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Comment Re:Those who would give up essential Liberty (Score 1) 113

"so I'm guessing they're crime statistics are roughly in line with ours. ..but I mean for like petty theft like this."

There's an issue across the UK where thugs and drug users will target shops selling 'high' value groceries e.g. large chocolate bars or strong alcoholic drinks.

The criminals will threaten to use violence against any member of staff who intervenes in the theft.

They'll then walk the goods round to a dodgy shop willing to buy them, and so have that as a source of income for buying drugs.

It's an absolute shitshow, and the UK police aren't able to cope with it. Part of the problem is that each crime is small, so that even if you catch someone in the act of stealing one thing from a shop, the culprit would be unlikely to receive a prison sentence from it. The police need to be able to acquire evidence of a pattern of theft, possibly across multiple shops, by a single person.

I'm not sure I would go as far as saying I support the plan, but it also doesn't seem out of scale with the problem being faced by shopkeepers.

Comment Re:Pension funds also play a role (Score 1) 231

flying is very safe, even flying on a recently build Boeing, statistically speaking. Maybe the safety standard is just higher than what the market is really demanding?

Well, Boeing is going to find out what the market thinks.

If a significant number of people will pay extra to avoid flying on Boeing, then that's going to make airline companies want to avoid buying Boeing.

And if airline companies also see the value of an aging Boeing fleet depreciate noticeable faster than an Airbus fleet, then it's going to make selling Boeing planes at a profit to be more difficult.

Comment Re: Was this not expected?! (Score 1) 66

on special capabilities only available on Safari which Apple doesn't want to make available to third-party browsers.

That sounds like a reasonable guess and probably partly true.

But I also wonder if it's to make sure that PWAs keep working exactly the same, as none of the current PWAs would have been tested on any other browser.

Comment Re:The Quarxs were before (and they were amazing) (Score 4, Informative) 60

max headroom also might want a word ...

Or not: "Max was advertised as "computer-generated", and some believed this, but he was actually actor Frewer wearing prosthetic makeup, contact lenses, and a plastic moulded suit, and sitting in front of a blue screen. Harsh lighting and other editing and recording effects heighten the illusion of a CGI character."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Comment Re:The snowball of capitalism (Score 1) 39

And enormous amounts of capital is commensurately powerful.

Even small amounts of capital is quite powerful.

There is an issue in my city that a lot of 'public engagement' done by the local government is done during the week, during officer hours. That means that anyone who works in a normal job needs to take a day off work to be able to turn up to those meetings to express their view.

For someone who has money to spare, that's not an onerous task. For everyone else, giving up a days earnings to 'possible' influence what the government does is a huge cost.

One result of this is that retirees are much more influential than they would be otherwise, as they can attend many more meetings than working age people can.

Comment Re:So dumb (Score 2) 50

> The custom silicon race has gone far beyond any possible profit margin scale at this point.

Well, that depends.

For companies making commodity components, or trying to sell devices made from commodity components, then yes, trying to make a profit from them is very hard. And in general, investing in R+D to make incremental improvements is not likely to see a good return on that money.

But if you are a vertically integrated company, and can design upcoming hardware around new hardware, and can sell those devices for a large profit, then the silicon chip race is awesome. Apple is pulling ahead in both high-performance laptops and mobile phones, and making huge profits from selling high-end products. Yes, there's lots of very cheap alternative devices out there, but there's a distinct lack of "almost as good as apple" products.

Without any serious competition for high-end devices, there is no pressure on Apple to reduce their prices....

And yes, that situation is not going to last forever, but an extra couple of 10's of billions of dollars profit per year, for however many years it lasts, is a nice bonus.

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