That sounds like a good thing for consumers. I currently use a rewards card but I damn well know that everything (whether I use that card or not) is more expensive as a result of rewards cards existing.

Rewards cards are a type of prisoner's game ripoff. If you defect (use a rewards card) you profit at the expense of everyone who doesn't also defect and use a card like that, but if everybody got the kickback then obviously the total amount of kickbacks will always be less than or equal to the total amount that merchants collect through increased prices. TANSTAAFL.

If this is the death blow to rewards cards, then everyone wins. Let's hope!

> Bruh. Apt already relies on Perl, which has no formal language specification. What nonsense is this?

You are right, which is why I don't think this is a huge deal.

Though perl5 compatibility back to c.2000 is pretty good.

Today's rust code most likely won't run in 2050 on modern compilers.

But perl4 code doesn't run well today either.

Yet nothing in trixie needs to run anything from buzz - so as long as everything works within a version or two it's hard to imagine anybody being negatively affected.

I have a UPS package shipped Overnight/Saturday Delivery on Friday and it now appears to be on a truck near Chicago. It was originally scheduled to transit from South Dakota to New England.

New delivery date is Tuesday. I hope the sender gets his money back!

(I didn't need it that quickly but the sender was making good on a delivery date guarantee, at a loss of his profits).

I have a floppy controller on order that doesn't know how to read disks; it just passes through magnetic field data to software which is supposed to be able to reconstruct the disk image.

Hopefully these tapes will be OK to read as long as somebody can build a magnetic read head of the correct type.

Maybe with ML there will be a reasonable chance of reconstructing faded regions. Old audio tape is still mostly fine, so fingers crossed.

BTW, what a great job these folks have!

> No need for all that. Either "Judgement is for the other side" or "Case dismissed." Clears the docket, and slows down these kinds of submissions until they're at least doublechecked.

Interesting. I think you've changed my mind about this.

Economic incentives are probably the way to go.

> Hopefully there are more relevant "science objectives" than this dead issue.

It's an exoteric story. Really they want funding to build rockets and this is a technology demonstrator.

But there is a theory that the asteroid belt is the former crust of Mars. More data on that would be interesting.

It's of course "widely discredited" but not with a scientific method or anything. Comparing isotope ratios would be fun someday.

Or if it's even still readable. Intel when retrieving the 486 tape-in for the Edison project had to bake the tapes in an oven to remove moisture, and then had ONE CHANCE at imaging the tape as it crumbled to dust going through the reader.

it's just as bad to build things that are exceptionally good and stimulating that greed as it is to take advantage of them.

So, when coin-money was invented it made bartering a whole lot easier, but also enabled greed at a whole new level. Are the people who invented coin money enemies of humanity?

And when fiat money was invented, it averted a global economic crash that would have impoverished the entire developed world. It also took greed-enablement to the next level. Are those people enemies of humanity too?

What about people who invented computers? That allowed for electronic banking and commerce, which blew the ceiling off the levels of greed that can now be achieved. Are the inventors of computers enemies of humanity too?

Come to think of it, the police spend a lot of time preventing poor people from robbing rich people. This enables the greed of rich people. Does that mean that the entire enterprise of law enforcement is nothing but enemies of humanity?

I could go on, but I think my point is clear. Either literally everyone who has ever existed or ever will exist is an enemy of humanity, or your blame-shifting is utterly unreasonable.

Or both.

If you REALLY want to you can set this in pavucontrol in about twenty seconds. Should last until the browser restarts.

Might even work with pipewire if the planets are aligned.

Also (outside of California) wrongful imprisonment is a legal justification for the use of deadly force.

But California is intentionally destroying their former high-trust society as a pretext for totalitarianism, so ... whatever ... get out like everyone else with a brain.

Not too long ago U-Haul was offering free one-way hauls TO California because the escape rate was so lopsided.

This likely violates fire code. I wouldn't be surprised if the practice abruptly ends.

The big tax preparation software companies lobbied strongly against the Direct File system, for obvious reasons.

They are just as obviously operating as a cartel, keeping their prices "in the same ballpark" without exactly matching. I remember a day when TaxAct was still a new entrant into the market, and it had excellent features and support at a price that significantly undercut TurboTax and H&R Block. Once it achieved popularity, its price suddenly jumped (a bit more than double) to match that of H&R block. Its features and support didn't improve at all; the price hiked and that was it.

TurboTax still charges more than the other two, creating an illusion of price competition. The truth is that TurboTax is significantly more popular, so it charges more, even though its features and service level are merely equivalent (at best).

So they all three ride on the same gravy train, and the last thing they want is a taxpayer-funded entity to provide a high quality option for free. They might have to actually EARN their income then! So they applied their considerable wealth to the political action of killing this offering, and succeeded.

Won't happen, at least not with my books.

There is a reason writing the last one took two years. Many of its passages have very carefully considered wordings. Intentional ambiguities. Alliterations. Words chosen because the other term for the same thing is too similar to another thing that occurs in the same paragraph. Names picked with intention, by the sound of them (harsher or softer, for example).

I've used AI extensively in many fields. Including translations. It's pretty good for normal texts like newspaper articles or Wikipedia or something. But for a book, where the emotional impact of things matter, where you can't just substitute one words for a synonym and get the same effect - no, I don't think so.

This is one area where even I with a general positive attitude to AI want a human translator with whom I can discuss these things and where I can get a feeling of "did she understand this part of the book and why it's described this way?".

This new feature has not changed my opinion of Windows 11.

I still won't use it.

The Matrix
The Colony
Aeon Flux
Highlander 2