athms

It is very difficult to build anything in SF. The city doesn't have any available land, therefore you need to demolish existing structures and build higher. There is a loud and vocal community of activists that refuse to allow new construction because of gentrification. Additionally, many won't allow retail businesses that are not local. SF prevents retail chains of a certain size in some neighborhoods. Also, the city has a law that allows any resident to challenge a change of use permit or new construction, no matter where they live in the city. These cases ultimately come up before the Board of Supervisors which tend to attach requirements and restrictions for construction leading to expensive delays.

AB5 was in response to the California Supreme Court ruling in Dynamex v. Superior Court. In Dynamex, the court created a new 3-part test that replaced the old Borello standard from 1989. AB5 carved out exceptions in the wage law statute. If it wasn't enacted, most contractors would be considered employees under Dynamex.

It is an opinion piece from Bloomberg.

HPE and Oracle didn't leave the state, they moved their headquarters. The Oracle campus in Redwood City and the HPE campus in San Jose will remain, and they continue to hire locally. Also of note, both companies are incorporated in Delaware and that will continue to be the case.

Apple's Design Awards has snubbed Mac apps for the last three years and in those years the majority of the awards went to mobile games.

>No Time Machine

There are plenty of ways to sync files or clone disks, either natively or using third party applications, both free and commercial.

>Software compatibility: AppleScript, Office, Keynote/Numbers/Pages, Skype

Office and Skype are available for Windows. Windows has PowerShell and it is cross platform, available on both MacOS and Linux.

>Cannot sync iPhone over USB

On Windows, you can use iTunes or SMB via Files.

>Generally heavier, worse webcams, non-replacable batteries

That depends on the brand and model. There are many laptops that are lighter than the MBA and offer more ports.

Apple's 720p webcam in their laptops is not that great, it is a decade old at this point and on par with many other laptops. You can find Windows laptops with 1080p webcams, but they are usually on premium models.

Brands Dell, Lenovo, and HP (and other brands) have replaceable batteries which use screws and brackets to hold them in place. You might mean user replaceable and this is the same as Apple, the manufacturer will only allow authorized service for battery replacement. Unless you have an onsite service (which many brands offer), you need to mail the laptop to the manufacturer for a battery replacement. That said, there are plenty of third party sellers of batteries for Windows laptops.

>No leaked schematics, boardviews, parts, iFixit guides for repairers.

Dell, Lenovo, and HP (and other brands) have freely available hardware support documentation on their websites. You can find repair guides for many of these laptops that available from third party sites including iFixit and YouTube.

Apple's has done the same thing regarding QA. Lots of companies have eliminated their QA departments, moved the QA engineers under development managers, and transitioned the QA labs to virtual machines allowing all tests to be identical and repeatable on each machine. You will never find edge cases or problems unique to certain hardware and software configurations.

As an example, Big Sur bricked lots of Late-2013 MBP laptops, but Apple had no way of knowing this would happen because they never tested them.

He was hired to stop the disease from spreading and he did a great job; he lopped off the infected limb. Nokia is better today because of it.

In 2006, my girlfriend at the time worked in HR at Nokia's US headquarters in Irving, Texas. The writing as on the wall and the company was preparing for a major layoff because Nokia's mobile phone business in the US was tanking. Luckily for her, she was able to transfer to Nokia-Siemens Networks. This was before the iPhone was released and before Elop joined the company in September 2010.

Nvidia has been offering ARM SoCs since 2008.

In California, the two-party consent rule only applies when there is an expectation of privacy.

As an example, dash cams that record audio are legal in California. However, there can be cases when somebody expects to have a confidential conversation with you (on the phone, standing next to the door, or from the backseat) and you must notify them of the audio recording.

>Security cameras that record audio are illegal in California.

It depends.

The two-party consent rule applies when the audio being recorded is in a location where there is an expectation of privacy because the communication is considered confidential. Generally, this doesn't apply to cameras as long as their use doesn't violate community norms and they are used in an area without an expectation of privacy. Using a security camera on your porch is fine because there is no expectation of privacy, but if the microphone is powerful enough to pick up the conversation across the street on the neighbor's porch, that is illegal.

>Security cameras that are not clearly visible (i.e., with a sign pointing them out) are also illegal in CA.

Again, it depends.

There is no two-party consent rule for video recording. You are free to put security cameras anywhere on your property (inside or outside), without notification, including hidden cameras.

There are some exceptions:

1) Commercial operators of vehicles used to transport passengers require notification to passengers when using a video recording device.

2) It is illegal to use a video recording device in the interior of a bedroom, bathroom, changing room, fitting room, dressing room, or tanning booth, or the interior of any other area in which the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, with the intent to invade the privacy of a person. This doesn't include areas of a business used to count negotiable instruments.

3) It is illegal to use a video recording device to view the naked body or undergarments of a person, without their consent, under circumstances in which the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Farm work is more dangerous than being a cop, and the federal government lets children younger than twelve work on a farm unless a state sets its own rules. Age, hour, overtime and minimum wage provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act that protect young workers in other fields don't apply. Seventeen states have exempted farm work from most or all their child labor laws: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.

>Find a new job" is equivalent to "move to a different country".

No it isn't. Switching from cop to ditch digger doesn't require an immigration visa, learning a new language and culture, figuring out the metric system, uprooting your family and maybe supporting your spouse because they won't be able to acquire a job in the new country. Shall I go on?

Only a third of vehicles purchased are new. It has been this way for decades.

>I have no office or legal entity in the United States, yet there are US laws which, if I broke them, would cause the United States to attempt to extradite me.

If you are in Canada and hire somebody to rob a bank in the US, you have violated American law and can be extradited. This works in reverse too. If you are in the US and hire somebody to rob a bank in Canada, you have violated Canadian law and can be extradited.

>For example, see Kim Dotcom.

Poor example because Megaupload had a US nexus.

Yet, Twitch will not ban the women preying on lonely men (aka simps). The activity of these women is is no different than the grifters that prey on the elderly. Twitch has become the modern day peep show booth for these women, who engage in soft core porn with their cleavage on full display and risqué clothing choices.

>...excess light at times of the day when the Sun don't shine messes up our evolutionary psycho-biology, causing issues with sleep.

That is folk wisdom in the IT field. At best, it is blue light, but there aren't enough long term studies to conclusively say this. BMJ Open Ophthalmology published a study in 2018 that said blue light could be a factor in eye tiredness, but it also stated dry eyes due to lack of blinking for long periods a more serious cause of eye strain. It also noted very small fonts, low contrast, and medical conditions like uncorrected astigmatism and presbyopia as factors.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6020759/

Human eyes don't have good night vision, we see best in daylight.

Black text on a white background is best, since the color properties and light are best suited for the human eye. That’s because white reflects every wavelength in the color spectrum. Because of the reflection, our irises don’t need to open as wide to absorb the white light. That leaves our irises in a neutral position and allows us to see with better clarity. This is especially true when white light is contrasted against black, which absorbs wavelengths instead of reflecting them.

Light text on a dark background makes the eye work harder and open wider, since it needs to absorb more light. When this happens, the light letters can bleed into the dark background and cause halation, which makes the text blurry. Our eyes focus better when the iris is narrow.

Additionally, most people are born with some form of astigmatism, a misshaped cornea that blurs vision. For people that have the worst forms of astigmatism, light text on dark backgrounds aggravates the condition. When looking at a light display, the iris closes more, decreasing the effect of the deformed cornea. When using a dark display the iris opens to receive more light and the deformation of the cornea makes halation worse.

On the flip side, dark mode helps with floaters, tiny fibers or spots that appear in a person's vision. These are caused by changes to the fluid in the eye which cause shadows to be cast on the retina. Floaters distort vision in light mode. This condition tends to increase with age.

Also, people with light sensitivity might be better served by a dark background.

Both light and dark mode should be offered for accessibility reasons.

Retina is about pixel density.

>The white background is not good for the eyes.

There is no evidence dark mode is better. In fact, human eyes don't have good night vision, we see best in daylight.

Light text on a dark background makes the eye work harder and open wider, since it needs to absorb more light. When this happens, the light letters can bleed into the dark background and cause halation. Our eyes focus better when the iris is narrow.

Additionally, most people are born with some form of astigmatism, a misshaped cornea that blurs vision. For people that have the worst forms of astigmatism, light text on dark backgrounds aggravates the condition. When looking at a light display, the iris closes more, decreasing the effect of the deformed cornea. When using a dark display the iris opens to receive more light and the deformation of the cornea makes halation worse.

On the flip side, dark mode helps with floaters, tiny fibers or spots that appear in a person's vision. These are caused by changes to the fluid in the eye which cause shadows to be cast on the retina. Floaters distort vision in light mode. This condition tends to increase with age.

Also, people with light sensitivity might be better served by a dark background.

I have found that dark mode works best in low light, 100% contrast can be harder to read with more eye strain, reading large amounts of text in dark mode is harder.

It is frustrating when people who work in IT don't take accessibility seriously. Not everybody is young and in perfect health. Both light and dark mode should be offered for accessibility reasons.

IBM made AMD the second source for Intel's CPUs used in the IBM PC line of computers.

You (and Ted Cruz) are under the illusion that platforms must be neutral. There is nothing in Section 230 mandating neutrality. Section 230 deals with liability of user content. The First Amendment gives platforms the right to censor.

>I don't get this view.

People like things you don't like.

From Kristof's article:

>Its site is infested with rape videos.

Not illegal in the US. In fact, there is plenty of consensual porn made to look like women are being assaulted or coaxed into sex.

> came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive.

If I come upon an adult being assaulted, including sexually, and recorded the incident, this is perfectly legal in the US. That said, there is consensual porn that falls into this category, made by professional outfits.

>It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.

It monetizes all content, even illegal content which hasn't been reviewed or reported. This is how it works for all sites that allow user generated content, including YouTube.

Racist and misogynist content isn't illegal in the US.

There are plenty of BDSM videos including footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. You can find men and women with hot wax being poured on their genitalia or needles piercing their genitalia. You can find golden showers and scat too. None of that content is illegal in the US.

>Unlike YouTube, Pornhub allows these videos to be downloaded directly from its website.

Really? We all know this isn't true because of youtube-dl. Restricting downloads will not work for the determined. If the browser can see it, it can be downloaded.

>A search for “girls under18” (no space) or “14yo” leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren’t of children being assaulted, but too many are.

By the author's own admission, most of the results were not true. Of those that have illegal content, report it. There is only so much a site can do to weed out illegal user generated content. PornHub doesn’t encourage illegal content or turns a blind eye to it. The company uses many of the automated tools that Microsoft and Google developed for fingerprinting pictures and videos of child pornography.

>Depictions of child abuse also appear on mainstream sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook.

You can find videos of adults beating children with all manner of household items. You can find videos of vehicles running over people with their twisted, mangled bodies laying in the street. You can find killings of rival gangs in Mexico and Brazil, or state executions in Iran and Iraq. None of this stuff is illegal in the US.

It would be nice if the author focused on the illegal content, rather than the stuff he finds distasteful.

>Texas also exempts grocery store food purchases from sales tax, barring a few specific luxury categories

California does this too. That said, food prices are higher in California because the local cost of living is factored into all prices.

>...implemented prop 13 back in the 80s.

Your math is a little off, it was 1978.

>Maybe if you stay in the ecosystem.

Not to discount your experiences, but I use FreeBSD, Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android devices, professionally and personally, and I don't have many problems getting these devices to talk to each other.

>Had all kinds of problems connecting it to my Android phone.

MacOS doesn't have native MTP support. You can use a third party tool on MacOS or an SMB client on Android.

>...what hope does the government have for protecting access to legally mandated backdoors in encryption?

None. Both the CIA and NSA have been hacked too. The only entity that should hold private keys should be the person or organization using those keys.

It has been this way for a long time, including selling albums. Musicians and singers make money by performing. The real money is made by song writers.

Universal Music Publishing is a subsidiary of Universal Music Group (UMG), which is a subsidiary of the French conglomerate Vivendi. UMG is one of the big three global music publishers, behind Sony Music but in front of Warner Music.

>The alternative would be to release the songs as public domain like Tom Lehrer

In the United States, authors cannot put creative works in the public domain. The concept of abandoning copyright doesn't exist in US law. At best, copyright holders can license their works permissively.

Be aware that authors (except work-for-hires) and their heirs have an inalienable statutory right of termination, which allows them to terminate copyright transfers and licenses in certain circumstances.