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Comment Re:What's the ROI then ? (Score 1) 34

$100 billion invested vs $100 million p.a. income. And that is, by Dirty Altman's own words, their "Last Resort". Goodbye and good riddance.

Yea, 100 billion in Treasury Notes at 3.6 would be 36 billion. That's a high hurdle rate and basically zero risk; I'm guessing their hurdle rate is much higher and will be tough to clear.

Comment My take (Score 3, Interesting) 34

I am not a fan of ads, but will tolerate them if I find the content worthwhile and it is free, as in someone else is buying the beer. There are sites I like and do not block ads because I want them to be around, and in the end they either need to paywall or run ads to stay in business. If I pay for a site, then I want it ad free. That's the deal.

For sites like Netflix, with ads + subscription price, I need to decide where the value/cost trade off occurs. For some sites, it's cancel and forget about them, others pay at some level.

Unfortunately, ads are here to stay. The days of Archie, Veronica, Lynx are long gone...

Comment Re:Anonymous to whom? (Score 1) 84

Apple probably never promised that it would be anonymous to Apple, only that average joe won't get the information.

Apple never promised anonymity, at least not broadly. All they promised is a unique email address that does not expose your real address when used. The official explanation is pretty clear that it is to help you prevent your email from view, not that it protected your identity from being revealed. Frankly, anyone that sends threatening letters to government officials and thinks a provider won't turn over their info is doubling down on stupid.

Comment Re:Also several cases of face recognition software (Score 2) 67

There is a basic concept at play, if a single innocent person gets abused by government because of a broken procedure or process, that is far far worse than if a few people who are guilty are released(as long as those incorrectly released are not dangerous criminals themselves). You would rather see one bad person cause 20 innocent people to go to jail though, as long as it's not YOU or someone from your family who are incorrectly or unfairly thrown in jail.

This also applies to what is going on with ICE in the USA, you don't care that innocent CITIZENS are being killed by ICE, because you are a racist and you have no problem when ICE assaults "brown" people.

I support the police(generally), because the police in most places are not above the law themselves, and if a police officer deprives others of their rights, they will potentially lose their job. ICE isn't held to the standards of the police though, and as a result, needs to be shut down until the fascists currently in control in Washington are out of power and tried for their violations of the US Constitution and protecting criminals.

Comment Re:Good (Score 4, Informative) 91

more free movies & music for the poor I encourage the piracy of movies & music & software, the only people that will bother to pirate that stuff is poor because people with disposable income will just buy it and the poor should not be making the rich richer

I can agree with it. If someone can't afford what I've created and it helps them have a better life, I'm all for it. What does piss me off is where I see people steal my work and make a profit off of it. I'd happily license it for very small fee, but they figure why bother if they can just take it for free? It's not worth going to court over it because the cost likely far outweighs any verdict, and then I'd have to collect.

Comment Re:too bad (Score 2) 312

"Well regulated" is not well defined. It definitely didn't originally mean "government approved"...or at least it didn't mean that to everyone who put their signature to it.

If you want to go back to the times of the founders, many of the colonies and later states had laws regulating ownership, carry and storage of weapons;. some required a regular muster of citizens as well. "Original intent" if you will, might indicate that the 2cd was not intended to prevent any government regulation of weaponry.

Comment Re:The flip side (Score 1) 192

Could, in theory. In practice, how do you implement and maintain that given there will be more than one person in the aisle looking at the price tags? Or that if two people see different prices, there are going to be two very angry people yelling at customer service? How will they advertise sales? How will they advertise?

Good points. As always, in theory there is no difference in theory and the real world, in the real world there is.

Right now, it's more of a hypothetical to cause a lot of handwringing, and likely more trouble than it's worth; since in the end I suspect the price difference would be so small that the costs to do it outweigh the benefits. For multiple shoppers they'd probably need to show the lowest, for example, so there would be no advantage to it. Who knows if it will ever happen.

One way to deal with some issues is to get rid of shelf tags and do all pricing in app, but that has its own issues; from people who don't use apps to allowing was price comparisons between shoppers in the aisle.

Personally, I'd rather see them use such data to offer discounts real time in app, since that would give me the ability to decide if I want to use it or not.

And what about Instacart?

That might be easier since they know the customer and buying habits, so targeting would be easier if ordered in app. (I've never used Instacart)

Comment Re:The flip side (Score 1) 192

How would those bad things work? Individual pricing won't work in stores, everyone would just say that the shelf tag said something lower than what the register has. No way to verify. Besides, big stores don't even care. They want to advertise low prices, and you can't change an advertised price.

Surge pricing could change the price based on purchase data, allowing stores to increase prices when they get a demand signal. Using location tracking in store of shoppers, perhaps using the store’s app, would let them change prices when they sense a buyer is nearby and base pricing on purchase history. Let’s say you often buy something every 3 months like clockwork, and you’re at the 3 month point and by the product, they could up the price based on your buying history.

Comment C--? (Score 1) 159

>>Or, since all microprocessors consist of registers, simple instructions, memory addresses, and push/pull, just create a very simple, generic, "language"based on that, and then compile it to any specific architecture.

We already have programming languages like that. C-- claims to be a "portable assembly language" (some claim that traditional C also fits that description).

Comment Re:I Enjoyed My Cable (Score 1) 102

It's an issue of finances. Which comes down to advertising. Big national brands can hang their ad spots anywhere. But local content providers have the advantage of reaching a known geographic area that neigborhood businesses want to reach. Bob's plumbing doesn't need to reach viewers in NYC. Or have to pay for ads shown there. And ISP location services are crap. But advertising on the local news generally gets businesses customers in the correct geogrphic area. Even if that local news is streamed.

Local stations can survive because of its niche, it’s the small networks showing specialty fare that would likely have problems going it alone; primarily, as you point out, the have now way of targeting local viewers with local adds due to the difficulty in targeting those ads.

Comment Re:I Enjoyed My Cable (Score 1) 102

If cable had something where I could pick only and exactly the channels I wanted, and pay only a certain rate per channel, I'd happily take it. Say, just as an example, Disney, HGTV and TBN, and pay for just those 3. And not have to channel surf through 375 channels

Problem is many of the smaller channels would not survive unless they charge a high rate, and people wouldn't subscribe. They only make financial sense as part of a bundle where they get a few pennies per subscriber but it is enough to make them viable.

In your example, that bundle would be anywhere from ~23-28$/month, depending on your tolerance for ads, plus ISP fees.

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