One of the issues with traffic enforcement cameras (speeding, red light) is that they can either:

a) Do the claimed job: reduce infractions (less speeding, less running red lights)

b) Fulfill predictions and pay for themselves. Note, I did not say be profitable, I said pay for themselves. Usually they end up costing the city more money then the cost to install/maintain. At best a company is paid to manage them and they make money but not the city.

They cannot do both. If they reduce the infractions, then the tickets drop and it is not profitable. If enough tickets are paid, then that means infractions remain constant.

For this reason a lot of the time, towns just end the contract.

As you increase the size of the bulk licenses' box, the amount of expensive cardboard increases as a square, but the number of licenses that fit inside the box increases as a cube. This results in a reduction of the amortized cardboard cost per license.

If a cost reduction isn't happening, then I would suggest people look into the shape of their bulk licenses. It may be that a same-sized box holds fewer licenses than it did ten years ago, due to the addition of "AI features" being tacked onto everything, resulting in irregular, difficult-to-efficiently-pack licenses.

That depends on what they were trained for. Was it to uphold the law or... not? If the latter then yeah, sure. If the former, then no. The LLMs are trained on a fat core dump. The training corpus was produced without a thought even for accuracy, let alone honesty or fair play.

Ideally we get rid of MS in a cleaner way.

(To continue the discussion... Naturally they are different from IBM and cloud services are different from IBM's consulting services, but still services, if in no way other than in the sense of "being serviced".)

Portables are trash. Mini-splits don't cover a window, the connection between the inside and outside units goes through a fairly small hole, and they are much more efficient. Window units exist for stupid reasons to begin with, the solution is mini-splits.

An AC posted above about waiting for this inevitable type of comment posted by idiots and here it is!

I paid $99 for a fully legit copy of Windows 7 Pro, system builder's edition. That's simply intended to be sold alongside parts for a new PC, which in fact is what I was doing. Therefore I'm confident that an OEM license for Windows 7 Home was less than that.

It's groovy when the representative of a corporations admits deliberate violation of the Magnusson-Moss act. It's always nice when they confess in writing.

It is rather easy to blame others for climate change. Yes, the poor consume products which do ecological damage. But they wouldn't be able to do that damage without rich people deciding it's what they will be allowed to buy.

Come on now, leave some billionaire cock for the rest of us to suck.

How did it become controversial to think Nazis and child rapists were bad? When this is the state of political discourse and debate in the USA, we deserve for our nation to fail, as it is in the process of doing.

It was a step in developing morality perhaps, now it's an impediment to developing it further

You have repeated the failed arguments of idiots that are killing tens of thousands of people. Everything you said has at least a kernel of truth, but smart people ignore those excuses and fix the problem.

Yes just giving them AC will not fix the problem they have to install it and use it and not go out in 90 F+ degree temperature. The cultural change is part of the fix.

YOU DEFINITELY NEED AC Fans, water, shade are not enough. The same house designs that keep the heat in during winter keep the air conditioning in during summer. Yes you may need to redesign flexible AC's for the older houses. Not impossible to do.

The fans etc. were enough 50 years ago. 30 years ago the deaths from heat starting rising and We already knew about Global Warming You are basically claiming to be caught by surprise from the most famous trend in the last 50 years.

It is NOT a few days each year - that was what it was 30 years ago. Now it is 2 months per year.

The belief that you 'do not need AC' is part of the same stupid culture that has people go out in the sun. You are not part of the solution, you are a moron that thinks "it is not that bad of a problem, we do not need to use the same techniques of people from the equator use." Given the death rate, YES YOU NEED TO USE THOSE TECHNIQUES.

The problem is not measured in days you need AC, it is measured in Tens of Thousands dead. You get more than 50,000 dead it does not matter if they all die on one day, 10 days, or 30 days. That many dead = a problem.

Part of the solution may very well be a constant barrage of radio, TV, and internet propaganda with a Heat Index telling idiots that today is the day you turn on your AC and stay inside. But you need those AC's to exist in order to do this. Trying to do it with fans will fail. The people will think "I am not comfortable, I will go to the beach." Make them comfortable, not just liveable.

Note, I live in the NYC area. I use an AC in my bedroom but a ceiling fan in my living room. The fan works great as long as the temperature is under 90, then I go read in my bedroom. Because I am not stupid enough to think "Well, the fan keeps me alive but uncomfortable, so I do not need the AC." I want to enjoy my life not suffer through it.

1) Until recently = past 30 years. That is, the number of heat deaths has doubled over the past 30 years. So NO this is not a recent problem, it existed 30 years ago. Yes it has gotten worse. So what, when you have ten of thousands of deaths in 1990s, then you fix the problem so it does not reach hundreds of thousands.
2) Yes, Europe is to the north. So what. Montreal has air conditioners. NYC has air conditioners and it is the same latitude as Madrid, Naples and Istanbul.
  In those cities new buildings have AC, but not old ones. Retrofit it you fools.

You have explained the inept reasons why Europeans have not fixed the problem, proving they are foolish. Those are not good reasons. ore Europeans died this year from the lack of AC than Americans were killed by guns. Americans have their head up the ass on guns, Europe refuses to:

1) Redesign AC's to fit the tiny windows in Europe.
2) Make them easy to install and remove.
3) Create a culture where AC is expected and people do NOT go out when the temperature is above 90 F /32 C Instead stay in air conditioned areas.

It does not take 5 years to do this. This should have been done 10 years ago. The fact that morons keep saying "We are colder and do not need it" when that has not been true for 30 years is not an excuse.
Saying "We only need it for a few days" does not matter when people are dying.
Saying "It is hotter today than ever before" is MORONIC given that we all know Climate Change is happening. Yes it is is hotter. Next year will be worse. FIX THE PROBLEM NOW.

One racoon created 'more than a thousand power outages'??

This needs to be turned into a movie. I am OK with it being a disney cartoon, but I need to see this, preferably live action.

There is a strange movement in Europe against Air Conditioners. It is the reason why tens of thousands of people die from heat stroke most years in Europe.

The very very strange part is that the same people that hate and refuse to promote air conditioners often use refrigerators and freezers in the same homes.

The differences between a refrigerator and and air conditioner are basically cosmetic and placement. They use the exact same mechanism, just the AC has the hot end sticking out of the building (usually through a window or by placing the entire thing outside with a pipe/tube sending the cold air into the building).

Europe, the USA has a lot of stupid insanity that you rightly call out. This is one of YOUR stupid insanity that we call out.