Regulation of private companies and enforcement of same aren't really the way things work in America. And even the most highly regulated companies struggle with reality practicalities of tamper evident audit trails, for example designating a subset of systems in-scope of SOX or PCI controls where such trails are required.
You could require third party audits on an annual basis and discrepancies and violations addressed and or investigated. Failures need consequences like increased insurance rates, dismissals, etc. if it continues then the Feds get to take over the department/precinct, whatever.
the example is good and those ads are less awful because the same ad it sent to a demographic, rather than an individual, eg everyone in Michigan get the same ad or everyone watching Friends at 8pm in Cincinnati gets the same ad. Facebook's specialty is targeting a user with an ad. And a side effect or bonus is that few others see it to talk about how inaccurate it might be.
This point about using seconds is entirely correct, and date-time should always be in epoch timestamp (numeric) except for human interfaces (input or rendering for output). APIs and web-forms should never pass multipart date strings because they can be internally inconsistent, for example February 30.
(edit: unless there's no sequential meaning in the date and the date is just a local day name without the notion that adding or subtracting 1 takes you to yesterday or tomorrow (https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...)).
(p.s. autarch thanks for your efforts in open source).
That eBooks don't need printing, warehousing, distribution and retail shelving, it's quite galling that the price isn't favorably differentiated. And I don't think the author gets to keep the difference.
Much of the cost of even a print book is in fixed factors: authorship, editing, proofreading, marketing, cover design, and the like. These may vary by title and it's quite possible to skimp on elements, but for a highly-produced work (references, fact-checking, illustrations, data tables, etc.) can be significant. Those costs are amortised over the print run and sales, which for most books is quite small, perhaps a few thousands of copies.
Digital publishing bypasses print, distribution, warehousing, and materials, but still includes those fixed costs.
Keep in mind that many publishers effectively act a bit like investors or VC, seeding a large number of publications in the hopes that a small number succeed. The name "Random House" was said by its founding publisher, Bennet Cerf to be "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random". As in music and cinema, a few "tentpole" projects support much of the rest of the enterprise.
> eBooks don't need printing, warehousing, distribution and retail shelving
But they do need editing, layout, design, marketing, etc, which are a significant part of the cost of a book. A book is never a solo endeavor by an author.
Presumably, though, those are also things that you'd need for a physical print book, and you could share some of that effort / cost between the two? Maybe this is a naive assumption, but I would assume that the total cost per unit of ebook is still a decent amount less than a print book, even when factoring for the publishing costs, purely due to the fact that you are dealing with a digital version compared with a print version that needs real materials and labor.
You put it well and presbyterian is right in that point, but eBooks don't have the financial risk of retail merchandise planning and merchandising, and that cost saving isn't differentiated.
Not ssh related but I regularly suspend my terminal with Ctrl-S by accident, usually when going for Ctrl-C/V.
That was a nightmare to triage back in the late 90s when I did it. Thankfully Ctrl-Q (I think it’s Q) “resumes”, so, easy fix if you know what you’ve done.
Was discussing at home (USA) this same idea that vehicle lights are brighter and drivers are less inclined to be bothered to dip. I rented a car in the UK several years ago which auto-dimmed the beam and was fascinated by the technology which would allow it to differentiate light sources and identify oncoming vehicles.
This feature must be old. My Subaru Forester 2018 has it. What non-US cars have are those new zone dimmable lamps.
Regardless I keep my auto dim off and just down. I don’t usually need the headlamps in high beam mode.
What would be useful is a taller median between both sides on a highway since often the blinding is because of a difference in the direction facing due to the grade of the highway. Facing people who are looking up a hill is awful.
It is true, that many drivers drive with the high beam on. My cabin is frequently illuminated by their lamps. My lamps never illuminate the cabin of a car I follow by comparison. This strange asymmetry does annoy me and I am certain I’m in the right but it’s usually resolvable by allowing them to pass.
If you are using low-beams and driving more than about 45 mph, you can hit something (or someone) before you had time to see it (or them). Granted, that doesn't matter if you're following someone else, since they'll hit it first. Which is why you need high-beams on when there isn't someone else around to light up the distant part of the road for you--and which depends on how often you drive remote roads.
If my comment was interpreted as some advocacy for the removal of high-beams, please allow me to correct the record: I think they're a good feature to have.
Good. I’ve driven with people who learned to drive in a city and so were not taught to use high beams ever, out of fear of accidentally annoying on coming drivers
This has been available in the US for a long time. I had it on the car I bought in 2016, and on another I bought in 2023. It's just not mandatory, so it usually comes as a part of some safety / driver assistance package. And even if you have it, you need to enable it.
I think most if not all US cars do this now. My current one doesn't even have a way to keep the brights on permanently. Now to wait 8 or so years for all the old ones to cycle out :(.
The average car in the US is 12 years old, so the average lifespan is obviously longer. Though average includes some collectors car that nobody drives daily.
At the time "polls" predicted a Remain win. Between the vote and the eventual Brexit along with protests, there was a government petition for a redo and a Remain optimism that a re-do would flip the result. For this poll to me meaningful, I would expect to see declining support for Reform. But the opposite is happening.
What percentage of the vote was required to join the EU? The EU effectively constitutes a relinquishment of sovereignty, but that's not how it was sold to citizens, they were told that they could leave at any time.
> The United Kingdom consulted its citizens directly only after joining the European Communities: following the British general election of October 1974, the Labour government of Harold Wilson held a referendum to fulfill one of its campaign promises. The non-binding referendum was held on 5 June 1975, some two and half years after the UK's accession. It was the first ever national referendum to be held in the UK, and the "yes" vote won by a landslide 67.23% on a 65% turnout with 66 out of the 68 local counting areas returning majority "yes" votes.
You remember the story the citizens were sold but not the vote requirement seems odd. From a minimum of research, it seems there was no vote to join the EU, which did not exist at the time (1973) of the European Communities project with common currency and the rest. But in 1975 they had a referendum to stay and decided they would with a 67% Yes.
> the EU effectively constitutes a relinquishment of sovereignty
Agreed, it is pooling sovereignty. The UK already does that with a union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Pooling sovereignty is often regarded as a benefit on the whole.
Your link largely agrees; the "Polls of polls" shows a general consensus on a tight Remain win, and the chart shows the convergence being very late in the game.
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