Ductapemaster

Ah! What a coincidence — I registered my Banana Republic account with a gmail "+" email (eg, my_email+bananarepublic@gmail.com) as is my standard practice with retail accounts, and I have the same login issues. It's quite odd, but I'm glad it's not just me!

I don't know how they achieved it specifically, but there is a moment in the broadcast[0] they did where they show the umbilical on the rover and mention that it was cut. I'm curious as well how they did it!

[0] https://youtu.be/gYQwuYZbA6o?t=1898

Most defog is just a soap film, and many divers including myself just use baby shampoo diluted in water. Store-bought defog is expensive and doesn't really work any better.

However, when diving you leave your defog wet (hence the baby shampoo so your eyes don't get irritated) after a quick dunk in water to rise off the excess. A coating that dries will be very different, although I am sure they sell it somewhere!

I've heard of people using Rain-X on their masks, but never tried that before. Maybe it'll work on glasses too!

Reading about their clock and my subsequent research into how one would "communicate" through design that a particular site (say, nuclear waste dump) was harmful and not something to be messed with or explored was the original impetus for this thought experiment.

It's fun to dream!

Some days I dream of a distant future in which an average being (human or otherwise) comes in contact with a hard disk drive containing humanity's knowledge. I think about the vast number of layers that have been combined to create such a marvel of technology, simply to store data in an efficient way. Sure, you might be able to figure out the physics of magnetic storage, or even the basic electronics, but what about the motor controller? The architecture and firmware on the storage controller? The electrical interfaces to the storage controller?

Let's assume you even get that far.

What about the physical layout of data on the drive? The filesystem? The file formats?

That's not even all of it, and there is just so, so much that would be incomprehensible to a single individual, however intelligent.

It's truly incredible how we've been able to combine years and years of knowledge into something most humans would just take for granted.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” -Arthur C. Clarke

Yeah I dumped my Teflon cookware years ago, with the exception of one nice nonstick baking sheet I have. Cast iron requires a bit of care but it’s really not that hard. Plus if you screw it up, just strip it down and start over!

For acidic foods I use an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, or a SS sauce pot.

The really awful thing from that story (Planet Money did a great recent episode on the ProPublica coverage) is that they are able to get away with this through Arbitration clauses. By way of their contracts, they strongarm their contractors into dealing with any "misclassification" issues (eg. exerting too much control over a contractor) individually, silently, and outside of court. Contractors have no ability to sue in a class action suit, and aren't even allowed to speak to fellow contractors if they go through arbitration. It's such a sneaky and frankly complicit way to enforce their business model. They know it's grey, and they put people in the corner so they can't call it grey with a loud enough voice for serious attention to be brought to the issue.

Thankfully some law firms have taken the approach to overwhelm Arise with individual arbitration claims. Arise likely calculated in to their model as a cost of business expense, so the best that can be done is to make that expense grow.

I don't mean to me facetious, but I am genuinely curious: why should you get to have it your way? You are attempting to buy a product they do not sell.

I'm so confused about Autodesk's licensing now. I have an Eagle subscription at $100 a year and a number a months ago they bundled in F360 with it, which was a welcome change. But now, F360 alone is $300 a year (and they say it comes with a free Eagle subscription??). How are there two pricing models?

Am I going to be surprised by a 300% cost increase when my subscription renews? Are they going to force me to subscribe to F360 to get Eagle? Thankfully I just renewed, so I won't have to worry about this for at least a year, but this is frustrating.

I don’t have kids, but this strikes me as lacking empathy in the current climate.

Choosing to have kids or not pre-COVID came with a set of expectations, risks, and choices that were fairly well defined. Parental leave, childcare, proximity to family and friends, school, increased costs, medical treatemtn, etc. Parents could evaluate those based on what their employer offered and the experiences of their peers going through the same processes.

Now, with COVID, the entire world has changed. School is no longer school. Childcare doesn’t exist. Friends and family are socially distanced or inaccessible due to quarantine. Parks and beaches are closed. Vacations are extremely limited. Any social interaction has become a risk. None of these were risks that a reasonable parent would consider, and even for the paranoid ones, it is highly unlikely that anyone considered it all at once.

Given the extreme change we are going through, the “if you can’t handle it, don’t have kids argument” is just not realistic. A pandemic isn’t “just how life goes”.

These standards are robust to step-function changes like unplugging and plugging in, through smart electrical, mechanical, and software design. There's a ton of detail here, so if you're interested feel free to DM me.

However, the challenges I am referring to above mostly have to do with the steady state operation of the bus, after it has negotiated it's final data rate and is transmitting at full-blast. That's when you run into the transmission problems (eg. radiation of your signals), or your setup just won't allow you to reach the full data rate due to interference.

A lot of it has to do with the electrical properties of such a switch. Even older versions of DisplayPort have massive data rates, meaning each electrical signal switches many millions of times a second. Also, each signal may have to switch states close to the same time as the other signals, meaning there needs to be some sort of matching between the different signal paths.

Add in noise sources from the power supplies, your cell phone, and other sources, and it becomes a challenging physics problem. Not to mention, you don't want those signals leaking out either. At these data rates, wires are both transmitting and receiving antennas.

Switches are inherently very mechanical devices, so designing one that can operate in these conditions reliably would be both complex and expensive. Much easier to have some silicon do it for you.

I love that we have ideas and theoretically a combination of technologies that can take us to Mars and beyond in a short timeframe. The way I see it is that while chemical rockets are un-economic, as you point out, for a large scale colony, what humanity needs is a demonstrated need and a catalyst to get us to explore the more exotic propulsion technologies like nuclear + ion drives + hydrogen.

Chemical rockets will take us from 0 to 1, and the economics will drive the next technological development to take us from 1 to n. I think it will work the same way as when telegraph wires were exploding around the US and we realized copper resources were a limiting factor. Did we give up and say "well, let's wait for the next technology"? No, we kept building the wires and other industries sprouted up to handle the demand (notably recycling).

Ah, that's a good point. I wasn't thinking about the relative energies of the electrons themselves.

Is it also a relative improvement of the energy conversion into electricity vs. into heat? Intuitively the photons energy will be partially converted into both (conservation of energy) and this efficiency improvement seems like it would skew that ratio into favor of electricity generation.

I respect your adherence to your beliefs and that you are ready to stand up for your side. However, I think the thing that you’ve missed here is that not all users are the same.

Many many other highly technical folks on this website agree with your points and would side with you if it came down to it. However, that group of people (and surely the other groups who feel the same way) only represent a microcosm of the total user base for a device like a smartphone.

Millions and millions of people didn’t buy their phone because they wanted a handheld general purpose computer to tinker with and install any software on. They purchased their devices simply for the utility, the access to content, and user experience they provide.

The systems and businesses that create each of those sides are very different, and misaligned in terms of the freedom you wish to have. Apple has chosen to fight for what they view is an optimal user experience for their target market.

I pose a question: can the two expressions of technology not exist together? Not on the same device, but in the same world as separate entities?

I see where you are going here, but neither of those items (nor any independent of a comptuer) provides the same utility as an iPhone.

Fair point. From the way I see it, Apple is not a traditional hardware company, persay. It’s not like buying a PC from Dell. Dell sells hardware, and just that.

The difference is Apple sells a user experience. Sure, you have to purcahase a physical thing to access that experience, but that is the nature of what you have purchased when you buy an iPhone.

I think this boils down to a mismatched set of perspectives on the business Apple has created. Apple breaks the typical “buy hardware from X, install software from Y” flow and instead turned their iPhones into a portal into their own user experience universe. They did this because it provides a fundamentally unique experience when compared to other platforms. It’s a differentiating factor for them. Again, I would argue that Apple doesn’t want to be a hardware company. They want to be an experience company. In order to do that, they have to develop and sell cutting-edge hardware to you and me.

Don’t get me wrong, not trying to say this is good or bad — just observing a sublety that I think gets missed when passionately arguing about hardware ownership and the rights that come with it.

"...absolutely nothing to do with conceiving, designing or developing such a successful game."

But it has everything to do with distributing the game. Also it has a lot to do with outsourcing the maintenance of the mobile platforms — designing hardware, OS releases, etc. Epic did not design their own hardware, their own silicon, build entire global supply chains, design UX, etc. Apple and Google did. Do they not deserve a cut?

I'm not here arguing the percentage of the revenue, just that that some percentage is clearly warranted here. Their relationship with Apple and Google is clearly a partnership, meaning it has to benefit both sides. Same way it works with consoles.

The fact that you phrase this in such a binary fashion invalidates your point. Decisions are never so one sided.

Apple's version of gatekeeping is a balance between providing a user experience that they control and design, and managing/controlling competition.

I think that's a pretty un-based fear. Almost certainly any restaurant, and especially a bar, will use a professional ice making machine. At the volumes if ice they go through, it wouldn't make sense to make it in any other way.

Just thinking out loud here —

1. I think it's a lot harder to rig something to look good vs. like a landslide.

2. Making it "close" could potentially open up risk if something the victorious/controlling party didn't account for it (eg. uncounted ballots are uncovered due to a legitimate accident)

3. Suspicions don't really matter when you can just jail your opponents for arbitrary crimes.

As someone who is both new to Twitch and uses it for “alternative” content to gaming (eg. music streams, cooking classes, etc), I find this rebranding confusing and poorly timed. Clearly the platform is mostly for gaming, but the pandemic has highlighted Twitch’s ability to become more than just that. It works quite well for live music events, whether it be a single artist playing in their bedroom to 50 people or a full-on live music festival with 30k viewers. I’ve been attending all manner of these streams for months now, and I don’t see them ending soon, or even after the pandemic subsides. It’s a completely new way for artists and producers to engage with audiences. Entire record labels have multiple weekly streams for their content and communities.

I really hope that Amazon sees the platform for these other uses and makes it more friendly for other content producers. Clearly there is both a need and demand for it.

I realize I didn't make my point well — I intended to use the roads comparison as infrastructure is typically roadside on poles, or underground in a roadway. I thought it would be a relatively good analog for how many miles of cable we have to wire the US.

Questioning my daily routine led to me noticing significant improvements to my hair health. My lightbulb moment happened on a scuba trip (diving 4-5 times a day for week) where I wasn't showering like I usually do, but just rinsing off the salt at the end of the day. My hair was incredibly healthy by the end of the week — no excessive oils, discomfort, dandruff, itchy scalp — just healthy hair. I had suffered on and off with those before.

I started using shampoo only once or twice a week (I do shower daily) and just using hot water the rest of the days. My hair is immensely happier now! I also switched to using a "fancy" shampoo with salt granules in it, since the ocean seems to make my hair nice, and that helped as well. Even though the shampoo is more expensive than the cheap stuff I used before, I use way less of it and it's cheaper overall.

I've tested my theory in a couple ways, and it's all been positive. After a Pre-COVID haircut, I had them use whatever shampoo they use for a wash. My scalp was itchy, dry, and uncomfortable for at least 24 hours after that, and my hair was totally flat for a few days as well. I also tried not using shampoo for a long time (3 weeks) and just using hot water, but I got dandruff again and I could feel I was getting dry skin and oil residue building up on my scalp. I'm back to my normal routine now, and have never been happier.

Personally, I read it more as "95% of it is over a single medium", and that it's less about the actual length.

But, for the sake of comparison, the US has 6,853,024km of roads and 95,932km of expressways according to Wikipedia [0] (far and away the most of any country in the world, interestingly). Broadband penetration for the US is >50% for any demographic [1], so extrapolating there's millions of kilometers of internet cable just to support the US's internet needs. So maybe that number is pretty amazing after all...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_netw...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/710877/adult-home-broadb...

I totally understand how this feels. I've always been a night owl, staying up in my teenage years until 3 or 4 in the morning working on a project. I can just think more linearly when my brain is tired.

Pre-covid I was regularly doing an intense morning spin class before going to the office, so I was "tired" when I started my day, and my productivity was great. Not perfect, but much better. Since WFH/SIP I don't have the opportunity to do the same kind of intense cardio, so I've relegated myself to blocking my afternoons so all my meetings get scheduled in the morning. Even then, I still am not that productive in the afternoon, and sometimes resort to getting work done in the evenings when I feel I can take on a larger task.

It is incredibly dangerous in comparison (as a scuba diver). These courses generally have a requirement of being a very competent diver (hundreds of logged dives, for example) and they just won't pass you if you don't know what you're doing. Cave divers take things very seriously.

The more expensive beans from Costco are great as Toddy cold brew! I don't like them as normal hot-brew...too much cigarette/burnt flavor comes through for me as you mentioned — but not in the cold brew!

I'm a cynic about unlimited vacation policies for a few reasons:

1. At its core, I believe it's a clever bit of financial engineering disguised as a worker-first policy. All of a sudden your startup doesn't have any accrued PTO to keep on the books, and doesn't have to pay out anything to people who leave (I know this varies state-by-state but at least in CA I got paid out at previous jobs).

2. There's no tangibility to your vacation. You're just given access to this nebulous thing and it is up to you and the company to define a culture and a policy for it, and most of the time they don't do it well. People end up coming up with a "virtual bank" in their heads to justify taking time off and keeping track of things. This leads to totally different value systems between individuals, teams, managers, etc. All of a sudden a number I could look at in my payroll software and was inarguably whatever integer it was to anyone who looked at it is now some weird "idea" that my boss and I have to agree upon, potentially every time I go and take time off. This leads to unfair application of policies across a business, because every employee and manager is different.

3. In an unlimited system, the value of 1 day and 1 week has to be self-assigned by me or my manager, since with "unlimited" the value of any individual day is by definition basically zero. I think this leads people to see their time off as less valuable and are more likely to come online to check an email or respond to a slack. At my current company we have an unlimited PTO policy, but they found people weren't actually "off" when they said they were, so we now have one day a month that is dedicated as a company holiday so that everyone is off at the same time. It's usually used for creating a 3 day weekend, or extending a federal holiday.

Overall, I hope the policies continue despite my cynicism, but only with more guardrails. I hope that companies have better policies in the future encouraging employees to take time off. I would like to see companies do more "full shutdown" days like mine currently does. It's a forcing function that benefits everyone.