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Comment Suits (Score 1) 95

Some ski areas have bathing suit days for charity. You do as many runs as you can in your bathing suit, each run gets a donation. There are a few hot tubs at the bottom of the hill to warm up. Of course, when falling at those speeds the snow won't sandpaper your skin off like a ski jump would :)

Comment Re:Addictive design really is a thing (Score 2) 36

Flashing lights, constant noise, lack of reference points to tell where you are. Hells, even the carpets are custom designs for the casino featuring abstract patterns in contrasting colors that confuse your sense of direction.

You're right in that Vegas casinos are designed to keep people in and playing, but that has nothing to do with addictive design. The loud "winning" noises play into that, but not the confusingly laid out floor plans.

At any rate, the trend is away from that style of casino floor. The Bellagio and Wynn casino floors are clean and neatly laid out. The Wynn even has windows. Ditto the Aria.

Comment Re:Purpose (Score 1) 183

Because while those services do exist (typically using the FAST approach for older content with lower licensing costs), they do not always cover what some people want to view (I am guessing things like ESPN).There is, and will continue to be, a disconnect between what consumers are willing to pay, and what the owners expect to receive in revenue, for the content being produced.

Ah, that makes sense. My disconnect is that, while flipping through pay TV channels which I have access to them, I don't find any more programs to watch than when flipping through the free IPTV channels. The sports-heads I know just spring for the streaming package for whatever local team they want to watch.

Comment Purpose (Score 1) 183

I don't quite understand the purpose. Most smart TVs come with a free IPTV bundle. My LG came with LG channels, that has a few hundred free streaming channels to watch. Tubi does the same thing on any smart gizmo, you can plug into a TV, the cheapest of which is around $40.

Comment Never Ending Inflation (Score 2, Interesting) 82

In 2017 NYC opened a brand new 400 square foot public bathroom in a public park in Brooklyn. It cost $2 million. That's roughly $5000 a square foot. You could walk across the street and purchase a larger home for a quarter of that price. Nobody can account for it's cost. The official response is - shrug, yeah stuff costs a lot.

It should be an ongoing, continuous, strictly enforced law that any project over a few hundred thousand needs an independent audit conducted. A 10% cost overrun is understandable. A 200%-400% cost overrun is criminal. It happens all the time, continuously, everywhere.

Comment Low effort (Score 4, Interesting) 54

I like watching court cam videos, and Youtube is *constantly* recommending clone channels that clearly download someone else's video, slaps on an AI generated thumbnail and summary, then re-uploads it. I think the entire thing is automatic. I keep reporting the channels and Youtube keeps recommending more.

So, saying they are "cracking down" is kind of funny, as they aren't even doing the bare minimum enforcing their existing policies.

Comment Reviews (Score 1) 51

Which reviews are those? All the reputable sites (Rtings, AVSciencce) report that, while expensive, the high-end Sony sets generally have the best picture under most conditions. LG is up there with them, then Samsung.

I bought a TCL Android TV set for the basement on Wirecutter's recommendation, and it's a piece of junk. Sometimes it takes half a minute to turn on. There's always a two or three second lag from pushing a button on the remote to something happening. Streaming applications can take minutes to load. I thought there was something wrong with my set, but others report the same thing, and I went to a showroom and tested out one of their higher end models, and saw the same thing.

My LG, that's four years older than the TCL, still runs fine. No hiccups or issues at all. It cost twice as much, but you get what you pay for.

Comment Re:Standards should not include patented things (Score 5, Informative) 32

Many people will disagree with me, but I don't think patented ideas/concepts/inventions should be included in any standards.

If it's a standard it should be available for anyone who wants to make a compatible widget or device or program to use.

I'm ambivalent one way or another, but the way these standards generally work is the companies get together and hash out a standard based on various patents they hold, then form a pool to license them out under FRAND rules (Fair, Reasonable, Non-Discriminatory.)

I almost guarantee Acer's patents are "submarined," meaning they waited for the standard to come out, didn't say anything about their patents, *then* asked for licensing. I don't think they were included in developing the original 5G spec and are trying to shoehorn their way in.

Comment Plasma (Score 1) 109

The very first flat-screen TVs were plasmas that came out in that time frame, and they were super-expensive. Miles Finch brags about having one in Elf, that came out in 2003.

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