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Comment Re:Collective Risk (Score 1) 142

Yeah, it would probably take legislation forcing all of them to post and advertise prices including taxes. If everyone had to do it no retailer would be disadvantaged by being the first.

That said, I think it's a bad idea, unless retailers also have to itemize out the taxes on receipts so that consumers can see how much tax they're paying, which typically doesn't happen in Europe, as far as I've noticed (other than VAT, which is often itemized out on some purchases so that foreigners can get a VAT rebate). I think it's important that people see the taxes they pay so they can evaluate whether they think they're getting good value for their tax money. This is why I also oppose corporate taxes and any other sorts of taxes that are ultimately borne by individual taxpayers but are hidden by layers of obfuscation. Actually, there's another reason to oppose corporate taxes: Corporate taxes delegate to corporations the decision of how to allocate the cost of the taxes between customers, employees and shareholders. That allocation is an important public policy matter, and it should be decided by legislation, not by corporate bosses.

To be clear, I think there are a variety of public services that absolutely should be funded by taxpayers, and wholeheartedly support taxation for those purposes. But exactly what should be taxpayer-funded, at what level and with what efficiency are all important questions that voters should have input into, and that requires that they actually see what taxes they're paying.

Comment Re:That secure feeling. (Score 1) 23

If they're using the enclaves built into Intel and AMD, there may be side-channel issues to deal with. ARM is closer to what Apple is trying with their enclave.

ARM's TrustZone is definitely more secure than the alternatives on Intel/AMD, but TrustZone is also subject to side-channel attacks. To a first approximation, it's impossible to run two workloads on the same CPU and keep them perfectly isolated from one another.

However, I don't think any of these secure enclave concepts are relevant in this case. The way you'd build a private AI cloud is not to run it in enclaves (which are essentially just security-focused VMs) on CPUs that are running other tasks, the way you'd do it is to devote a bunch of CPUs solely to running the private AI workloads. Then your isolation problem becomes the traditional ones of physical access control to the secure machines and securing data flowing into and out of those machines over network connections.

Comment teething (Score 4, Insightful) 111

"There'll be some teething problems," O'Leary said of the move.

That's putting it mildly.

Smartphones can crash, run out of battery or any number of problems. On important trips I usually have a paper boarding pass with me as a backup. Only needed it once, but I'm just one person with fairly normal travel amounts. Multiplied over the number of people flying Ryan Air, statistically speaking this happens constantly.

Frankly speaking, I think it's a gimmick to milk the customers for more money. Someone at Ryan Air has certainly done the calculation, estimated how many people can't access their boarding pass at the gate for whatever reason, and how much additional money they can make by forcing all these people to pay the additional fee for having it printed.

Comment Re:Uncanny (Score 1) 56

And neither is good when your hands are full doing other tasks. I'd love to see you do the dishes with one hand while holding your iPad or iPhone with the other, all the while watching videos on a tiny screen rather than paying attention to what you are doing.

1) Ummm what? You know they make these things called ”stands" these days? Some of them are built into cases. 2) You do know the point of "podcasts" is to listen to them and not watch them, right?

These are the standards of iPad users.

The problem seems to be you do not understand how technology works. So let me explain how I use my iPad. Before washing the dishes, I put on a podcast and play it on the speakers. My hands are free to do dishes. If I am watching something, I flip the case so the iPad is standing at angle, and I position it where I can see it. I occasionally look at the screen while I do dishes. Hopefully you learned how people use technology.

Comment Re: One of the few advantages of a repressive reg (Score 1) 167

You used a whole lot of words to still be describing collective punishment, which is still a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Convention.

But do go on about why that's perfectly fine in the circumstance of a brutally oppressive authoritarian regime and how the "western media" got it all wrong.

Comment Does the author know what a tablet is? (Score 1) 56

Apple spent years positioning the iPad as a third category between phones and computers.

This is what a tablet is. Bigger than a phone but not quite a laptop or desktop. There are use cases for this. In my house they are basically portable streaming devices. Someone is watching their show on the living room TV, grab the iPad/tablet and watch your show in your room.

Comment Re: One of the few advantages of a repressive regi (Score 2) 167

Well, you see: the word "socialism" is bad, but the concept is just fine.

See: the Trump Administration seizing the means of production in the tech industry by having the government take a stake in Intel, Nvidia, AMD, etc. while also saying that the medical insurance companies are evil parasites all of a sudden while simultaneously shitting on anyone that dares to talk about a single-payer health care system.

Comment Re: Cloud computing is one the dumbest ideas ever. (Score 1) 82

The first time you add a website to your home screen, it installs the website's service worker. You have to use the Internet for that, just as you have to use the Internet to download an application from Apple's App Store.

So the service worker installs the entire Grab site to you phone? Grab handles food delivery, grocery delivery, package delivery, ride sharing, financial services, etc.. That seem extremely inefficient to load every single function to your phone just because you visited their website. Also I would imagine that working for Grab requires different functions than consumers. But according to you, every time someone visits Grab, it should install all these functions to your browser. I doubt it.

And I'm curious about what the blockers for even a partial PWA implementation have been during each of these 12 years.

Maybe you should research that before suggesting a solution that has been available for 12 years but not used. But let's step back. If you look at all the companies in the US that do food delivery like Grab: Doordash, Uber Eats, Instacart, Favor, Grubhub, Postmates, etc. They ALL use native apps. All of them. Maybe you should ask these companies why they don't use PWAs.

I don't see where I "assume[d] to know better than Grab".

You suggested a solution that Grab, Doordash, Uber Eats, Instacart, Favor, Grubhub, Postmates, etc. do not use. I pointed out maybe these companies know way more about their needs and solutions than you. Do you accept that?

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

Mostly true but not entirely. For the moment at least there are still applications such as airplanes where fossil fuels have no reasonable alternative. But yes, a large number of things that we currently power by burning long-dead dinosaurs could just as well work with other sources of energy.

And yeah, I think the whole world looks at the Middle East and is thinking: If you all so much want to kill each other, why don't we just step back and let you?

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