It's good news that this "DRM developer" took 6 months to do what a DRM cracker did in less than 2 weeks. "DRM developer" is also one of the most openly villainous job titles I've ever run across.
Canada seems like a poster child for the failures of FPTP voting. For many decades they've had 2-3 leftist-to-centrist parties that attract voters who would all agree to put the tories well down the list of parties they'd like to have in charge (just above any far-right fringe parties that might appear, maybe also the most leftist party for some), and these parties get significant fractions of the vote, but the tories often win because they get more votes than any one of those 2-3 parties. In a ranked-choice system the tories wouldn't win just because the majority doesn't agree on their #1 choice for who they'd vastly prefer to have in power instead.
FPTP's tendency to force moderate outcomes is not an advantage even if it can seem appealing at times - it merely acts as a pressure vessel for extremism, holding it in with Kang vs. Kodos/Douche vs. Turd choices that disappoint a majority of voters across the spectrum until it explodes with the election of an anti-democratic candidate like Trump.
I agree that most people merely tolerate democracy rather than actually want it. FPTP does have a tendency to produce 2-party systems however:
You have to weigh the greening against crop losses due to less predictable/more extreme weather and reduced crop nutrition beyond 400ppm (the point where plants stop benefiting from increased CO2, which was passed many years ago). By 2030 the overall effect is expected to be signficant double-digit percentage drops in crop yields:
How about improved forms of democracy? Countries with primitive forms of democracy like first-past-the-post should upgrade to ranked-choice voting with proportional representation to break 2-party strangleholds and end strategic voting. The next step would be to move toward liquid democracy.
I loved the first movie. Watching it in the theater was a genuine experience. The second movie (Reloaded) was a little goofy due to the over-reliance on certain nascent technologies, but I could appreciate the story. I was pumped for the third movie (Revolutions) because I thought they would course-correct a bit and present a solid movie. My expectations were not met.
As a fan of the Matrix movies (and even video games!), I wanted some type of continuation of the mythos, but that fourth movie was such a boring, self-indulgent, and performative stinker that I don't want to even consider further expansion of the mythos unless the Wachowskis don't have an influence. Much like modern Start Wars stories, it's better off without George Lucas having creative influence and better with Dave Filoni being on point.
Because I'm such a fan of the mythos, I will probably watch whatever gets produced and I'll need to make my own judgement on the final product, but I'm probably not going to look forward to it. My expectations are very low.
Are you able to use a VISA gift card instead?
Do you complain about screwdrivers because they can cam out (slip)?
Do you complain about hammers because they allow the user to miss the nail?
You seem to agree that the tools are widely (almost universally) used and accomplish goals at a price people are willing to pay, but since the tools don't ascend to the perfection of your imagination, you brand them as "gimmicks". That's simply unreasonable.
Microsoft Office isn't a decent platform, none of its tools stand out for quality, and most are just gimmicks.
Well this is just ridiculous. It is an oft-repeated meme that "The world runs on Excel" because it's true. Ya, huge, well-planned things actually run in databases, but for everything else, it's Excel. Same with Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Those three programs are the basis for most major enterprises and anyone who attempts to say otherwise with a straight face is ignorant of the real world or has an axe to grind.
Look at Power BI, it's analytics for people who don't understand analytics, and stripped of all useful data inspection tools.
It's analytics for people who know how to use Excel and need to show the results of the analytics online. That's not bad.
Should we talk about Visio? The flow chart / diagram / drawing tool that isn't compatible with anything, and isn't a good at any of those tasks!
Vizio could/should be integrated as a feature pack in PowerPoint. It doesn't need to be standalone.
Should I start listing the tools that are terrible? (Apart from those listed above): Forms, Calendar, Engage, Sway, Steam, ToDo, Whiteboard, Bookings, I'll stop.
Forms is unnecessary. SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics have that area locked down.
Calendar as a part of Outlook is intensely functional.
Sway is an outright gimmick.
Stream is transitioning into Sharepoint.
ToDo should just be a feature pack for Outlook.
Bookings is great if you need people to make meetings on your calendar without direct interaction. This is particularly useful for customer-facing fronts.
Personally, I'm still sore about the loss of Microsoft Mappoint. It was the only way I could cheaply (nearly free) and easily geocode a ton of addresses and then run experiments on travel distances, travel times, and proximity. It was a HUGE tool in sustainability. ArcGIS is nowhere near as usable and as a couple years ago when I last looked for replacements, everything out there wants to charge you to geocode per address (or per hundred addresses).
So ya... just like EVERY major company out there attempting to innovate in the software sphere, they make some pieces of software that won't be relevant to you. Eventually unpopular pieces die off. (See: Google.)
When you feed it a giant cesspool of invalidated data (The internet) you should not expect a single response to be accurate. none of these AI's are fed a carefully curated data set.
But companies are expecting to replace all their programmers with AI.... What could possibly go wrong?
Here's what you need:
0. Assumption that you have a worthwhile chance at winning the grant
1. Grant writer/manager ($$)
2. Project managers ($$)
3. Planning lead time with your utility
4. A worthwhile location (within a mile of an alternative fuels corridor, preferably near low-income housing, preferably near arguably rural space, etc.)
5. Matching funds ($$)
6. A plan with costings and estimates not just for where the chargers may go, but all the other facilities that will have to support the safe and compliant ingress/egress of all the potential users of the EV charging location. That may mean putting in a new signalized intersection and crosswalks. ($$)
Once you have all that, you can apply and roll the dice. And if you win, then you have to bid out all the construction work, select the hardware, and begin the process of procuring all the hardware, and validate the digital security of the EV chargers/transactors. Ya, the chargers are relatively easy to get, but the transformers? We're looking at a 2-year lead time unless you want to pay scalper prices.
It's a LOT of f*cking work and money to put in chargers where there isn't already an abundance/overbuild of power.
AND THEN THERE'S MANAGEMENT!
These need to be treated like gas stations. They need to be price-controlled, validated for fuel delivery, maintained, etc. You're going to need to handle customer service, complaints, and accusations of overcharging/gouging because people think that should ONLY pay for the cost of the electricity-- or worse, a SUBSIDIZED cost of electricity. Because they're single-handedly saving the environment by driving an electric luxury vehicle.
All this while public agencies throughout the US are going through silent recessions-- being asked to cut 3-10% of budgets because wages keep going up (because rents keep going up).
Anyone who complains about the lack of haste in rolling out EV infrastructure has no clue about rolling out or managing EV infrastructure.
Statistical significance is an arbitrary threshold anyway, especially when the textbook 5% is used as if there's some fundamental law of the universe that gives 5% a special relationship to causality, when it was actually just a default number plugged in that should set off alarm bells if it hasn't been changed.
The current level of productivity globally and nationally is sufficient for literally everything. We're not short on gadgets, vehicles, food, housing, tools, clothes-- ANYTHING. We have enough and we can make more. The problem that needs solutions are the distribution of food, the longevity/sustainability of our semi-durable goods, and the exploitation of basic necessities like the corporate ownership of housing to force people into renting.
When people say "we need more productivity", all they're saying is that they want to be more competitive with other businesses. They want to grow and dominate to make more income for their investors because that's the came the 1% play. That's nothing worth cheering about. I don't want to partake in a "boom" whose goal is to squeeze even more life out of me for the benefit of investors.
I'm waiting on that "quality of life" boom. When's the last time we had one of those? The 1950s?
First we have to compare two types of flaring, just releasing the gas unburned where the methane goes directly into the atmosphere and acts as a powerful greenhouse gas (rarely done these days...intentionally, anyway), and flaring and burning it where the methane is ignited into an open flame that mostly converts it to CO2, a longer-lasting but much less powerful greenhouse gas. Previously the energy wasn't used at all, just wasted, but that was an energy waste issue rather than an emissions issue.
Burning the gas in a turbine converts it to CO2 more efficiently than an open flame, so the environmental improvement over the first scenario is obvious, compared to the second the improvement isn't as huge but still significant. I'd guess the 63% CO2-equivalent emissions is the difference between the total effective GHG output of running the gas through a turbine vs. burning it in an open flame, since some of the methane can still escape that way.
It doesn't take more energy than the fossil fuel produced to capture all of its CO2 output and more, so it's not a violation of thermodynamics any more than a catalytic converter on a car is.
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
