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Comment Re:Adblock is even more popular (Score 2) 351

It's almost 100 times more popular, in fact.

The current Mozilla wouldn't dare to do that, but it would not be that different from when they implemented pop-up blocking. That annoyed advertisers, and also had some collateral damage. But it was very much appreciated by users. I think if adblock had been around back when pop-up blocking was invented, it too would have been built into the browser.

Comment Re:4k downsampled to 1080p is AWESOME (Score 2) 181

It's possible to turn off chroma subsampling in h264, avoiding the need to encode the video at twice the target resolution. But for a while that wasn't as well-supported.

For youtube in particular, there is another issue that makes video encoded at high resolution look better when downsampled than something encoded for the target resolution. Youtube assumes that low-resolution videos are low quality, and hence can be compressed more aggressively. This is why things like TASVideos encode their console gameplay videos, which are inherently 256x224 or similar in resolution, at at least 1080p. Simply doubling the resolution to avoid chroma subsampling still leads to youtube compressing the video too much.

It would not surprise me if other encoders than youtube's behave the same way. That could also be part of the explanation for why the downsampled video looks better.

Comment Came here to post this (Score 1) 595

From the google link, you can see that during the last 12 months, the fraction of traffic that is ipv6 has doubled from about 3.3% to 6.5%. The rate of increase is still accelerating, and is currently about 4 percentage points per month. If we use linear extrapolation, we get about 18% ipv6 traffic in 3 years. If we use exponential extrapolation, we get 52% ipv6 traffic in 3 years. It is finally coming (though it should have happened 15 years ago).

Comment Re:Mostly Rubbish Research. (Score 1) 246

this research is trivially shown to be a pile of garbage. It ASSUMES the only cause of recidivism can be the length of prison sentence, and therefore that relation is cause. It totally ignores that harder criminals, when caught tend to end up with longer sentences (because, well, they do worse crimes..) and that these same harder criminals are more likely to not change their ways.

No, it assumes there might be other causes, and controls for those. Here's the relevant part of the article (which I already quoted in my original post):

A 1999 study tested this assumption in a meta-analysis reviewing 50 studies dating back to 1958 involving a total of 336,052 offenders with various offenses and criminal istories. Controlling for risk factors such as criminal history and substance abuse, the authors assessed the relationship between length of time in prison and recidivism, and found that longer prison sentences were associated with a three percent increase in recidivism.

Comment Re: Hahah (Score 3, Informative) 246

Perhaps prison wouldn't be appropriate for an adult either, here? There is evidence that harsher punishment is counterproductive, increasing the chance of repeat crimes.

A 1999 study tested this assumption in a meta-analysis reviewing 50 studies dating back to 1958 involving a total of 336,052 offenders with various offenses and criminal istories. Controlling for risk factors such as criminal history and substance abuse, the authors assessed the relationship between length of time in prison and recidivism, and found that longer prison sentences were associated with a three percent increase in recidivism. Offenders who spent an average of 30 months in prison had a recidivism rate of 29%, compared to a 26% rate among prisoners serving an average sentence of 12.9 months. The authors also assessed the impact of serving a prison sentence versus receiving a community-based sanction. Similarly, being incarcerated versus recidivism.

This is especially pronounced for low-risk offenders.

Researchers also find an increased likelihood that lower-risk offenders will be more negatively affected by incarceration. Among low-risk offenders, those who spent less time in prison were 4% less likely to recidivate than low-risk offenders who served longer sentences. Thus, when prison sentences are relatively short, offenders are more likely to maintain their ties to family, employers, and their community, all of which promote successful reentry into society. Conversely, when prisoners serve longer sentences they are more likely to become institutionalized, lose pro-social contacts in the community, and become removed from legitimate opportunities, all of which promote recidivism.

If one goes to the step of imprisoning people, then the prisons that perform best when it comes to low risk of preventing future crimes are ones like this one.

Comment Re:Stupid NAT. (Score 2) 84

It is coming, finally. In 2010 0.1% of the connections to Google's services were native ipv6, and about the same used 6to4. Now, about 6% of the connections are native ipv6, while 6to4 is almost completely gone. 6% is enough that it's actually starting to matter. The fraction currently seems to be growing by 2.5 percentage points per year, though it might still be accelerating. So perhaps we will finally be free from the curse of NAT in a few more decades.

Comment Re:No they don't (Score 1) 226

Current international limits are 50 W/m^2. The sun at noon is 1000 W/m^2, so by that standard the rectenna is going to be very large indeed.

50 W/m^2 is absurd! One of the biggest problems with solar power is how much space it takes. Restricting yourself to 50 W/m^2 means that all things equal (which they wouldn't be, but still) you would be doing 20 times worse than normal solar power. For there to be any point in solar power satellites the flux in the beam must be much higher than the Sun's flux.

Are you sure 50 W/m^2 isn't just for some pathfinder experiments? It seems silly to have the same limits for radiation inside a power beam as everywhere else. It's a bit like having the same air quality standard inside a fireplace as in a city.

Comment Re:No they don't (Score 1) 226

>Or rectennas. You recall that SPSS's have a downlink portion, right?

The necessary size of the rectenna is set by the size of the microwave beam as it hits the earth, isn't it? Wouldn't that make its size not grow with the size of the array of solar panels in space? In fact, if all the sending antennas work as a single phased array, wouldn't you expect the beam to become smaller as you make the space array bigger?

Comment Re:First principle - who pays? (Score 1) 137

I would also point out that selling the content in other territories around the world has been an importance source of revenue for the BBC for many decades.

I just checked this, and I'm surprised by how much money they get from this: One quarter of their income is from commercial BBC Worldwide sales.

Without it the license fee would have to be much higher to support the content that is produced.

I wouldn't say "much higher". It would be 36% higher. Definitely noticable, but not dramatic. Or they would have to produce or buy somewhat less expensive programs. Still, it's much higher than the handfull of % that I had imagined.

Comment Re:BBC is a payed for service (Score 1) 137

>If I pay a license fee to have BBC content, then I don't want others receiving it for free.

Why not? That sounds pretty petty. It's already been paid for, and others viewing it doesn't take away its value. If I paid to have something produced, I would want as many people enjoy it as possible. It's people enjoying it that makes it worth paying for social services, and the more people watch the BBC, the more worthwhile it is paying for it. If something you pay for has a large international audience, then that's all the better in my opinion.

Comment Re:First principle - who pays? (Score 1) 137

After the tax-payers have already paid for a program, it doesn't hurt them if that program also benefits the rest of the world. In fact, if I paid for some television program I would want it to reach as large an audience as possible.

The problem is with all the stuff the BBC doesn't produce itself, but instead licenses from others. Those license agreements are usually much more restrictive than they were when television was simply broadcast to whoever could pick it up. Those radio waves didn't care about national borders, but current licence contracts do.

Hopefully multiple broadcasters in Europe will be able to share the costs of a licence for broadcasting across Europe (or ideally the whole world), so that the total costs for each broadcaster doesn't actually get any higher. Or of course one could just pass legislation specifying what the cost should be, though that probably wouldn't bee free market enough for the EU.

Comment You linked to the wrong page of the thread (Score 1) 286

From the first post of that thread:

The video linked below was made by a Russian Model S owner. He was traveling to Barnaul, industrial city in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, and found himself with 70 miles of range left, but 90 miles away from the destination (and presumably charging facilities).

The owner negotiated with a trucker to tow him for 20km in order to get some additional range via regeneration

As shown in the video he "charged" at near 60kW - a rate which, as the owner notes in the video, is 20 times faster than charging from a 16A, 220V outlet.

Here is the actual video.

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