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Comment Power companies have been doing this for decades (Score 2) 34

Back in the 20th century some power companies would put your hot water heater on a "controllable" meter that could be turned off during periods of high demand. The rate on that meter was lower than the rate for the rest of the house.

Industrial customers who are willing to be "turned off" can also get cheaper rates from many utility companies.

Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 0) 28

The preliminary results that previously sent their stock soaring "only" showed a 49% reduction. 42% over a much larger population still ain't bad!

I'm honestly stumped why the market reacted as badly as it did to this news - That's still a 100% viable product, and it targets people desperate for any reduction in recurrence! Exactly 0 people will turn down 42% who would have been thrilled with 49%.

Comment You'll own nothing and you'll be happy (Score 4, Insightful) 13

it's no longer possible to create new Arc accounts as of today

Why does using a browser depend on an "account"? And why is an already-installed application (not tied to a single service provider) going to stop working ever? I might not have a very good time with it, but I could still run a 29 year old copy of NCSA Mosaic if I really wanted to.

Then again, both of those pretty much are the answers to my other top question, "what the hell are Arc and Dia, and why have I never heard of them": Proprietary garbage whose continued use depends on the Chief Sociopath having a good quarter. Nope, and good riddance!

Comment Re:Bose (Score 3, Funny) 26

My thoughts exactly. Bose knows how to do "ear-catching", but I find listening to their stuff for any length of time gets really old really fast. Recently we had to rent a car, and it had a Bose sound system. The sound was impressive - in the same way that a freight train whizzing past with its horn blowing is impressive. I guess that's why I tend to dub the company "Blose" ...

I could not get that radio to not make my ears hurt, even after extensive fiddling with the controls. I finally settled on settings that were reminiscent of a cheap 70's transistor radio - that was the least objectionable sound I could wrest from the thing. So the Skullcandy acquisition fits - it's "showy" sound for people who let trends and advertising, rather than their ears, dictate how their music systems sound.

Comment Re:PHP (Score 5, Insightful) 63

This story really isn't about PHP. It's about AI easily finding multiple severity-9+ externally-exploitable server-side vulnerabilities without even breaking a sweat.

Over the next few months, this same story is going to repeat for Ruby, ASP, Python, Node (or JS in general), .Net, etc. And not all of them will be so easily fixed - Or for that matter, disclosed at all prior to a working exploit in the wild.

Running a public-facing webserver is about to become the losing side of an inevitable arms race.

Comment Re:Will ICE be using this, unironically? (Score 1) 115

LPT: Peacefully protesting is not illegal in the US. Guess who this will be primarily used against?

That said, this is the same LRAD system that the military unequivocally promised would never be used inside the US or against civilians. The same LRAD system that failed spectacularly when field-tested in Iraq against so-called "insurgents". It's trivially defeated by any amount of metal (e.g. tinfoil hats really do work against it), rain or even high humidity, plastic sheets more than a few mils thick, wet cloth - Basically anything except bone-dry thin woven fabric is substantially effective at blocking it.

So of course, they'll just crank up the power and actually cook innocent bystanders, but let's be honest, we all know they'll do that even if it worked spectacularly well, because cruelty is the point, and 11 is more cruel than 10.

The time has come when a full-body faraday cage is required gear for any serious protestor - So naturally, we should fully expect wearing anti-static clothing to a protest to become a felony as soon as police realize their intended victims aren't squirming in pain enough to sate their sadism.

Comment Re:VRBO (Score 1) 118

Respectfully, that's not what banning "tasks that require significant effort or time, or would typically be performed by a cleaner" means. Unlisted ad-hoc requirements have been prohibited all along (though admittedly, not well enforced).

AirBNB / VRBO / whatever gets a cut of every dollar. They benefit from junk fees, and couldn't care less except to the extent it costs them customers or risks incurring regulatory oversight - And basic cleaning has been a pretty standard clause right from the beginning (albeit there's a legitimate concern over hosts double-dipping).

Comment Re:This is a good use case for AI, BUT... (Score 1) 57

The use case I envisioned is experts who COULD do the work by hand use AI as a tool to be more efficient. This assumes they are expert-enough that will recognize if their AI of choice is giving a false-positive rate that makes their work harder, not easier. It also assumes that since they are being paid for their time (but perhaps only a pittance or not at all if they are students), they will be paid by their employers or funders as much for reviewing the AI's output as they are for the other parts of their research.

Comment Re:VRBO (Score 1, Interesting) 118

I think everyone is missing the real story here.

This has nothing to do with taking out the garbage, and everything to do with making it impossible to be an "absentee landlord" (or at least hiring a cleaning service)

And it's a much needed change! Far too many deadbeats pick up a literally-condemnable shack in a touristy area and think they can just list and ignore it. It's easy to ghost someone over email, not so easy when your renters are in your face demanding the toilet work ASAP.

Comment Re:The "Promise of anonymity" is never plausible.. (Score 1) 35

The surveys my company sends out really are anonymous, insofar as they don't contain a tracking ID and don't ask for a name.

They do, however, ask for our site and our job title. Which would be just fine if I was Engineer #81 of 200 working out of corporate HQ. Instead, our job titles are unusually specific - Mine is basically "$Teamname Engineer 3", of which there are only two in the entire company, and we're based out of different satellite offices (we're all remote, so my "site" is just the company's largest physical office in my state - A whopping 12 people on-site, maybe 50 including remote workers).

So is it anonymous? Technically yes, functionally no.

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