agree, it seems inefficient. I have friends that use YouTube as their main music subscription platform though. With YouTube premium I think you can close out of the app and still have it play music. I would hope that YouTube is smart enough to not buffer video when you're out of the app for long enough.
Red ripped off JPEG2000, and the derelict USPTO awarded them a patent on it... which was upheld at some point by some equally ignorant judge.
It's such a blatant rip-off that you can actually use an off-the-shelf JPEG2000 decoder to read Red's files.
Until software patents are ruled invalid (as they were supposed to be from the beginning), corporations will continue to use the patent system for exactly what it was supposed to prevent: the theft of other people's work.
Nikon managed to "prevail" over Red in a dispute over these patents, but not in a public-benefiting way. Red folded, but unfortunately their patents were not invalidated. So nobody should be crowing too loudly over this deal.
Years ago you used to be able to open .r3d files after hex editing the magic header numbers with a generic jpeg2000 codec, but that's no longer the case with more modern variations of the file format (they encrypt it), but obviously the core image compression is still fairly similar (wavelets), but it's not like you got high-quality YCrCb data out of the .r3d file that way anyway (as you would if it was a true jpeg2000 file), you'd need to de-bayer it first (hence the two green channels you get, which effectively give it twice the resolution for green - somewhat similar to Chroma encoding like 422).
I believe they were saying that the rumors saying Red was going to be acquired Canon not Nikon, due to the fact Red cameras use a Canon mount, were incorrect.
Epic isn't squeaky-clean, but Apple is making dangerous and dumb decisions in this whole debate.
Banning third-party payments was one thing, but then Apple banned publishers from TELLING people about the ability to pay through a Web site.
That is not just unnecessary from a business standpoint (since the vast majority of people opt for the most convenient thing); but it's so offensive that it invites crackdowns, implemented by ignorant politicians and legislative bodies... hurting Apple's bottom line.
Apple is tarnishing its image and earning it a place among the true offenders of "big tech," a place it mostly doesn't belong because it's not a gatekeeper to huge swaths of the Internet and commerce the way Google, Amazon, and Meta are.
>but it's so offensive that it invites crackdowns, implemented by ignorant politicians and legislative bodies... hurting Apple's bottom line.
Apple is a billion (nay trillion) dollar company with the best lawyers and accountants in the world. They clearly believe that the added uncertainty and negative perception that could be attached to their brand by allowing systems that can increase fraud and malfeasance is more harmful to their bottom line than maintaining their walled garden with all the accompanying "crackdowns".
I, for one, agree with them. I would much rather keep the existing system for both myself and my extended family members and people who rely on me as their tech person than allow these third-party vultures to further complicate and enshittify the system. In the current case, if my parents bought something on their phone, I know exactly where to go to see the purchase and can easily help them refund it or, if it's a subscription, cancel it. Corporations misleading people into using external payment systems and channels in order to make a quicker buck (and keep more of that buck) is easily a worse experience for everyone involved except the vultures.
It seems pretty clear what should happen here: Apple should be able to require you to accept their payment system, but not to require you to charge uniform pricing across payment systems, and not be able to charge you anything for sales outside of their payment system.
Now you can continue to use Apple's payment system all you like, but if Apple continues to charge 30% when e.g. Stripe charges ~3%, you're going to pay the difference for the privilege.
And with any luck that would encourage Apple to match Stripe's fees, but either way, now the choice is yours instead of the extra fees being hidden and mandatory.
The test of whether they're in compliance should be whether it's feasible to sell an app to an iOS user without paying anything to Apple.
Apple can charge for whatever they want, but they can't put up a troll bridge between other businesses and their customers. Then you can choose whether to use their service or not. If they want to charge for payment processing, you can use Stripe or Paypal. If they want to charge for XCode, you can use VSCode or emacs. If they want to charge for app distribution, you can use the Epic Games Store -- or Google Play -- or host it yourself on AWS or your own servers. Whatever they want to charge for, they have to open up to competition.
If their services are good and well-priced then people will choose them even when they have an alternative. If they're not, they won't.
Amen. I have also rearranged attempts at building a "maze" that deliberately waste customers' time. If I'm in a shitty enough mood, I'll move entire displays so I can walk directly where I need to go without detouring around them (when it's clear that they are only arranged to be an impediment).
Same. It can get tiresome in CA though! I'll take widows over recluses any day.
On the one occasion where I found an infestation too extensive to relocate (under almost every one of my outdoor chairs), I tried bug spray. Horrible. Thanks to CA's hysterical bans on everything, the spray is ineffective and merely tortures the spiders and often leaves them alive but maimed. I felt terrible. Never again.
It was too late to repel them. The chairs were rife with brown-widow nests.
Anyway, now I just blast these areas with a hose from time to time. Individual spiders I will relocate if they're in an area where people are likely to sit.
There's a tiny baby spider roosting in my oven hood right now. The two last evenings he has descended on a web to look around. I considered putting him outside, but it's too cold so I just let him return to his hiding place.
> Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
The lib’dems in Europe are anything but liberal or democratic.
Liberal means less intervention from the state, it has literally changed its meaning to soft-socialism.
Democratic is not when you’re elected as part of Boris Johnson on a program to leave the EU, and 16% of elected MPs left his party after the vote and rejoined the Libdems (withouth giving a choice to electors, nor resigning as MP) to fight to stay in EU, coining the phrase “What voters really meant was stay in the EU with conditions.”
I focussed on England, but lib’dems in every EU country have the same betrayal.
I think what you are referring to is the tory MPs who defied the government and voted with the opposition on a single vote.
At that time literally one of them permanently defected, very visibly crossing the floor. Many of the rest were booted out of the parliamentary party by Boris, only to be readmitted later (including my MP, who I do not vote for).
There were two or three who joined minor parties, and a handful ended up in the Lib Dems afterwards, but there was never a mass defection to the lib dems, who only have 15 MPs now; 15% of the 2019 Tories would be over 50.
Either way I think your summary misunderstands the reasons all of that happened, and the principles behind it.
It's the same inverse signal in newspaper names too. Russian propaganda Pravda (Truth), Polish tabloid Fakt (Fact), etc. Organisations that practice X every day typically don't have to put X in the name to convince you about it.
Suppose there was a country where individualism was prioritized. Having your own opinions, avoiding "groupthink", even disagreeing with others, is a point of pride.
Suppose there was a country where collectivism was prioritized. Harmony, conformity and agreeing with others is a point of pride.
Suppose both countries have similar government structures that allow ~everyone to vote. Would it really be surprising that the first country regularly has 50-50 splits, and the second country has virtually unanimous 100-0 voting outcomes? Is that outcome enough basis to judge whether one is "democratic" or not?
I wonder if anyone that voted "wrong" has ever tried to say the election was rigged, and their votes were changed to avoid their families receiving a bill for a bullet.
Even in multi-party systems, it comes down to ruling coalition vs. opposition. DPRK technically has multiple parties, but they are in a tight coalition.
Nice comparison. And also certain political factions in the USA try to hide the shamefulness of laws they propose by giving them names that are directly opposed to what they'll do.
The "Defense of Marriage Act" comes to mind. There was one so bad that a judge ordered the authors to change it, but I can't find it at the moment.
Defense of Marriage Act is actually an exception. The people supporting it honestly thought it was defending marriage, and the supportive public knew exactly what it did.
It passed with a veto proof majority a few weeks before a presidential election, received tons of press, and nobody was confused about what it did.
Whereas the Inflation Reduction Act had absolutely nothing to do with reducing inflation.
It was, and is, absolutely clear to everyone what this bill was about.
If it had been called the “Support Healthcare for Veterans Act” or even “Interstate Marriage Consistency Act” it would have been dubious.
But the 70% of Americans who opposed gay marriage correctly understood its meaning, as did the gay rights activists who saw gay marriage as unobtainable.
This wasn’t a confusing or misleading title, as is evidenced by the fact that nobody was confused or misled.
I think people weren't confused because its details were covered repeatedly by the news, not because the name was clear. I, for instance, figured a name called "The Defense of Marriage" act would be defending everyone's right to be married. It does the opposite. So count me as someone that considers that name misleading.
Not all people who subscribe to the definition of marriage as put forth in the Defense of Marriage Act also believe that gay people are subhuman animals.
Eh, the ACA is the only reason I have "affordable" insurance. In the end it might have been more accurate to say, "Marginally Less of a Rip-Off Care Act."
USA PATRIOT Act was an acronym, actual name was Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.
Actually, that's my mistake. The examples I was thinking of turned out to be one and the same: It was a California proposition originally titled the "California Marriage Protection Act." That was the one where a judge forced it to be renamed to "Eliminates Rights of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment"
Side note of a kinda similar thing happening, forgive me for the sidetrack and side-rant.
PrivatePropery <- was a website in South Africa setup in a market where all real-estate sales was controlled and gate kept by real-estate agents (assisted by Lawyers, various government bodies and even legislation), and its purpose was to allow "Private" individuals to put up their own properties for rent or sale.
Predictably, it eventually got take over by real-estate agents that posed as "private" sellers, and then that caused the entire site to support "Agents" as a concept and here we are. Today, you will hardly ever find a private individual on there and the company makes no effort at all to root them out. The agents just spam all their listings, lie on the metadata for properties, add duplicates, make zero-effort postings and use skew photos, the works.
Another example if you will, AirBnB. Taken over (I exaggerate a bit) by management companies that own many many properties and allocate an "agent" to oversee each property. At least here in South Africa, that is. Might not be that true in other countries, but it's on its way there. Mark my words.
Or more:
Pricecheck <-- Another South African website. Still claims to be a price-comparison website, but is really just like Google shopping, that doesn't do any scraping of prices, but simply "partners" with websites that give it a kickback after a user purchases something.
#3 is certainly bullshit, but Yahoo failed because of #1. Forcing a user to drill down through hundreds or thousands of categories to do a search is absurd, don't you think?
What other buttons do you want?
But for sure Google has crippled its core product. First they removed the + option, which forced the inclusion of words (their excuse was that it "interfered" with their stupid "Google Plus" product which is now gone). Yes you can use "allintext:" but come on. I'm not even sure that's honored anyway.
And the removal of the ability to exclude certain sites from results.
I think the search box was always there, but for some reason it seemed that you needed to select a category...
OK, I just looked up their old layout, and they buried the search bar amongst so much crap that it wasn't clear whether it pertained to the ad or the thing above it, or what... if you even noticed it: https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/longforms/04ILIeAX3JAF...
For output to be accurate, input has to be precise. But there's a trend of dumbing down and minifying interfaces and then tacking AI to guess what the user really means from the little input he is allowed.
It will never work. It can't work. Anyone who thinks this can work is delusional. And with Google it's particularly obvious how stupid the trend is.
Look at the "tabs" Google has for search: all, images, videos, shopping, news, etc. This is things users can input. But wait! What if an user wants news about something? And they have to reach all the way out to the news tab. That's too much for our bubbling moronic users to manage! They can't into computers. They have room temperature IQ. They have never used Google before, so they don't know where the tab is. They probably don't know what tabs or links are either. I know what I'll do. I'll put an AI to reorder the TABS of my users based on their search history, query input, season of the year, and their zodiac sign based on what birth day they used when they signed up for a Google account. That should solve it.
And now the order of the tabs is all over the place and when you want to click the "images" tab it's sometimes not the second tab and when you want to click the "videos" tab it's sometimes not the third tab.
I think this is very interesting because you have to think. If Google can fail this hard at tabs, which is not really a complicated thing to program, imagine how hard they are failing at indexing the entire interweb. Imagine if they are doing to search results the same nonsense bullshit they are doing to the tabs. Just imagine it. It's clear they have absolutely no idea what they're doing with the tabs.
>And now the order of the tabs is all over the place and when you want to click the "images" tab it's sometimes not the second tab and when you want to click the "videos" tab it's sometimes not the third tab.
I also noticed this; they redesigned their search tabs few months ago and now it's sort of bad and user unfriendly. Sometimes there is "News" tab, sometimes there is no news tab and tabs look all the same and generic(white rectangles with black text).
>I think this is very interesting because you have to think. If Google can fail this hard at tabs, which is not really a complicated thing to program, imagine how hard they are failing at indexing the entire interweb. Imagine if they are doing to search results the same nonsense bullshit they are doing to the tabs.
God knows what is in their index and what is not in their index. I think every search engine needs to make its index open and transparent. And yea Google can fail with all sort of things, they are not ubermensch or something like that.
Google's ranking algorithms and search technology are millions of LOC and not even Google engineers know how exactly Google Search works.
I wish people wouldn't abuse video sites and services to post audio-only content, though. That's what SoundCloud is for.