That ad would be a hell of a lot cooler if they didn't use a ton of CGI, just set up 10 cameras around that stage and used a real press to create a visceral video of the lot being crushed. The obvious CGI really dampens the impact, either it was a ton of small crushes composited, or potentially nothing was even crushed at all. In this case, there is a thing as "too polished".
It absolutely adds cost and complexity to the design of a modern day automobile. Effective AM antennas are not exactly small and you have to incorporate one into the design of your vehicle in a way that minimizes interference (much harder with EVs) without ruining the aesthetics of the vehicle. If that was as easy and cost free as you think there'd be no incentive to remove it in the first place, your tinfoil hattery notwithstanding.
I suspect it's more about selling satellite radio subscriptions. They push that hard with newer cars. And the cost argument really falls apart when you consider the cost of a car. If it was a budget item that's one thing, but vehicles cost many tens of thousands of dollars, a fifty buck radio is not going to move the needle on EV adoption.
solving a captcha too quickly can be a sign it is being done by a bot.
Yeah I've run into this issue. In the captchas where you have to identify crosswalks but they fade out each picture and fade in a new one once you click one. Not sure if it was triggered by clicking before it fully faded in, or submitting before the next one had fully faded in, but I knew I was done and it failed me. Super annoying. Now I sit here wasting three seconds waiting for their slow-ass-fade so I can click the image I already know needs to be clicked. Takes ten seconds for a captcha rather than two.
This megacity "the Line" isn't doomed because the architecture is a bad idea, it's doomed because if there isn't already a city there then it's probably a bad place to build a city. That being said, "the Line" is a uniquely bad architecture since by design most of the city will be in places that are a bad place to build a city.
Pretty much all of those middle east cities are in the center of inhospitable desert areas but when they add the desalination plants to provide drinkable water, and all the artificial high tech city infrastructure then it works. I wouldn't count them out just because there isn't anything in the area currently. Especially since for their people it's basically this desert place or another city in the same situation, it isn't as if they're choosing from an alpine lake town and a modern line city in the desert.
Companies - especially media companies - need to learn a lesson from places like iTunes that innovation is superior to these ever-failing attempts to turn off the content spigot. For instance I like to fanedit as a hobby - if I see a movie that I think has a good core but has a character or a bunch of unnecessary side plots that ruin the experience, I'll trim it up in a video editor and save a new copy for my own library.
It's not for everyone but I could see that sort of concept being a huge boon for the film/tv industry with the prevalence of streaming. All they need is extra disk space on the servers and they could provide a dropdown on Netflix that allowed you to choose your "cut" of the movie. So maybe some new triple-A movie sucked in the theatrical release, but instead of the "Director's cut" you heard that the "Unfair cut" was the best way to watch it, so you pick that edition on Netflix and watch a 90 minute cut of a 120 minute movie that's a vastly better experience.
Bam, innovation just solved Hollywood's problem, giving new life and interest to certain titles that may not have grabbed audiences in the original format, but some innovative editor found a way to make it better. They could even turn it into a little cottage industry like indie game development or youtube with a small rev-share if your edition of a particular film is the popular one to watch. This would drive popular personalities to make their own editions of media too and get their audiences to watch it.
I'm sure there are a hundred ideas like that which could be a boon to the industry, but instead they're still just focusing on trying to create a better wall for their garden, it's a tired and sad approach that didn't work the first dozen times they tried it, whereas Steve Jobs made them a bucket of money by charging *less* for songs and commoditizing them. That should be a lesson - focus on accessibility and customization, and profit.
A lot of it is about managing consumer expectations. You don't expect the cafe to give you a brand new mug with your drink, a used one that has been washed is fine. Might even have a chip in it, or the logo be a bit worn.
How about this. Create an industry standard for reusable bottles. Instead of buying a new plastic one every time, you bring your reusable one and refill it.
...or we could use glass or metal containers or our liquids and then pay people a small amount per can or bottle to bring them in for recycling... nah, that would never work...
Well, safe to say nothing of value is lost if we continue to develop the moon, if NASA is only in the "shown interest" stage. That's like saying they were planning to build something there a century from now if they can get the funding. No reason to inhibit progress for the perpetual "soon" that never comes.
I understand how certain more cerebral jobs could easily be knocked down to 30 hours a week with little to no loss in work output, but anything manual labor related like manufacturing or flight attendants, both mentioned as being in favor of this hours reduction, would require extra bodies to fill the hours. Airlines aren't going to run 20% less flights a week because the government decided people should work one day less.
The lack of labor will drive up wages, which isn't bad given the current state of pay in America, but it is a factor to consider, and in some cases companies may choose to keep the same hours and employees but pay overtime for the extra 8 hours, so pay would go up but work hours would be otherwise unchanged for the employees.
It's an interesting question, and definitely not as simple as just allowing everyone to only work four days a week from now on.
If the government could create a verification system (which in itself would be hard to do and is why it doesn't exist)
I don't know why you think it would be hard, all you need is a backend with a hash of the drivers license and government ID numbers, date of birth, and hash of the name. The site submits an oauth query of the name and ID hash, if both of those are in the same record the date of birth is checked, if that's over 18 an OK is returned, if under 18 a DENIED is returned, and otherwise a NOT FOUND is returned.
Probably want a rate limit per name hash and per ID hash to prevent abuse, and you're done. It's one of the simplest systems you could ever need to set up since the sites don't need any privileged info, they just need to know if this person should be allowed in or not, so there aren't even any privacy implications.
But his entire post is just him making up an explanation unless he knows exactly how they're performing tests. Even if what he says is correct, it still proves that their results are garbage and wrong. If it could determine human DNA this badly, then it's probably getting dog DNA just as wrong and just guessing breeds.
The other companies could not determine a breed. This company was able to determine 3 breeds, all incorrectly.
How do you know they determined the breeds incorrectly? Seems to me that this company is just going the cheapest route and analyzing only the breed portion of the DNA, since more sequencing costs more, and if someone is sending in human DNA they really don't care. In short, if some bits were flipped in her DNA and she was a dog, that's the breed mix she would be, based on the part of DNA that maps to dog breeds.
This complaint might apply in other circumstances, but in this case, tit for tat.
I see that excuse a lot when dealing with countries we simultaneously demonize. By the same logic we can do literally any heinous act as long as some other evil person has done it first - race to the lowest denominator.
This is your brain on postmodernism kids. Once you abandon objective standards and morality anything is fair game and easy to justify.
At some point we just need to disband the CIA. They're always doing Mean Girls bullshit trying to overthrow or ruin random governments. If we weren't so hyper focused on spending billions of dollars trying to stifle other countries we could probably fund a hell of a lot of domestic innovation and stay further ahead rather than impotently trying to sanction technologies to keep our closest rivals from catching up.
See, no politics or culture wars needed for some theories. Different, ain't it.
Different in an ignorant way, if you think Ukraine is "politics or culture wars", or think it isn't a major consideration given the intense messaging of the administration about it. It's a very real issue that they're struggling tenaciously not to let go of even though it's already a lost cause, so expect to see them spend every cent they can scrounge up without congressional authorization on it.
If we actually consider semiconductors a strategic resource for our weapons, as our cold-war with China over the fabs would seem to indicate we do, then Biden has repeatedly screwed the pooch when trying to encourage US-based production. The CHIPS bill was a nonstarter from the jump, given that they burdened it with a clause prohibiting excessive profits - basically if the semiconductor companies made over a certain amount they'd have to share with the government - a ludicrous proposition that would just make them seek private funding for any worthwhile project.
And the Pentagon pulling funding is amusing, I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking for change under the couch cushions to send to Ukraine, a couple billion extra is an extra month of artillery shells as Biden tries to stretch out his disastrous war as long as possible. It's all chump change that won't change the outcome at this point though, they could have done something domestically with the $300m that Biden just sent rather than just throwing it down the toilet. It might not be a lot for a war but it's still a ton of money.
Seems like they're just asking for a lawsuit based on the low buyout price, it isn't unusual for a price to be below the current market value, but usually that's due to the negotiation happening during a time when the price was lower, and being a premium on some previous price. In this situation 52 cents was the lowest the stock had ever been, so not only are they not paying a premium on any price that would have existed during negotiation, they're paying less.
And given that they didn't hold a public vote because the insiders held enough shares to steamroll the public investors, and the people buying the public shares to take the company private are insiders, it just seems like an open theft of investor money, offering less than market value because they have the votes to take money from the public investors if the SEC doesn't intervene. They probably assume most of the public investors are retail without enough capital in the stock to go to court over the issue. Very scummy imo, even though I don't hold any of their stock myself.
You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on. -- Hepler, Systems Design 182
