Surprising how often the former seems to work these days.

Um... aren't all ads suggestions?

Removing all the pesky leading white-space helps, but it never runs right after that. :-)

(Also, define "readable".)

"I'd argue that Cobol and Fortran have carved out a niche where they *are* the best in their class."

Seriously, and I say this as someone who knows both Cobol and Fortran, what niches are Cobol or Fortran best at other than "applications that are already written in Cobol or Fortran"?

Technically those fees are paid by the merchants, though a recent settlement with MasterCard and VISA may change things a bit.

Visa, MasterCard reach $38 billion swipe fee settlement, draw opposition

The battery will love this. /s

I was going to snark about how Trump will just pardon them for this "white collar" crime, but then saw their names. Guess they'll either have to buy a *bunch* of his crypto or become presidents of another country, like former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez - convicted of conspiring in smuggling +400 tons of cocaine into the U.S., sentenced to 45 years in prison 1 year ago, and just pardoned (at the recommendation of Roger Stone and others).

I park in the driveway because it's difficult to get into my garage. It's a 90 degree turn and there's fencing along the top and opposite sides of the driveway. Not impossible, but a PITA.

Also, insert joke/commentary about "parking on a driveway" and "driving on a parkway." :-)

> Meanwhile, H.264 has dedicated hardware decoders in world+dog devices, including ancient ones.

Ancient ones, yes, but most devices sold in the past five years have AV1 *decode* support.

Hardware with AV1 *encode* is still pretty rare but a fair number of up-market chips from the past few years have it.

What we mostly care about here is the $20 amtel or mediatek devices sold today, and those are fine.

Netflix can support the older devices with H.264 as long as it makes more sense to pay the patent license fees than to drop support for old devices.

It won't be long before there are no devices that the manufacturer still supports that can't decode AV1 in hardware. Not that most end-users even know their device went EOL and now a potential liability.

Given that Netflix has native apps on most of these systems it should be straightforward to serve the non-patented stream to any device that can play it well.

> They don't do backups at those outfits?

We really need Federal government backups to be centralized at the National Archives.

Both so one expert team can make sure it's done right, instead of hundreds of teams with questionable experience and track records attempting to do it right.

And /also/ so when one agency goes, "whoopise, I guess we deleted the evidence of our crimes!" there is recourse.

Right now, the prosecutor just goes, "shucks, I guess we don't have a case then. Better fire some leaf-node IT contractor."

They moved fast and broke things.

Which rich, tech-bro, donors running AI companies whispered this idea into his ear?

Steve Lehto has a good video about this.

In Michigan the Lemon Law applies to problems that 'reduce the value to the consumer'.

Some people are attempting to return their cars over these popup ads. IIRC it was GM that was much more aggressive but I might have that detail wrong.

This pattern keeps re-emerging.

Online payment systems want your bank login details.

Facebook was infamous for scraping your IMAP account for contact information.

etc.

The implications for security are so severe I wouldn't mind if this were illegal, but certainly it should be legal for banks or cell providers to terminate online accounts of people who share their credentials, no matter if - or especially if - they are with other large corporations. How many times has T-Mobile been hacked in the past two years?

If an account holder wanted to download a data export and upload that to another provider I don't really care so much. It's the near mandatory sharing of credentials that is just such a terrible habit to normalize.

And yes, greybeards, we know you've never heard of apartment rental agencies only accepting Venmo for rent.