Also, lowered air pollution - things like catalytic converters and such lowered the amount of NOx and acid rain producing chemicals from the air, which had the effect of cleaning up the air. But that also meant less sunlight was being reflected into space.

So yeah, the effect is relatively minor, and anyone who's lived in LA or Beijing probably can tell you smog days suck, but it's also an unexpected side effect of cleaning up the air so you can breathe.

Pretty sure they are just "eakon" in Japanese.

You can get Daikin ones in the UK. The terminology in English is a bit unclear but I'd can it an air conditioner.

Daikin and Fujitsu too.

To be fair to Obama, powering out of the global financial crisis was the right move, even if it increased the debt ratio. The UK did the opposite, it imposed austerity, and it destroyed a lot of lives. We may not recover from it.

Earbuds can have great sound quality. Try brands like Yuin or Sony, for example. The technology has come a long way.

You can get ones that are joined too. The keyword is "neckband". I wish Sony made its flagship ANC buds in a neckband version. The full size cans are great sounding, but not very good for portability.

Actually, I retract my earlier statement. I had read something about Tinker earlier today on another site, but crossreferencing, it appears to have been wrong.

The residential price of electricity is often based on the most expensive source, which is usually gas.

For example, in the UK we have a bidding system where suppliers bid to sell energy a day in advanced, based on predictions of demand. Their offers are taken up starting with the cheapest and working up the list to the most expensive, until the predicted demand is met. Renewables typically bid zero and are the first to be used, followed by gas. Nuclear has a sweet deal where we have to buy their overpriced energy no matter what.

Everyone gets the highest bid that was taken up, which is almost always gas. And thus the retail price of electricity is set by the price of gas.

The less gas we use, the cheaper electricity will become. Nuclear won't help because it gets guaranteed very high price, and new nuclear takes over 20 years to build. Renewables are the only way to bring down energy bills.

Don't make the mistake of comparing us with subsidized bills either. France has a low retail cost because much of the actual cost is paid from general taxation.

If you've ever had to deal with Lufthansa's customer service, you would not be surprised if sacking them and replacing them with AI agents noticeably improves customer service entirely by accident.

And I don't think much of AI agents.

With Luftwaffes famous anti-competitiveness, monopolistic designs, lack of customer service or even giving a shit, it's easy to mistake them for one.

This product is a 'me too' since there's already tools to help you fine tune various Big Player models.

That's not what this is. This is a tool for creating foundation models.

Would you prefer the word "proprietary"? Because AFAIK that's all he means by that.

They want to keep the brand, just get rid of the expensive hardware that doesn't pay for itself.

It's been the dream for a console generation to last 10 years, now it's a requirement as the hardware is sold at so much of a loss that you're not going to break even for years even when you're nickel and diming everyone for everything you can.

The problem with the loss leader strategy is that you have to make up that loss somewhere else, the bigger the loss the more you need to squeeze in other areas. Games get more expensive, subscriptions get more expensive, you require subscriptions for more and more features that used to be free. This leads to a situation where people get sick of being wrung out for money and just give up on the whole thing, which means you're not making back the loss you made by selling them the console to begin with.

Sony blinked by upping the price of their already old console to $700. Unlike Microsoft they cant subsidise their gaming division from more profitable divisions.

Computer hardware gets significantly faster every few years, so a 5 yr old console is going to start showing it's age... when you need it to sell for 10 years to make money you're going to have serious problems. I've long said that the "PC wannabe" consoles Sony and Microsoft make wouldn't last, they just cant compete with PCs and don't have the cheap, casual fun USP of a normal console. Also PC's have entered the console domain with the Steam Deck and unlike MS and Sony, the hardware is not being subsidised, so now the PC Wannabe consoles have to compete with an actual PC console.

I certainly hope not.

That's a countable noun so it should have been "fewer" brown people.

The UK is having more immigration than ever (the overwhelming majority is regular immigration, along the lines of 99%), but we're not getting the boom because we made it more difficult to sell stuff to closest ally and largest trading partner. The magical trade deals that Brexiteers promised never came... I wonder who could ever have predicted that.

Sadly for the UK, those who aren't learning from Donald Trump are planning to vote for Nigel Farage... A man who spends most of his time in other countries bad mouthing the UK.