>"They SUCK in my area...mediocre prices and every store is a horror show of damaged shitty merchandise thrown all over the place, flicking lights, and poorly maintained everything."

My nearest Walmart, which I frequent, has on-part or lower prices on most goods than anywhere else, and it really not dirty or overly disorganized. And no problems with lighting. My problems are:

1) They are *ALWAYS* out of SOMETHING I need. Often it is several items on my list. And often it is something basic like eggs, distilled water, or cat litter. It is infuriating, and I try to counter it by buying much more of what I need when available (although I can't do that with things like eggs, due to shelf life).

2) Most of the carts are dirty, broken, noisy, or can't go straight.

3) They never have enough checkout lanes open, so are always INCREDIBLY slow. The self-checkouts are wonderful (best anywhere), except they limit to only 15 items now, which is stupid, and often half of them are out of service.

4) No tap to pay with credit cards, further slowing down checkouts.

>"They won't go NEAR a major city because they try to avoid labor laws at all cost...so because I live in the city, the nearest WalMart is 30 min away, but I have 10 Targets in the same range with one just a few blocks down the road."

That is just your area. I live in a large city and Walmarts are plentiful. In fact, there is one 2 minutes from my house... and a Target 3 minutes. One other Walmart is 10 min away. And a third is 15 min away. The Targets are cleaner, have tap to pay, and are rarely out of anything. But they also have less selection and considerably higher prices.

>"After years of refusing to adopt tap-to-pay technology in its stores, retail giant Walmart announced today that it is finally accepting payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay. "

The definition of "tap to pay" is not Google Pay and Apple Pay (or Samsung Pay or whatever). It is touching the reader with ANY device, including a physical credit card, and have it contactlessly and quickly completing the transaction.

All the Walmarts around here don't allow you to "tap to pay" with anything; INCLUDING real physical credit cards. You have to insert the card and stand there, waiting, and waiting, and waiting. And in my case, 25% of the time, it fails and I have to try again. Every other merchant I can think of uses tap to pay with cards, except Walmart. And I don't believe that ability would cost more than inserting the same exact card into a reader.

https://www.savingadvice.com/a...

The consensus seems to be that Walmart just wants to make using credit cards as inconvenient as realistically possible, in the hopes customers will just use their app or whatever.

>"I don't know a single person who ever said that they want more or bigger touchscreens in their car."

Well, I am one of those, even though you don't know me. I am much happier with the much larger touch screen in my new vehicle compared to my previous, 16-year-old one. Maps are much easier to see, more information, better layout, less scrolling, and larger fonts and buttons.

>"Quite the opposite. I want physical controls and so do most people I've talked to."

So do I. And that was a requirement. Mine has all the same physical controls as my old car did. All important/major functions have physical controls as well. There are choices, pick wisely. Just because it has a larger/better screen doesn't mean it has to have fewer physical controls.

>"This is a car, not an iPad. Most of it I should be able to operate without taking my eyes off the road. And a touchscreen doesn't offer that."

A touchscreen doesn't negate that, either. Lack of physical controls does. They are not mutually exclusive. Oh, and my new vehicle also has a real dashboard with display in front of the driver, like a vehicle should have (unlike a Tesla). AND it ALSO has an HUD display with speed, speed limit, nav info, etc, as well. AND it has voice controls. So all options are on the table.

>"There is not going to be $2,000 worth of RAM in a new computer, get real"

This is my position. ALL new cars are going to have screens and some type of infotainment, even if they have physical buttons as well (like mine does). So there is a base amount of RAM that is needed for ANY system. The additional amount for more functions is negligible compared to the price of the vehicle. So they double the 4GB of RAM to 8GB? Big whoop- what does that add? Another $100 or $200 on a $30,000 or $50,000 vehicle?

>"A lot of the newer Chinese EV's have a nice balance with a touch screen for all the controls and then a set of physical buttons and controls for all the things you commonly touch while driving"

That is also true of many Japanese vehicles. Nissan is doing it right, for example (my 2025 Ariya is great). Telsa is one of the worst offenders (they don't even have a dashboard, just a center screen). VW was pretty bad. Korean is a mixed bag.

My advice is to REALLY examine what you are buying and make sure it has physical buttons for at least the primary functions:

Primary audio- volume, track, play/pause, mode
Primary HVAC- on/offf/temp/defog/recirc/vent positioning
All wiper/washer functions
All primary light functions
Mirrors
Primary seat controls
Shifter, drive modes, parking brake mode, brake hold
Locks and door/hatch/windows
Camera views/mode
Trip and primary info functions

We seem to be in a parallel to Rural Electrification now.

If someone lives five miles from the nearest connection, currently on 100A AC and POTS, is the limited budget better spent on running five miles of fiber or dropping off a satellite terminal?

They'll be going from either 3Mbps DSL to 300Mbps satellite or 800Mbps fiber.

If we had unlimited money I'd say fiber almost everywhere. But that isn't realistic.

The flip side is some of these rulings which ought to be applied to edge cases may well be applied to areas where FTTH is entirely reasonable and achievable.

Government almost always sucks at applying broad rules without subtlety at both the median and the far sigmas.

I live in an area where welfare broadband is offered for about $15/mo for about 60Mbps. Frankly I could live with that almost all the time. I do download some massive datasets every few months but my smoothed average is probably 2% of my max.

But those welfare programs exist because society has decided that some Internet is required for participation so there is some responsibility to provide.

The bigger risk is probably dual-use dangers. Ukraine has been using Starlink for terrorist attacks and while Musk has said he cut them off the Russian FM has warned that Russia will take out the Starlink constellation if it continues because apparently it is.

So we don't run fiber and then Starlink goes away, and then what?

There are also ice storms, hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, etc. that can take out landines for months so having a few satellite terminals in an area would be more antifragile.

FCC is seemingly treating this as simple when it's complex.

> We have a massive shortage why is nobody stepping up to make more supply?

Look up some stuff instead of just commie ranting.

Apple is testing supply from an up-and-coming DRAM supplier in China. Hynix is working on converting old fabs into a smaller process to create more fast RAM. TSMC is building a fab in Arizona. Samsung is opening a fab in Texas next year.

> the big three can anytime they want drastically increase production within 6 months to a year

Tell me you've never been to a fab without telling me you've never been to a fab.

If they could double their capacity Altman would buy *that* too. At least presume that the greedy capitalists are greedy.

> Capitalism needs a referee and US dumbasses fired the ref.

How, precisely, did they accomplish this coup in China?

Also, why not move to China, Cuba, or North Korea? They have varying degrees of central planning that should take care of your needs. Nobody wants you to be unhappy.

Reenlisting is tougher since you already got your GI Bill and VA Benefits and such.

On a recent talk show a military guy was saying that DoD was instrumental in nationalizing the student loans under Obama.

They knew infinite money for school would jack up the price of school for everybody but unaffordable college is what drives people to the GI Bill and their recruiting was dragging ass after the last time a President lied us into war in the Middle East over made-up claims of weapons of mass destruction (and then promised to leave Iraq and close Gitmo).

Say what you want about TikTok but the kids all know about the scam now. They didn't even bother trying to convince the country this time.

Have we had a story here about the record-short procurement process last month for the new Draft management software?

Yes, to expand on your point - just looking at demographics the Democrats tend to skew younger and the Republicans tend to skew older.

Emotional maturity tends to skew older as well, so it offers two possibilities:
1) The results would be the same based on age, not politicial affiliation.
2) People with less maturity tend to want echo chambers, those with emotional control can more easily engage with challenging opinions.

There are other studies that look at gender, mental health status, psych meds, etc based on party that could be tossed into the mix if somebody wants to do real analysis of variance.

It's hardly worth it IMO as the X feed is not designed to help people reach their highest state of enlightenment. Hooking people for ads is inherently limbic hijacking so any data derived from that is going to not reflect the participants' best minds.

The primary benefit of Verizon is their VHF 5G band, for a "call 911 device". Probably not important in cities.

In the meantime I got an unlocked Pixel 8 for $220 so I need to replace that 3x to make repairing interesting.

I am not good at screen replacement - busted two Pixels trying that.

'Linked' may be too strong

Associated, correlated, OK.

Like ice cream sales are 'linked' with crime rates.

Which is just a textbook example of "ignoring a common cause".

Social Science papers are more abour PR and H-index today than stats.

The benefit is for key distribution because you know whether that distribution has been intercepted or not.

The rest is more interesting than useful at this point. Clearly someone clever will find new uses in the future ... or at least it would be shocking if this is the end of the line (from a Philosophy of Science perspective).

>"Entangled quantum particles do not allow for faster than light communication"

My understanding is that you also cannot use entanglement for communication at all (for example, by separating entangled particles and relaying state information between them). You can't set or control what is being sent, there can be no information exchange.

https://www.researchgate.net/p...

Well they've done 95% of the work required to make the books available to everybody.

Perhaps they could be persuaded to do the last 5% after some competitive advantage latency?

If I had to choose between preserving the physical book and allowing access for a billion people, I would sacrifice the paper.

"It belongs in a museum" is really dated and felt to be wrong today.

Why isn't anybody else making these books available? That's the bigger question.

Granted, modern Copyright Law is ruinous to society.

The Google Books project has many of the older ones. There is no moral case against duplication for books that are impossible to purchase but still "protected" by Copyright.

I would like to know the average price of these books. If they are $7 that means something very different than $700.

Thank you, full (no mod) points awarded.