“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

George Orwell

To provide a slightly contrary opinion -- I am of the general belief that if you are unaware or unable to tell the difference in performance about something (and be honest with yourself), then don't make decisions based on that as a symbol of what you think you need. If you don't know what LTE or this "E" after 5G means, or even what 5G is, then don't throw your money after it. You are bound to be deceived or end up paying for something you don't need.

Just like Rolexes or other status symbols -- if I can see only the same performance as a good old quartz wristwatch, I'm much safer not opening myself up to be defrauded by fakes and knockoffs by chasing things I can't perceive the value of.

On the other hand, I do think that anyone who casually calls him/herself a software engineer should be questioned aggressively, as I find people who adopt that title have nowhere near the concern and care for the performance of their designs that a real engineer should...

I believe Facebook has altered its DNA just about as much as I believe Mark Zuckerberg altered his DNA in the last year.

Just to be clear, these are probably low cost copies of books printed in other countries where the copyright laws or marketed costs of these books are 1/10 to 1/20 of the price in the USA. And therefore not supposed to be imported into the USA. Or outright copies of USA textbooks, repackaged into paperback and sold by someone who doesn't have the license to do so.

"Counterfeit" makes it sound like they have 3rd rate imitation equations or incorrect facts in them, written by some kids in a sweatshop in Bangladesh.

It's hard to keep a monopoly on knowledge.

This kind of thing interests me in how and when a government needs to push their people to make a change for their own good? Take the example of mandating energy efficient appliances that cost more now but save people in the long term.

The laissez-faire in me says that people should be allowed to do what they find most economically rational and desired, within the rules of the market and forecasts of costs that they believe.

On the other hand, most / many people will not do something unless required to, and then later they get mad when energy costs (for example) suck 50% of their paycheck. cf. Paris riots right now.

So what is a government to do? Act in its (society's) long-term interest and piss some people off who think it's not in their short-term interest? Or act in government's short-term interest to help people now, but face long-term costs that they didn't act deeply enough to address?

I think in democratic govts, it ends up being the 2nd choice. That is one shortcoming of that way of governing I suppose...

I have always been looking for a good explanation of what makes a soap opera video look the way it does, versus say a evening news broadcast, versus a movie theater film.

Is it the frame rate? Is it the white balance? Is it the sensor / shutter angle?

Since sensors are so versatile and you can correct for colors, etc in postprocessing (I guess), why don't they make soap operas look more "professional" by adjusting certain settings (what are those?) afterwards?

I always was hoping for someone to explain this to me well.

I disagree and think this issue will be unsettled until the carriers make their tariffs clearer to consumers. And therefore maybe Apple will not lose anything by delaying.

Maybe I'm an outlier, but why would I want faster / more bandwidth if my carrier still caps me at x GB per month, and charges me overage? (ok, ok, for some uses, like voice, etc. of course it matters)

But until the carriers roll out a proportionally larger cap because now they can deliver more, what benefit does the consumer see and is willing to pay for? Why would I jump to buy a phone that simply burns through my data faster?

Why should Zuckerberg testify before a UK governmental body? Facebook is for the record, Facebook UK LTD, a corporate entity in the UK. He is not one of the officers of that entity. The nearest person of interest in that UK entity is Sheryl Sandberg (Director).

If the UK parliament is interested in having a company account for its UK activities they should call the corporate officers responsible for that company in the UK. So I would call this mostly a symbolic demand, which Zuckerberg is probably right to equally symbolically turn down.

Jail is too far off a concept for people in charge. I always felt that a simple solution would be to immediately charge companies the following penalty schedule for losing each customer record:

$2 for each name + password
$5 for phone number
$10 for social security number

And multiply for combinations of the above. You'll see companies start fixing their processes (or simply refusing to store unnecessary data, right quick.

Here are some of the articles that talk about this:

https://www.newyorker.com/cult...
https://get.chownow.com/blog/restaurant-delivery-killing-restaurants

I am no liberal sympathy-monger riding on the bandwagon of local / artisanal / anti-gentrification / etc that thinks that all technology is bad. But the issue of how local restaurants are surviving is one that has hit home more than others. Specifically, how a lot of small restaurants, "mom-and-pop" to shorthand it, are at the mercy of middlemen, essentially who are extracting the profit out of the industry.

Small restaurants have never been great at marketing, being super efficient in delivery, or getting rewarded with outsized profits for the service they provide, and now this layer of tech middlemen has come in to squeeze out the profit even more.

I read the story about how Doordash and their ilk (I forget the specific service mentioned in the story exactly, but similar ordering service) basically takes over a restaurant's phone number, publishes it and diverts and monitors their calls to make sure they're paying an agreed % cut of every order. Even if Doordash did essentially nothing value adding for that order. The customers don't know anything different -- they're just ordering from their favorite restaurant using a convenient method.

So basically the restaurant and its workers become a labor slave to Doordash because customer traffic has been channeled through Doordash, even though the restaurant has enough patrons to exist on its own. They pay a cut for people being able to press a button and have food appear, rather than walk down to the restaurant, or call the legit restaurant's phone number.

So, how is the small guy ever to overcome the power of tech companies in a situation like this? Or how can you ever turn a profit as a small company when tech talent is out there to squeeze you as soon as you do?

Pretty soon, I could imagine that we'll just become a country of order takers from some tech overlords, and be dominated by flavorless food dictated by corporate efficiency recipes. It's a little disturbing.

Why are we linking to Scribd the shitty service which scrapes content off of others and charges you membership to read or download it?

Could someone please provide a reasonable link where this ruling originated from, rather than enriching some assholes?

Maybe:

1) People who can't understand statistics shouldn't be put in charge of important decisions (un-democratic, I know), or

2) Statistics education needs to be made mandatory to qualify as high school educated in this country.

I think the problem is that police officers think they're in Iraq, but have absolutely no training to act like they actually are. It might actually help us if police officers had been in Iraq.

Military trained officers actually are less trigger happy and less panicky because they know how to deal with situations minute by minute, and aren't thinking that some idiot with a knife is going to be able to kill them: https://www.npr.org/2016/12/08...