This can be extended via VPN for those geeky enough, although user-friendly private VPNs are becoming more of a thing.

2) P2P encryption-based comms via a cloud-based relay server. Standard PKI libraries should allow for reasonably-secure communication.

3) Extend control via Apple HomeKit. I wouldn't trust Google or Amazon any further than I can throw their corporate headquarters, but so far Apple has been pretty well-behaved and they are really, really good with crypto (look at the innards of iPhone filesystem design, for example). Yes, this implementation would defeat the intended purpose, but it would also make the product far more commercially viable. All we need is an *option* for better control over remote access. Rich people tend to use Apple products, and will search for products with keyword "HomeKit." Go ahead and take their money. The geek market along is probably not enough to sustain a product line, so you're going to have to compromise somewhere. This is probably the least noxious way to do so.

To begin with, this doesn't mean that Luxottica isn't doing bad things. It's just this bullshit line of reasoning makes me a bit crazy.

Cost to produce something and get it into the hands of consumers does not equal the Bill Of Materials (BOM) cost. There are a lot of other people involved in the supply chain that - shockingly enough - don't want to work for free. This includes:

1) The designers and engineers that create the product.
2) The manufacturers that pay everyone from the people actually making the product, their managers, administrative support, etc.
3) The distributors and their overhead (this reduces the exposure of retailers to carrying excess inventory)
4) The salespeople that help you select the frames, fit them, take measurements for where your eyes are relative to the frames (critical for making the lenses focus properly on your retinas), their management, administrative support, etc.
5) The capital involved in all of this - machines to make the eyewear and lenses, buildings people work in, retail space leased, their computers, furniture, etc., etc., etc.

In most cases, BOM is maybe 10%-15% of the price you pay because everything else costs money too. I don't see of this isn't fucking obvious, but apparently the world needs constant reminders because ZOMG CONSPIRACY!!!

I see a million of these articles, none of which even mention the obscene amount of unnecessary overhead in many of these systems. The politicians bullshit about there not being enough taxes or fees, but they (and their media lapdogs) ignore the egregious amount of waste involved. A starter....

https://ny.curbed.com/2017/12/...

Silicon Valley has this Janus-like political stance where they behave like caricatures of the most amoral greedy sociopathic businesspeople while ostentatiously parroting progressive dogma as if it somehow balances the whole thing out anywhere outside of their twisted little minds. The left happily and hypocritically ate it up while the negative aspects of their behavior were carefully hidden away, but now that the curtain has been pulled back the infighting has begun and now it's funny to watch.

This isn't a blanket condemnation of business or progressives (there are plenty of outstanding people and organizations in both areas), but representative politics has a horrible way of bending the path of humanity towards kakistocracy (government by the worst possible people).

Strictly speaking - not defending this practice, just explaining it - merchants should decline to take your card if you've done this, per their agreement with the card issuers. The signature is there as a promise to pay, not as a means of identification. Yes, this is stupid. A better practice is the banks that allow you to put your picture on the card.

Wish I had points to mod you up - you're exactly right. And it's not all US airlines. American Airlines is among the worst at these seat games and other nickel-and-dime bullshit. So guess what? I no longer fly with them, even though they have some routes that are very convenient for me. Southwest and Alaska are both fairly reasonable for seat quality and pricing, and so I use them more.

This trend of seeking offense where none is intended is incredibly toxic to humanity. In the English language many words have different meanings based on their context. It's plainly obvious that no allusion to human slavery is meant in the context of software or hardware module relationships.

Let's be blunt about what has happened: people have been abusively harmed by others lying to them and telling them that context is meaningless. They have been given invented forms of discomfort in order to make them slaves to unpleasant emotional responses that have no underlying basis in reality. That's the irony here. The people complaining about the terminology are behaving in a herd manner, controlled by powermongers who benefit from it. Power flows from irrational group cohesion, and the cheapest and easiest form irrational group cohesion is hatred of the other. There are many ways to define the "other" and you can see it everywhere in politics: race, nationality, language, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and (seriously, humanity actually went here) word choice. Both conservatives and progressives exploit these shamelessly. Stop playing their games.

If something terrible is happening but it's not trending on social media then nobody gives a shit. The overwhelming majority of people in the US only get outraged when their peer group tells them to. Whether such outrage is sensible, proportionate, or useful is never a consideration. Being seen to "care" is what's important.

Musk made a fraudulent tweet to manipulate his stock price. It's both illegal and unethical. Now imagine if, say, an oil company executive pulled this shit. The exact same people who are defending Musk would be screeching for the oil company exec's immediate imprisonment and being fined into starvation.

Welcome to 2018, where facts don't matter and right vs. wrong are a function of political correctness. Enjoy your stay.

... it *really* crashes.

What do you call a government where only the proles have to obey the "laws?" Totalitarian? Yeah, I think that's it. Can we please now stop pretending our governments are in any way, shape, or form represent the peoplpe?

... don't let it drive.

Just saying.

Yet they still try to cram Silverlight down our throats continuously on Windows Server updates (yes, I know that with enough hassle this can be turned off, but...). There are probably like six people using it for some oddball VDI application; for the rest of us it's a stupid nuisance.