Is it true though? I was watching a series of documentaries on the Ultima games, and it seemed their best work came out of the worst conditions. When Origin was small and the devs basically lived out of the office (and smelled like it), they were at their peak.

Or maybe it's that people have different views on and requirements for contentment.

Back in the 90s id was a small company of a handful of people who worked late. When Doom got released they all made out like bandits - the id parking lot was famous for the number of Ferraris that were parked in it.

Origin in the early days I could see being the same - they were pushing the frontier of computing in the early 90s and people in general were excited about computers. Heck, the company probably gave them pretty nice machines to work on, and if you were a computer geek in the 90s being handed a top end system to work on, it would be a form of contentment to just be there working it and pushing it hard.

But these were the pioneer days - like the early days of the dot-com era where similar things happened. The fact that people were getting stupid rich quick only served to provide the excitement going into it.

These days though, videogames are old hat, there's no quick money anymore and it's basically a mature industry. Back in the startup culture where you literally could get-rich-quick things were different.

You might compare it with the AI boom going on where money is being thrown around. I'm sure the people jumping between OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic getting those million dollar signing bonuses are working in pretty terrible conditions, but hey, if you're getting paid a million dollars a year with a million dollar signing bonus in a field that's booming, well, you don't really complain - you ride the gravy train.

Because when the bubble pops and the salary for AI developers plummets, if you managed your money right you can be set for life after the layoffs.

Contentment for many people is more than just money. Job satisfaction comes into play as well - and money can help with this, but also things like responsibility and other things. A small game development team might be fun to work with when you come up with an idea and everyone gets excited to add it to the game. Usually a sure sign of contentment is people that inadvertently work long hours because they're so excited at what they do they forget time exists. Contrast with someone who watches the clock and the interminable wait for 5pm.

It's one reason why WFH was popular and companies found their workers worked more - they were able to work, then deal with family business the work more to the point where they put in extra hours just because. You can take a smoke break at the office, but that doesn't compare to being able to spend quality time with your kid for 15 minutes during a break.

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.

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.

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.

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.

IÃ(TM)d rather see them bring back the big manuals. Microprose games came with great supplemental info.

Many GOG downloads include a PDF manual. These big box templates are just templates to produce your own box as well, so it's basically the same thing

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

The thing is, it's not hard to protect the grid. The Sun is monitored and if something like this happens, it can take anywhere from hours to days to hit. Which means we have plenty of time to start protecting things. They don't come out of the blue, we have plenty of warning.

And the best way we have to protect the grid is to turn it off. This can be a bit inconvenient, but if you have say, 24 hours notice that the power will be shut off for a few hours, it's a lot easier to prepare for. Transformers are easily grounded out and much of this can be done remotely.

Sure, we will burn out of a few transformers - because sometimes there's critical infrastructure that needs to stay up, but we can pick ones that were due for replacement anyways, and ensure we have ways to route around problems. Many power lines are redundant in that they can be fed from multiple substations - traditionally not for load balancing and such, but if a transformer fails, the load it powered usually can be picked up by another one somewhere else.

It will be disruptive, yes, but it's not hard to protect, we have advance warnings when this happens, and can shut down the grid, ground out power lines and transformers and other infrastructure so everything is at the same potential (remember, current needs a potential difference - a shorted transformer to ground offers none). Essential facilities can operate from generators or batteries (substations have massive battery banks so they'll be online for days). Power line communications are usually done over fiber optics as it's something that can be safely run along high voltage cables, and fiber optics are not vulnerable to stray currents.

That mandate drop was 4 years ago. Cox still supports TiVo, for now (and by "support" I mean, it works, with the cable card and tuning adapter, even though it is only 720P and all they ever want to do is try to get me to rent their brand of crappy DVR). Will this continue under Spectrum? Who knows. If not, it is at that point I will decide to try and deal with their crappy non-TiVo DVR, or just drop cable TV completely.

Well over 4 years actually. It was done at the start of the Trump 1.0 and took effect a couple of years later prior to the pandemic. This year seems to be the big one though as cable providers are dropping support and forcing everyone onto their proprietary platforms now.

I'm not really surprised it's happening - TiVos are dead - cable is being just as proprietary as IPTV services and there's no room for third party devices. The only alternatives are OTA units. Maintaining SkipMode service is likely a cost center now, as it breaks frequently for long periods of time, and only works for shows that are supported, so it's likely on the way out and they're trying to see if the few people actually still using their service care enough to maintain it. I believe it's mostly automated but there's a little bit of manual labor involved in keeping it working and such.

Basically streaming killed cable tot he point where people are now slaves to watching ads again - you may marvel at the "cloud DVR" but it can lock you out of ad skipping just like anything else.

The rest of the headline should read âoeFlock cameras replaced with Axion cameras.â
Just changing horses, not actually learning why mass surveillance is a *problem*.

Well, the big question are the Axon (taser) cameras networked and linked.

Part of the problem for Flock is that access to their network is basically unlimited - your county or whatever subscribes and now you have access to all cameras in the network. If your ex moves across the country, you can still track them through Flock as you always had.

Axon and other systems generally are more segregated - if you're in one city, you're limited to that city.

It's not a perfect solution, but it helps cut down the abuse a lot. And never let perfect be the enemy of good, because ALPRs are not going away. They're going to be ever present (mobile ALPRs are used everywhere to monitor parking lots, for example, and have been for way over a decade to make sure you paid your parking). And you have ALPRs on toll roads to charge you tolls. Again, something that's been around for decades.

The problem of Flock abuse is because ICE and others would often be friendly with a LEO to get access to the entire network. If one city prohibited ICE from using its ALPRs, they could go to another city and get access to the same data.

With Axon and others that's less of a possibility as long as all the data stays isolated and islanded. It's one reason why DOGE wanting to create one database for all was the scary bit - while it seemed inefficient that the IRS had one database and other departments had their own, as long as they were kept separate things were fine. But once it all gets linked, scary amounts of extra knowledge appears.

though it seemed to limit power considerably at low speeds (might have been a setting for that somewhere)

I believe under Chinese law they imposed restrictions so people who floor it expecting ICE lag and get surprised when their wheels spin out at the traffic light. It's actually a real EV issue because max torque happens at 0 speed so if you've driven an ICE vehicle, the engine takes a long time to start from 0. If you do that in an ICE, it can cause the tires to lose traction and then cause issues.

There were a few accidents the Chinese attributed to people unused to EVs were causing because of it. So at slow speeds it limits how much torque you can get out of the motor