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Comment Re:ISA (Score 1) 42

Yeah, I never had a problem with IRQ/DMA fuckery having a pretty loaded up (for the time) machine; Awe32 with Waveblaster daughterboard, ATI Rage 64 card, etc etc.

The main challenges back then were dealing with your low memory; figuring out the exact right order to load mscdex, memory manager, mouse driver and every thing else to squeeze out every bit of conventional memory, and using loadhigh to squeeze what you could into UMA, because that 1 kb difference could mean Wing Commander 2 didn't play the speech packs.

Comment Re: Shame they didn’t cover NOx, SOx, etc as (Score 1) 164

No, my point is explicitly that, gas car or BEV, if I'm driving from St. Catharines to North Bay, I'm stopping an on route just south of Barrie to eat. With a gas car, I'm fueling up, then eating. With a BEV, I'm plugging in, then eating.

The fact that *you* wouldn't do it the way *I* do it doesn't negate the fact that for my process, which includes a half-hour break *either way,* it's more efficient to charge while taking that break than it is to fuel up, then take that break.

Comment Re: Shame they didn’t cover NOx, SOx, etc as (Score 1) 164

Well, your comment is instantly dismissible for taking 'I need to hit the bathroom, stretch, and eat' as 'you piss for half an hour,' but an On Route is a rest stop that happens to have a gas station. You go into the On Route itself which has bathrooms, multiple restaurants, some convenience stores, lots of seating, a picnic area....

Submission + - The IRS's New Tax Software: Rave Reviews, But Low Turnout (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Biden administration marked the close of tax season Monday by announcing it had met a modest goal of getting at least 100,000 taxpayers to file through the Internal Revenue Service’s new tax software, Direct File — an alternative to commercial tax preparers. Although the government had billed Direct File as a small-scale pilot, it still represents one of the most significant experiments in tax filing in decades — a free platform letting Americans file online directly to the government. Monday’s announcement aside, though, Direct File’s success has proven highly subjective.

By and large, people who tried the Direct File software — which looks a lot like TurboTax or other commercial tax software, with its question-and-answer format — gave it rave reviews. “Against all odds, the government has created an actually good piece of technology,” a writer for the Atlantic marveled, describing himself as “giddy” as he used the website to chat live with a helpful IRS employee. The Post’s Tech Friend columnist Shira Ovide called it “visible proof that government websites don’t have to stink.” Online, people tweeted praise after filing their taxes, like the user who called it the “easiest tax experience of my life.”

While the users might be a happy group, however, there weren’t many of them compared to other tax filing options — and their positive reviews likely won’t budge the opposition that Direct File has faced from tax software companies and Republicans from the outset. These headwinds will likely continue if the IRS wants to renew it for another tax season. The program opened to the public midway through tax season, when many low-income filers had already claimed their refunds — and was restricted to taxpayers in 12 states, with only four types of income (wages, interest, Social Security and unemployment). But it gained popularity as tax season went on: The Treasury Department said more than half of the total users of Direct File completed their returns during the last week.

Comment Re: Shame they didn’t cover NOx, SOx, etc as (Score 1) 164

What 'time' is that, exactly?

My car can do a 500km trip with a single half-hour charging stop. I cannot. I need a break in there to piss, maybe shit, grab some chow, and get a stretch.

In a gas car, I'd be pulling in to an On Route, sitting in the gas line for a few minutes, filling up, parking, then going in to hit the can, grab some chow, and leave.

In my BEV, I pull into the charger, plug in, go in to hit the can, grab some chow, and leave.

For this very standard and usual use case, charging while hitting the can and eating is actually faster than gassing up, hitting the can, and eating.

Comment Re: Shame they didn’t cover NOx, SOx, etc as (Score 1) 164

For people that a) go on long trips two or three times a year, and b) don't want to worry about fast charging on those trips, renting a car for those trips is more cost effective than driving an ICE car year round so that you can satisfy what is, in reality, an edge case.

Like, I'm sure you love using a cube van when you have to move a bunch of stuff, but you're not going to make a cube van your daily driver just in case you need to move a bunch of stuff.

Comment Re: Shame they didn’t cover NOx, SOx, etc as (Score 1) 164

It's both. If China were to shut down their dirty power plants and factories today, you'd have better air pretty damn fast.

But if you're driving on the highway in rush hour traffic for an hour or two a day, surrounded by cars with engine exhaust, you're breathing in all that crap right then and there.

And as more cars move to electric, your local pollution drops, which is good.

We need both local and global pollution sources to drop,

Comment Re:But not practical everywhere (Score 1) 164

And a hundred years ago, you'd have said 'I live in rural America, and a gasoline pumping infrastructure is largely-nonexistent.'

Actually, you'd have said 'a paved road infrastructure is largely non-existent.'

You'd also have argued the merits of horses versus cars for most of the same arguments you make here.

Which is what many people at the time actually did.

Comment Re:Lifespan (Score 1) 110

How about the 'natural experiment' of people having 40 year old CDs and 27 year old DVDs that work just fine?

Given that the page referenced claims that DVD-R will last 50-100 years, but factory pressed DVDs will last 10-20, I think there's a typo for the factory pressed ones.

Comment Re:Lifespan (Score 1) 110

So far in my life, I've had exactly one optical disc go bad that wasn't explained by severe scuffing or physically breaking it, and that was Kentucky Fried Movie. And that was a manufacturing issue.

I have CDs from the 80s that still play fine, and DVDs from the late 90s.

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