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Comment Escalation or error? (Score 2) 187

YouTube currently has a problem with playing livestreams as long as I'm logged in, ad-blocker enabled or not. They get interrupted and it errors out in about a minute. If I pass the link off to another browser that's not logged in, it plays OK. Even recordings of live streams do it. All other videos are fine.

Comment Re:Did someone actually say this? (Score 1) 317

And they've always been subject to interference from everything from ignition wires to florescent light ballasts. It's not just shielding the radio, in an electric vehicle you have all sorts of noise sources from motors and driver circuits to controller electronics. They all need shielding as well. Auto makers are cheap. They'll do they bare minimum. If you don't have to worry about AM radio, that's a whole bunch of work they won't (have to) do.

Comment Re:Did someone actually say this? (Score 1) 317

When you consider the weight of the additional shielding and other RFI mitigation hardware required to quiet the vehicles electrical emissions enough to allow AM radio reception it technically adds to the weight of the vehicle and therefore reduces the range with the additional power required to move it around. Probably about as much as having a larger person or persons inside would. Of course that can be compensated for in other ways but may add to the cost. Boohoo. They can complain all they want, but as I ham radio operator I'm all in favor of spectrally clean transportation. If there's a radio in it, or around it.

Comment False recognition lawsuits await (Score 1) 113

Facial recognition technology is far from perfect. In the rush to tag offenders they'll inevitably flag innocent people and make it impossible for them to go out in public without harassment. Private companies have already had action taken in the US. Rite Aid is banned by the FTC from using it for five years for just such reasons.

Comment Adaption aids adoption (Score 1) 134

IBOC requires the purchase of a new receiver. There's no getting around it. Even the smallest portable model costs $40-50 in the US. A larger unit can run hundreds. This is one of the biggest problems blocking adoption. Hybrid mode notwithstanding, it renders a century of radio purchases obsolete. The open nature of DRM allows many after-market options for adapting these legacy radios to continue to work. Even your vintage cathedral receiver could be enabled without permanent modification by sampling an IF stage at one of the tubes and either routing it to a computer, or a small inexpensive decoder somewhere in/on the case.

Comment Sustainability (Score 1) 430

While I see portable devices only increasing in popularity, It's hard to beat a desktop for replaceable components. Want a ton of storage? Add more drives. Cool new game? Update the video card and add some memory. Something breaks? Grab the stuff that still works and rebuild. Most laptops, netbooks, and multi-touch gadgets are not made with this in mind. Even standardization between makes and models is difficult, with vendors preferring as much lock-in to their platform as they can get. If you like the notion of replacing the whole system every couple years, fine. It's an unnecessary waste and expense. In practical terms many people are quite happy using/reusing many components for as long as possible.

Comment More cameras, not less. (Score 1) 1123

I doubt there is any way to stop the people recording law enforcement in public, in the line of duty. This is legally distinct compared with recording activities inside the police station. Equipping cruisers and other vehicles with a Google Street-View type camera system would assist all parties in interactions. And proper software for combining video would also allow for unprecedented scene imaging. For the record.

Comment Re:iPhone (Score 1) 351

I noticed some time ago that staring at my iPod touch before going to sleep causes a residual flicker in my vision afterward. I've never had that happen before, and I'm not prone to photo-sensitivity in anything else I've encountered. It can persist for a minute or two after I turn it off. Video or gaming modes make it worse. Like there's a fast strobe light dimly leaking into the room with my eyes closed. Turning the brightness down avoids it, or just avoiding the iPod completely.

Comment Re:Definitions (Score 1) 979

If life is an emergent property of the universe, and adaptation, intelligence, communication, and ultimately awareness an evolution of that, then the nature of the universe should allow the creation of consciousness (or the result we possess) in any sufficiently complex environment. It's mostly conditioning.

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