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Comment Re:So what (Score 0) 8

Some place between sometimes and often - I'm not here to argue that - researchers are the first to discover.

But it's also almost meaningless to just go, "I'm such an amazing realist, the worst case happens every time."

That's not really being realist. That's just you not knowing actual things, and having an emotion.

Comment Re:Only 30%? (Score 5, Insightful) 92

Unionizing takes several steps. First, you have to sign enough interest cards to even begin the process. 30% is about right - you show there's a significant interest in people joining the union. Then you have the certification push - that is, a general vote on if you want to join the union or not. That takes a simple majority - if it fails, then no union. It's basically 30% of people saying they're interested in joining a union.

As for a "monopoly on labor" you have to realize the power mismatch that's going on here. Basically gig workers are disposable - they have no power at all the employment relationship. It's take it or leave it. (This applies to most other workplaces as well). The company holds all the power and your option is to either starve or work at whatever the company says they'll pay you.

Unions basically try to combat that power inequity. Progressives aren't against monopolies, they're against unfairness. The key is fairness - everyone has a fair shot at getting a job. The fact you're about to be homeless shouldn't be a determining factor in what you'll accept for a job.

Trump's vision of how the 50s and 60s were - that was the era of the strong union where the C-suite was paid less than 20 times the janitor. Where even the janitor was paid enough to own a home.

Of course, that's why we're never going to return to those times unless the politicians start reversing course on greed and start giving workers power through unions. Union busting is basically why they make up only 10% of the workforce in the US today through right to work laws and other things.

Progressives aren't generally in favor of monopolies because they generally lead to unfairness. But in the unbalanced power dynamic of employer-employee relations where for most employees they have little to no power to dictate working conditions, a monopoly on labor suddenly becomes a powerful thing to equalize the power dynamic and strike a fairer deal.

Comment Re: Flock is building 1984 (Score 1) 186

YouÃ(TM)re not wrong, but the issue with flock and similar is not so much being witnessed in public as it is being algorithmically analyzed and suffering consequences as a result. Which is an erosion of the presumption of innocence. It also provides a an easy tool for stalkers/oppressors/paychopaths that is really difficult to defend against.

The big thing with Flock is the Flock "social network" of cameras. That is their heavily advertised feature and what makes Flock cameras different from all other ALPRs out there.

You see, when Flock started, they sold their cameras to private individuals to monitor vehicles passing through their property (HOAs, parking lots, etc). But each was basically isolated from each other - just because Home Depot had Flock cameras doesn't mean your HOA could get information on that.

But then Flock started selling to governments, and they realized they could offer a big network. If your city joined the Flock network, then your city LEOs could search across the entire Flock network. The more cities that joined, the more valuable this access was.

And that lead to the problems of today where the network is abused by people for purposes that were not law enforcement related, like stalking romantic interests, exes, etc. Because the network was nationwide, this mean if your ex moved to a new city with Flock, they could be tracked just the same. No justification beyond some arbitrary "case" needed.

Flock sells it as "track a stolen vehicle across the nation". Which is far less effective since a single license plate can hit many different vehicles because many states have similar license plate number schemes. A stolen motorcycle lead to a takedown of a family in an SUV because their license plate matched except state. Because of oddball New Jersey license plates, Jaguar (the car company) have to re-plate their entire fleet of vehicles because the Flock camera only reads the big numbers on the Jersey plates, which match another stolen vehicle. Studies of the effectiveness of the alerts reveal it to only be about 20% effective.

All the other ALPRs like Axon(Taser) and such, either record it local to the city, or limit the network to where they are, so the city only has access to the city's network of cameras. Sure you break the nationwide stolen vehicle thing, but honestly do you think car thieves are stupid enough to ride around with stolen plates for more than a day? It's one of the first things they change.

And Flock knows the problem - as cities cancel their Flock subscriptions, the network gets less valuable. It's why when cameras get taken down, they're often replaced by Flock. A city who cancelled their Flock contract reclaimed all the cameras, only to find new ones put up. Basically it's like the city loses access but Flock retains the right to keep spying. Either that or they're like weeds.

Comment Re:Flock is building 1984 (Score 4, Insightful) 186

That's a pretty shallow(thought admittedly depressingly popular) analysis of the situation.

Being in public does leave you with no particular defensible expectations of not being observed, and possibly even remembered for a time, by assorted passers by; and typically also permits more direct tailing of people for observation purposes(subject to some, often slightly vague, threshold at which having PIs or paparazzi hunting someone remains a problem even in public; as we saw here where the police took the notion seriously enough to show up but not to do anything in particular).

What it has historically never meant, for technical reasons, was pervasive coverage and longterm retention. Which is certainly increasingly feasible with only moderate levels of investment; but is absolutely a novel development for what 'public' and 'no expectation of privacy' meant.

It's like defending the installation of a massive network of sprinklers because "you have no expectation of staying dry when you go outside; haven't you heard of rain?" Sure, nobody the weather to be sunny all the time, any more than they expect everyone to avert their eyes in public; but they would correctly consider the installation of irrigation equipment on every lamppost to be an intrusion on their ability to stay dry despite the fact that the sky has never extended them a constitutionally protected right to no rain.

Comment Re:What about Playstation? (Score 3, Informative) 30

They should release it on Playstation as well, with some nice long Microsoft and Xbox bumpers during load.

Supposedly a big reason PlayStation cancelled it was because Kojima wanted a physical release as well. And with Sony ditching discs (and repurposing their Austrian pressing plant), well, that wasn't going to happen.

Sony's no-more-physical plan has also caused some games to be forced to release in December 2027 because of it.

If a physical release is going to be mandatory then it bodes well that the next Xbox (Helix) will have the option for a disc drive.

The whole budget thing was just a cover - the timing of all this happening lines up with the whole Sony scrapping physical media.

Comment Re:How can you tell if the account is a childs? (Score 1) 50

The problem isn't with what the law says it is trying to do, the problem is there is no way to tell who the kids are, so we have to force everyone to ID. There is no site on the internet that I need to use bad enough to provide an ID. None. Would rather not use the site than provide my ID. Full Stop.

Given how much data Alphabet, Meta, etc., have on people, they can figure our your age just from the data they already have on you.

I mean, when McDonald's has 512 pages of information on you that include your ordering habits and such, your age can be inferred from all that data. I'm pretty sure Meta and Alphabet and everyone else already has a pretty good idea what your age as well.

Comment Re:I hope they don't expect Rust to do magic (Score 1) 72

Rust does help somewhat, but, as Linus put it "Rust can prevents some errors, but it does not prevent logic bugs".

But in general, memory errors are some of the most common causes of a large variety of issues - using vulnerabilities. If you're not carefully tracking lifetimes of memory allocations (and in a kernel where the code is re-entrant, this gets tricky fast) it's way too easy to have issues like a use-after-free or a memory leak.

At best, it's a kernel crash. At worst, it's a privilege escalation bug.

If Rust at least helps keep memory issues at bay, that's in general a win.

GPUs just complicate the memory management even more since there will be times the GPU needs to own the memory and that can be complicated especially if blocks get moved around.

Comment Re:News Flash (Score 2) 166

1. Most campground owners don't want you drawing 32A for hours. Their wiring infrastructure was designed with assumption it would only see the intermittent spikes in usage typical of an RV.M

Never owned an RV, then?

The RV parks provide several - 15/20A outlets (110V) are basic trailers. 30A outlets (240V) are standard for RVs, and 50A for land yachts. The AC units alone typically draw 10A each constantly, plus all the other electrical loads. You get an RV using the 50A socket and you can count on it using 30A pretty consistently.

It's why many RVs have programmable load centers - if you need 50A but are at a place that can only provide 30A, you tell the load center you only have 30A and it'll coordinate the AC units and other high power loads so you're not actually going to trip the breaker.

RVs are not the most energy efficient things out there. The AC units are designed for compactness and weight, and the inch of insulation allowed doesn't provide much R value. In fact, one purpose of the generator units on an RV is if you're travelling through the desert (e.g., Death Valley, CA), the vehicle AC may not be able to maintain temperature. In this case you need to start the generator and run the AC units along with the vehicle AC.

Comment Re:Why post the charger as publicly available? (Score 1) 166

Probably the most common L1 charging globally is 230V 10A. 120V is pretty rare, only the USA and parts of Japan that I know of but I am sure there is others. Likewise that 100 mile figure is well above the average daily commute globally. L1 charging is fine for the vast majority of commuters.

L1 chargers operate at 110V.
L2 chargers operate at 220V

If you're in a place that uses North American power, you have L1 charging. If you're in the rest of the world, you have L2.

A 220V 10A outlet is still considered an L2 charger. In a place like Europe, this is quite sufficient for their needs as well (given in many places in Europe, your entire house only gets 30-60A total, maybe 100A if you're lucky. Most North American homes get at least 100A for the past half century or more, and the past few decades 200A is common).

Comment Re:Shocking not shocking (Score 1) 166

Oooh... 240 single phase... the EV charger issue is you can only pull so many watts or amps on your house wiring (if you have 480V, give us all your address).

If you're an average person, you can often get by with L1 charging.

The average BEV will get between 3-5 miles per hour on L1 alone. If you charge 10 hours overnight (come home, wash, eat, sleep, wake up, morning routine - that's at least 10 hours), it means you'll get around 30-50 miles of range. A commute is typically around 20 miles round trip, so adding a few miles for a couple of errands and 30 miles a day seems good, which is basically an overnight charge.

L2 chargers might be needed if you travel more extensively on a frequent basis - perhaps you're the 2 hour RTO commuter with a 100 mile round trip commute.Though if you have EV charging at the office, this can offset the need.

L1 gets you surprisingly far - you don't need a full L2 setup at 40A (9.6kW) with a 50A plug to use an EV. Many times you can get away with a much smaller install,

Treating a BEV like a gas car is like using your cellphone untill it's empty, then scrambling to find a charger where ever you may be at that point in time. You can charge an EV anywhere there's power, and opportunistic charging should be something you do. Putting your cellphone on the charger before you sleep is something you do to have a full battery in the morning.

Comment Re:Electronic transfers of gold can be reversed (Score 2) 41

Gold cannot be transferred electronically due to its physical nature

And it's extremely inconvenient to transfer it physically. It's so inconvenient that when the Dutch central bank decided to transfer its holdings from the US to UK, it did it electronically.

That is, it sold its gold holdings in the US and then bought them back in London. So no physical gold moved around. Presumably whoever bought the gold in the US wants it there, but physically moving it is now a Them problem.

For small amounts, gold is transferred electronically - private holdings often have gold located in many places. You can buy gold from them, and some amount of the holdings is marked for you. But the physical gold bar itself isn't actually allocated unless you ask for it.

Comment Re:TDS (Score 1) 272

It means Iran has severely limited the capacity of the Strait of Hormuz. It's a hostage situation. No one is winning, but the objective isn't to win in the sense of completely closing the Strait, the objective is to create a sufficiently long period of pain that eventually the US and its allies walk away. Christ almighty, force multiplication is hardly a new concept.

Comment Re: A giant step forward for mankind (Score 1) 272

There are plenty of places in North America without coverage because there's so little to cover. The Los Vegas metropolitan area has about three million people. So yes, that would be a place with cell phone coverage. By the same token, coverage in states like Montana, particularly in mountainous areas is spotty because, well, there's not a lot of people.

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