101 karma · joined October 10, 2010
The sheer laziness of the article to not even link to the PR release is amazing.
The other thing I didn't realise until I read the thread is that this situation seems to be currently unfolding - there are posts on the thread from Richard Wang dated September 2nd.
Model.find_by_sql(query, binds=[])
http://devdocs.io/rails~4.2/activerecord/querying#method-i-f...
Model.connection.select_all(query, name = nil, binds=[])
http://devdocs.io/rails~4.2/activerecord/connectionadapters/...
The app read the card correctly and gave the card number and expiry. When I tried to use it in store the eftpos terminal returned roughly: Err 226 contactless card not allowed. The terminal fell back to swipe/insert mode and the merchant told me 'contactless not allowed'. Inserted the (same) card and paid successfully.
I was disappointed because for me, being able to carry just mmy phone for day to day would be awesome, and NAB has no phone solution yet.
Is the content on the site itself just as offensive? If so, how do you feel about the MCs and the large numbers of album sales etc. that they attract?
(1920 * 1080 * 3 * 60) / 1024.0 / 1024.0 => 355.96 MB/s
300mbps wireless n:
300 / 8.0 => 37.5 MB/s
Given that the whole point of HDMI is image quality, how are they going to shove 355MB/s through a 37.5MB/s link without lowering the quality hugely?
It all seems rather pointless to have a large, high quality display and content, and force it through a small link.
As far as I can tell, this fight seems to be between two ways to watch a sports game:
1. on over-the-air broadcast, which is free to receive. 2. cable television, which is not free to receive.
Apparently Aereo makes (1) easier, which presumably means more people will choose (1) instead of (2).
What I don't understand: * If I could watch the sports game for free, why would I ever choose to pay for it instead? * If they (I think in this fight 'they' refers to the NFL and MLB) don't want me to watch the sports game for free, then why do they allow/provide free broadcasts in the first place?
From what I can tell, the whole sports game watching market looks even more ludicrous than the arbitrary restrictions online TV/ebook market (the number of books in the kindle store that are available - then suddenly disappear when I log into my Australian amazon account - presumably publishers/authors love losing money).
[edit: Oh, and all my debit/credit cards are now paywave/paypass enabled, and they are all from the big 4/5 banks]
The Coin page doesn't mention this at all; does it have this? If not, it sounds like a step backwards.
Strong crypto is, and should be, available to everyone.
I often have problems during upgrades using the proprietary drivers. The solution is usually: 1. Uninstall proprietary drivers. 2. Reboot, make sure the fallback mesa/vesa works (i.e. you can boot to graphical login). 3. Install proprietary drivers again. 4. Reboot, make sure the graphical login works, then run glxinfo | grep -i opengl, and make sure the renderer is GeForce or Radeon or whatever, NOT "Mesa".
Yes, it's stupid, and yes, we shouldn't have these problems in 2013, but the proprietary drivers tend to just have more compatibility issues.
Specifically, you can do an EFT transfer from a bank account to any other bank account in Australia via online banking, and it's free (at least in all the times I've used it).
In the case of ETFPOS terminals, EFT is always free for the payer (the customer), and credit cards are usually free for the payer, but do sometimes have a fee for the payer (certainly AMEX and Diners).
As I've now been corrected on, both types of transaction have a fee for the payee (the merchant).
The fee for the terminal itself is definitely true - I was mainly thinking of fees in terms of payers, i.e. the customer, not the merchant.
Though given there are alternative methods for credit/debit payments (i.e. alternative terminal types, like the swipe thingy that plugs into iPhones) it'll be interesting to see if people keep the combined EFTPOS + credit/debit card terminals, or abandon the EFT side, as the number of non-debit bank/keycards dwindles.
Yeah, the real question I was getting at was, given the Australian market is even more insular and stagnant than the US, why do we have much better systems?
What you're saying sounds plausible; a comparison of the US and Australian regulations on deposit banks would be interesting.
In Australia, the equivalent is EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). You can deposit money to anyone's account by telling the bank their BSB (Bank/State/Branch number) and their account number; however this is not sufficient information to withdraw money.
To withdraw money: 1. at a physical bank branch: a. you put your credit/debit card in a POS terminal and enter your pin/sign to authenticate. b. provide yous credit/debit card and photo ID to the teller. 2. at an ATM: credit/debit card + pin number. 3. online banking: either the credit/debit card number and a password and often a pin as well, or a separate number and password.
All of these use an independent authentication source to the bank account number.
Also the delays quotes here are insane: In Australia, there are essentially 2 ways to pay for something (excluding cash): 1. EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) 2. Credit card (possibly using a debit card) transaction.
On POS terminals, you can choose either; the differentiator being whether you want to use a savings account (EFT) which goes via your bank, or a credit (or savings account accessed via debit card) account, which goes via MasterCard/Visa.
All forms of EFT take 1-2 business days between banks, pretty much all the time; and they're universally free for the payer.
Credit/debit transactions seem to take 1 day universally.
We have a fairly stagnant banking system, with 4 major banks having basically the entire consumer market (and the vast majority of the nonconsumer market as well). Why, in a small, stagnant market like ours, do we fare much better than the US system?
[edit: I forgot to mention, checks are dead here, they're now almost only used for large transfers of money where: 1. you don't want to use EFT; 2. they're over the daily online maximum for EFT transfers, and you can't be bothered to go to a bank branch (although you can only get bank checks at a branch AFAIK); 3. You want an immediate guarantee that the ammount was paid and the date/time/payer/payee (as opposed to waiting 1 day for the payment to come through).]
Widespread unchecked surveillance is evil in and of itself, it doesn't matter _who_ is doing the surveilling.
Following your argument, if the Chinese government engaged in exactly the same sort of surveillance against you that the NSA does, you'd be fine with it, since it would merely be international espionage. But in the end, the same information about you is being stored. And your information is probably less trustworthy with the Chinese government than even with the NSA!
'Spying' in the traditional meaning is qualitatively different to dragnet surveillance of all communications.
I understand that all countries engage in a level of spying, and that friends may not always remain so, but the US' seemingly widespread lack of trust in _any_ other country, only works when you're (1) right and (2) the most powerful country.
These may not always hold true, and it's when bad things happen that you need friends you can trust (and that can trust you).
I'm probably missing something, but it looks like it has the same inputs/outputs as a PI, but with only 720p output (as opposed to the 1920x1080 of a PI). The form factor looks to be larger and the PCB looks a lot more complicated. And it's $30 more expensive?
I really hope all these great improvements are shared between the media player projects as much as possible.
Could you please elaborate?
Now it's ripped, you can play it through any decent media player - mplayer2, mplayer, VLC, etc. etc.
Do you actually know that? Presumably if there is US regulation/law around selling and marketing food products, then Soylent will have to be compliant just like everything else?
Though, given I live in Australia, a country which
> adheres to standards of food safety and has regulatory bodies to protect and promote public health
and I can still buy all the Quarter Pounders and chocolate I want, it seems these bodies are more about food safety, than choosing my diet for me.
(For examples, just read the comments on this article, or any of the Soylent-related articles).
It seems to be based on a presumption that we all have amazing, carefully designed and scientifically tested diets as is, and Soylent is going to make our diets demonstrably worse, or (apparently) make us really sick, or (even) kill us.
Given that 69.2% of the adult US population is overweight, it would seem that our current amazing diets are perhaps not working.
Of course, the vast majority of us make it up as we go along, influenced by food manufacturers and marketing, and the people around us, as well as our parents.
Sure, food manufacturers have more scrutiny than you or I, but no one is making sure that any particular combination of food in the supermarket is going to lead to a healthy diet - nothing stops me from choosing and carrying out a bad diet - and many many people 'choose' and carry out bad diets as is.
Do you seriously think that, when the supermarket put in an entire aisle of confectionery, that they were doing it as some attempt to give us a good diet?
Or that coke is attempting to help us lose weight when the dump all that sugar - or HFCS - in?
If you think the person buying Taco Bell for breakfast, McDonalds for lunch, and KFC for dinner is following a carefully designed, healthy diet, you are deluded. If you think these people don't exist - you're deluded there too.
To be not evil, Soylent only has to be _not worse_ than the average existing diet.
Now, I agree that a complete meal replacement product should get more scrutiny than the average person's diet - and Soylent is! I certainly haven't had my diet designed by a group of food scientists or dieticians.
Compare the marketing/segmentation of the existing products:
Senior citizens: For old people / a worse replacement for regular meals / medical.
Women losing weight: I'm fat / unhealthy / a worse replacement for regular meals / temporary, once I've lost the weight I'll switch back.
Bodybuilders: DUDE, CHECK OUT MY LATS. I ALWAYS DO 10 x 10 DP SETS AND THEN SLAM DOWN A PROTEIN SHAKE. DUUUUUDE.
Soylent: For many people, on many occasions, food is a hassle, especially when trying to eat well. It allows one to enjoy the health benefits of a well balanced diet with less effort and cost.
Now which of these is going to attract, and which is going to repel, the stereotypical HN user?
Of course these are stereotypes, but this is marketing, and segmenting often uses stereotypes to push people into making different purchasing decisions: As an average HN user, I'm going to feel weird/wrong buying a women's weight loss shake, or a senior citizens medical food, or a gym expert's protein shake, but I'm going to feel great buying Soylent, because I fit into the marketing.
My point is that none of the existing products on the market market all these points: * An equal replacement for food, instead of a worse substitute on one axis or another (at least nutritionally); * An all the time replacement, not just for a specific purpose; * Market direct to the consumer (this seems to be the issue with some of the replacements used in hospitals).
Now, whether Soylent actually meets these claims, or whether the stereotypes are actually relevant to the contents of the products themselves, is largely irrelevant at this point. This is marketing, and HN users are gullible to it like everyone else. (Personally, I'm rooting for Soylent)
Re the name, which a bunch of people who seriously fail to see why that name: because it is rebellious in exactly the way average HN users are suckers for.
Is this a US cultural assumption? Or is there something else I'm missing?